The London Eye can withstand winds of a year storm, the worst storm anticipated to occur once in a period of 50 years, and if it's ever struck by lightning , the strike would be conducted to the ground with no harm to passengers.
The London Eye rotates around the hub much like a bicycle wheel, but motorized. Hydraulic motors, driven by electric pumps, provide energy to turn the wheel. The drive systems are located in two towers, one at each end of the wheel's boarding platform. Here's how the wheel turns: Standard truck tires along the rim of the wheel act as friction rollers. Hydraulic motors turn the tires , and the rotation of the tires turns the wheel. A computer controls the hydraulic motor speed for each tire.
The main components of the London Eye were built offsite. Once they were completed, barges transported them piece by piece up the River Thames to the construction site on the South Bank. Workers assembled the London Eye horizontally on a temporary support platform over the river, which made construction faster, easier and safer than if it had been built vertically. Once it was assembled, hydraulic lifts and cables slowly raised the 1, ton 1, tonnes structure over the course of one day, until it reached its degree angle.
Once it was in final position, the 32 capsules were attached to the rim, which took eight days. Instead of being suspended and swinging, the passenger capsules turn within circular mounting rings fixed to the outside of the main rim. As the wheel rotates, the capsules also rotate within their mounting rings to remain horizontal.
If the capsules didn't rotate, by the time your capsule went around the wheel, you and your friends would be upside down. Each capsule has its own heating and cooling system, bench seating and is fitted with special glass that can handle weather fluctuations. Capsules also have a built-in stability system, meaning the capsule will stay level even if all the passengers suddenly move to one side.
There are 32 capsules, one to represent each borough of London. Instead of "rides," the London Eye has "flights. At the top of the London Eye, on a clear day, you can see 25 miles 40 km -- as far as Windsor Castle. Each rotation takes about 30 minutes, and the wheel moves at about 0. Its speed is quite slow, and passengers can easily step on and off without the wheel ever having to stop -- though for elderly or disabled passengers, the wheel can come to a complete stop for safety.
The London Eye carries 3. Each of the 32 capsules holds up to 25 people, allowing the London Eye to transport people at a time. The Eye also offers special packages, including private capsule flights, flights with champagne or cocktails, flights with wine tastings, flights with breakfast and the list goes on. Many couples get engaged or married on the London Eye. Just don't forget your wallet -- obviously the more amenities you want, the more you'll pay.
The Eye advises booking flights in advance for any special packages. Originally, fluorescent tubes lit the London Eye by night. This system proved costly to maintain. In order to bathe the London Eye in different colors for special occasions, workers had to manually cover each fluorescent tube with a colored gel "slip.
Today, the London Eye can be coated in all sorts of colors and even perform light shows. We've all read enough horror stories about amusement park rides to wonder if anything has ever gone awry with the London Eye. Home London Eye Blueprint. It is coming in rectangular format and available in four sizes: 16 x 20, 22 x 28, 24 x 36, 30 x 40 stretched or framed.
Frames are offered in three colors: black, espresso, driftwood style. Great for residential or business interior design projects. Paper: This is a beautiful photograph of the pillars in the famous Patio de los Leones.
This depiction of just An art print poster that could be a real conversation piece. With the arrival in c. The rapid expansion of Muslim rule in the early thirteenth century brought peace and stability to large portions of North India for thefirsttime in centuries. Secure borders and safe roads encouraged expansion of trade.
A routinized system of administration led to the founding of a network of administrative centers. Often sited in the hierarchy of market towns that grew up to service the newly expanded trade in grain that stimulated by the revenue demands of the new rulers , these centers attracted converts, merchants, artisans, bureaucrats, soldiers, and others dependent on the new regime. There were other reasons for the revival of urban activity after Islam, unlike Hinduism, was congenial to city life.
A Muslim had to worship once a week in a congregational mosque in the company of fellow believers. In India a great many of the foreign nobility settled in cities and towns. After the Mongol conquest of Eurasia in the middle decades of the thirteenth century, a conquest in which city after city was razed and ploughed under, India received a good number of immigrant Muslims from urban West Asia.
In addition, the rapid increase in the number of converts served to swell the urban population. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, on the eve of Mughal conquest, the level of urbanization in India had never been greater. Urban expansion continued under Mughal rule. The Mughals extended their sway from the Indo-Gangetic heartland in North India to the west, south, and east, establishing a zone of peace and prosperity. Within City and Empire 5 this zone, which each emperor tried his best to enlarge, an administrative system of unprecedented reach and complexity was established.
The primary task of the system was to collect the taxes due the state, taxes which were, for the most part, levied on food grains and denominated in cash. In an environment of stability, prosperity, and governmental expansion, a new generation of urban centers was born. Rooted in the past, their origins in the older, smaller, administrative and economic centers of the pre-Mughal period, these new settlements were the outcome of a dramatic transformation.
The periodic marketplaces and sluggish towns of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were transformed into thriving, populous centers of economic, social, and political activity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cities of Delhi For nearly a thousand years the rulers of North Indian states established their capitals in the Delhi area.
The Delhi triangle, a sixty-square-mile area bounded by the Aravalli hills on the west and south and the Jamuna river on the east, occupied a strategic position in upper India.
It commanded the mile wide corridor that, on the one hand, separated the Deccan tableland and the Thar desert from the Himalayas and, on the other, separated the Punjab and the lands of the Northwest from the rich unbroken flood plain of the Ganges.
Touching the Jamuna at its northernmost point of year-round navigation, the Delhi triangle encompassed the major break in transportation between the two great river systems of the subcontinent, the Ganges and the Indus. Earlier treatments err by treating as historic cities ancient sites that cannot be reliably identified, by failing to distinguish between palaces or palace-complexes and cities, and by not separating temporary settlements and local headquarters from cities.
In this account of the cities constructed in the Delhi area a distinction is drawn between those for which there is solid evidence, both archeological and literary, and those for which there is little or none.
Table 1 and map 1 summarize the results of this investigation. Sharma, Delhi and Its Neighborhood, 2nd. It has the most 6 Shahjahanabad The first appearance of the name Delhi is impossible to pinpoint.
According to one tradition a certain Raja Dilipa, mentioned in the Vishnu Purana, founded a city named Dili before the time of the Mahabharata. An inscription dated mentions Dhilli of the Hariyanaka region and another of names Dhilli of Haritana. The first evidence of settled habitation in the area dates to c.
Excavations in at a site near Purana Qila Old Fort turned up shards of painted gray pottery, but further exploration during failed to discover a regular painted gray ware strata. According to local tradition this was the site of Indraprastha Indra's District , the capital of the Pandavas, the great heroes of the Mahabharata. The arguments put forward - that painted gray ware had been found at other sites associated 7 8 9 10 up-to-date and sophisticated discussion of the archeological evidence.
Burton-Page in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, "Dihli" presents a lucid and well-illustrated account of the settlements in the area. However, new archeological finds reported by Sharma have rendered his treatment of some of the earner sites inadequate. It has, of course, been superseded in a number of ways, but many of its conclusions and judgements have not been disturbed and its presentation of the literary evidence is excellent.
His overall treatment is uneven, but it does throw light on the premutiny remains, the historical literature, and certain local traditions. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, - is the basic reference for the remains at each site.
It does, however, include a number of maps and local traditions. The following sources provide supplementary information. Frykenberg, ed. Archeological Survey: , 4 pp. Aziz, "Origin and Growth," p. Sharma, Delhi, p. LalKot 2. QilaRai Pithora 3. Siri 4. Tughlaqabad 5. Jahanpanah 6. Firuzabad 7. DinPanah 8. Shergah 9. Shahjahanabad They cannot support the statement that Indraprastha was the first city of the area.
In fact, the recent discovery on a rock in the nearby hills of a shorter version of the Minor Rock Edicts establishes an unmistakable tie between Delhi and the great Mauryan Emperor Asoka c. A clan of Rajput warriors, the Tomars, settled in the Aravalli hills south of the Delhi triangle toward the end of thefirstmillennium A.
An early ruler named Surajpal, whom we know only from later tradition, is 11 12 For a review of the evidence see ibid. Burton-Page, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, 'Dihli', p.
City and Empire 9 said to have constructed a large reservoir called Surajkund in the area. Scattered here and there about the reservoir are ruins of houses, temples, walls, dams, and other buildings - evidence of a Tomar settlement of sorts. Lai Kot Red Fort is the first site with remains substantial and extensive enough to be called a city. Neither the dates for Anangpal nor the date of the city are known with certainty but Cunningham's estimate of A.
The most famous Chauhan ruler, Prithviraj or Rai Pithora, established a new city for his followers by expanding Lai Kot. He raised a great wall that enclosed not only the old city but a much larger area besides. In he met the Afghan warriors of Muhammad Ghuri outside Delhi and was soundly defeated. The Muslim conquerors, however, did not build a new city.
Content to settle within the walls of Qila Rai Pithora, Qutb al-Din and his immediate successors confined their building activities to renovation and reconstruction within the Rajput city. Qila Marzqhan Fort of Refuge , built by Ghiyas al-Din Balban near the the tomb of Nizam al-Din Auliya, was an asylum for debtors and not a separate citadel or city. Cunningham, Archeological Survey: , 1 pp.
Sharma's discussion seems to me the most persuasive. Sharma, Delhi, pp. Cunningham, Archeological Survey: , 1 p. Kailughari was primarily a place of residence for the emperor, a few nobles, and their servants and retainers; it did not replace Qila Rai Pithora.
In fact, Kaiqubad's successor, Jalal alDin Khalji , though crowned in Kailughari, soon moved back to the old Rajput city. An enthusiastic builder and one of the greatest Muslim rulers of India, Ala al-Din erected or renovated a great many structures in Qila Rai Pithora.
Siri, the new city, began as military camp on a plain north of the old capital, a response to the threat of Mongol invasion. Having successfully defended the area, Ala alDin walled the camp and ordered the building of permanent structures. Erected soon after his accession to the throne in , this fortified city was divided into a citadel or palace-fortress for the ruler, his family, and retainers; an area for the houses of nobles and others; and a businesscommercial sector laid out in a gridiron pattern.
In one corner of the city Muhammad bin Tughluq , Ghiyas al-Din's successor, built a palace-fortress named 'Adilabad Home of Justice. Since the Mongols had plundered the heavily built-up area between Qila Rai Pithora and Siri several times, Muhammad ordered a wall to be erected around the suburbs separating the two cities. The enclosure, called Jahanpanah World-Protector , soon became a thriving center of urban life. During this period Muhammad remained with his family and followers in Tughlugabad.
In he led a large part of the Muslim population of the city to Devagiri renamed Daulatabad in South India and spent over two years there. He returned in and was followed in by the rest of his North Indian followers. Defremory and B. Sanquinett, eds. Gibb, 3 vols. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, , 3 pp. City and Empire 11 Firuz Shah , the last Tughluq ruler of note and a great builder, founded his new capital Firuzabad Home of Firuz in an area remote from the southern sites of the previous centers.
Begun c. Although no walls now remain, the city is said to have been about twelve miles in diameter and to have included the entire site of Shahjahanabad. Kotla Firuz Shah Palace of Firuz Shah , near the Akbarabadi gate of Shahjahanabad and one of the few substantial structures remaining, was the palace-fortress of the emperor.
After the invasion of Timur, however, Delhi no longer commanded a state of any size. The North Indian empire of the Khaljis and Tughluqs shrank under the Sayyids to an area around Delhi of about two hundred square miles. Khizr Khan , founder of the dynasty, defeated the last Tughluq ruler and established himself in the imperial palace in Siri. He spent most of his reign battling his neighbors, defending, and trying to enlarge, the boundaries of his small kingdom.
Mubarak was assassinated just over three and one-half months later and, as a result, not much work appears to have been done on the new capital. Since no archeological remains have been found at the site south of Shahjahanabad along the banks of the Jamuna , there is good reason to suppose that the city was never finished.
Bahlul Lodi , founder of the dynasty, ruled his small 22 23 24 25 List of Monuments, 2 pp. Habib and Nizami, Delhi Sultanat, pp. Some writers state that Khizr Khan built a city named Khizrabad on the banks of the Jamuna. See Burton-Page, "Dihli," p. Since, however, there is no reliable literary or archeological evidence of the city, I have not included it in the table. See Sharma, Delhi, p. Other authors assume that a city was built and populated. Like his Afghan predecessors, Bahlul had to contend with insubordination and rebellion among his tribal followers and with attacks and invasions from the rulers of surrounding kingdoms.
In , in order to govern more effectively, BahluPs successor, Sikander Lodi , decided to shift his headquarters to Agra. From there the Afghan leaders could deploy their forces to greater advantage in dealing with predatory Mewatis, rebellious zamindars, and ambitious rajahs.
The emperor Babur laid out several gardens during his short four-year reign while Akbar and Shahjahan erected some of the most magnificent examples of Muslim architecture in India. Humayun , Babur's son and successor, founded a modest city called Din Panah Refuge of Religion on the banks of the Jamuna in Using bricks and stone from the remains of Siri, the walls and gates of the city were put up in about ten months.
No trace of Humayun's city remains, however, since Sher Shah Sur , his successor, plundered and razed the settlement. Sher Shah's palace-fortress, known later as Purana Qila, contained a mosque and the tower from which Humayun, after he had defeated the Surs and captured the city, tumbled to his death. Erected sometime between and and only three-quarters of a mile around, the fort was intended, it seems clear, as a residence for Islam Shah and not as the nucleus of a new city.
In the northern sector of the triangle, on a piece of ground overlooking the river, the Emperor Shahjahan founded a completely new city called Shahjahanabad Abode of Shahjahan. When finally completed in , 26 27 28 29 Habib and Nizami, Delhi Sultanat, pp.
I follow Sharma, Delhi, pp. Both Cunningham, Archeological Survey: , pp. City and Empire 13 this new center contained two imposing structures of red sandstone - the imperial palace-fortress and the Jami' Masjid - and a number of very fine but smaller buildings of marble, sandstone, and brick.
Shahjahanabad served as the Mughal capital from until the effective demise of the empire in The last city in the area was built by the British. On 12 December King George V announced that the center of government would shift from Calcutta, longtime capital of British rule in India, to Delhi.
Lord Hardinge chose a site to the southwest of Shahjahanabad, and Edward Luytens and Herbert Baker drew up plans for a magnificent city that took years to complete. The wide, carefully planned streets of New Delhi, the great monuments, and the imposing government buildings spoke eloquently of the imperial impulse to dominate and order. Although Babur could trace a connection to Chaghatai Khan, the second son of Chinghiz, through his mother, it is by no means accurate to call him or his successors Mongol.
Mughal, the name of the dynasty, is a variant of Mongol and was used in India to distinguish immigrants or the recently immigrated from local Muslims. European travellers, who misunderstood the meaning of the word, thought it denoted the descendants of Babur exclusively. This meaning gained currency in Europe and soon Mughal became the accepted name of the dynasty. However, since Babur's father, Umar Shaikh Mirza, had been fourth in a direct line of descent from Timur the great Central Asian empire builder , it is more accurate to call the dynasty Timurid, the name by which it was known to Indians of the period.
In Babur, at that time ruler of a city state centered on Kabul, was invited to the Punjab by a group of Afghan nobles dissatisfied with the rule of their chief Ibrahim Lodi. Meeting Ibrahim at Panipat, Babur decisively defeated the Afghans and inaugurated Mughal rule in the subcontinent. Following his victory Babur and his men moved quickly down the Ganges, capturing Delhi, Agra, Gwalior, Kanauj, and Jaunpur in the space of a few months. In he defeated the massed armies of the Rajput ruler, Rana Sangha, and by was master of the Indo-Gangetic Plains all the way to Patna.
In , at the height of his power, he died. Humayun, Babur's son and successor, faced a difficult task. He had to mold territories in Afghanistan, Punjab, and the Gangetic Plains into a 14 Shahjahanabad functioning state, and he had to do it against the opposition both of his own followers and of the recently defeated Afghans of Ibrahim Lodi.
It is no wonder that he failed and was forced to seek refuge with the Safavid ruler of Iran. In succession quarrels opened the way for Humayun. Several years before, he had defeated his brother Kamran and had collected a substantial fighting force in Afghanistan. With these men he quickly overran Lahore and Delhi and seemed on the verge of reconquering the territory left him by his father. In , however, he died in a freak accident and bequeathed his young son Akbar a situation fraught with uncertainty and danger.
At the age of thirteen, and newly crowned, Akbar was hardly prepared to assume command of the Mughal armies. In a time of peace the task would have been difficult; in the uncertain period following Humayun's return to India the task was simply too much for an inexperienced adolescent, even one of genius like Akbar. Under the Hindu general Hemu, the Afghans quickly reconquered Agra and Delhi and soon threatened to drive Akbar and his men from the subcontinent altogether. At this juncture Bairam Khan, one of the most loyal and successful of Humayun's generals, took over direction of the Mughal forces.
He defeated Hemu at Panipat near Delhi in late and over the next four years gradually reestablished Mughal supremacy in Hindustan. In at the age of eighteen, Akabar dismissed Bairam Khan.
He had grown increasingly impatient of all restraints and in , having rid himself of the influence of his foster-mother and her family, became his own man entirely. For the remainder of his reign Akbar sought to extend the boundaries of the empire; his goal, like that of so many Indian rulers before and after him, was to make the boundaries of state and subcontinent coincide.
In he conquered Malwa and in Gondwara, both in Central India. In Akbar began a campaign to subdue the Rajputs, the Hindu warrior caste of North Central India and the most formidable threat to Mughal hegemony. Several years before he had taken a Rajput wife, had abolished the tax on Hindu pilgrims, and had accepted several Rajput chieftains into Mughal service. These inducements, however, were not enough. Some Rajputs remained recalcitrant, and it took several years of hard fighting to reduce them.
In Gujarat was annexed and in campaigns against Bengal, a stronghold of Afghan influence, were begun. In Akbar moved to Lahore. Babur's old enemies, the Uzbegs, the warrior tribesmen who had driven him from his homeland overfiftyyears before, threatened Mughal possessions in the Northwest. In the Uzbegs withdrew, and Akbar was free to shift troops to South India.
In , after several years of hardfighting,the Mughals drew the Deccan states of Ahmadnagar and Khandesh into the empire. Akbar's achievement was to establish a governing structure for India and to put Mughal rule on a sound footing for the first time.
In Jahangir , Akbar's only surviving son, assumed the throne. While this is not a complete or accurate characterization of Jahangir's rule - a time to pause and consolidate was probably in order after the whirlwind expansion and innovation under Akbar - no reassessment of his reign and its significance has yet been made.
During Jahangir's reign no serious attempt was made to extend Mughal dominion in the Deccan and South India, and Qandahar in central Afghanistan was lost to the Persians. On the other hand, Mughal rule in the province of Bengal was reorganized and put on a peaceful and more stable footing.
During Jahangir's rule also the number of nobles in imperial service expanded from about eight hundred to nearly three thousand. This proved to be a major burden on the treasury and the percentage of state revenues controlled by the imperial household dropped precipitously during this period. The Emperor Shahjahan , the builder of Shahjahanabad, was a different man altogether. He was energetic and bold, a skilled general, and he had the inclination and resources to patronize the arts.
As a prince he had led the Mughal armies in a number of important battles and as emperor he readopted Akbar's policy of vigorous expansion. His first move was to reestablish Mughal rule in the Deccan, and he spent several years reconquering states, defeating others for the first time, and reorganizing the Mughal administration.
He was also responsible for the last serious attempt by the Mughals to recover Qandahar - winning it briefly, losing it to the Persians, and then failing on three separate occasions to regain it. By the middle of his reign, he had consolidated Mughal rule in most of the subcontinent, and had appointed men of talent and experience to administer the revenue system.
All of this meant that he was free to patronize the arts - poetry, music, painting, and especially architecture. Shahjahan is best known as the builder of the Taj Mahal, that beautiful memorial to his wife in Agra, but he also renovated the palace-fortresses in Agra and Lahore and planned and built the new capital city in the Delhi area.
Possessed of energy, talent, experience, and discipline, he should have been the perfect ruler, presiding over a reign of peace and prosperity. Yet there is almost universal agreement that Aurangzeb was a failure and that his reign marked the beginning of the end for the Mughals. Like other Mughal princes before him, Aurangzeb had grown discontented and had revolted against his father. He differed from his predecessors, however, in his success. In Shahjahan fell ill and Aurangzeb, fearing that his brother Dara Shikoh would capture the throne, allied himself with his two other brothers and attacked and defeated Dara.
Outwitting his allies, he crowned himself emperor, notwithstanding the fact that Shahjahan had in the meantime recovered. Aurangzeb had always been a skillful general and a careful administrator, and he moved quickly to reinvigorate and expand the empire. He brought Assam and Eastern India into the state, put down a revolt among the Afghan tribesmen of the Northwest, and subdued the Sikhs, a militant, newly founded religious movement centered in the Punjab.
He also moved against the Marathas, a group of people located in Western India who were restless and dissatisfied under Mughal rule. At first he was successful, defeating the Marathas and assimilating them to the Mughal system much as Akbar had done with the Rajputs earlier.
Soon, however, this strategy began to fail and Aurangzeb decided to leave North India and to direct the campaign in person. In he left Shahjahanabad and for the next twenty-eight years, until his death in , he pursued the Marathas from place to place, conquering and reconquering small forts, fighting innumerable skirmishes, but always failing to entice them into the one major battle that would have decided the issue.
This effort so bled the Mughals of men, resources, and will that Bahadur Shah, Aurangzeb's successor, found it impossible to reestablish the old imperial structure on his return to North India in Because Aurangzeb had ruled for so long, Bahadur Shah was an old man when hefinallycame to the throne. On his death the usual succession struggle broke out but this time the imperial princes were pawns rather than principals. Competing factions among the nobility supported rival candidates and, after a short rule by one particularly undistinguished prince, Farrukhsiyar was put on the throne.
His reign was short and he made no attempt to assert himself against his supporters. In he was removed from the throne and replaced by Muhammad Shah Like his immediate predecessors, Muhammad Shah had no interest in generalship or administration. He hunted in the area around Delhi, amused himself in his palace, and refused to support efforts to reform the state. Easily defeating the disorganized and badly led troops of the emperor, he occupied Shahjahanabad. The initial intentions of the Persians were peaceful but when a group of young men from the city attacked and killed some nine hundred Persian soldiers, Nadir ordered a general massacre.
Thousands of persons were killed, many areas of the city were burned, and bazaars and mansions were looted. When Nadir and his men finally left, the city lay devastated and the Mughal Empire was, in any meaningful sense, at an end. It is true that Mughal emperors remained on the throne until , but these men had few troops, little money, and limited authority. They did, however, retain a symbolic importance for the subcontinent at large: a number of successor states considered the emperor a source of legitimacy and new rulers generally asked for his sanction.
Patrimonial-bureaucratic empire The Mughal Empire is an example of a type of premodern state which I call the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire.
The rulers of such states govern on the basis of a personal kind of traditional authority whose model is the patriarchal family. Patrimonial domination orginates in the patriarch's authority over his household; it entails obedience to a person, not an office; it depends on the loyalty between subject and master; and it is limited only by the ruler's discretion.
Patrimonial states arise, according to Weber, when lords and princes extend their sway over extrahousehold subjects in areas beyond the patriarchal domain. Expansion, however, does not limit the ruler's ambition. One can distinguish two variants within the patrimonial type of political organization. The first, the patrimonial kingdom, is the smaller entity and is closer in organization and government to the ideal represented by the patriarchal family.
The second, the patrimonialbureaucratic empire, is larger and more diffuse. Rulers of such empires developed strategies and techniques which allowed personal, householddominated rule of an attenuated kind within realms of considerable area, population, and complexity.
Patrimonial armies were made up of troops whose primary allegiance was to an individual rather than to a dynasty or an office. In patrimonial kingdoms the military forces consisted, for the most part, of the household troops of the ruler. In patrimonial-bureaucratic empires, on the other hand, armies grew large and complex. To conquer and order states of such size required a collection of soldiers too great for the imperial household to manage and maintain.
As a result, the armies of patrimonial-bureaucratic emperors split into two groups; one, private household troops of the emperor and, two, soldiers of major subordinates, the bulk of the army, men who were bound more to their commanders than to the emperor. Patrimonial administration followed a similar pattern.
In the limited compass of the patrimonial kingdom the private domain of the ruler was virtually coterminous with the realm itself, and there was little or no difference between state and household officials. In patrimonialbureaucratic empires, however, these groups were not the same. Extension of control beyond the household domain called forth extrapatrimonial officials who administered, for the most part, the collection of taxes and the settlement of a limited number of disputes.
Such officials, neither dependants nor bureaucrats, worked in an organization intermediate between the household apparatus of the patrimonial kingdom and the highly bureaucratized system of the modern state.
For example, patrimonial-bureaucratic officials filled positions that were loosely defined and imperfectly ordered-a situation very different from the articulated hierarchy of precisely circumscribed offices in modern bureaucracies. Candidates for posts in patrimonial-bureaucratic administrations had to demonstrate personal qualifications - loyalty, family, and position-in addition to technical qualifications such as reading and writing.
Whereas modern bureaucrats are given fixed salaries in money, members of these administrations were often assigned prebends or benefices, such as rights to certain of the fees, taxes, or goods due the state. In a modern bureaucracy a job is a career, and is the primary occupation of the jobholder; in patrimonial-bureaucratic administrations, on the other hand, officeholders served at the pleasure of the ruler and often performed tasks unrelated to their appointments. Finally, while modern bureaucrats are subject to an official, impersonal authority, patrimonial-bureaucratic emperors demanded personal loyalty and allegiance of their officials.
Such rulers ignored the modern distinction between private and official, or personal and professional, and tried to make household dependants of their subordinates. In the smallest and most intimate patrimonial kingdoms, officials City and Empire 19 received compensation for their services directly from the ruler's household - they ate at his table, clothed themselves from his wardrobe, and rode horses from his stables.
Beyond that, however, they had no claim on the resources of the realm. In the larger, more complex situation of the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire, on the other hand, rulers found it impossible to maintain personally all members of their expanded administrations; thus they began more and more to give officials benefices or prebends. In time this led to a situation in which the greater portion of state revenues was assigned to soldiers and officials.
Since these revenues bypassed the ruler entirely, and since the assigned lands were often at considerable distances from the capital, this arrangement meant a loosening of the emperor's control over his officials.
Under such conditions the strength of personal, patrimonial authority began to wane, and officials began to appropriate prebends and declare their independence.
As a result, patrimonial-bureaucratic emperors began to devise strategies that would replace, to some extent at least, the traditional sources of control. In order to maintain their hold and prevent appropriation, emperors travelled widely and frequently, renewing in countless face-to-face meetings the personal bond between master and subject on which the state was founded; they demanded of all soldiers and officials regular attendance at court and, on their departure, often required that a son or relative be left behind as hostage; they periodically rotated officials from post to post, allowing no one to keep his job for more than a few years running; they maintained a network of newswriters or intelligence gatherers outside the regular administrative structure who reported directly to them; and, finally, in an effort to check the power of subordinates, rulers of partimonial-bureaucratic empires created provincial and district offices with overlapping responsibilities.
What one can find though is a number of states that approximate the model more or less The most complete discussion of the patrimonial state and its variants is found in Weber, Economy and Society, 1 pp. Weber's remarks on the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire are scattered and fragmentary, not at all easy to integrate and interpret. His style is to construct pure types - the patrimonial state and the modern bureaucratic state - and contrast them.
No historical state, as Weber himself points out, exactly matches either type. All present and past state systems are combinations of elements from several types; the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire is a mixture of the modern bureaucratic and patrimonial states.
Actual historical examples of the model differ as they approach closer to one or the other pure type. The structure developed by Akbar and described in the A9in by Abu al-Fazl endured. Succeeding emperors left it pretty much alone, and it survived in its basic form down to the early eighteenth century. In his preface to the A'in, Abu al-Fazl states that the art of governing comprises three topics: I shall explain the regulations a'in of the household manzil , the army sipah , and the empire mulk , since these three constitute the work of a ruler.
Household The dominating presence in Book One and, indeed, in the text as a whole two of the five books center on him is Akbar, the emperor. A major theme in thefirstbook, one that is treated from a variety of perspectives, is the relationship between the emperor and his subjects. Abu al-Fazl defines a ruler as a man touched by God, a person ennobled by divine inspiration. Royalty padshahi is a light from God Without a mediator it appears as a holy form to the holders of power and at the sight of it everyone bends the forehead of praise to the ground of submission.
These include trust in God, prayer, and devotion, a large heart, and, first and most important, a paternal love for the people - the ideal ruler governs as a father. Neither, however, writes at any length on the application of the model to Mughal India.
Abu al-Fazl, The A'in-Akbari, ed. Blochmann, 2 vols. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, , 1 p. A'in, 1 p. F o r a similar statement see A'in, 1 p. City and Empire 21 kamil , a Sufi phrase which describes a person who enjoys a special and intimate relationship with God. In the imperial household departments dealing with purely domestic matters coexist side by side with departments of wider reach and significance.
In Book One there are regulations for the harem, the wardrobe, the kitchen, and the perfumery; there are also directives on the care and keeping of the emperor's elephants, horses, cows, camels, and mules. Several a'in touch on matters of construction - on styles, materials, and workmen - while others discuss the imperial mint, the state arsenal, and the departments of the treasury.
All of this suggests close similarities between the Mughal and patrimonial-bureaucratic empires. The centrality and importance of the imperial household in the organization of Akbar's empire parallels the position of the ruler's establishment in the ideal type. Abu al-Fazl's portrayal of Akbar as a divinely aided father to his people recalls the traditional, family-rooted authority of the patrimonial-bureaucratic emperor.
And the inclusion of state offices and officials in the imperial household, the combination there of personal and official, brings to mind the thwarted ambition of patrimonial-bureaucratic emperors to absorb state into household and to rule the realm as one great extended family. He divides this second branch of Mughal government into four classes: mansabdars officeholders and their men, ahadis single troopers , other soldiers, and infantry.
Men with mounted followers became mansabdars only after an interview with Akbar. In the meeting between emperor and applicant, Akbar had an opportunity to size up the candidate and to inquire into his background and experience. With his divinely aided insight and judgment, Akbar was, according to Abu al-Fazl, consistently able to choose superior men.
According to his knowledge of the temper of the times A'in 77 provides perhaps the best example of Abu al-Fazl's approach. See A'in, 1 p. For another example of Akbar's penchant for making quick decisions on mansabdari candidates see A'in, 1 p. According to Francois Bernier, the Emperor 22 Shahjahanabad Ahadis, the second class of the Mughal army, were single men who had no mounted military following, and so could not be given mansabdari rank.
Since they were often men of talent and birth, however, and skilled in fighting and administration, the emperor decided it was better to keep them nearby as a body of personal servants than to assign them to mansabdari contingents. Ahadis, like mansabdars, had to maintain a certain number of horses in proper condition. Since these men were usually too poor to own horses, the Mughals gave them lands or cash to buy mounts and to support themselves. Of the nine groups listed under A'in 6, only one, matchlock bearers, participated in actual combat.
Porters, runners, guards, gladiators, wrestlers, slaves, bearers, and laborers worked as miscellaneous support personnel. A'ins treat Akbar's charitable contributions; A'in 22 discusses feasts; A'in 23, fancy bazars, A'in 24, marriage; and A'in 25, education. If these regulations are read carefully and in context, however, a common theme links them all: namely, the emperor's effort to influence, order, and shape the lives of his subordinates.
Thus, the a'ins on Akbar's gifts to the needy and deserving are intended to give mansabdars examples of meritorious activity. In A'in 24 Akbar established rules for the size of dowries, the age of consent, and the permitted degrees of consanguinity; he also appointed two officials to see that the rules were followed. Finally, in A'in 25 Akbar suggested reforms in the traditional system of education; he wanted the method of instruction simplified and its pace increased, and urged that the curriculum be expanded to include subjects of practical interest, like arithmetic, arithmetical notation, agriculture, household 38 41 Aurangzeb knew all his mansabdars personally.
Travels in the Mogul Empire, , trans. Irving Brock, ed.
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