The Mughal Imperial Administration

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

1. The Mughal empire had no charter, constitution or statute in the European sense: sovereignty was personal to the emperor and was exercised through written instruments, the nishan from a prince and the hasb-ul-hukm reciting the imperial will through a minister, so that every privilege a European company held in India rested on such an instrument and was revocable. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Doctoral thesis: "Administration of Gujarat under the Mughals, A.D. 1572 to 1737," doctoral thesis, author not named in the digitised copy, Internet Archive, for the ministerial instruments and the working of imperial authority in the province
2. Surat was a sarkar within the subah of Gujarat and its port was governed by a mutasaddi, an office instituted under Akbar that joined executive authority over the town to fiscal authority over the customs house, serving under the subahdar at Ahmadabad, who could procure his removal on merchant complaint, as happened to Ghiasuddin Khan in 1677. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Peer reviewed journal article and doctoral thesis: Sagufta Parveen, "Surat: As a Major Port-Town of Gujarat and its Trade History," IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, volume 19, issue 5, version VI, May 2014, pages 69 to 73, for the sarkar and the institution of the mutasaddi under Akbar; "Administration of Gujarat under the Mughals, A.D. 1572 to 1737," doctoral thesis, Internet Archive, for the combination of offices, the supervision of the subahdar and the dismissal of Ghiasuddin Khan in 1677
3. Surat's customs were an imperial resource, the port yielding about four lakhs of rupees a year in customs and other dues as early as Akbar's reign, and from 1663 Aurangzeb set aside the earlier uniform rate and required Muslim merchants to pay 2.5 per cent while others paid 5 per cent. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Peer reviewed journal articles: Sagufta Parveen, "Surat: As a Major Port-Town of Gujarat and its Trade History," IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, May 2014, for the yield of about four lakhs of rupees a year; Ghulam A. Nadri, "Islam, Muslim Merchants, and Commerce in Early Modern South Asia," World History Connected, volume 19, number 2, June and July 2022, for the differential customs of 1663
4. The Mughal empire had no navy worth the name and met the sea by delegation. Arnold Wright, writing from the East India Company's records, describes the Mughal fleet as "a rare assortment of craft from large vessels of 300 or 400 tons armed with heavy ordnance to row-boats, in which a few matchlock-men and spearmen found cramped accommodation", and judges that "as an opponent of well-found European squadron of ships this 'Navy' was contemptible"; the Sidhi, "as the Mogul admiral was called, was one of a line of sable adventurers of African blood, who, enrolled under the Mogul flag, had established themselves in the seventeenth century in the vicinity of Bombay". It was the Sidhi who invaded Bombay in 1689, overran Syon, Mahim and the outlying points and besieged the small English garrison in the fort, which is a heavier operation than a blockade. The admiral's name Yakut Khan, the Janjira connection and the date of about 1670 for the appointment are carried by nothing read here. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Company-records monograph: Arnold Wright, Annesley of Surat and His Times: The True Story of the Mythical Wesley Fortune (London, Andrew Melrose, 1918), chapter VI, The Sidhi's Invasion of Bombay, pages 129 to 134, written from the East India Company's records and read in a scanned copy on the Internet Archive
5. Henry Every's taking of the Ganj-i-Sawai in 1695 put the English at Surat in irons. The East India Company's Bombay letter of 12 October 1695 records that on 11 September one of Abdul Ghafur's ships came in whose people reported they had been plundered by an English vessel, and that on 13 September "the Gunsway, one of the Kings Ships, arrived from Judda and Mocho, the Nocqueda and Merchants, with one voice, proclaiming that they were robbed by four English Ships", whereupon "the Governour sent a very strong Guard to the Factory and clapt all our People in Irons, shut them up in a room, planked up all their windows". The immediate order was the Governor of Surat's, who referred the matter to the Emperor; the imperial decree, arriving in the closing days of 1695, took the form of a direction that all three European nations having factories in Surat should send ships to search for and bring in the pirates or pay the damages. Samuel Annesley and the leading men lay in irons until 27 June 1696, when the Court's orders for the reopening of the port reached the factory and the Governor caused the irons to be removed and the guard withdrawn, about nine months after the first confinement. The day of the taking of the ship is not settled: the indictment at the trial of Every's men in 1696 lays it on 28 September 1695, agreeing with neither the 5 September nor the 7 September given by later accounts. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Company records, monograph and printed trial: Letter of the General and Council for the English Affairs residing at Bombay, dated 12 October 1695, printed in J. F. Jameson, ed., Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (New York, 1923), in the section on the case of Henry Every; Arnold Wright, Annesley of Surat and His Times (London, Andrew Melrose, 1918), pages 164, 179 and 187, for the irons on Annesley and the leading men, for the imperial decree that the European nations convoy or pay, and for the release: "the welcome tidings of the arrival at Surat of the Court's orders for the reopening of the port reached the factory on June 27, and the same day the Governor caused the irons to be removed from the prisoners and the guard to be withdrawn" (Annesley's own reckoning of his second fettering, quoted at page 310, runs "from Dec. 11, '95. to June 26, '96"); and The Tryals of Joseph Dawson [and others] for Several Piracies and Robberies by Them Committed, in the Company of Every the Grand Pirate (London, printed for John Everingham, 1696), the second indictment being for that "on the 28th of September, 1695. in a Place 40 Leagues distant from Surrat, [they] did Forcibly and Beastially set upon a Moorish Ship, and take away her Tackle and Goods, to a great Value"
6. The decisive obstacle to Sir William Norris's embassy was Aurangzeb's requirement, put at the audience before Panhala in April 1701, that the English company be made responsible for the suppression of all piracy, which the ambassador was authorised only to answer with the active operation of the king's ships; the translated drafts were found altered to include provisions he could not accept, no farman was obtained, and Norris died at sea in 1702. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Scholarly monograph edited from unpublished records: Harihar Das, The Norris Embassy to Aurangzib, 1699 to 1702, condensed and rearranged by S. C. Sarkar, Calcutta, Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1959