KONGRE BİLDİRİLERİ
b) History of land assessments and records in South Asia’s conglomerate states:
We know that records of land assessment of Gandhara and Sind were prepared by Achaemenid
rulers of Iran but the terms of reference for assignment, assessment and registry do not appear in
historical texts till Ghaznavi times. Since urban life is known for nearly seven millennia before then
[Mehrgarh Phase]2, a brief, speculative history seems germane as prelude to the main historical
statement of this paper. The four millennia that constitute the emergence, rise and decline of Indus
Valley urbanization are a fascinating period suggesting organization in a vast area without any formal
administration. This society either had collective communal ownership or a free enterprise unregulated
individual initiative based on mutual communal obligations. The latter seems more likely as it would
be the initial form of the independent, self-contained village community that has existed till modern
times and was the basic building block of its corporate, composite and conglomerate state structures
throughout history.
The next 1500 years constitute the emergence of Bharat under Aryan states more as semi-settled
clans of pastoralists than as formally administered governments. There was occupation and acquisition
but perhaps no transfer or assessed value of land until the Persian conquest. Unfortunately at this time
a series of political and ethnic changes took place that are difficult to place in sequence of time & space
and impossible to document in terms of their records and procedures of governance. What we can say
with some certainty is that village communities were self-sufficient and marketed their surplus. They
may have been regulated by the moral code of Buddhism for the greater part of the period in most of
the regions where pastoral-tribal life did not dominate. Pastoralists like the agriculturalists contributed
to the economy voluntarily and the state assessed corporate revenue of these communities rather than
maintaining land registers; this practice may even have been followed by Umayyads in Sind. Kautilya’s
Arthashastra mentions private ownership/property, principles of agriculture and record keepers but the
method of recording ownership or procedure for assessment and collection of dues is not clear3.
Although in principle individuals could alienate land, the communal and occupational structure of
South Asian society did not provide a climate conducive to sale of property so normally alienation was
confined to apportionment of inheritance. Even urban property, being divided into quarters for each
caste, class, occupation tended to be passed on to successors in occupation whether family members,
relatives, clansmen or guild members. This did not apply as strictly to cosmopolitan towns or Muslim
settlements but, still being community specific, local registration was enough except in state sponsored
re-allotment of usufruct, right to collect taxes or supervise revenues and finances. The responsibility
of assessment and record of finances had been vested in the office of the Vizier or Divan-i-Vazarat by
the Persians. The Muslims readily adopted this institution and established the triumvirate of Mushrif,
Mustaufi4 and Vizier as a system of checks and balances on misuse or pilferage of finances, either in
collection or in disbursement. Deeds of title/assignment issued by the state were registered in all three
offices and appear in some family records as past glory if not as present claim5.
While the original model for administration developed by the Arab Khilafat was a hybrid one
which amalgamated system using the Arab polity as it could best respond to the myriad of procedures
being applied in different domains, the Abbasid Khilafat gravitated to the Iranian model as it soon
became the core region of the state. When Sultanates emerged, the archetype of the Khilafat was
adapted to Turkic norms; naturally Mahmud Ghaznavi, being the first to have that title, was idealized
as a model sultan. Ideals/best practices were drawn from Iran [Bahram Gor; Noshirvan], Macedonia
[Alexander] and Turan [Afrasiab] in addition to Muslim heroes and, above all, the Sharia. Another
ideal sultan was Sanjar and the typical vizier was Nizam-ul-mulk Tusi, whose manual for conduct, The
Siyasat Nama was supplemented by Chahar Maqala and Jawami-ul-Hikaya in South Asia. Principles
of tax assessment and land records from the Al-Ahkam-us-Sultaniya of Al-Mawardi provided the basic
structure on which the fuqaha of the Sultanate of Delhi developed their local awards according to local
needs6.
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Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü
The Achaemenid state had introduced the system of semi-independent governors called Satraps
which probably left the internal system of assessment and registration to the assignee. Before that the
informal tribal-state did not interfere in the local assessment and communal revenue even at the village
level where a mutually acceptable system of hierarchy and rights over goods and services in the closed
economy allowed for a lump-sum assessment policy. The Turks brought the concept of Khalsa land
as the domain of the Sultan and assigned collection of revenue and expenses to nominees in a sort of
inverted satrapal structure where assessment of revenue and state share was a sultan’s.
Within Khalsa land the financial management was apportioned to Iqtadars or awarded as Inam,
Milk or Waqf; beyond Iqtas and Vilayats of the Umara ruled the Rajas, beneath them were a class of
locals variously called Khut, Muqaddam or Chaudhry7 linking the Sultan and Muqtis to the reaya.
The need for assessment and records of assignment of individual property at the micro level was also
obviated by the mode of financial management. Only surplus revenue [called fawazil]due after all local
expenses such as salary, equipment, stipends, maintenance costs and establishment and development
expenses [called mawajib]8 had been met, was to be deposited in the central treasury. The greater part
of accounts was thus cleared on the account sheets where gross receipts and gross expenses were to
be cancelled. Heads under which land was assessed included Khiraj, Ushr, Khums, Jizya and Zakat,
in addition was the income from conquests [ghanaim] but that was not an assessed income9. Thus the
major burden of records was left to local management at the village level.
While the Iqta system was not very common in Ghaznavi times because it gave too much freedom
to subordinates, it was to become a mainstay of Ghori administration which prospered due to its highly
decentralized system10. The Ghori state and its successor Ilbari and Khalji rulers allowed the Muqti or
administrator of an Iqta the right to add territories to their domain at will if they were not subordinate
to Delhi already. If they coveted one another’s domain, Sultans claimed right to assign it to contenders
as usufruct or on terms similar to those of tributary rajas11. Within the land governed by the Sultan,
the khalsa, land was allotted to an Iqtadar not a Muqti. In addition Milk, Inam12 and Waqf lands were
assigned to individuals, the last being institutionalized in the person of mutawalli of a khanqah, shrine
or other institution so endowed. Though no registers survive13 for assignments during this period, we
have a detailed account of the procedure of maintaining records14. At this stage also subsidiary systems
seem to have been left undisturbed and the sultan remained content to rely on booty and khiraj.
The Ilbari period did not lead to any significant contribution to land assessment even though
Aibuk did take note of the fact that Muslims were to be taxed at the rate of ushr and non-Muslims at
the rate of khums15. The Muslim community was not large enough to hold the hinterland directly; even
urban centres could not be brought under control in the far flung regions. The Sultans were constrained
to award tributary or vassal status to many rajas and even the Muqtis of the periphery, like those at
Lahore, Multan and Lakhnauti16, had to be allowed considerable freedom of action. In Khalsa lands
also the iqtadars were expected to furnish levies for campaigns and remit fawazil. Towards the end of
the Ilbari period the Sultanate penetrated the first layer of local administration and involved the Khuts
in actualization of revenue. It does not, however, seem that the registration and assessment of land
was taken as a central subject. Assignment of land at the intermediate level was the responsibility of
the Sultan and at one tier below it was possible for the Muqti to do so. Since these were large tracts
of land, an approximate area of control along ‘district’ or even village boundaries was enough17; this
state of affairs continued till the time of Jalal-ud-din Firoz Khalji despite some additional conquests.
During Firoz Khalji’s reign, his nephew achieved the first conquests south of the Vindiya and
opened the door for a new kind of vassal; the windfall revenue not only paved Ala-ud-din’s path to
the throne, it also facilitated further conquest and fresh terms of land tenure. A policy of intensifying
involvement of the central government in revenue assessment and collection was initiated in the Delhi
Sultanate by Ala-ud-din Khalji. This had been made possible also by the efforts of Nasir-ud-din and
Arşiv Dairesi Başkanlığı
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