Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires: The Uses of an Indo-Islamic Legal Form

Abstract

This paper looks at a Persian-language documentary form called the mahzar-nama that was widely used in India between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries to narrate, represent, and record antecedents, entitlements, and injuries with a view to securing legal rights and redressing legal wrongs. Mahzars were a known documentary form in Islamic law and used by qazis (Islamic judges) in many other parts of the world, but in India they took a number of distinctive forms. The specific form of Indian mahzar-namas that I focus on here was, broadly speaking, a legal document of testimony, narrated in the first person, in a form standardized by predominantly non-Muslim scribes, endorsed in writing by the author's fellow community members and/or professional or social contacts, and notarized by a qazi's seal. This specific legal form was part of a much broader genre of declarative texts that were also known as mahzars in India. I examine the legal mahzar-namas together with the other kinds of mahzars, and situate them in relation to Indo-Islamic jurisprudential texts and Persian-language formularies. What emerges is a distinctive Indo-Islamic legal culture in contact with the wider Islamic and Persianate worlds of jurisprudence and documentary culture, but responsive to the unique socio-political formations of early modern India. I also reflect on the meanings of law, including Islamic law, for South Asians and trace the evolution of that understanding across the historical transition to colonialism.

Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia

“…Steps in this direction have been taken for Maratha territories and the Rajasthani kingdom of Kota in eighteenth-century South Asia. 83 These studies show that some eighteenth-century regimes intervened in localized caste orders and that these interventions extended to keeping Untouchables "in their place. " Other studies tell us about the place of such "untouchable" groups as chamārs and bhuīṁyās in regimes of land and labor, revealing the role of early modern political expansion, conquest, and the introduction of new agrarian and land revenue arrangements in inscribing the location of these castes in local power structures.…”

“…82 The officers who held positions such as treasurer and newswriter in this office too were largely drawn from brahman, mercantile, or scribal communities. 83 Also under the district governor was the sāyar, the office in charge of nonagrarian levies. It was staffed with a superintendent (darogā), an amīn who helped assess revenue demands from the land assignments (paṭṭās) in the district, accountants (mushrafs), and treasurers (potdārs).…”

“…These state functionaries were ruling on behalf of the Rathor king, referred to in these orders as Śrī Hajūr, but it was under their own names that each command was issued. Another difference from Malwa is that unlike sijills, which usually were accompanied by detailed mahzars (containing claims and counterclaims of the people involved and signed by witnesses), 83 the Jodhpur Sanad Parwāna Bahīs have only a perfunctory statement of the issue at hand, a terse summary of the petitioner or defendant's testimony and a short declaration of the state officer's command to resolve the matter, as made clear in the command above and in all the others that I have translated in this book.…”

“…The landholder of Bhakhri village in Parbatsar informed the crown when the son of the local jāgīrdār killed a deer, one that was pregnant. 83 Mahajan Mayachand raised an alarm (helā kīyā) when he realized that a jāgīrdār was killing animals inside his fortress in Siwana district. 84 In 1789, rajput Hanvantsingh Jivansinghot informed the crown that another rajput, a young man who had been in the state's employ but had been fired for killing an animal, was innocent.…”

Writing Law at the Edge of Empire: Evidence from the Qazis of Bharuch (1799–1864)

“…20 of 1839. On another documentary form, see Chatterjee, “Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires.”…”