Mughal Administration c9.s7.1

c9.s7.1

I shall now discuss in detail the ābwābs or exactions made on various pretexts in addition to the regular land-revenue or custom duty. These imposts were again and again declared by the Muhammadan sovereigns to be illegal and forbidden within their realms, but they soon reappeared with some changes in their items. Thomas in his Revenue Resources of the Mughal Empire has given from Persian sources lists of the ābwābs abolished by Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1375 A.D.) and Akbar (about 1590). Those prohibited by Aurangzib in a farmān dated 29th April 1673, are enumerated in Mirāt-i-Ahmadi, i. 286—288 (with explanations on pp. 260-264), Z. f. 135, and D. f. 102. But these three sources do not agree in all points; Mirāt names forty-one, Z. seventyfour, and D. seventy-eight ābwābs as abolished at this time. In Bengal nineteen such imposts continued to be levied, but from the tenants only, till the 19th century, when the British law-courts finally put an end to them as illegal. (Rampini’s Bengal Tenancy Act, 4th ed., pages 255-256.) We are thus in a position to make a comparative study of the growth of ābwābs through several centuries of our history.