Akbar's reign and the institutions (mansabdari, jagirdari, zabt) that defined Mughal governance, 1556-1605
Akbar's Early Reign and Consolidation
The Basics
When Humayun died in 1556, Akbar was only thirteen. He was in Punjab commanding operations against Afghan rebels. He was crowned at Kalanaur in 1556. He inherited a difficult position. Kabul was under threat, and Sikandar Sur, a defeated Afghan ruler, was active in the Siwalik Hills. The Afghans were also regrouping under Hemu. Hemu had risen from market superintendent to become wazir, or chief minister, of Adil Shah, taking the title Vikramaditya.
With the Uzbek rebellion crushed in 1567, Akbar had full control of the core Mughal territories and could now expand the empire outward into central, western and eastern India.
By c. 1570, Akbar had conquered Chittor and most of Rajasthan, but a conquered Rajasthan still needed to be governed without constant rebellion, so Akbar chose alliance over permanent subjugation.
Akbar ruled over a large, newly expanding empire. His nobles came from many backgrounds: Turani and Irani Mughals, Afghans, Hindustanis and now Rajputs. These groups had no single, shared scale of rank or pay. This made the nobility hard to control and the army hard to organise. Akbar needed one system to bind every officer into a loyal, disciplined service answerable to him.
The mansabdari system had fixed how many troopers a noble must keep and what rank he held, but it still needed a mechanism to actually pay him, since the imperial treasury could not settle every noble's salary in cash every month.
Akbar inherited a land revenue problem. Sher Shah Suri had set up a crop rate called ray, fixing dues per crop based on productivity, and Akbar first adopted this system. But converting dues into a single central schedule of prices caused delays. Court prices were usually higher than village prices, so peasants ended up paying more than they should have.
When Akbar took personal charge of the empire, he inherited a central government modelled on the Delhi Sultanat. In that system, one all-powerful wazir stood between the ruler and every department. Bairam Khan had exercised exactly this kind of unchecked power as wakil during the regency. Akbar now saw this concentration of authority as a danger to his own control.
In 1580, Akbar organised his growing empire into twelve subas (provinces): Bengal, Bihar, Allahabad, Awadh, Agra, Delhi, Lahore, Multan, Kabul, Ajmer, Malwa and Gujarat. This followed the same logic as the centre, where diwan, mir bakhshi and sadr-us-sudur held separate powers. Akbar extended this system down to the provinces. No single provincial officer could then become too powerful.
Akbar had already drawn Rajputs into his nobility through marriage and service. Yet a Muslim state that taxed Hindus for their faith sat uneasily with this policy. So Akbar began removing symbols of religious discrimination. Around 1563 he abolished the pilgrim tax levied at Hindu bathing places such as Prayag and Banaras. Around 1564 he abolished jizya, the poll tax non-Muslims paid in a Muslim state. He also stopped the forcible conversion of prisoners of war. These were not mere gestures. They expressed Akbar's growing belief that a ruler owed equal care to every subject, regardless of creed. This belief was shaped by Sufi teachers, his tutor Abdul Latif, and scholars such as Shaikh Mubarak and his sons Faizi and Abul Fazl. This outlook came to be called sulh-i-kul, meaning universal peace or toleration.
Akbar ruled over a vast and diverse empire. He wanted his court to mirror that diversity rather than favour one community alone. Out of this outlook grew a tradition, remembered in later accounts, of nine especially distinguished courtiers called the Navratnas, meaning the nine jewels.