Mir Bakhshi

Topic: The Mughal Empire: Babur to Aurangzeb · NCERT: Class 8, Ch 2 "Reshaping India's Political Map"

Meaning

The Mir Bakhshi was one of the four central ministers of the Mughal Empire. He was in charge of military matters, which mainly meant keeping the pay and muster rolls (lists of officers and troops, used to check who was present and how much each should be paid).

• This matters because the Mughals had no big permanent army. Their troops were kept by rank-holders called mansabdars. The Mir Bakhshi's records were how the emperor checked that these troops really existed.

Explanation

Background: why such a minister was needed

• The empire was very large, and one man could not watch every corner. So Akbar reorganised the machinery of government for two goals:
• control: the centre must know what is happening;

• efficiency: work must get done fast.

• He split the work into fixed departments. Each department had one head, and each head answered to the emperor.

• Military work went to the Mir Bakhshi. The other three central ministers were the Diwan (finances), the Khan-i-Saman (public works, trade, industry, agriculture and the royal household) and the Sadr (justice, religion and education).

Main duties: the army's record-keeper

• Pay rolls: these recorded what each officer and his troops were owed.
• Muster rolls: these recorded which men and animals each officer actually had.
• His work was tied to the mansabdari system. A mansab means a rank, and a mansabdar is the person who holds it.
• Each mansab fixed three things: the officer's standing at court, his salary, and the number of troops he had to keep ready.
• There were 33 grades, from 10 up to 5,000. Ranks were granted only by the emperor [2].

• A mansabdar had to keep exact numbers of elephants, horses, camels and troops for the state.

• Regular inspections checked whether officers really had the men and animals their rank required. The Mir Bakhshi's rolls were the record these checks were made against. Without them, the whole system would exist only on paper.

• Standard textbook accounts also give him other jobs. They say he recommended appointments and promotions of mansabdars and supervised the news reporters who sent reports from the provinces to court. The study note does not mention these, so treat them as background and not as core facts.

How it worked at the provincial level

• The empire had twelve provinces, called subahs. Each subah copied the centre, so each had its own bakhshi as well as a provincial diwan, sadr and other officers.
• Checks and balances were built in. The military officer (bakhshi) and the revenue officer (diwan) in a province did not report to the same boss.
• So one officer's records could be checked against another's.
• An officer could not quietly cheat the state, because the two sets of records would not match.

Results: the "army without an army"

• No permanent central army was needed.
• The troops lived with the mansabdars, spread across the empire.
• When war came, the mansabdars were called and an army formed at short notice.

• In peacetime, the state saved the huge cost of feeding and paying soldiers.

• Mansabdars were usually paid through a jagir (land whose revenue an officer collected in place of a cash salary), so they were also called jagirdars.

• An honest muster roll protected the state's land revenue. A jagir paid for troops the officer was supposed to keep, so missing troops meant lost revenue.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: the Mughal Empire (1526–1707). The office as a fixed central department belongs to Akbar's reorganisation of government.
• Place: the imperial court at the centre, plus a bakhshi in each of the twelve subahs.
• Key people: Akbar, who rebuilt the administration; the mansabdars, whose troops the Mir Bakhshi recorded.
• Evidence:
• The Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl records the mansabdari system in detail. It is the third and final volume of the Akbarnama [4].
• The Ain-i-Akbari's third section covers the judicial and executive wings of the empire [3].

• The text survives as a rare book and in published English volumes kept in national digital collections [5].

• NCERT: Class 8, Ch 2 "Reshaping India's Political Map".

Don't confuse with

• Diwan: in charge of finances (revenue, income and spending), not the army. In a province, the diwan and the bakhshi deliberately reported to different bosses.
• Khan-i-Saman: in charge of public works, trade, industry, agriculture and the royal household. He had nothing to do with troops.
• Sadr: in charge of justice, religious and educational matters. Do not mix him up with the Mir Bakhshi in "match the minister" questions.
• Mansabdar: a rank-holder who kept troops. The Mir Bakhshi was the minister who kept the records of those troops and their pay.

Prelims Hooks

• Mir Bakhshi = military matters: the pay and muster rolls of officers and troops. He did not handle finance (Diwan) or justice (Sadr).
• The four central ministers: Diwan (finance), Mir Bakhshi (military), Khan-i-Saman (public works, trade, industry, agriculture and royal household), Sadr (justice, religion and education).
• Each of Akbar's twelve subahs had its own bakhshi, copying the central pattern.
• Mansab ranks ran in 33 grades from 10 to 5,000, were granted only by the emperor, and were not hereditary or permanent [2].
• Mansabdars kept elephants, horses, camels and troops according to their rank. This was checked by regular inspections.
• The mansabdari system is described in the Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl, the third volume of the Akbarnama [4].

Mains Points

• Records as the backbone of military power. The Mughals kept troops spread out among mansabdars instead of keeping a standing army. The Mir Bakhshi's pay and muster rolls, together with regular inspections, were what turned scattered private contingents into a usable imperial army. The weakness was that the army was only as good as the inspections. Once the records stopped matching reality, the state paid for troops that did not exist.
• Checks and balances by design. In each subah, the bakhshi (military) and the diwan (revenue) did not report to the same boss. So one official's records checked the other's. This shows how Akbar's administration used divided authority to control a huge empire. It is useful for GS-I answers on Mughal centralisation: strong in extracting revenue and troops, but light at the village level, where old self-governance carried on.

Related concepts

• Diwan
• Mir Saman
• Sadr-us-Sudur
• Qazi-ul-Quzat
• Muhtasib
• Subah
• Sarkar
• Pargana
• Faujdar
• Kotwal

Read more

• Administering the empire