The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c3.4

c3.4

The highest *manṣab* that could be held by a subject, not of the royal house, was that of commander of 7000 men, though in the later and more degenerate times we find a few instances of promotion to 8000 or even 9000. The *manṣab* of a prince ranged from 7000 up to 50,000, and even higher (*Mirāt-ul-Iṣṭilāḥ*, fol. 35). In the *Āīn-i-Akbarī* (Blochmann, 248, 249) sixty-six grades are stated, beginning at commanders of 10,000, and ending at those set over ten men. Even at that earlier period there seem to have been only thirty-three of these grades in actual existence (Blochmann, 238). All the later authorities agree in holding that the lowest officer’s *manṣab* was that of twenty men; and these writers record, I find, no more than twenty-seven grades, beginning with that of 7000 and ending with that of twenty. In the earlier days of the dynasty, rank was granted with a niggard hand. In Akbar’s time the highest rank was for long that of 5000, and it was only towards the end of his reign that a few men were promoted to 7000, while many officers exercised important commands although holding a comparatively low *manṣab*. The great accession of territory in the Dakhin and the incessant wars connected with these acquisitions may account in part for the increase in the number and amount of *manṣabs* granted by Shāhjahān and ʿĀlamgīr. But the relative value of rank was thereby much depreciated; and the author of the *Maʾāsir-ul-Umarā* (i, 8), while considering Akbar’s officers of 500 rank of sufficient importance to deserve separate biographies, contents himself in the later reigns with going no lower than those of 7000 or 5000, men below those ranks being too numerous and too insignificant to call for detailed mention.