Under the Mughal administration, the emperor gave nobles the rights to own land and collect tax revenue (either in perpetuity or for renewable fixed terms) in the form of a jāgir (revenue assignment for nobles in lieu of pay by the Emperor1) or madad-i maʿāsh (revenue grant, by which the emperor relinquished his right to collect taxes for a particular area owned by the grantee2). From the middle of the eighteenth century, with the weakening of the Mughal seat of power, these rights began to be bought and sold.3 However, the Mughal vocabulary of land ownership prevailed: Sharaf un-Nisa’s brothers write that her brother Daim Beg was assured a jagir in ʿAzimabad (Patna). As well as older estates being bought, sold, combined or divided, new estates could still be formed out of uncultivated jungle by cutting down forest and instituting dams and canals for irrigation (‘bandha,’4see letter "Petition from ʿAlim Beg to Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Signed by ʿAlim Beg" or Metadata Item 25) to cultivate agricultural land5. One letter refers to this process as jangal buri, the clearing of land overrun with forest.6
A generic term for agricultural landlord was zamindar, defined in the mid-eighteenth century as somebody who owned a share of a particular village or set of villages and carried on the cultivation there.7 Zamindars were a rural class above and apart from the peasantry. They collected tax income based on their land rights to the area, which were increasingly seen as inheritable (unlike earlier Mughal land rights) and able to be bought and sold.8 In Bengal, the zamindars owed the state (initially the Nawab, then gradually the English East India company) a fixed yearly amount (called by English administrators the "land revenue settlement") regardless of their villages’ output.9 Their profit was the difference between the amount of tribute they could collect and the amount of tax owed, and margins in Bengal were especially small.10
In the eighteenth century, a system known as ijāra, essentially ‘farming out blocks of revenue to effectively the highest bidder,’11 became widespread. Cash-strapped rulers began auctioning off land revenues in advance to fund their armies, a process known as tax farming. The tax farmer, who had paid a fixed cash sum for the right to collect the land’s taxes, was incentivized to squeeze as much income as possible out of the land. This made those who worked on the land even more vulnerable to extortion, and estates could be run into the ground. The zamindar was often not the one doing the tax collecting, frequently leaving it to his agents; a survey of Purnea landlords from the early nineteenth century remarked that the largest estates were held by a ‘Persian’ who was in Iran and had left its upkeep to his capable manager.12
These different, overlapping kinds of land holding, coupled with a rapidly-changing environment in which British administration was attempting to take over the administration of the Mughals and successor states, led to confusion and multiple claims to land rights. Land disputes were common, and since land rights were essentially private property, were dealt with by the courts.13 This letter refers to one between Ashraf Ali Khan and Khwajah Basit over some land near the tomb of Khwaja Anwar Shahid, which was held up in court. A record in the British Library suggests that Sharaf un-Nisa’s brother Alam Beg appealed unsuccessfully to have the government take up his case when it stalled in court; the note suggests his case was an extremely common one, and it would be an ‘endless trouble and embarrassment’ to the Company to take up every case with merits like this one.14 Given this litigiousness, pieces of paper that detailed one’s rights were also important, and deeds authenticated by seals or particular handwriting are concerns for the brothers in the letters: in several letters, they are in search of a chitti, an Indic word for a note or letter; in one letter they write that ‘English handwriting’ (dastkhat-i angrayzī) rendered a note effective.
The strained agrarian system was vulnerable to disasters, including drought, flooding, and famine: one letter details fires and floods. The Bengal famine of 1769-70 was extremely hard on Purnea.15 At least one Persian commentator blamed the British, while singling out Gerard Gustavus Ducarel as one of few who helped with famine relief efforts.16 Devi Singh, the Diwan of Purnea, was accused of hoarding grain during the famine; Ducarel later testified in his favor at a trial where the British circuit court found the rajah innocent.17
Being a landowner was a large component of what made a Muslim in Bihar or Bengal ‘sharif,’ i.e. noble (from the same root as Sharaf un-Nisa’s name). An Indian Muslim who visited Sharaf un-Nisa and wrote about her in a Persian travelogue described her as being from the ‘sharif’ class in Purnea (‘az shurafā′ī ānjā’).18 The ‘ashraf’, what Bayly calls a Muslim "locally-based service gentry" was consolidated in the eighteenth century and defined by their male members’ hold over land, placement in administrative roles in local court centers, and patronage of small towns (qasbahs).19 An English account of Purnea from the late nineteenth century noted that the Muslim landlowners avoided spending much time in the capital of the province, a town called Haveli Purnea, ‘when a visit can possibly be avoided.’20 He also claimed that Muslims in the district who claimed Afghan heritage (‘Pathans’) considered themselves pure or noble and thus entitled to hold tax-free land from the government, but many had fallen on hard times and sought civil or military employment as an alternative to manual labour, which was perceived as debasing. Tight marriage alliances solidified the class, and intermarriage was frowned upon.21 Sharaf un-Nisa’s brothers seem to consider themselves members of this class, writing to ensure they keep up their land holdings or to secure jobs in service of the Nawab of Murshidabad. Other means of earning an income do not appear as options.
It is worth noting that women (especially Muslim women) were landowners in eighteenth century Bengal, appearing in the land ownership records. Several women (notably Munni Begum, wife of Mir Jafar Nawab of Bengal22) appealed successfully in the courts for the British administration to uphold their land rights. This trend was practically wiped out with the ascendancy of colonial rule.23
1: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 302.
2: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 342.
3: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 189.
4: A glossary of vernacular judicial and revenue terms, and other useful words occurring in official documents relating to the administration of the Government of British India, 11
5: Richard Eaton, Shrines, Cultivators, and Muslim ‘Conversion’ in Punjab and Bengal, 1300–1700, 203.
6: A glossary of vernacular judicial and revenue terms, and other useful words occurring in official documents relating to the administration of the Government of British India, 45
7: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 173.
8: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 191.
9: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 217-8.
10: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 190.
11: P J Marshall, The Eighteenth Century in India: Evolution or Revolution?, 9
12: Francis Buchanan, An Account of the District of Purnea in 1809-10,
13: Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, 219.
14: British Library IOR/H/422
15: Rajat Datta, ‘The Agrarian Economy,’ in Marshall ed., Evolution or Revolution?, 413
16: Karam Ali (trans. Shaista Khan), Tārīk̲h̲-i Bangāl va Bihār sadah-ʾi hīzhdahum: Muẓaffarńāmah (Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, 1992), 463
17: British Library V/27/42/23 Proceedings of the Committee of Circuit at Purnea Vol VII, 158
18: Mirza Abu Talib Khan, Masir-i Talibi fi bilad-i Ifranji, Royal Asiatic Society Ellis Persian 35, f56
19: C A Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870, 236
20: Francis Buchanan, An Account of the District of Purnea in 1809-10, 60.
21: Francis Buchanan, An Account of the District of Purnea in 1809-10, 196; C A Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870, 233
22: British Library Mss Eur G37/13/10 ff.4-5
23: Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Dowry Murder: The Colonial Origins of a Cultural Crime, 103, 106.