The Afghan Suri Dynasty

Between 1540 and 1555, North India was ruled not by the Mughals but by an Afghan dynasty known as the Sur, founded by Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545). The Sur interregnum, though short, was political episodes of the sixteenth century: it drove Humayun into fifteen years of exile, demonstrated the fragility of early Mughal rule, and produced a body of administrative practice — most notably in land revenue and road building — that the restored Mughal state under Akbar adopted in modified form.

The Origin of Sher Shah Suri

Sher Shah Suri (1486-1545) was born Farid Khan, the son of a minor Afghan noble of the Suri clan, in the region of Sasaram in present-day Bihar. The early life of Sher Shah was marked by a long and difficult struggle against the hostility of his father and stepmother, and he was, in his youth, forced to flee his home and to take service with the governor of Bihar. By 1530, however, he had established himself as the principal Afghan chief of the region, and over the next decade he gradually built a substantial military and political force that came to challenge Mughal authority in the east.

The Rise to Power in 1540

The Suri-Mughal conflict began in earnest in 1532, when Sher Khan, as Sher Shah was then known, began to challenge Mughal authority in the region of Bihar and Bengal. The principal engagements between Humayun and Sher Shah took place in 1539 and 1540, at the battles of Chausa and Kannauj respectively. At Chausa, on 26 June 1539, Humayun’s army was defeated, and the emperor narrowly escaped with his life. At Kannauj, on 17 May 1540, the Mughal army was again defeated, this time decisively. The victories established Sher Shah as the effective ruler of North India, and he assumed the title of Sher Shah (Lion King).

The Administrative and Revenue Reforms

Sher Shah’s most lasting contribution to Indian governance was his administrative and revenue system. He reorganised the land-revenue assessment on the basis of a measurement of cultivated area, classification of soils, and a detailed survey of crops, with rates calibrated to the productivity of each soil class. The system is often treated as the direct precursor of the Todar Mal settlement that Akbar would adopt in the 1570s. Sher Shah also reformed the currency, replacing the ill-struck debased coinage of the late Lodi sultans with a clean silver rupee of standardized weight and fineness — the prototype of the Mughal rupee — and reorganised the iqta system of military-administrative assignments.

In addition, Sher Shah undertook a major program of road building. The Sadak-i-Azam (“Great Road”), which he ordered rebuilt from the Indus to Bengal, was the most ambitious public-works project of pre-Mughal India. It included the later Grand Trunk Road, the sarais (rest houses) spaced along the route, and the planting of shade trees. The system of sarais also served as a network of post houses, supporting an imperial intelligence and postal service that Sher Shah used to control his extensive domains from his new capital at Delhi.

The Mughal Restoration Under Akbar

The Mughal restoration of 1555-1556 was the work of the restored Humayun and of the young Akbar, with the support of the regent Bairam Khan. The military events of 1556 are treated in detail on the Second Battle of Panipat 1556 page, and the political background of the restoration is examined on the Akbar the Great and the Mughal Empire overview pages.

The institutional legacy of the Suri state was of considerable importance for the later Mughal state. The revenue and administrative arrangements developed under Sher Shah and Islam Shah were adopted, with significant modifications, by the government of Akbar, and many of the principal officials of the early Mughal state had received their training under the Suri regime. The institutional background of this continuity is examined on the Mughal administration overview and the Mughal land revenue systems pages.

Sources

• R.P. Tripathi, The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. I (Shiv Lal Agarwala, 1956).
• Abraham Eraly, The Mughal Throne: The Saga of India’s Great Rulers (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), chs. 4–6.