ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Mansabdar

Okay kiddo, so in the olden days, the kings and emperors of India needed a lot of people to work for them and help them run their kingdom. They needed soldiers, administrators, and other people to help with running the government.

To make sure they had enough people, the kings introduced something called the Mansabdar system. This system gave people a rank or a position within the government based on their skills, experience and loyalty. These people were called Mansabdars.

Now, imagine that you're playing a game and you're the king. You have a lot of characters in your game who you can pick to help you with different tasks. You might choose someone to be your advisor, someone to be the captain of your army, and so on. These characters all have different abilities and skills, and you need to make sure you pick the right ones for the job.

In the same way, the Mansabdars were chosen by the king to do specific jobs. Each Mansabdar had a rank, which could be from 10 to 5000. The higher the rank, the more important the job was.

For example, if you were a Mansabdar with a rank of 10, you might be in charge of a group of soldiers. But if you were a Mansabdar with a rank of 5000, you might be in charge of a whole province or even an entire region.

So, in short, the Mansabdar system was a way for kings to manage their government by assigning different ranks to people based on their abilities and assigning them specific jobs.
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