What is Mansabdari System ?

 People from diverse backgrounds joined the Mughal service as the empire 
expanded. They were known as mansabdars.
Mansabdari was a grading system used by the Mughals to fix rank, salary and 
military responsibilities of those in their service. The numerical value of zat
determined the rank and salary of mansabdars.
Mansabdars’ military responsibilities required them to maintain a specified 
number of cavalrymen.
 Mansabdars received their salaries as revenue assignments called jagirs, similar 
to iqtas. The rights of the mansabdars were limited to the revenues from 
jagirs.
 During Akbar’s reign, these jagirs were carefully assessed so that their 
revenues were roughly equal to the salary of the mansabdar.
 During Aurangzeb’s reign, there was a huge increase in the number of 
mansabdars. This created a shortage in the number of jagirs. Jagirdars tried to 
extract maximum revenue due to which the peasantry suffered.

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MANSABDARI SYSTEM The Mughal emperors main­tained a large and efficient army till the reign of Aurangzeb. The credit of organising the Mughal nobility and army systematically goes to Akbar. The steel-frame of Akbar's military policy was the mansabdari system. Through it he set up a bureaucracy which was half-civil and half-military in character. The term mansab means an office or rank in the imperial service, and the mansabdar was an official who, out of his pay, was expected to furnish a certain number of cavalry to the imperial army. They were graded into 39 classes ranging from commanders of 10 to 10,000. During the later years of his reign, Akbar introduced the ranks of zat and sawar in the mansabdari system. According to most historians zat indicated the status and salary out of which besides personal expenses, the mansabdar had to maintain a fixed quota of horses, elephants, carts, etc. Sawar stood for the number of horsemen under him. No one could have a higher quota of sawars than his zat status. Depending on the relation between the zat and sawar, there were three categories in every mansab. The mansab was not hereditary. There were also the stipulations that for every ten cavlarymen, twenty horses had to be maintained and that the contingents of the nobles should be drawn from various groups-Rajput, Pathan, etc. The mansabdars had jagirs assigned to them in lieu of cash payment.

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