A History of Agriculture in India v2.c60.5

v2.c60.5

The impressions of Ibn Battuta are based on personal experience as he was assigned the revenue of some villages near the City of Delhi for his maintenance. Ibn Battuta states, ‘the Sultan gave orders to assign to me such a number of villages as would produce a revenue of 5,000 dinars a year. The vizier and the offices of the administration assigned them to me accordingly, and I went out to visit them. One was a village called Badali, another a village called Basahi, and half of a village called Balara. These villages were at a distance of sixteen kurūhs, that is to say miles, in a sadī known as the sadī of Hind. But, the sadī being in their usage a group of a hundred villages. The territories of the city also are divided into hundreds, each hundred of which has a jawtarī (al-jawtarī is the Hindi chowdhri), that is to say a shaikh, from among the infidels of those lands, and a mutasqrrif, who is the person who collects the revenues.