Community Memory and Identity Experiments in Mughal India: The Noble Lives of Qayamkhani Mansabdars

 on Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference’s online blog, 

March 2022

Abstract: During the reign of Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), drawing upon already-existing traditions, the Mughal Empire’s administrative system was accorded uniformity and stability through a system of bureaucratic ranking known as the mansab system. Consequently, when the bureaucrats – or mansabdars – were enrolled into imperial service, they were simultaneously ranked. While the lowest mansab (rank) was 10, the highest was 7000. At the same time, socially, these mansabdars were strongly wedded to the principle of nobility by birth. This was to such an extent that in popular understanding, ‘the absence of a noble lineage was considered a disqualification for royal service’. As a result, the socio-cultural milieu was marked by anxiety, a by-product of the need to prove an elite identity, associated with bloodline, among one’s peers. In this context, the paper undertakes a case study of the Qayamkhani mansabdars, who belonged to the lowest rungs of the bureaucratic structure. A small Muslim community of Hindu converts belonging to the Indian region of north-eastern Rajasthan, their first genealogical history – the Qayamkhan Rasa – was composed in Braj Bhasha during the seventeenth century. The text, which seems partly fictionalized, reveals an attempt to establish a lofty lineage for the Qayamkhani community in a retrospective manner. The paper explores the impulse behind the fabrication of community memory and recreation of a genealogical identity among low-ranking mansabdars such as the Qayamkhanis. Additionally, foregrounding the identity experiments among Mughal lower bureaucrats, the major objective of the paper is to uncover the very process by which such a fabrication took place.

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