Importance and limitations of Ain-i- Akbari 

A. Importance

i. The Ain gives detailed accounts of the organization of the court, administration and army, the sources of revenue and the physical layout of the provinces and the literary, cultural and religious traditions of the people. 

ii. Along with a description of the various departments of Akbar’s government and elaborate descriptions of the various provinces (subas) of the empire 

iii. TheAin gives us intricate quantitative information of those provinces. 

iv. The Ain is therefore a mine of information for us about the Mughal Empire during Akbar’s reign. 

v. The Ain is made up of five books (daftars), of which the first three books describe the administration. 

vi. The first book, called manzil-abadi, concerns the imperial Household and its maintenance. 

vii. The second book, sipah-abadi, covers the military and civil administration and the establishment of servants. 

viii. The third book, mulk-abadi, is the one which deals with the fiscal side

B. limitations of Ain-i- Akbari

i. Numerouserrors in totaling have been detected. These areascribed to simple slips of arithmetic or of transcription by Abu’l Fazl’s assistants. 

ii. Ain is the somewhatskewed nature of the quantitative data. 

iii. Data werenot collected uniformly from all provinces. 

iv. For many subas detailed information was compiled about the caste composition of the zamindars such information is not available forBengal and Orissa. 

v. Vital parameters such as prices and wagesfrom these areas are not as well documented except Agra. 

vi. It has limited relevance for the rest ofthe country