The Zamindars and Mughal Power in the Deccan, 1685-1712

an unprecedented ascendancy of the Mughal power in the Deccan and ends with the revival of the victorious Maratha raids. It will try to analyse the factors that guided the alliance of the zamindar class as such or of one category of them with, or their alienation from, the Mughals. We shall show how on the basis of greater concessions to one category the Mughals were initially able to integrate some of the dominant sections in the village in their administrative system, though this could be done at the cost of the alienation of some other elements. We shall also examine the reaction of the zamindar class as a whole to the succession of Bahadur Shah in 1707 and to the resurgence of the Maratha activities in the Deccan after 1708. Our study is confined primarily to those sarkars of the Mughal Deccan which were situated on the east and the south-east of the Western Ghats, at the periphery of the main swarajya land of Shivaji. Apart from the Jaipur Akhbarat and some of the known published and unpublished chronicles, our information is based on the administrative and agrarian documents of the Inayat Jang Collection. This collection contains over twenty-two thousand documents relating to the period and region under review. Over four thousand of them pertaining to Bahadur Shah’s reign (1707-