The Great Moghuls

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Parthasarathi, Prasannan (2011). Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850. p.42. Dyson, Tim (2018). A Population History of India: From the First Modern People to the Present Day. Oxford University Press. pp.70–71. ISBN 978-0-19-256430-6. We have seen that there is considerable uncertainty about the size of India's population c.1595. Serious assessments vary from 116 to 145 million (with an average of 125 million). However, the true figure could even be outside of this range. Accordingly, while it seems likely that the population grew over the course of the seventeenth century, it is unlikely that we will ever have a good idea of its size in 1707. The Mughals adopted and standardised the rupee ( rupiya, or silver) and dam (copper) currencies introduced by Sur Emperor Sher Shah Suri during his brief rule. [107] The currency was initially 48 dams to a single rupee in the beginning of Akbar's reign, before it later became 38 dams to a rupee in the 1580s, with the dam's value rising further in the 17th century as a result of new industrial uses for copper, such as in bronze cannons and brass utensils. The dam was initially the most common coin in Akbar's time, before being replaced by the rupee as the most common coin in succeeding reigns. [10] The dam's value was later worth 30 to a rupee towards the end of Jahangir's reign, and then 16 to a rupee by the 1660s. [108] The Mughals minted coins with high purity, never dropping below 96%, and without debasement until the 1720s. [109]

The Bengal Subah province was especially prosperous from the time of its takeover by the Mughals in 1590 until the British East India Company seized control in 1757. [140] Historian C. A. Bayly wrote that it was probably the Mughal Empire's wealthiest province. [141] Domestically, much of India depended on Bengali products such as rice, silks and cotton textiles. Overseas, Europeans depended on Bengali products such as cotton textiles, silks, and opium; Bengal accounted for 40% of Dutch imports from Asia, for example, including more than 50% of textiles and around 80% of silks. [130] From Bengal, saltpeter was also shipped to Europe, opium was sold in Indonesia, raw silk was exported to Japan and the Netherlands, and cotton and silk textiles were exported to Europe, Indonesia and Japan. [10] Bag, A.K. (2005). "Fathullah Shirazi: Cannon, Multi-barrel Gun and Yarghu". Indian Journal of History of Science. 40 (3): 431–436. ISSN 0019-5235. Tracy, James D. (1997). The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750. Cambridge University Press. pp.97–. ISBN 978-0-521-57464-8. Archived from the original on 22 September 2023 . Retrieved 9 August 2017. Nehemia Levtzion (1979). Conversion to Islam. Holmes & Meier. ISBN 978-0-8419-0343-2. Archived from the original on 3 April 2023 . Retrieved 19 March 2023.Under Akbar's reign in 1600, the Mughal Empire's urban population was up to 17 million people, 15% of the empire's total population. This was larger than the entire urban population in Europe at the time, and even a century later in 1700, the urban population of England, Scotland and Wales did not exceed 13% of its total population, [147] while British India had an urban population that was under 13% of its total population in 1800 and 9% in 1881, a decline from the earlier Mughal era. [151] By 1700, Mughal India had an urban population of 23 million people, larger than British India's urban population of 22.3 million in 1871. [152] a b c Jean-Noël Biraben, 1980, "An Essay Concerning Mankind's Evolution", Population, Selected Papers, Vol. 4, pp. 1–13 The empire was divided into Subah (provinces), each of which were headed by a provincial governor called a subadar. The structure of the central government was mirrored at the provincial level; each suba had its own bakhshi, sadr as-sudr, and finance minister that reported directly to the central government rather than the subahdar. Subas were subdivided into administrative units known as sarkars, which were further divided into groups of villages known as parganas. Mughal government in the pargana consisted of a Muslim judge and local tax collector. [77] [88] Parganas were the basic administrative unit of the Mughal empire. [90] Various kinds of courts existed in the Mughal empire. One such court was that of the qadi. The Mughal qadi was responsible for dispensing justice; this included settling disputes, judging people for crimes, and dealing with inheritances and orphans. The qadi also had additional importance with regards to documents, as the seal of the qadi was required to validate deeds and tax records. Qadis did not constitute a single position, but made up a hierarchy. For example, the most basic kind was the pargana (district) qadi. More prestigious positions were those of the qadi al-quddat (judge of judges) who accompanied the mobile imperial camp, and the qadi-yi lashkar (judge of the army). [97] Qadis were usually appointed by the emperor or the sadr-us-sudr (chief of charities). [97] [99] The jurisdiction of the qadi was availed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. [100]

Dalrymple, William (2007). The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857. Random House Digital, Inc. ISBN 978-0-307-26739-9. a b Centre, UNESCO World Heritage. "Taj Mahal". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Archived from the original on 1 February 2018 . Retrieved 7 May 2020. The development of Hindustani classical music, [165] and instruments such as the sitar. [166] [ self-published source?] Broadberry, Stephen; Gupta, Bishnupriya (2003). "The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia 1500–1800" (PDF). p.34. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 May 2022 . Retrieved 22 January 2021. a b Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (2004). Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (2nded.). Routledge. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-203-71253-5.Main article: Government of the Mughal Empire India in 1605 and the end of emperor Akbar's reign; the map shows the different subahs, or provinces, of his administration Mosca, Matthew (20 February 2013). From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China. Stanford University Press. pp.79–94. ISBN 978-0-8047-8538-9.

While there appears to have been little concern for theoretical astronomy, Mughal astronomers made advances in observational astronomy and produced nearly a hundred Zij treatises. Humayun built a personal observatory near Delhi; Jahangir and Shah Jahan were also intending to build observatories, but were unable to do so. The astronomical instruments and observational techniques used at the Mughal observatories were mainly derived from Islamic astronomy. [190] [191] In the 17th century, the Mughal Empire saw a synthesis between Islamic and Hindu astronomy, where Islamic observational instruments were combined with Hindu computational techniques. [190] [191] a b Asher, Catherine B.; Talbot, Cynthia (2006). India before Europe. Cambridge University Press. p.267. ISBN 0-521-80904-5. OCLC 61303480. Ballhatchet, Kenneth A. "Akbar". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 25 May 2023 . Retrieved 17 July 2017. The stability of the previous reign continues, and Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) — more the aesthete and less the man of action than his father—is the right person to enjoy it. Meanwhile, drama is provided by the rivalries which surround the emperor, especially between his wife and son.Faruqui, Munis D. (2005), "The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and t a b Roy, Tirthankar (2010). "The Long Globalization and Textile Producers in India". In Lex Heerma van Voss; Els Hiemstra-Kuperus; Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (eds.). The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000. Ashgate Publishing. p.255. ISBN 978-0-7546-6428-4. Archived from the original on 2 July 2023 . Retrieved 15 August 2017.

Sinopoli, Carla M. (1994). "Monumentality and Mobility in Mughal Capitals". Asian Perspectives. 33 (2): 296 & 298. ISSN 0066-8435. JSTOR 42928323. Archived from the original on 1 May 2022 . Retrieved 11 June 2021. Begum, Gulbadan (1902). The History of Humāyūn (Humāyūn-Nāma). Translated by Beveridge, Annette S. Royal Asiatic Society. pp. 237–239. Parthasarathi, Prasannan (2011), Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850, Cambridge University Press, pp.39–45, ISBN 978-1-139-49889-0, archived from the original on 4 April 2023 , retrieved 9 August 2017 Chatterjee, Nandini (2014). "Reflections on Religious Difference and Permissive Inclusion in Mughal Law". Journal of Law and Religion. 29 (3): 396–415. doi: 10.1017/jlr.2014.20. hdl: 10871/15975. ISSN 0748-0814. S2CID 143513602. Archived from the original on 22 September 2023 . Retrieved 13 December 2021.

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The Mughal Empire's legal system was context-specific and evolved over the course of the empire's rule. Being a Muslim state, the empire employed fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and therefore the fundamental institutions of Islamic law such as those of the qadi (judge), mufti (jurisconsult), and muhtasib (censor and market supervisor) were well-established in the Mughal Empire. However, the dispensation of justice also depended on other factors, such as administrative rules, local customs, and political convenience. This was due to Persianate influences on Mughal ideology, and the fact that the Mughal Empire governed a non-Muslim majority. [97] Scholar Mouez Khalfaoui notes that legal institutions in the Mughal Empire systemically suffered from the corruption of local judges. [98] Legal ideology Leonard, Karen (April 1979). "The 'Great Firm' Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 21 (2): 151–167. doi: 10.1017/s0010417500012792. JSTOR 178414. S2CID 54775994. Archived from the original on 21 December 2019 . Retrieved 6 July 2019. The evolution and refinement of Mughal and Indian architecture and in turn, the development of later Rajput and Sikh palatial architecture. A famous Mughal landmark is the Taj Mahal.