Economy and Society in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Towns
As Abul Fazl observed, “People that are attached to the world will collect in towns, without which there would be no progress.” This insight captures the extraordinary pace at which urbanisation unfolded across Mughal India during the 16th and 17th centuries — a process that built on the town-life already established under the Sultanate, accelerated further, and continued right up to the middle of the 18th century. This article examines the growth and typology of Mughal towns, their physical layout and administrative machinery, the social composition of their populations, and the sharply contrasting standards of urban life that characterised this so-called “golden age of urbanisation.”
Towns
- On account of the peace and law and order established by the Mughals across north and central India, and the consequent growth of commerce and manufacture, the period has been described as a “veritable golden age of urbanization.”
- This process, however, did not unfold uniformly across the empire. Western U.P. and Eastern Punjab were the most rapidly developing regions until the end of the 17th century, while eastern U.P., Bihar, and Bengal forged ahead in the first half of the 18th century, owing to the strong rule of local Nawabs and regional rulers. Poona and Hugli, similarly, developed under Maratha rule.
Four Types of Urban Centres
- Administrative towns: Functioning primarily as seats of governance, with manufacturing or religious roles being of secondary importance. For the Mughal Empire, these included cities such as Agra, Delhi, and Lahore, as well as many provincial capitals; later, Poona, Faizabad, and Hyderabad emerged as important towns of this type.
- Religious towns: Pilgrim and religious centres where trade and craft also flourished to some degree, though sustained chiefly by a large floating population — cities such as Banaras and Mathura, Kanchi, and Tirumalai fall into this category, while Ajmer combined both religious and administrative character.
- Military/strategic towns: Developing essentially as military cantonments, which in due course attracted civilian populations as well — examples include Attock and Asirgarh.
- Commercial towns: Urban centres serving as the focus of large-scale commercial activity, or predominantly functioning as production centres to which some administrative role might be attached — for the Mughal Empire, towns like Patna and Ahmedabad fall under this head.
- Certain centres flourished specifically because of a distinctive manufacturing technique, skill, or local commodity — Bayana for indigo, Patan in Gujarat for dyeing, and Khairabad in Awadh for textiles, each fall into this category.
Note: An average town in the Mughal Empire was, in effect, an extension of the village in terms of social ties and attitudes — a rural-urban continuum that stands as a notable feature of Mughal urbanisation. Given the diversity of urban economies across the empire, it would in fact be a misnomer to speak of a single “stereotype” of the Indian town — even two apparently similar cities, at least in function, could differ considerably in character.
Urban Landscape
Even allowing for this caveat about the diversity of Mughal towns, certain common features can still be identified.
- Scholars have not reached agreement on what precisely defines the “size” of a town, though it is generally accepted that this depends on the population of the country as a whole. The basic feature of a town, in any case, is the presence of a market.
- The smallest towns in India, the qasba, have been defined as essentially a “village with a market” — retaining features of village life such as agricultural production, alongside a market, and generally also functioning as the headquarters of a pargana.
- There existed a clear hierarchy of towns, from the humble qasba, up to the district (sarkar) headquarters where the faujdar resided, and finally to provincial and imperial towns such as Agra, Delhi, and Lahore.
- In Akbar’s empire, there were 120 big cities and 3,200 townships or rural towns (qasbas) — a count that excluded the towns and townships of South India altogether.
Large Towns
- In the 17th century, the largest city was Agra, with an estimated population of 500,000, rising to 600,000 whenever the Emperor was in residence; it remained a very large city even after the court shifted back to Delhi in the middle of the 17th century.
- Delhi itself was by then considered as populous as Paris, then the largest city in Europe.
- According to the traveller Coryat, at the beginning of the 17th century Lahore was even larger than Agra, and “one of the largest cities of the whole universe.”
- Ahmadabad was estimated to be larger than London and its suburbs, while Patna had a population of 200,000.
- Other large towns included Dacca, Rajmahal, Thatta, Burhanpur, and Masulipatam.
- However, what mattered was not so much the sheer size of these towns as the role they played in the social, economic, and cultural life of the country.
- According to a recent estimate, the 17th century saw a very high ratio of urban to total population — as much as 15% — a proportion not exceeded again until the middle of the 20th century.
- In Mughal India, the largest towns functioned as “thriving centres of manufacturing and marketing, banking and entrepreneurial activities, intersections in a network of communications by land and water which crossed and re-crossed the sub-continent and extended far beyond, to South East Asia, to the Middle East, to Western Europe, and elsewhere.”
Physical Configuration
Fortification Wall
- Most towns had some form of fortification wall, with one or more gates. A typical example is provided by John Jourdain’s description of Agra at the start of the 17th century, noting that it was walled, though its suburbs were joined to the walls.
- Nobles and princes typically built their mansions or gardens outside the gates of the town, and it was these settlements that developed into suburbs in cities such as Delhi, Agra, Patna, Ahmedabad, and Allahabad.
Markets
- In planned towns, markets were laid out systematically, with shops lining both sides of the main roads. Many of these markets specialised in a particular commodity, and the names of various city localities often reflected this specialisation — as in Agra, where Loha Gali denoted the iron-goods market, cheenitole the sugar mart, sabzimandi the vegetable mart, and churiwala the market for bangles.
Chowks
- Not all streets were narrow, crooked, or unpaved. Each town had one or two principal, generally paved roads, which formed chowks.
Mohalla
- The residential area of a town was divided into wards, or mohallas, in which people of a single caste or profession generally resided — though some mohallas, such as those in Delhi, housed both Hindus and Muslims together. The mohalla was locked up at night for security.
- Mohallas were often identified by the professional groups residing there — mochiwara (shoemakers) and kucha rangrezan (dyers) being notable examples — while in other cases they took their names from influential individuals who lived there.
Sarai
- Another important urban feature was the presence of sarais, halting places for merchants and travellers, found even in the smallest towns; larger towns such as Delhi, Agra, Patna, Lahore, and Ahmedabad had sarais by the dozen.
- These were generally built by nobles, royal ladies, wealthy merchants, or the state itself, and provided travellers with amenities including storage space for merchandise. Sarais were managed by families of bhatiyaras, who specialised as their keepers.
Structure Suited to Climatic Conditions
- Describing the layout of the newly built city of Shahjahanabad, Bernier notes that house design had to suit India’s climatic conditions — airiness being essential, along with terraces for sleeping outdoors during hot weather.
- He observed: “Very few of the houses are built entirely of brick or stone, and several are made only of clay and straw, yet they are airy and pleasant, most of them having courts and gardens being commodious inside and having good furniture. The thatched roof is supported by a layer of long handsome and strong canes, and the clay walls are covered with a fine white lime.”
- Interspersed among these houses, and the shops above which merchants lived, were a great many smaller ones built of mud and thatched with straw, home to common soldiers and the vast multitude of servants and camp followers.
Note: Foreigners visiting towns were required to inform the city administration of their arrival and departure. On the whole, most towns lacked any detailed town planning — barring the major thoroughfares, other lanes and by-lanes remained congested and muddy.
Administrative Machinery of the City
- It has sometimes been argued that Indian cities lacked a specific legal character of their own, unlike many European towns, and therefore had no genuine civic life — a view famously associated with Max Weber, who held that Oriental cities lacked the corporate and civic character of their European counterparts. However, this view does not hold up, since medieval evidence clearly points to the presence of such civic character.
- Each city possessed its own administrative machinery and regulations to manage day-to-day affairs, structured so as to discharge the effective purposes of town life satisfactorily. The state itself created much of this system of governance, as reflected in several key offices:
Kotwal
- General administration of the city lay in the hands of the kotwal, who maintained his own staff for watch and ward and served as the head of law and order, calling on the faujdar for assistance in special cases.
- His duties included controlling economic activity — regulating weights and measures, keeping track of prices, and prohibiting illegal cesses — as well as broader civic duties: appointing persons to look after watercourses, prohibiting the sale of slaves, setting the idle to some handicraft, organising reciprocal assistance among residents of the mohallas, and appointing a guild-master for every guild of artificers.
- He also functioned as an intelligence agent, keeping track of the movement of people, births and deaths, and census operations.
Daroga
- Several kinds of Darogas existed for specific functions, including the Daroga of the market, of the daak (postal system), of public works, of the city gates, and of the royal karkhana.
Mudasaddi
- The Mudasaddi was the official in charge of general administration.
Mir-i-Bakal
- The Ain-i Akbari (Abul Fazal) records a proper system of provisioning for the city of Agra, with food products drawn from various surrounding areas; evidence points to the office of Mir-i-Bakal being specifically in charge of this provisioning function in Agra.
Urban Autonomous Institutions
- Alongside these state-appointed officials, certain self-administered institutions, rooted in socio-economic tradition, functioned in coordination with the state.
- Mohallas/wards themselves served as such institutions, with references to a Mir-i-Muhalla, who acted as superintendent of the mohalla and supervised its affairs.
- Nagar seths (merchant heads), also known as Malik-ut-tujjar, and the heads of urban guilds (shreni), likewise played a role in occupational regulation within the city — sometimes organised along caste or religious lines.
- Together, these arrangements point to a structure of local consultation and participation, suggesting that a genuine degree of civic character did exist within medieval Indian towns.
Composition of Population (Urban Classes)
- The urban population was far from homogeneous, comprising various categories of residents that can be classified into four broad groups:
- Nobles and their retainers, along with officials of the state and troops.
- Persons engaged in mercantile activities — merchants, sarrafs, brokers, and the like.
- People associated with religious establishments, along with musicians, painters, poets, and physicians.
- Artisans, menials, and workmen of various kinds.
- The relative weight of these categories in any given town depended on its nature — whether it functioned mainly as an administrative or a commercial centre.
- In imperial headquarters, the largest single group was often that of the retainers and troops attached to the king and nobles — Bernier (1658) estimated the total strength of Shah Jahan’s great camp at around 3–4 lakh.
- Since most large towns were also important commercial centres, the mercantile community held considerable weight — at Ahmedabad, for instance, it was estimated that there were around 84 castes and subcastes of Hindu merchants alone, while Patna had some 600 brokers by 1640.
- Another important group comprised people connected to medicine, learning, literature, art, and music. Religious and charitable grants were generally made in the vicinity of towns, and a large number of poets, musicians, and physicians made their homes there, drawn by the money to be earned or the patronage available from the king and nobles.
- Artisans, workmen, and labourers formed one of the largest groups in towns with significant commercial activity, and could themselves be divided into several categories:
- Individual artisans, working at their own premises and selling their own wares.
- Artisans employed in the karkhanas of kings and nobles, or in the large-scale building construction undertaken by them.
- A large workforce of semi-skilled and unskilled workmen, assisting artisans or working in enterprises such as ship-building, diamond-mining, saltpetre production, and salt-making.
- A further body of workmen employed as domestic help and daily-wage labourers.
Urban Demography
- The Tabqat-i Akbari (c. 1593) records that during Akbar’s reign there were around 120 big cities and 3,200 qasbas (small towns); by the 17th century, with the further growth of trade and commerce, this number would likely have increased further.
- Irfan Habib estimates that around 15% of the total population in Mughal India lived in towns. For the size of individual towns, only scattered references survive, largely drawn from the accounts of European travellers.
Urban Life: Standard of Living
- Standard of living in a medieval Mughal city showed a striking contrast — while the upper strata lived a life-style akin to royalty, the urban poor often struggled to secure even a bare subsistence.
- Describing the common populace at Goa, Linschoten (1580–1590) noted that they “are so miserable that for a penny they would endure to be whipped and they eat so little that it seemeth they live by the air; they are likewise most of them small and weak of limbs.”
- A similar observation came from De Laet, who commented that “the condition of the common people in those regions is exceedingly miserable; wages are low; workmen get one regular meal a day; the houses are wretched and practically unfurnished, and people have not sufficient covering to keep warm in winter.”
- Bernier, by contrast, observed that rich merchants tended to appear outwardly modest, “lest they should be used as filled sponges” (that is, squeezed for money) — while Barbosa praised the rich dress style of the Muslim merchants of Calicut, and Pietro della Valle commented on the splendour of the merchants of Surat. Hindu nobles followed Muslim fashions in dress, with Brahmans wearing the tilak on their foreheads and Rajputs wearing earrings.
- The lower strata, by contrast, were largely scantily clothed. Salbanke observed of the common people between Agra and Lahore that “the Plebeian sort is so poor that the greatest part of them go naked” — an observation echoed for the south, where Barbosa remarked that the common people of the Vijayanagar Empire “go quite naked with the exception of a piece of cloth about their middle.” Linschoten similarly noted that the common people of Goa “live very poorly; go naked.”
- Babur observed that “peasants and people of low standing go about naked,” tying only the lunguta, a decency-cloth hanging two spans below the navel, with another cloth passed between the thighs and secured behind; women, he noted, tied a lung, half wrapped around the waist and the other half thrown over the head, while in winter men wore quilted cotton gowns and caps. In the South, most people went barefoot.
- The Ain-i Akbari and contemporary European accounts (Pelsaert, Pietro della Valle, and others) show that the average monthly wage of urban workers ranged between Rs. 3 and 4.
- Shireen Moosvi (1987) has shown that the purchasing power of an unskilled worker was significantly higher in 1595 than in 1867–71: an unskilled worker under Akbar could purchase considerably more wheat, inferior food-grains, ghi, and sugar than his 19th-century counterpart, and could therefore afford better food overall, even though his purchasing power in terms of clothing was comparatively poor.
- The fall in purchasing power appears even more marked for skilled workers in terms of food-grains than for unskilled wages over the same period — urban wages were, in short, considerably higher around 1600 than in 1867.
- Middle classes — particularly petty revenue officials, lower-ranking mansabdars, and physicians — appear to have been fairly prosperous, whereas intellectuals, in general, remained poor and dependent solely on their patrons for a livelihood.
- Nobles and other upper classes in Mughal India led an unmistakably luxurious life-style — it is recorded that the son of one amir spent one lakh rupees in a single day in Chandni Chowk purchasing daily necessities, prompting Moreland’s observation that “spending not hoarding was the dominant feature of the time.”
- Shireen Moosvi’s analysis of the consumption pattern of royalty and the nobility clearly reflects this life-style, showing that a Mughal noble spent almost 75% of his income on luxury and comfort.
- This extravagant life-style, in turn, tended to leave the nobility deeply impoverished. As Bernier put it, “…Omrahs: on the contrary most of them are deeply in debt; they are ruined by the costly presents made to the king and by their large establishment.” This burden, in turn, pressed the nobility to extract more from the peasantry than the dues legitimately owed.
- Nobles do, however, appear to have supported the development of craft production — Shireen Moosvi calculates that 63.26% of nobles’ salaries went towards supporting the craft sector, with average estimated expenditure on craft production amounting to 37.38% of the jama. Investment in craft production was thus considerable, but was directed chiefly towards personal consumption rather than the market, and consequently, despite these large investments, failed to generate a genuine “home market.”
In summary, the towns of Mughal India during the 16th and 17th centuries reflect both the scale and the contradictions of the empire’s economy and society. A genuine “golden age of urbanisation” produced cities that rivalled or surpassed the great capitals of contemporary Europe in population, supported a sophisticated administrative machinery with real civic character, and sustained a remarkably diverse urban population — yet this same urban world was marked by a stark and enduring gulf between the extravagant consumption of nobles and the bare subsistence of the urban poor, a contrast that shaped, and ultimately limited, the wider economic development of the period.
