The Mughal empire

The Mughal empire, founded by Babur in 1526, became the most centralised state in Indian history before British rule. Akbar's mansabdari system, Todar Mal's revenue settlement and a policy of sulh-i-kul, or universal tolerance, tied a diverse empire together. A concrete example is Akbar's zabt system in the Doab: measured fields, classified soils and a ten-year average price turned land revenue from arbitrary demand into a predictable state income. Later Mughal decline shows what happened when that balance broke down.