Most historians of the Mughal empire currently emphasize economic factors in their attempts to locate and measure the causes of imperial decline in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India. Recent articles reiterate a standard set of tensions: those between monarch, military and service nobles (mansabdars), landholders (zamindars), and peasants. Existing theories attribute the Mughal decline to the nature of the monarchy, the breakdown of the mansabdari administrative system, and the challenges from newly established regional rulers. One influential analysis points to the increasing burden of taxation and consequent zamindar-peasant rebellions throughout the empire as the fundamental cause of decline. The nobility and the mansabdari system have received most attention, however. Historians have emphasized the strains caused by numerical expansion, inflation of noble ranks, and the ‘aristocratization’ of the mansabdars through conspicuous consumption and hereditary control of positions.