This study of the political career of Mun'im Khan (1494-1575) is a part of the larger enquiry into the structure and role of the Mughal nobility which as been in progress at Aligarh for some time past. On this subject, there have already appeared from Aligarh two monographs, namely, The Parties and Politics at Mughal Court by Satish Chandra and The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzib by M thar Ali. In these works an attempt has been made to analyse the working of institutions and traditions that defined the organization and the role of the nobility during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a period marked by a crisis and then a rapid process of disintegration of the Mughal imperial system. Here, the same subject is studied from yet another angle, though, as goes without saying, the scope of this work is much smaller and it deals with a period when the Mughal state in India was still in its formative stages.
The present work attempts the political biography of a noble as a case-study, aiming at attaining an insight into the actual working of the political institutions and policies of the Mughal Empire during the sixteenth century.
