Identify the name of the foreign traveller who commented on the Mughal Empire – ‘its king was the king of “beggars and barbarians”; its cities and towns were ruined and contaminated with “ill air”’.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Francois Bernier
This is how Francois Bernier saw the Mughal Empire, and he traced all of it to one reason: crown ownership of land.
NCERT (2026-27): “6.1 The question of landownership … This, then, is how Bernier saw the Mughal Empire – its king was the king of ‘beggars and barbarians’; its cities and towns were ruined and contaminated with ‘ill air’; and its fields, ‘overspread with bushes’ and full of ‘pestilential marishes’. And, all this was because of one reason: crown ownership of land. Curiously, none of the Mughal official documents suggest that the state was the sole owner of land. For instance, Abu’l Fazl, the sixteenth-century official chronicler of Akbar’s reign, describes the land revenue as ‘remunerations of sovereignty’, a claim made by the ruler on his subjects for the protection he provided rather than as rent on land that he owned.…” |