Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/115

of no family, who owed everything to their lord, and were devoted to his interests: so the Mughal Emperors endeavoured to bind to their. personal interest a body of adventurers of any sort of origin, generally of low descent, perhaps formerly slaves, and certainly uneducated, who derived their power and affluence solely from their sovereign, who 'raised them to dignity or degraded them to obscurity according to his own pleasure and caprice.' This body was called Mansabdárs, or grant-holders, because each member received an income in money or land from the emperor. The jágír or estate of the mansabdár was the Mughal equivalent of the timar of the Ottoman timariots, and the feof of the Egyptian Mamlúk. The value of the mansab, or grant, whether paid in cash or lands, was carefully graduated; so that there were a series of ranks among the grantees corresponding to the degrees of chin in the Russian bureaucracy. The ranks were distinguished in accordance with the number of horse a mansabdár was supposed to maintain: and we read of mansabdárs of 500, or 1000, or 5000, and even 12000 horse. The higher ranks, from 1000 horse upwards, received the title of Amír, of which the plural is Umará. The writings of European travellers are full of references to these 'Omrahs,' or noble, as they call them, — though it must not be forgotten that the nobility was purely official, and had no necessary connexion with birth or. hereditary estates. The term an 'Amír of 5000,' however, did not imply a following