Jagir

Edit

JAGIR  جاگير
"A place;" Gir, "Occupying." A tenure common under the Muslim Government, in which the public revenues of a given tract of land were made over to a servant of the State, together with the powers requisite to enable him to collect and appropriate such revenue, and administer the general government of the district. The assignment was either conditional or unconditional; in the former case, some public service, as the levy and maintenance of troops, or other specified duty, was engaged for: the latter was left to the entire disposal of the grantee. The assignment was either for a stated term, or, more usually, for the lifetime of the holder, lapsing, on his death, to the State, although not unusually renewed to his heir, on payment of a nazarana, or fine, and sometimes specified to be a hereditary assignment, without which specification it was held to be a life-tenure only. (Ben. Reg, xxxvii, 1723, cl. 15) A Jagir was also liable to forfeiture on failure of performance of the conditions on which it was granted, or on the holder's incurring the displeasure of the Emperor. On the other hand, in the inability of the State to vindicate its rights, a Jagir was sometimes converted into a perpetual and transferable estate; and the same consequence has resulted from the recognition of sundry Jagir as hereditary by the British Government after the extinction of the Native Governments by which they were originally granted; so that they have now come to be considered as family properties, of which the holders could not be rightfully dispossessed, and to which their legal heirs succeed, as a matter of course, without fine or nazarana, such having been silently dispense with. (Wilson's Glossary of Indian 
Based on <a href="https://www.juancole.com/library/dictionary-of-islam-hughes">Hughes, Dictionary of Islam</a>
Terms.)

Cancel