So far as is known, no census of persons was ever conducted in any part of the Mughal empire. The size of the population of Mughal India can, therefore, be estimated only on the basis of other data, the richest repository of which is the A'īn-i Akbarī, the unique work compiled by Akbar's minister, Abū-l Fazl, in 1595–6.

The A'īn-i Akbarī gives us details of the ārāzī or area measured for revenue purposes, down to each Pargana, the smallest administrative subdivision of the time. Moreland attempted to use these statistics, first, to work out the total area under cultivation at the end of the sixteenth century, and then to estimate, on this basis, the total population of Akbar's empire. He assumed that the ārāzī represented the entire gross cropped area, and concluded that in western Uttar Pradesh, cultivation around 1600 was about three-quarters of what it was around 1900, and further that the proportion declined as one went eastwards, to be just one-fifth in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. He thought that cultivated land per capita was the same in 1600 as in 1900; and, on this basis, estimated the population of the plains from ‘Multan to Monghyr’ to be between 30 and 40 millions. This, as his core figure, together with his estimate of 30 million for the Deccan and southern India (arrived at on the basis of other considerations), led him to estimate the total population of India in 1600 at about 100 million.