KONGRE BİLDİRİLERİ
Naturally no province could compare with the ethnic variety of Delhi; it had been the core of empire
for half a millennium, as such its ethnic pool was drawn from local and foreign settlers throughout
South Asia. Also, as its recorded data for some sarkars had continuity over many centuries, details
were easily available.
The western peripheral provinces had a different but equally fascinating ethnic construct and data
set; sarkars for Lahore are identified as doabs. A similar pattern is followed in Multan except that the
region beyond the Indus and that east of the Sutlej is listed separately and the doabs have two charts
in two cases. The two provinces were old settled areas which had probably a history of records going
back to Ghaznavi times and had seldom been delinked from Delhi governments since Aibuk’s time;
their columns are as full as Delhi and Agra. The contrast with Thatta is striking where information is
as scarce as Khandesh though columns, unlike Khandesh are same as Lahore. Thatta had traditionally
been difficult for the Delhi Sultanate to acquire and almost impossible to hold, like Bengal. Next
came Kabul, which should have been [and later became] two provinces, those of Kashmir and Kabul.
Since Kashmir was counted as a sarkar of Kabul, its data has been listed according to parganas in
separate charts. Most interesting is data for Ghaznavi heartland, the Mughal province of Kabul as its
columns read asma-i-mahal, tuman, dinar, gosfand wa asp, kharwar wa ghalla vaghaira, sawar, piada
and aqwam zamindar; and there is no column for serial number of entries. That this was perhaps the
first region to have records under the Turkish Sultans gave it a long history but its essentially pastoral
nature gave it a unique record of assets: goats, horses, ass loads and grain; and list for sources of
taxation.
It is probable that this system of record keeping was followed during the reigns of Jahangir,
Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. It also seems likely that the areas for which the Ain has fewer details also
came to be registered in central registers as Mughal rule became firmly entrenched there. However, no
compatible document of collated summery seems to have been formulated to update the Ain; records
would also have been compiled in the central registry for additions to the empire. After Aurangzeb,
once again the process of decentralization was initiated. For at least two generations decentralization
of control at what would be the equivalent of the Beglarbeg level had been under consideration.
Aurangzeb ran his government from the Deccan for nearly 25 years, as Muhammad bin Tughluq had
tried to do before, for the mammoth conglomerate. Aurangzeb’s successors tried to dissociate civil
and military functions through the Nizam of Hyderabad but only succeeded in losing control over the
military35. Because of the nature of the conglomerate state it was as easy to integrate as to disband
it; the British established their control by stages and also added components under different terms as
had the Turkish empires before them but imposed new managerial practices to suit their commercial,
imperial design.
The British formalized systems of land ownership of the composite state outside the principalities
at a provincial level suit accounting procedures. One category of ownership was the Zamindari
system, the headman was held responsible for the revenue of one or more self-sufficient village; many
subordinate channels of tax collection [like patwari, Chaudhry and lumbardar] were employed under a
Zamindar36. Another category was the Rywotary system where a cultivator was accepted as the owner
of the land37. A third system was the Mahalwari in which the village as a unit and not its headman/ruler
was treated as a party by the state but individual landowners contributed their share to the collective
levy based on the size of their holding through collectors. Thus in the first category large units of
land which did not classify as princely states were treated on the same principle as a comprehensive
levy from a tributary; in the second the state needed comprehensive records of ownership and title to
land; and in the third a partial survey involving more administrative supervision for collection than
assessment was used. As regards registration of land in Bengal, Madras and Bombay, the British first
introduced regulation no. 36 in 1793 for mortgages followed by an act in 1843 to rationalize earlier
assignments38.
124
Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü
c) comparative/analytical: comparison of the varieties used by the composite states
There are two major reasons for the emergence of the conglomerate structure in South Asian and
for the structure of oral and documented records of assets, assignment, assessment and privileges of the
rulers and the ruled. First and foremost is the social compartmentalization and integration within the
structure of the selfsufficient village39; the second is the geographic mosaic of lands ideally suited for
either animal husbandry or agriculture. South Asian terrain has a variety of land suitable for different
kinds of grain/crops interspersed by a similar variety of grazing land. As a consequence economy and
ecology combine to form watersheds of natural provinces/principalities. Thus the independent village
emerged as one tier of socio-political management and the district/province/principality emerged as
another. In this environment, lack of interest in the literary medium [due to cycle of rebirth] promoted
oral settlements; these in their turn reinforced maintainence of records of small units within their own
community. Naturally oral reco