Mughal India's Towns and Countryside

Some Reflections on the Town and Country in Mughal India
Author(s): K. N. Chaudhuri
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1978), pp. 77-96
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311823
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Modern Asian Studies, I2, I (1978),
pp. 77-96. Printed in Great Britain.
on the Townand Country

SomeReflections
in MughalIndia
K. N. CHAUDHURI
Schoolof Orientaland African Studies, Universityof London
THERE can be few aspects of Indian studies more neglected than that of
historical geography. Within this larger area of neglect, urban history

occupies a special place. The indifference with which Indian historians
have approached the urban heritage of the subcontinent is all the
more difficult to understand because to contemporary European visitors,
the merchants and other travellers, the towns and cities of Mughal
India held a profound fascination. From the time of Tome Pires and
his highly perceptive Suma Oriental down to the end of the eighteenth
century, stories of Indian travels and the accompanying descriptions
of Mughal urban life continually entertained the popular literary
audience. Not all of them understood or reported accurately what they
saw. As the Scottish sea captain and country trader, Alexander
Hamilton, who had an unrivalled knowledge of the sea ports and the
coastal towns of India, pointed out with some candour, one great
misfortune which attended the western travellers in India was their
ignorance of the local languages.1 But the manifest contrast between
the physical appearance of the European cities and those of Asia
provoked some considerable and sensitive analysis of the nature of the
urban processes in the two continents. Perhaps the most able and
penetrating comments on the Mughal political, economic, and civic
order came from the pen of the Dutch merchant, Francisco Pelsaert,
and the French physician, Fran5ois Bernier. In his open letter to M. de
la Mothe le Vayer written in 1663, Bernier characteristically began
with the statement: 'I know that your first inquiries on my return to
France will be respecting the capital cities of this Empire. You will be
anxious to learn if Delhi and Agra rival Paris in beauty, extent, and
number of inhabitants.' He went on to say that in treating of the
This paper was originally read at the Seminar on 'The City in South Asia' organized
by the Centre of South Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London. I should like to thank the participants of the Seminar for their
helpful comments.
1 Alexander Hamilton, A New Accountof the East Indies, ed. Sir William Foster, 2
vols (London, 1930), I, 7. First published in Edinburgh in 1727.
77
78
K. N.
CHAUDHURI
beauty of these towns, he was sometimes astonished to hear the contemptuous manner in which Europeans in the Indies spoke of these and
other places. They complained that the buildings were inferior in
beauty to those of the western world, forgetting that different climates
required different styles of architecture. What was useful and proper
in Paris, London, or Amsterdam would be quite out of place in Delhi.
According to Bernier, if it were possible for any one of those great
capitals to change place with the metropolis of the Indies, it would
become necessary to throw down the greater part of the city, and to
rebuild it on a totally different plan.2 If we have here the rudiments of
an ecological theory of the eastern city, there was practically nothing
comparable either on points of information or theoretical analysis in
the purely indigenous historical sources. Even Khafi Khan, one of the
ablest of the Mughal historians, referred in the most general terms to
the numerous towns and cities whose history had such a critical role to
play in his political narrative. Consider the following passage describing the famous destruction of Sirhind in 1708 by the Sikhs under
Banda: 'Sirhind was an opulent town, with wealthy merchants,
bankers, and tradesmen, men of money, and gentlemen of every class;
and there were especially learned and religious men in great numbers
residing there. No one found the opportunity of saving his life, or
wealth, or family.'3 For more than a century Sirhind had been one of
the most flourishing towns of the Empire, producing high-quality
cotton textiles and containing more than 300 mosques and many
dargas and serais. No contemporary civic records of the town, of any
nature, commercial, religious, or administrative, are known to have
survived to this day.
The urban history of any society can be written from two different
points of view. There is first of all the particular approach. Each town
or city is treated in terms of-its unique history. Even when such urban
centres are grouped together and treated collectively the time scale is
all-important. The factors responsible for their rise and fall, prosperity
and depression, remain strictly historical as discrete points on a temporal
plane. The second approach is to consider the totality of the political,
economic, and social order which sustains the urban localities as viable
entities. It is of course a truism that no town or city can exist by itself.
The great past debates among urban sociologists on the rural-urban
2
ed. A. Constable
FranCois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. I656-1668,
(London, I891), pp. 239-40.
3 Muhammad
Hashim, Khafi Khari, Muntakhabu-l Lubab, translation printed in
Sir H. M. Elliot and J. Dowson, The History of India as Told by its own Historians, 8 vols
(London, I877), Vol. 7, pp. 414-I5.
TOWN
AND
COUNTRY
IN MUGHAL
INDIA
79
continuum testify to the theoretical difficulties of working with polar

types as approximation to the reality.4 Similar problems also arise from
the attempt to create a synthetic construct such as Max Weber's urban
'community' or Sjoberg's 'preindustrial city'. On the basis of a priori
reasoning Weber concluded that in order to qualify as a full urban
community a settlement must be characterized by fortifications,
markets, judicial courts administering autonomous laws, a related
form of association, and at least partial political autonomy.5 Since
these urban features were distilled into abstraction from the European
historical experience, it naturally follows that the full civic community
occurs only in the occident. The criticism of circular argument also
applies to Sjoberg's statement that 'in their structure, or form, preindustrial cities-whether
in medieval Europe, traditional China,
one another closely and in turn differ
India, or elsewhere-resemble
from
modern
industrial-urban
centres'.6 For this statement
markedly
to be valid one needs a strict definition of what constitutes a modern
industrial-urban centre and a method for dealing with the deviations
from the pure types. For the historian such problems can be avoided by
taking the historical features of urban areas as given and concentrating
the analysis on their functional role within a larger social framework.
An urban paradigm of Mughal India must have as its central point
of inquiry the question why do these cities and towns exist and what
function do they perform?7 Unlike post-Industrial Revolution cities,
there are no compelling technological reasons for the pre-modern
urban centres to develop as major areas of economic production. In
many cases Indian towns of course contained a substantial artisan
population and were the seats of many craft industries. But it is incorrect to say that their economic life depended on the concentration
of such activities.8 The urban location of craft skills must be explained
on grounds other than the constraints of production functions. At the
4 See R. Redfield and M. B.
Singer, 'The Cultural Role of Cities', EconomicDevelopmentand CulturalChange,Vol. 3 (I954), 53-73; F. Benet, 'Sociology Uncertain: the
Studiesin Societyand History,
Ideology of the Rural-Urban Continuum', Comparative
Vol. 6, No. I (October I963),
I-23;
Oscar Lewis, 'Some perspectives on Urbanization
with Special Reference to Mexico City', printed in A. Southall (ed.), UrbanAnthroStudiesof Urbanization(London and New York, I973), pp. 125-38.
pology:Cross-cultural
5 Max Weber, The City, ed. Don Martindale and G. Neuwirth (New York, I958),
pp. 80-1.
6 G.
City (Glencoe, Ill., i960), pp. 4-5.
Sjoberg, ThePreindustrial
7 For a theoretical discussion of these
points, see H. M. Mayer, 'A Survey of
Urban Geography', printed in P. M. Hauser and L. F. Schnore, (eds), The Studyof
Urbanization(New York, I965).
8 For the
emphasis on the industrial function of Mughal towns, see H. K. Naqvi,
UrbanCentresand Industriesin UpperIndia 1556-1803 (Bombay, I968), p. I35.
80
K. N.
CHAUDHURI
other extreme is the view that the Asian city was primarily an administrative, political, and cultural phenomenon. There seems to be a
general consensus among many western observers of the Indian city
that it was essentially an expression of national political will, a symbol
of legitimacy, and an upholder of what Redfield and Singer call the
'Great Tradition'.9 Commercial and industrial functions are taken to
have played only an insignificant role in the formation of such cities, and
Sjoberg goes so far as to say that he could find no instance of significant
city-building through commerce alone.10 As a contrasting viewpoint,
one might juxtapose the comment made by John Henry Grose when he
visited Surat, the great Mughal port, in the middle of the eighteenth
century: 'the City on the bank [of the river] is perhaps one of the
greatest instances in the known world, of the power of trade to bring in so
little a time wealth, arts, and population to any spot where it can be
brought to settle'.1 A possible explanation for the functional existence
of the pre-modern towns may be found in the theory of central places.
Originally developed as an analysis of urban locations, the theory of
central places has been recently extended to examine the concept of
exchange in human society and early settlements. In a penetrating
essay Colin Renfrew makes the suggestion that every civilization, if it
is to advance from the condition of isolated and self-contained chiefdoms,
must have a permanently functioning central place.12 The emergence
of central places is not the same as the origin of urbanization, but the
process provides the necessary condition for it. The key to Renfrew's
argument is the notion that exchange of goods or of information can
take place at two levels, that of reciprocity and redistribution. If there
are N number of communities which wish to exchange one another's
surplus products, at the reciprocal level there will be a series of transN.N.-i.
actions and journeys given by the formula
But if there is a
2
system of redistribution located at a central place, the members of

the various communities need to perform only a single journey to the
latter and their total number will be just N-i. It is obvious that the
direct savings on transaction costs are very substantial in case of
central places serving as points of redistribution and the external
economies at such centres provide a powerful impetus to further growth
9 Redfield and Singer, 'The Cultural Role
10 Sjoberg, The Preindustrial City, p. 76.
1 John Henry Grose, A
Voyage to the East
12 Colin
Renfrew, 'Trade as Action at a
Communication',
printed in J. A. Sabloff
Ancient Civilization and Trade (Albuquerque,
of Cities', p. 60.
Indies, 2 vols (London, 1772), I, 98.
Distance: Questions of Integration and
and C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
(eds),
New Mexico, i975), pp. 3-59.
TOWN
AND
COUNTRY
IN MUGHAL
INDIA
and conglomeration. The corollary of this particular theory of a

redistributive central place is the necessity for political order which
provides the security, the storage facilities, and the contractual conventions for transactions involving a time delay. These services must be
supported by taxation, and the growth of political power on the part of
the central authority may well create the kind of market-less trading
cited by Karl Polanyi.13 The emphasis placed by Renfrew on the
exchange mechanism of central places and his characterization of
cities as 'communication engines' leads him also to conclude that
population size is a secondary parameter in their functional role.14
It is clear that here we have a powerful analytical tool with which
the typology of the Mughal towns can be identified and defined. But
the sceptic might ask to what extent was the economic exchange
between the town and country in India of this period a universal
phenomenon. The towns certainly needed to draw their food supplies
from the country, but what did the villages get in return? The traffic
seems to have been in a decidedly one-way direction. The answer to
this obvious paradox lies in realizing that the process of exchange is
not always symmetrical as between goods and goods. Commodities can
be exchanged for money as a store of wealth, for services, and most
important of all, for political considerations. The buying of protection
from violence is as much an act of exchange as any other market
transaction. In the Indian context the problem can be looked at from
another aspect. The average revenue demand from the central government in the Mughal Empire can be taken as about a third of the total
gross output from agriculture. Even if we assume that the rest of the
economy operated on a simple barter system, the exchange of thirty per
cent of the total basic output for areas as large as the Mughal provinces
must imply the existence of very widespread marketing facilities which
could be provided only in central places. The hypothetical nature of the
questions and answers calls for caution in accepting any single theory
on the operation of the Mughal economy, and there are many problems
on which our existing knowledge is highly deficient. But there is a need
for asking some basic and fundamental questions. For example, it is
critical for our analysis of the urban phenomenon to know if the Mughal
land revenue demand was paid for in money or in kind. If it was
collected in cash, who did the peasants sell their crops to and where was
13 K. Polanyi, 'Marketless Trading in Hammurabi's
Time', and 'The Economy as
Instituted Process', printed in K. Polanyi, C. M. Arensberg, and H. W. Pearson
(eds), Trade and Market in the Early Empires (New York, I957).
14
Renfrew, 'Trade as Action at a Distance', p. I.
82
K. N.
CHAUDHURI
the marketed output consumed ? On the other hand, if the payments

were in kind, by what accounting procedure were the physical quantities transformed into exchange claims (i.e. money claims) of the administrative and ruling classes ? It is common knowledge that the locus
of political authority in the Mughal Empire lay in towns. But we also
know that the faujdar in the district or the provincial subadar did not
remunerate his subordinate staff, the military, and personal household
retainers from state-controlled produce stocks. The market mechanism
operated freely to feed the town population and to provide for the
needs of the state.
The concept of the redistributive central places can be applied to
Mughal urban centres in two basic forms. The first step is to distinguish
their qualitative roles such as political and military functions, economic
activities, cultural and religious significance, and demographic
character. The second task is to arrange them in a functional hierarchy
against the dimensions of both space and time. Thus it might be
postulated that the influence of a primate city would extend to the
whole area of the Empire and that it would remain stable over a
reasonable period of time.15 The next in order is the regional city,
followed by the provincial and district towns serving localized areas.
It is important to remember that this method of scaling would yield
variable hierarchies. For example, a great capital such as Delhi or
Agra must be placed in the category of a primate city when ranked by
political influence, but its economic role may be no higher than that of
a provincial town. Again, as a large concentration of population its
internal level of consumption would be correspondingly large and
differentiated in quality. All these factors must be taken into account
even within ranking by economic role. The larger the size of the matrix
more closely would the model correspond to reality. If it were possible
to fill in all the elements of such a matrix with historical data the
intelligence content of the information must be at a maximum. But at
the present state of our knowledge these theoretical remarks should
merely point to the future direction of detailed research and analysis.
The argument adopted so far leads to the conclusion that any
complex civilization has an in-built political, economic, and social
structure that gravitates it towards the formation of multi-functional
urban localities. That the Indian society under the Great Mughals had
advanced far beyond tribal isolation no one would deny. The pains15 On the functional hierarchy of cities, see J. Friedmann, 'Cities in Social Transformation', ComparativeStudies in Society and History, Vol. 4, No. I November I96I), pp.
86-I03.
TOWN
AND
COUNTRY
IN MUGHAL
INDIA
83
taking listing of cities and qasabasin Ain-i-Akbari marks the contemporary awareness of the distinction between urban and rural. But there was
perhaps a subtle way in which the coming of Islam to the subcontinent
and its military subjugation had altered this perceived distinction. The
Sanskritic term for the town, nagar, has mainly cultural overtones and is
quite distinct from a rajdhani, the seat of royal power. The Islamic
word shahristan,on the other hand, was a place of political and military
power, and it was this term that came to be universally used throughout
northern India to denote a town or city. The conquest of India by
Islam brought with it the special role which urban centres occupied in
its political ideology. Von Grunebaum, in speaking of the great period
of Arab expansion, has stated that the empire and its culture were
carried on the shoulders of the peasants, but dominated by the townsmen: 'The countryside was organized from the town and exploited by
princes, burghers and mercenaries. The Islamic East, from the intrusion
of the Turks in the ninth century to the fall of Baghdad ([A.D.] I258), is
the history of the victory of a predominantly Turkish military landowning aristocracy over the landowning but primarily mercantile
Arab or Arabizing aristocracy dominant in civil government.'16 A
similar analogy could also be applied to the history of India from the
thirteenth century to the sixteenth. The Arab garrison towns in
common with all expanding empires had a vital function in upholding
the political power and influence of the conquerors. To what extent
these settlements also coincided with the existing economic central
places is a separate topic of investigation. But in time Islam came to
recognize only the towns as the true repository of the faith.17 The whole
development gave rise to the twin features of Muslim urbanization in
its political role. As the sharia made no distinction between one member
of the faith and another, between different classes or communities, the
inhabitants of towns also enjoyed no special privileges. There was no
historical necessity to treat the towns as politically autonomous and
separate from the countryside. At the same time, however, they
provided the nodal points through which a conquering ruling elite
could assert its power.
In India an additional complexity was created by the refusal of the
Hindus to accept mass conversion to Islam. But even here the political
assimilation of subjects of other religious beliefs was made possible by
the principle of the jizya. While the poll tax legalized the toleration of
infidels in the land of true believers, its mitigation or re-imposition
16G. E. von Grunebaum, Classical Islam; A History 600-1258 (London, I970), p. 99.
17 W.
J. Fischel, 'The City in Islam', Middle Eastern Affairs, Vol. 7 (1956), 227-32.
84
K. N.
CHAUDHURI
provided the Mughal Emperors at least with a powerful political

weapon for curbing the Hindu dissidents.18 Within the towns the Hindus
and Muslims occupied mixed or separate quarters according to the
internal civic morphology rather than religious or political considerations. Francisco Pelsaert noted at the beginning of the seventeenth
century that the sudden growth of Agra under Akbar and its subsequent expansion meant that everyone bought plots of land wherever
these were available. As a result Hindus lived mingled with the Muslims
and the rich with the poor.19 A much more positive statement comes
from the Italian nobleman, Pietro della Valle, who visited Surat in
1623. In describing the inhabitants of the city, della Valle observed
that the Hindus appeared to be more numerous than the Muslims, but
'they live all mixt together, and peaceably, because the Gran Moghel,
to whom Guzarat is now subject... although he be a Mahometan ...
makes no difference in his Dominions between the one sort and the
other; and both in his Court, and Armies, and even amongst men of the
highest degree, they are of equal account, and consideration.'20 There
is ample evidence to indicate that the close proximity of the two
religious communities in urban locations could have explosive consequences without the exercise of political restraints and the process of
assimilation.21 In I7I3 one of the worst cases of communal rioting
occurred in a mixed mahalla of Ahmedabad because the Mughal
Subadar, Daud Pani, had adjudicated in favour of the Hindus
in celebrating the festival of holi in front of Muslim houses.22 Both
the Islamic tradition and the religious polarity in the Empire made the
Mughals reluctant to make any kind of political distinction in the
government of the town and country. Beyond the construction of a
mosque in a predominantly Hindu town, which symbolically marked
the presence of Islam, the ruling elite had no special duty towards the
autonomy of urban centres.
However, the picture changes dramatically when one looks at the
administrative and political map of the Empire. Imperial control in
Mughal India depended vitally on the possession of six primate cities:
18KhafiKhan, in Elliotand Dowson,Historyof India,VII, 296.
19 Francisco Pelsaert, Jahangir's India: the Remonstrantie Francisco Pelsaert, ed. W.
of
H. Moreland and P. Geyl (Cambridge, 1925), p. I.
20 The Travels
of Pietro della Valle in India, ed. Edward Grey, 2 vols (London, 1892),
I, 3o.
21 For the social effects of
Aurangzeb's edict of I669 ordering the suppression of
Hindu religious practices, see Letter from the Surat Factory to the East India
Company, 26 November 1669, India Office Records, London (I.O.R.), Original
Correspondence, Vol. 30, No. 3373.
22 Khafi
Khan, in Elliot and Dowson, History of India, VII, 454-6.
TOWN
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IN MUGHAL
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85
Lahore, Delhi-Agra, Patna, Burhanpur, and Ahmedabad. If the northwestern frontier is included, Kabul and Kandahar could also be added
to the list. Whoever controlled these eight primate cities was the true
Padshah of Hindustan. A single dissension or loss was tantamount to the
most public display of the weakening power of the reigning Emperor.
When a royal prince raised the flag of rebellion the capture of one of
these cities was an inevitable part of the military campaign. Equally, the
subadar of Patna, Burhanpur and Ahmedabad was often a close
relative of the Emperor. At the height of the Mughal imperial power
the main function of these primate cities was political; their strategic or
military significance was only secondary. But there was an additional
string of garrison towns, such as Gwalior, Allahabad, Chunar, Aurangabad, and Junnar, which provided the military sinews of the Empire.
The pattern of political conflicts in the subcontinent in this period
indicates clearly the key role played by towns and cities. The early life
of Babur was characterized by fierce struggles to master Samarkand
and Tashkent. As long as Babur remained a wandering warrior encamped in high mountain valleys the political basis of his power also
remained strictly limited. It was the possession of Kabul which eventually provided the real foundation of his later success in the plains of
India. The military campaigns of Akbar followed a similar sequence.
Of the thirty or so rebellions committed by insubordinate Amirs during
the half-century of his reign, twenty-eight took place in towns, and
the list includes Agra, Lahore, Kabul, Allahabad, Jaunpur, Patna, and
Ajmer.23 The terrible example which Akbar made of the garrison and
the inhabitants of Chitor was intended as a demonstration to the
Rajputs of the Mughal determination to overcome the dangerous
resistance at the flank of the Empire. Chitor was perhaps the greatest
fortress-town in northern India at the time. Its destruction by Akbar's
forces had the same message as did later the conquest of Golconda and
the overthrow of Abul Hassan by Aurangzeb.
As seats of imperial power the twin capitals of Agra and Delhi with
other satellite primate cities functioned as central places exchanging
political information. Access to the Imperial Court by the ambitious
Umara was an indispensable condition of advancement. For the Iranian
or Turani gentry seeking patronage and lucrative employment the
Mughal capital cities proved unfailingly attractive for more than two
centuries. The constant migration of the administrative and military
personnel from the periphery of the Empire to the primate cities and
23 See H. K. Naqvi, Urbanization and Urban Centresunderthe Great Mughals 1556-1707
(Simla, 1972), pp. 175-7.
86
K. N.
CHA.UDHURI
from the latter to the lesser towns in search of higher financial rewards
was both a demographic and a social phenomenon, which had important political consequences for the survival of the Mughal imperial
institutions. Even in the days of its decline in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, the sanction of legitimacy conferred by the imperial
sanad was a necessary condition for success in provincial politics. The
records of the European trading companies amply confirm this. In 171
the English Council in Surat reported to Bombay that the Governor,
Amanat Khan, had recently returned from Delhi after having spent
six lakhs of rupees in presents, which secured the continued confirmation of his office.24 Two decades later, in the crumbling political world
of Gujarat, it was still a matter for comment when a local governor
defied the authority of Delhi. On the eve of the famous revolution in
Surat in I732, the East India Company's official Broker, Sheth Laldas
Vittaldas Parakh, warned the Company of the need to be cautious in
dealing with the existing Governor, Sorab Khan, saying: 'Consider
gentlemen, you have a Governor to deal with who by force of arms has
maintened his post in rebellion against his Sovereign, against whom
he has shutt his gate in the form of Mustapha Khan, presented with
royal grants for the Government of Surat.'25 The urban concentration
of political power was not without its source of weakness. In 1626
Pelsaert could exclaim that Jahangir, whose name implied that he
grasped the whole world, was no more than the king of the plains or the
open roads. For rebellious chiefs, thieves and robbers did not hesitate
to pillage up to the very gate of Ahmedabad, Burhanpur, Agra,
Delhi, and Lahore.26 It is interesting to compare the Dutchman's
comment with the accession farman of Jahangir which reads in its
preamble, 'In as much as thieves and robbers carry off people's goods in
isolated places, it is ordered that new qasabas should be populated, and
the jaghirdars are directed, wherever they find considerable areas of
waste and uninhabited land, to arrange to provide masjids, dharmasalas and water-tanks so as to populate these areas.'27 Foundation of new
townships was typically seen as an answer to lawlessness.
If the political role of the main primate cities identified so far was
unambiguous, their economic ranking was no less evident. With the
exception of Delhi, which was in a special class, all the others were
24 Letter from
Bombay to the Court of Directors, 26 April I 7 0, I.O.R., Abstract of
Letters Received from Bombay, Vol. 449, para. I4, p. I43.
25
I.O.R., Bombay Public Proceedings, 29 November 1723, Vol. 5.
26 Pelsaert, The Remonstrantie,
pp. 58-9.
27 Ali Muhammad Khan,
Mirat-i-Ahmadi,quoted by M. S. Commissariat, A
Historyof Gujarat(Bombay, 1957), p. 43.
TOWN
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87
important centres of trade, banking, industrial handicrafts, and

agricultural processing. To see this we have only to follow the commercial listings prepared by Pelsaert or trace the itinerary of Jean Baptiste
Tavernier. In Pelsaert's time horizon the golden age of Mughal cities
always seemed to have been in the past, and his description of Agra was
no exception. The trade of the city was at its peak during the time of
Akbar and at the beginning of the present reign, when Jahangir still
had a vigorous intellect. Its volume had declined since then because of
bad administration and oppression by the successive governors.
Pelsaert concluded with the remark: 'The survival of a certain amount
of commerce is due to the situation of the city at the junction of all
roads from distant countries. All goods must pass this way, as from
Gujarat, Tatta (or Sind); from Kabul, Kandahar, or Multan, to the
Deccan; from the Deccan or Burhanpur to those places, or to Lahore;
and from Bengal and the whole east country; there are no practical
alternative routes, and the roads carry indescribable quantities of
merchandise, especially cotton goods.'28 There seems to be a certain
contradiction between the last statement and the alleged commercial
decline of Agra. However, if the goods merely passed through the city
without breaking bulk, Pelsaert would have been right in saying that
the consumption level and the off-take of the traded commodities had
fallen in the ex-capital, owing to the long absences of the Emperor. But
the passage highlights the redistributive function of Agra and the
importance of nodality. Favourable location and the convergence of
long-distance trade routes were absolutely necessary for any Indian
town or city to advance to the top of our functional hierarchy. Population size and the presence of a consumption-prone ruling elite might
contribute to its economic development but are not sufficient by
themselves as explanations. The gradual erosion during the first half of
the seventeenth century in Lahore's status as a premier trading city in
the long-distance caravan trade of the Middle East and the Mediterranean might be taken as an illustration. Before the arrival of the
English and Dutch trading companies in Surat and Agra, Lahore was
the chief market for indigo rather than Agra and Biana, and the
Armenian and Aleppo merchants had a large and highly profitable
trade. The caravans from the eastern Mediterranean travelling through
Isfahan and Kandahar stopped at Lahore to meet those which arrived
there from other parts of India. But the diversion of the indigo trade
greatly undermined Lahore's prosperity because of the inability of the
caravan traders to compete on points of transport costs. However, in the
28
Pelsaert, Remonstrantie,pp. 5-6.
88
K. N.
CHAUDHURI
second decade of the century Lahore still had a brisk trade in fine cotton
goods, the famous chintz products of Golconda and Masulipatam,
which were exported in large quantities to Central Asia and Persia. The
large Hindu Khattri merchants carried on business on what was left of
their old profits, and the frequent visits ofJahangir to the city gave it a
renewed air of splendour.29 But by the time Tavernier visited the place
large parts of the town were falling into ruins. The silting up of the
Indus around Tatta had affected the trade of Multan, which in its turn
caused many merchants to stay away from Lahore.30
It is evident that the prevailing emphasis on the administrative and
political function of the Indian towns rests on a confusion between
their origin and foundations and subsequent development. No urban
centre in any part of the world is able to survive without political
authority and legal order. An examination of the main urban localities
in Mughal India during the period from 1550 to I750 (about 250 in
number) would lead to the conclusion that a great many of them were
founded on the initiative of local political rulers, where they were not
already the seats of existing kingdoms. But the unresolved question
remains as to what caused the founders to select a particular site. Is it a
possible conjecture that these were already serving as some sort of
central place as defined by Renfrew? Three of the greatest sea ports and
commercial cities in India, Surat, Masulipatam, and Hugli, had little
political significance and their prosperity lasted long enough to qualify
them as economic primate cities. What explanations can we offer for
the success and survival of these places ? In the case of Surat, favourable
geographical location, access to rich markets, and the presence of an
active entrepreneurial class must head the list. On the landward side
caravan routes from the north, east, and the south converged on the
city. It was the hub from which sea-lanes radiated to all the famous
ports of the Indian Ocean and beyond. Described as bandar-i-mubarak
in the early coins of Aurangzeb, Surat had a special role for the pious
Muslim: it was the gateway to Mecca. All contemporary European
accounts of India agree that as a commercial metropolis Surat had no
serious rival on the western seaboard of India. The English author of a
memorandum on 'country trade' wrote from Fort St George in 1965:
'Surat, the most ancient Presidency and Emporium of the Northern
parts of India, is a City extraordinary well scituated for Trade, not
improperly termed the Mogull's Chamber, and seaport to Agra,
29 Ibid., p. 30.
30 Jean
Baptiste Tavernier,
(London, I925), I, 9I.
Travels in India, ed. V. Ball and W. Crooke,
vols
TOWN
AND
COUNTRY
IN MUGHAL
INDIA
89
Lahore, Burhanpur, Ahmedabad, and other inland marts. It can both

take off and furnish a cargo for any part in India whatsoever ... The
Moors drive a great trade from hence to Persia, Bussora, Aden, Mocha,
and Judda where they dispose of those goods which from thence are
carried throughout the Grand Segnior's Dominions.'31 Surat's trade to
the Red Sea, Bengal, South East Asia, and China sustained its civic
wealth for a century and a half, and the skill of its commercial population was a frequent topic of comment among European merchants and
travellers.32 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Alexander
Hamilton estimated the city's population as 200,000 with many rich
citizens. Among the banyanswho formed the most numerous community
in town were 'merchants, brokers, or pen-men as accountants, collectors,
and surveyors.'33
As Bombay's long struggle to supplant its rich northern neighbour
demonstrated, it was not easy to displace a city of such economic
strength. The eclipse of Surat from its position of overwhelming commercial superiority in western India during the eighteenth century was
no doubt a gradual process. Even English shipowners, who were to
emerge as the most dominant group in the carrying trade of the Indian
Ocean, for a long time preferred to discharge their cargo at Surat
rather than in the East India Company's settlement in Bombay. In
I747 when the personal guards of the Surat Governor caused a riot in
town, the English Council pointed out to the authorities that a city like
Surat which lived by trade could not afford such lawlessness.34 A year
later the Council took note of the fact that if the English did take part in
the local politics, it was 'to save from Ruin so great a City as Surat.'35
Apart from internal political weakness which periodically paralysed the
city's commercial life, there were other factors also working against the
long-term interest of Surat in the middle decades of the eighteenth
century. Political instability in Persia and the contraction of the Red
Sea markets contributed their share to the decline. The transit trade
from northern India was always a vital life-line to its prosperity. A
document on the internal trade of the Mughal Empire dating from
I66I records that the cotton piece-goods annually exported by the
Armenian and Mughal merchants to Persia through Surat came from
as far as Benares and Patna, and that their value was no less than a
British Museum, Additional Manuscript 34,I23, p. 40.
Voyage to the East Indies, I, 105-6.
33Hamilton, New Accountof the East Indies, I,
89-90.
34 I.O.R., Factory Records Surat, I I
January I747, Vol. 3I, p. 50.
35 Ibid., 24
February 1748, Vol. 32, p. I39.
31
32 Grose,
K. N.
90
CHAUDHURI
million rupees.36 But in the second quarter of the eighteenth century,

Maratha expansion in Gujarat and the north brought a renewal of
military operations which adversely affected the caravan trade. The
most notable victim was the great industrial city of Ahmedabad which,
as the provincial capital, was the first target of a military and political
struggle. When the city fell to the combined forces of the Marathas and
the Imperial viceroy, Momin Khan, in I737 after a long siege and
much suffering, John Lambton, the Chief of the English Factory in
Surat, recorded in the official diary that the news of the capture of
Ahmedabad 'gives great hopes to the merchants of this Place that it's
trade will be revived and run in its wonted channel.'37 If it is an oversimplification to say that the commercial towns of Mughal India were
a case of 'trade following the flag', it is nevertheless true that political
skills were essential to preserve their economic interests. Perhaps the
most eloquent testimony comes from the deed signed by all the mahajans
of Ahmedabad in I725, when the city faced imminent attack by the
Marathas. In recognition of his services for saving the city from plunder
the merchants agreed to pay to Nagarsheth Khusalchandji and his
descendants in perpetuity four annas in every hundred rupees' worth of
goods sold in the city.38
The functional distinctiveness of the economic primate cities was to be

found in their capacity to offer a wide variety of commercial services.
From a spatial point these centres were able to handle goods which
travelled over long distances. The cost indivisibility of transport
arrangements and the near-certainty of finding markets, made it
possible for merchants to move both high-valued and low-valued
goods. There was generally an inverse relationship between value and
bulk which with given transport costs and constant margin of profits
would have determined completely the distance scales for each category
of traded goods. But with wooden sailing ships or large boats it was
necessary to lade both rich and fine goods as well as bulky and heavy
cargo. One provided high financial rewards, while the other ballasted
the ships. The position was not so fortunate with land carriage. But here
also the practice of travelling in large caravans-which was a necessitywith attendant fixed overhead costs brought opportunities for mixing
the commodities. If the theory of central place exchange is accepted for
Mughal India, it can be seen that below the level of primate cities there
would be other lesser towns which performed similar services but for
36B.M., Additional Manuscript 34,123, p. 98.
37I.O.R.,
Factory Records Surat, 30 May 1737, Vol. 2I.
38 For a facsimile
copy of the deed, see Commisariat, History of Gujarat, p. 423.
TOWN
AND
COUNTRY
IN MUGHAL
INDIA
9I
smaller areas. The hinterland of Surat was in a sense the whole of

India, but for a town like Broach or Baroda it was probably no bigger
than Gujarat. A careful spatial analysis of the exchange mechanism as
centred on towns should yield new insight into the distribution of
economic and political power in the subcontinent.
It was suggested that the location of industries in pre-modern towns
was independent of technological considerations. An examination of the
dispersion pattern of textile weaving in India during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries reveals many regional variations.39 In western
and northern India large concentrations of textile workers were to be
found in urban areas producing for the export and interregional
markets. In the south and in Bengal the industry was scattered throughout the country. It is impossible to offer any single explanation for these
differences. The availability of water-transport in Bengal made it
cheaper and easier for the cloth traders to collect their supplies from
the rural weavers. In northern India, on the other hand, the existence
of roads and heavy wheeled carriage made the towns natural points of
exchange, and their internal population generated a steady demand for
the products of artisans. In both the cases the presence of commercial
intermediaries was essential to distribution and to establishing an
equilibrium between supply and demand. As traders and merchants
can only operate from fixed locations, above the level of peddling, the
redistributive function of towns took precedence over their industrial
role.
It is important to keep in mind that our suggested functional hierarchy of Indian cities has a temporal as well as spatial dimension. The
economic fortunes of particular towns constantly fluctuated. As Pelsaert
observed with some perspicuity, the volume of goods imported, transported, and sold in the country differed from year to year; a good
harvest would create a demand from every village, while civil wars
were ruinous to trade and merchants were afraid to invest their capital.40
Babur not only castigated the towns of Hindustan for their lack of
charm, but also mentioned the rapidity with which they were constructed and depopulated.41 Even Surat had a large floating population.
When the ships were preparing to depart for the Red Sea and the
Persian Gulf from January to March the town was so full of people that
39K. N. Chaudhuri, 'The Structure of Indian Textile
Industry in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries', The Indian Economicand Social History Review, Vol. 9 (1974),
pp. 127-82.
40
Pelsaert, Remonstrantie, p. 44.
41
Babur-Nama, tr. A. S. Beveridge, new edn (Delhi, 1970) pp. 487-8.
K. N.
92
CHAUDHURI
lodgings were hard to find and the three suburbs were all overflowing.42
A long tradition of internal migration, an essential safety-valve to
political instability and natural calamities, made for the volatile
demographic features of both town and country in Mughal India. In
the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Surat became a substantial industrial centre because of the influx of skilled workmen and
artisans from Ahmedabad.43 During the same period in southern India,
textile weaving suburbs sprang up in numerous towns where the local
rulers made special provision for the settlement of weavers fleeing from
disturbed and famine-stricken areas.44 In years of severe harvest
failures and grain shortages, it was common for the starving populace to
seek relief in towns. In I660 the streets and bazars of Delhi were
choked with poor helpless people who had come to the capital in the
hope of escaping from famine which scarred the rural areas during
that year.45
The catastrophic nature of these events makes it easier for us to note
the temporary movements of population to and from towns than to
derive any positive estimate of the permanent elements of Mughal
urban demography. Information on the size of town populations is
almost universally lacking. Even Bernier, who specifically referred to
the population of Delhi, did not venture beyond saying that it was
much less than that of Paris.46 From European travel accounts we can
identify the larger cities from lesser towns and we know that the
average housing density was fairly high. The gross overcrowding of the
present-day Indian towns was probably absent, though not the characteristic mixture of better-class houses with wretched mud and bamboo
huts. There were so many of these even in Delhi that Bernier often
thought of the imperial capital as a collection of villages or a military
encampment.47 The reader who follows through Tavernier's journeys
from Surat to Agra and down to Bengal is struck by the monotonous
repetition of similar epithets applied to one town after another through
which he travelled. Sironj was a large town with a population mainly
composed of merchants and artisans who lived there from generation to
generation. This is why it contained some houses of stone and brick.
Burhanpur was also large, but it was much ruined and the houses were
for the most part covered with thatch. In Patna, which measured at
Indian Travelsof ThevenotandCareri,ed. S. Sen (New Delhi, 1949), p. 2I.
I.O.R., Factory Records Surat, 27 September I742, Vol. 27, pp. 27-30.
4 Letter from Madras to the Court of Directors,
13 January 1736, Recordsof Fort
42
43
St. George,Despatches to England 1736-1740, paras 29-30, pp. 2-3.

5
46
Khafi Khan, in Elliot and Dowson, Historyof India, VII, 263-4.
Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, pp. 281-2.
47
Ibid., p. 246.
TOWN
AND
COUNTRY
IN MUGHAL
INDIA
93
least two coss (5 miles) in length, the houses were no better than in the
majority of the other towns of India and they were nearly all roofed with
thatch or bamboo. The approaches to Dacca were completely marred
by unsightly settlements of carpenters and boatbuilders. Only Benares
was singled out for special praise. It was not only large and well built,
but the majority of the houses were of brick and cut stone and higher
than anywhere else.48 The mixed appearance of Mughal towns, to
which Tavernier and other contemporary travellers from Europe
direct our attention, certainly reflected great disparities in income
distribution and cultural traditions. But we have to distinguish between
the various features of a town before we can analyse the way in which its
character changed or the process through which it prospered and
declined. These features may be geographical, as, for example, Fernand
Braudel's suggestion of slow-changing elements or semi-permanent
elements; they may also be economic, political, and social.49 Towns
which were constructed on permanent lines and built with durable
materials were the ones that could change their character from one
typology to another, i.e. from commercial to banking, or administrative
and political to industrial, more successfully than smaller towns containing less durable houses or public buildings. The fluidity of Indian
political tradition was reflected in the flimsily-built dwellings. Was the
economy of the towns correspondingly impermanent? Here again we
should separate those towns which had permanent markets for their products and services from those which did not.
When Babur came to northern India he rightly lamented Hindustan's
lack or running water and gardens. Anyone who has seen the spring
blossoms in the courtyard of Madrese Mader-e Shah at Isfahan or the
great sycamores in the garden of Chihil Sutun will understand the
feelings of home sickness which a largely Persianized Mughal aristocracy must have felt in this hospitable but culturally alien land. Even
Europeans travelling from India to Persia noted the difference. In 1677
John Fryer wrote in his diary, as he landed in Bandar Abbas after
having come from Surat, 'So strange an alteration in Three hundred
Leagues as passes admiration! for whereas we left a Sullen, Melancholy,
Sunburnt Nation; an Open, Jovial, and a Clear Complexioned Race of
Mankind is offered in exchange.'50 But this very contrast was responsible
for creating the great driving force behind the cultural tradition of
48 Tavernier,
Travels in India, pp. 42, 46, 96, 100, 105.
F. Braudel, 'Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue duree', Annales,Economies,

Societes,Civilisations,Vol. 13, No 4 (I958), 725-53.
50 John
Fryer, A New Accountof East India and Persia Being Nine Years' Travels
49
1672-1681,
ed. W. Crooke, 3 vols (London, I909-15),
II, I59.
94
K.
N.
CHAUDHURI
Islamic India, which again was almost entirely urban-based. It had a

negative and positive side. The negative aspect is to be found in the fact
that today with the exception of Mathura and Benares all vestiges of
Hindu urbanism have disappeared from northern India. The positive
features were the encouragement of Islamic learning, religious institutions, and, above all, the magnificent architectural heritage. All
Islamic rulers of India were prodigious builders and the Mughals
especially so. Babur's occupation of Agra was followed by the immediate measurement of land on the bank of theJumna for the construction
of a chahar bagh. The Iranian gardens of Agra, he noted with pride,
made people call it the Kabul of India. The urge to build was not
confined to the Emperors alone. The entire Umara class was infected
by it, and the reasons with which they justified the competitive building
of magnificent gardens, houses, and tombs appeared to the cautious and
rational instincts of Pelsaert as most vain and trivial. But he admitted
that the existence of these aristocratic buildings and gardens and their
exquisite beauty enhanced the civic attractions of Agra.51 The architectural expressions of Islam in India were typically centred on the
mosque, adjoining markets, the great public square, and the palace.
Passing through Gwalior in 1665, Tavernier recorded that the people
of the town had built a magnificent tomb for the murdered prince,
Murad Bakhsh, in a mosque with a great court in front and surrounded
by vaults in which were shops. For it was the custom in India 'when
they build a public edifice, to surround it with a large market-place,
with an endowment for the poor, to whom they give alms daily, and
who pray to God for him who has caused the work to be done.'52
The two most notable examples of this integration of the masjid-i-jami,
the royal palace, and the bazar were Fatehpur Sikri and Shahjahanabad. They differed profoundly in architectural style and spirit but the
common concepts of Islamic city-building were preserved in both. In
Delhi the great square flanked on one side by the Red Fort and on the
other by Jumma Masjid was the meeting-place of the main streets
containing the bazars. These were arcaded at the front with warehouses
at the back, which served as shops. Merchants and traders lived in
houses built over the warehouses, and Bernier thought that they looked
handsome enough from the street and were tolerably spacious inside.
But the great defect of the bazars of Delhi was their failure to display
the goods properly. Most of the costly wares were kept out of sight in the
warehouses and for one shop making any show of fine and beautiful
51Pelsaert, Remonstrantie,
p. 5.
52
Tavernier, Travelsin India, I, 52.
TOWN
AND COUNTRY
IN MUGHAL
INDIA
95
cloths, silks, and brocaded fabrics, there were twenty-five where nothing
was to be seen but pots of oil or ghi, piles of baskets filled with rice,
wheat, millet, and endless variety of other grains and pulses.53It was
only the fruit markets of Delhi which could claim any credit for a
proper display. Bernier's description of the public appearance of the
Mughal capital in this respect contrasts unfavourably with the famous
qaisariyyaof Isfahan. When Fryer visited these vaulted and galleried
streets which also converged on the public square, the maidan-i-shah,
he
was so struck by their fine aspect that he thought that the European
bourses were only mediocre buildings compared to the bazars of
Isfahan. His admiration was heightened on the discovery that the
cloth market contained a greater variety and quantity of English
broadcloth than Blackwell-Hall itself.54
The contrast between the classical cities of Iran and those of Mughal
India must surely be ascribed to the difference between a homogeneous
culture and a heterogeneous one, between an indigenous style and a
transplanted version. But the essentially Islamic character of the north
Indian towns cannot be questioned. In the south and in parts of
western India the Hindu influence and ideas were of course still strong.
Much depended on the tradition fostered by the political rulers. At the
height of its power the reputation of Hyderabad, the capital of the
Qutb Shahi dynasty, was greater than that of any Mughal city. Its
great public buildings, gardens, and caravanserais were famous
throughout India. The subtle influence of Islam in its architectural
manifestation did not remain confined to Muslim towns alone. The
lake palace in Udaipur built in the early eighteenth century has the
classic outlines of Shahjahan's pavilions in Ajmer. Its interior gardens,
of ravishing beauty and elegance, were designed on the pattern of
Mughal gardens softened by Rajasthani sensibilities. The list could be
extended. The pre-modern cities and towns of India were the products
of the prevailing forms of technology and social institutions. Their
economic existence depended on the ability of the countryside to
produce a surplus and the way in which the latter was distributed. But
there was an organic bond, an ecological balance between the rural
and the urban. Our understandingof the working of the urban economy
and society depends on the ability to decipher the inner nature of this
relationship.
There is one final problem which has not been explicitly touched upon
in this essay. It is the question of the factors that led to the rise and fall of
53 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, pp. 248-9.
54Fryer, New Accountof East India, II, 241, 249-50.
96
K.
N.
CHAUDHURI
Indian towns and cities. While general causes of urban growth or

relative decline are very difficult to isolate, a systematic inquiry
addressed to this problem alone might succeed in at least suggesting
the possible range of explanations. The central idea behind this paper
is the complementarity of economic nodality and political attributes
which was as much a feature of Indian towns as it was of urban areas
in other parts of the world. Conditions affecting these two vital components of civic life might explain at the same time why historically
certain towns of Mughal India rose to prominence while others
declined.

Mughal India's Towns and Countryside

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Mughal India's Towns and Countryside

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Some Reflections on the Town and Country in Mughal India

Modern Asian Studies, I2, I (1978),

pp. 77-96. Printed in Great Britain.

on the Townand Country

historical geography. Within this larger area of neglect, urban history

continuum testify to the theoretical difficulties of working with polar

Vol. 6, No. I (October I963),

Oscar Lewis, 'Some perspectives on Urbanization

system of redistribution located at a central place, the members of

and conglomeration. The corollary of this particular theory of a

the marketed output consumed ? On the other hand, if the payments

provided the Mughal Emperors at least with a powerful political

important centres of trade, banking, industrial handicrafts, and

Pelsaert, Remonstrantie,pp. 5-6.

Travels in India, ed. V. Ball and W. Crooke,

Lahore, Burhanpur, Ahmedabad, and other inland marts. It can both

million rupees.36 But in the second quarter of the eighteenth century,

The functional distinctiveness of the economic primate cities was to be

smaller areas. The hinterland of Surat was in a sense the whole of

St. George,Despatches to England 1736-1740, paras 29-30, pp. 2-3.

Khafi Khan, in Elliot and Dowson, Historyof India, VII, 263-4.

Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, pp. 281-2.

Travels in India, pp. 42, 46, 96, 100, 105.

F. Braudel, 'Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue duree', Annales,Economies,

ed. W. Crooke, 3 vols (London, I909-15),

Islamic India, which again was almost entirely urban-based. It had a

Indian towns and cities. While general causes of urban growth or

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