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Mughal Administration c14.s1: § 1. The Government as a producer.

Mughal Administration c14.s1

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§ 1. The Government as a producer.

c14.s1.1

The Mughal Government was forced to supply its own wants by becoming a producer of nearly everything it required, because in the 16th and 17th centuries our country was in an undeveloped economic condition, the modern private organisations of production and transport were wanting, and the Government itself took a somewhat patriarchal attitude in dealing with its servants and subjects. Such State-factories were an ancient institution of the land, as, throughout the middle ages, they were necessitated by the circumstances of the times. Thus, we read that Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq, in the late 14th century, maintained 36 *karkhanahs* on which probably fifty lakhs of Rupees were spent every year, at a time when the Rupee had at least 25 times its present purchasing power. Afif's *Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi*, pp. 334—340, gives a detailed description of the management of these factories, and the Arab geographer Shihabuddin Abul Abbas Ahmad al Dimishqi, writing from the reports of merchants, tells us something about their working. (Elliot, iii. 578.) For the palace workshops in Fatimid Egypt, see *Encyc. Islam*, ii. 17-18.

c14.s1.2

In Akbar's reign, about the end of the 16th century, the system of palace-workshops had expanded, as was to be expected from the development of civilisation for 250 years. His eulogist, Abul Fazl, writes,—In the 39th year of the divine era (1595 A.D.), there are in the imperial household “more than a hundred offices and workshops, each resembling a city or rather a little kingdom.” (*Ain.* i. 12.) Bernier saw them sixty years later and has left an eyewitness’s account of them (p. 259). We have also lists of *karkhanahs* in the official manuals called *Dastur-ul-aml* and certain other historical works composed at the end of the 17th century and later.

c14.s1.3

But in order to get a clear idea of the economic activities of the State, it is necessary for us to distinguish between two classes of things which our Persian authorities designate by the name of *karkhanahs* and include in the same list, viz.,—(a) STORES of animals, articles of food and drink, and things in a finished or usable condition, acquired by the Government and kept in the palace, which required no further working up, and (b) FACTORIES proper, where raw materials were worked up by salaried servants of the State into fully manufactured goods fit for use.

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