ary expeditions that Akbar
far surpassed his contemporaries in generalship. But it was not the
love of war and conquest which drove him each time anew to battle; a
sincere desire inspired by a mystical spirit impelled him to bring to
an end the ceaseless strife between the small states of India by
joining them to his realm, and thus to found a great united empire.[9]

[Footnote 9: Noer, II, 8, 390, 423.]

More worthy of admiration than the subjugation of such large
territories in which of course many others have also been successful,
is the fact that Akbar succeeded in establishing order, peace, and
prosperity in the regained and newly subjugated provinces. This he
brought about by the introduction of a model administration, an
excellent police, a regulated post service, and especially a just
division of taxes.[10] Up to Akbar's time corruption had been a matter
of course in the entire official service and enormous sums in the
treasury were lost by peculation on the part of tax collectors.

[Footnote 10: For the following compare Noer I, 391 ff.; M.
Elphinstone, 529 ff.; G.B. Malleson, 172 ff., 185 ff.]

Akbar first divided the whole realm into twelve and later into fifteen
viceregencies, and these into provinces, administrative districts and
lesser subdivisions, and governed the revenues of the empire on the
basis of a uniformly exact survey of the land. He introduced a
standard of measurement, replacing the hitherto customary land measure
(a leather strap which was easily lengthened or shortened according to
the need of the measuring officer) by a new instrument of measurement
in the form of a bamboo staff which was provided with iron rings at
definite intervals. For purposes of assessment land was divided into
four classes according to the kind of cultivation practiced upon it.
The first class comprised arable land with a constant rotation of
crops; the second, that which had to lie fallow for from one to two
years in order to be productive; the third from three to four years;
the fourth that land which was uncultivated for five years and longer
or was not arable at all. The first two classes of acreage were taxed
one-third of the crop, which according to our present ideas seems an
exorbitantly high rate, and it was left to the one assessed whether he
would pay the tax in kind or in cash. Only in the case of luxuries or
manufactured articles, that is to say, where the use of a circulating
medium could be as