Fall Research Expo 2020

Visualizing the Elements of Political Rank and Hierarchy in the Mughal Era, 1556-1627​

Akbar headed the Mughal Empire as its emperor from the year 1556 until his death in 1605. Throughout the decades of Akbar’s reign, provinces and forts were incorporated into the Mughal Empire by means of conquest in military campaigns, allowing for expansion across the Indian subcontinent. By studying the available resources in the archive, (such as the second volume of The Tabaqāt-I-Akbarī of K̲h̲wājah Nizāmuddīn Ahmad, translated by Brajendranath De) we were able to track the military campaigns that occurred across the Indian subcontinent during this period. These military campaigns were led by Akbar and his most prominent nobles. We determined the thirty-eight highest ranked nobles during Akbar’s reign using mansabdari information gathered from The Apparatus of Empire, by M. Athar Ali. To maintain control and restore authority during times of rebellion in conquered lands, Akbar would send his most trusted nobles who were capable of establishing stability, to govern them. From The Apparatus of Empire, we were able to compile the year and province in which these individuals were given governmental appointments.  

In our next step, we looked for individuals with extensive historical records to track their military campaigns. Since the mansabdari (ranking) system came into fruition under Akbar’s rule, we were able to correlate the individuals leading the military campaigns to the mansab ranks that they held. Of the thirty-eight nobles analyzed, we were able to come up with timelines for three of Akbar’s top commanders: Man Singh, Mirza Aziz Koka, and Zain Khan Koka (as well as Emperor Akbar himself). From this information, we worked to format our timelines into digital representations through Palladio and Knightlab, which are online digital humanities tools for visualization. 

In building off of the framework we set, researchers could use this work to possibly find a link between mansab rank and other aspects of Mughal life, such as marriage, societal status, privileges, etc, due to the amount of power this rank held within Mughal upper society. Additionally, future researchers can attempt to use digital humanities tools to help visualize the scope and dynamics of various systems and societies, including earlier or later rulers of the Mughal empire. With the research that we have done, we have found that it is still possible and necessary to reconceptualize scholarly approaches to the Mughal empire and the incorporation of data visualizations will better communicate this history

PRESENTED BY
PURM - Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program
College of Arts & Sciences 2023
Advised By
Ramya Sreenivasan
Associate Professor and Department Chair
PRESENTED BY
PURM - Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program
College of Arts & Sciences 2023
Advised By
Ramya Sreenivasan
Associate Professor and Department Chair

Comments

Hi! Your project was super interesting. I am really impressed by your use of the digital humanities, and the way you mapped the data using Google Earth. I personally do not know much about the subject, so to see a visual representation of what your project was about, helped me understand and appreciate it much more.