Abul Fazal’s Division of Society: A Comparison with Plato’s Republic

When Abul Fazal sat down to compose the Ain-i-Akbari in the late sixteenth century, he was not simply chronicling Akbar’s court. He was building a theory of how a well-ordered society should function. At the heart of that theory lay a division of society into distinct classes, each with a defined role. What makes this scheme fascinating for students of political thought is how closely it echoes an idea proposed nearly two thousand years earlier by the Greek philosopher Plato in his Republic. Both thinkers, separated by vast distances of time, geography, and culture, arrived at strikingly similar conclusions about social organisation. Examining this parallel reveals much about how classical and medieval political minds understood order, stability, and the role of the ruler.

Abul Fazal and the world of the Ain-i-Akbari 🔗

Abul Fazal was the principal historian and closest advisor of Emperor Akbar. His two great works, the Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari, together form the official record of Akbar’s reign and remain among the most important sources for understanding Mughal administration and political philosophy. The Ain-i-Akbari, completed in 1598, is a detailed survey of the empire covering its household, military, fiscal system, and the social and cultural life of its people.

What sets Abul Fazal apart from ordinary chroniclers is the intellectual ambition behind his writing. He was known for the predominance of reason in his work and his willingness to challenge rigid religious orthodoxy. He developed a theory of sovereignty grounded not in religious law alone but in the practical needs of society, arguing that without a strong ruler there would be lawlessness and rebellion. This vision of the state as the guarantor of order shapes his entire approach to social classification.

The four classes of Abul Fazal 🔗

Abul Fazal divided society into four broad categories based on the function each performed for the state. According to scholarly accounts of his classification, the four groups were warriors, artificers and merchants, the learned, and husbandmen and labourers. Each class was valued according to its contribution to the survival and prosperity of the realm.

Warriors at the top 🔗

In Abul Fazal’s hierarchy, the warriors occupied the highest position. This reflected the realities of the Mughal state, where military strength was essential for maintaining law and order, defending the kingdom, and expanding the empire. The emphasis on warriors underlines how heavily the political body depended on military power for its very existence. This placement was a deliberate choice rooted in the needs of the time rather than in abstract moral ranking.

The repositioning of the learned class 🔗

One of the most striking features of Abul Fazal’s scheme is where he placed the learned class. In traditional Indian texts such as the Dharmashastras, the priestly and learned sections sat at the very top of the social order. Abul Fazal, however, placed the learned, including the Brahmans and the Ulama, in the third position. By relegating the religious classes to a lower rank, he sought to downgrade what he viewed as pretentious and self-opinionated sections of society, while also reflecting the social reality of his age. This was a quietly radical move, consistent with his broader resistance to hardline religious authority.

The foundation of producers 🔗

The husbandmen and labourers, alongside artificers and merchants, formed the productive base of society. Abul Fazal likened the husbandmen to the earth itself, believing their labour produced enjoyment and vigour for everyone. The merchants and artisans, meanwhile, were valued for circulating goods and making the gifts of the world available to all. Though placed lower in rank, these groups were understood as indispensable to the functioning of the whole.

The four elements analogy 🔗

Abul Fazal gave his classification a poetic and philosophical dimension by comparing the four classes to the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth. Just as the physical world maintains its balance through the harmony of these elements, he argued, the political body maintains its equilibrium through the proper working of its four ranks of men. He extended this further to the structure of royalty itself, dividing the king’s circle into the nobles of the state, the assistants of victory, the companions of the king, and the servants. The underlying message was clear: order depends on each part keeping to its proper place.

Plato’s threefold division in the Republic 🔗

To appreciate the parallel, we need to understand Plato’s own scheme. Written around 380 BC, the Republic is a dialogue concerning the nature of justice and how a just society should be ordered. Plato divides his ideal city into three classes, each defined by its distinct function.

Guardians, auxiliaries, and producers 🔗

At the top sit the guardians, the rulers who govern with wisdom and love knowledge above all else. Below them are the auxiliaries, the warriors responsible for defending the city from external threats and keeping peace at home. At the base are the producers, the largest class, comprising farmers, craftsmen, artisans, and traders who supply the material needs of the city. Each group must perform its own function and not interfere in the work of the others.

Justice as harmony between classes 🔗

For Plato, justice is not a list of correct behaviours but a structural quality. He used a famous analogy between the city and the soul, mirroring the three classes to the three parts of the human soul: reason, spirit, and appetite. Justice emerges when there is harmony between the three parts of the city, just as a just individual is one in whom reason governs spirit, and spirit governs appetite. A society is just when each class fulfils its natural role and refrains from encroaching on others.

Comparing the two schemes 🔗

The resemblance between these two thinkers is more than coincidental. The scholar S. R. Sharma observed that just as Plato conceived of a society divided according to the principle of division of functions, Abul Fazal arrived at almost an identical order. The mapping is remarkably neat.

Where the two classifications align 🔗

Plato’s guardians or rulers correspond to the ruling and official class in Abul Fazal’s scheme, while the auxiliaries or warriors match Abul Fazal’s warrior class almost exactly. The first two categories are essentially identical across both systems. Abul Fazal’s remaining groups, the husbandmen and labourers along with the artificers and merchants, are best understood as subdivisions of Plato’s single third class of producers, which itself included agriculturists, traders, and industrial workers. In other words, where Plato saw one broad productive class, Abul Fazal saw two, but the logic of functional division remained the same.

The shared principle of functional specialisation 🔗

Both thinkers built their social vision on the idea that each person and group has a specific role suited to its nature, and that the health of the whole depends on everyone performing that role. For Plato, this principle defined justice itself. For Abul Fazal, it ensured the equilibrium of the political body, comparable to the balance of the natural elements. Neither thinker imagined social mobility as a virtue; instead, both prized stability achieved through people keeping to their assigned functions.

Where they part ways 🔗

The parallels are real, but the differences matter just as much. Plato placed his philosopher-guardians, the men of wisdom, at the very top, reflecting his conviction that those who grasp truth are best fit to rule. Abul Fazal, by contrast, elevated the warriors and the king, while pushing the learned class down to third place. This inversion reflects the practical priorities of an expanding empire that depended on military power rather than philosophical contemplation. Plato’s scheme was a utopian blueprint for an ideal city that never existed; Abul Fazal’s was a description and justification of an actual functioning empire. One was prescriptive philosophy, the other was applied statecraft.

The king as guarantor of order 🔗

In both systems, the question naturally arises: who ensures that each class stays in its place? For Plato, the guardians themselves maintain the order, since they alone possess the wisdom to know what is best for the whole. For Abul Fazal, this responsibility falls squarely on the king. He argued that it is obligatory for a king to put each class in its proper place and, by combining personal ability with respect for others, to cause the world to flourish.

This is where Abul Fazal’s theory of sovereignty connects directly to his social division. He famously described royalty as a light emanating from God, a divine radiance that justified the king’s supreme authority. The ruler was not merely one class among others but the active force that held the entire social structure together. Just as the welfare of the world depended on the four classes working successfully, the body politic depended on the king properly arranging them. Social classification and kingship were therefore two sides of the same coin: a vision of a stable, harmonious order presided over by a wise and powerful monarch.

Why this comparison still matters 🔗

Studying Abul Fazal alongside Plato shows how political thinkers across very different traditions have wrestled with the same fundamental problems. How should a society be organised? What keeps it stable? Who has the authority to maintain order? The fact that a medieval Indo-Persian courtier and a classical Greek philosopher reached such similar answers suggests these are recurring questions in political theory rather than the concerns of any single culture.

It also reminds us that ideas of social hierarchy were often defended not as injustice but as the very foundation of harmony and good government. Whether we accept that reasoning or reject it, understanding how thinkers like Abul Fazal and Plato justified their systems helps us think more critically about the structures of power and order in our own time.

What do you think? If functional specialisation can bring stability to a society, does that justify fixing people into rigid social roles, or does it come at too high a cost to individual freedom? And was Abul Fazal right to place warriors above the learned, or does a society ultimately depend more on knowledge than on military strength?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_Fazl
2. https://egyankosh.ac.in/handle/123456789/84771
3. https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/01/03/22-medieval-india-state-and-government-under-akbar/
4. https://medium.com/@deshmukhpatel/4-96e5949b8df
5. https://www.historyhit.com/platos-republic-explained/
6. https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/republic/characters/
7. https://www.ipl.org/essay/Three-Classes-And-The-Soul-In-Platos-P3YSPCM74SJP6
8. https://www.studocu.com/en-us/document/indiana-institute-of-technology/elementary-p-6-physical-education-methods/abul-fazal-sr-sharma-lecture-notes-1/20022499