Zabt Ten-Year Revenue System (Dahsala)

Timeline

1. c. 1570–1579Zabt districts of North India · North IndiaUnder Akbar, arable land was measured with standard survey ropes, and after 1574 a karori system of regional collection was trialed, gathering village-level areas, crop yields, and market prices. Annual renegotiation caused instability, preparing the data for ten-year averaging while exposing the failure of the collector experiment.
2. 1580–1582Fatehpur Sikri · Uttar PradeshDahsala averaged crop output and market prices over the past ten years for each pargana, first converting to a physical share of about one third, then using the ten-year average price to set a cash rate per bigah, recorded in the Dastur-ul-amal. Neither peasants nor the state renegotiated rates annually, and zabt was thereby fixed.
3. 1582–1585Agra · Uttar PradeshAfter the karori experiment faltered, Todar Mal regained control of finance in 1582, extending the ten-year rate tables to the zabt districts of North India and linking them with jagir land grants and mansab military pay. Fixed cash quotas allowed the empire to predict revenue by province without reassessing yields annually.
4. 1585–1600Lahore to Allahabad region · North IndiaBy the end of the 16th century, the core provinces of North India collected cash zabt by crop and revenue circle, while the Deccan and some northwestern frontier areas still used revenue-sharing or rough estimates. This system provided a calculable revenue base for the jagirs of mansabdars and bound peasants more tightly to cash taxation, becoming the backbone of Akbar's fiscal state.