Pargana in the context of "Bijapur Sultanate"

A Subah is a term for a province or state in several South Asian languages. It was introduced by the Mughal Empire to refer to its subdivisions or provinces; and was also adopted by other polities of the Indian subcontinent. The word is derived from Arabic and Persian. The governor/ruler of a Subah was known as a subahdar (sometimes also referred to as a "Subeh"), which later became subedar to refer to an officer in the Indian and Pakistani armies. The subahs were established by Padishah (emperor) Akbar during his administrative reforms of the years 1572–1580; initially, they numbered 12, but his conquests expanded the number of subahs to 15 by the end of his reign. Subahs were divided into Sarkars, or districts. Sarkars were further divided into Parganas or Mahals. His successors, most notably Aurangzeb, expanded the number of subahs further through their conquests. As the empire began to dissolve in the early 18th century, many subahs became de facto independent or came under the influence of the Marathas or the suzerainty of the East India Company.

In the modern context, subah (صوبہ) is used in several Pakistani languages (most notably Punjabi, Balochi, and Urdu) to refer to a province of Pakistan.

A tehsil (Hindustani: [t̪ɛɦsiːl], also known as tahsil, taluk, or taluka (IPA: [t̪aːluːkaː t̪aːluːku]) is a local unit of administrative division in India and Pakistan. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administrative centre, with possible additional towns, and usually a number of villages. The terms in India have replaced earlier terms, such as pargana (pergunnah) and thana.

In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, a newer unit called mandalamu (circle) has come to replace the tehsil system. A mandal is generally smaller than a tehsil, and is meant for facilitating local self-government in the panchayat system. In West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, community development blocks (CDBs) are the empowered grassroots administrative unit, replacing tehsils.

The Punjab Canal Colonies is the name given to parts of western Punjab which were brought under cultivation through the construction of canals and agricultural colonisation during the British Raj. The Punjab underwent an agricultural revolution, with arid subsistence production getting replaced by commerce-oriented production of huge amounts of wheat, cotton and sugar. Between 1885 and 1940, nine canal colonies were created in the inter-fluvial tracts west of the Beas and Sutlej and east of the Jhelum rivers. In total, over one million Punjabis settled in the new colonies, relieving demographic pressures in central Punjab. Many of these colonies were called Chak and given a number. Earlier their equivalent subdivisions used to be the Subah or Taraf, Pargana or Mahal, Mauza or Pir, which were replaced by the administrative divisions of India after the partition of India in 1947, though the Chak as name of villages still continues in the former Punjab Canal Colonies.

The Jaunpur Sultanate (Persian: سلطنت جونپور) was a late medieval Indian Muslim state which ruled over much of what is now the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and southern Nepal between 1394 and 1494. It was founded in 1394 by Khwajah-i-Jahan Malik Sarwar, a eunuch slave and former wazir of Sultan Nasiruddin Muhammad Shah IV Tughluq, amidst the disintegration of the Delhi Sultanate's Tughlaq dynasty. Centred in Jaunpur, the Sultanate extended authority over a large part of the Ganges-Yamuna Doab. It reached its greatest height under the rule of Sultan Ibrahim Shah, who also vastly contributed to the development of Islamic education in the Sultanate. In 1494, Sultan Hussain Shah Sharqi was defeated by the forces of the Afghan ruler Bahlul Lodi, Sultan of the Lodi dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate at Benares at which point Hussain fled to Kahalgaon in modern-day Bihar where the Sultan of Bengal assigned him a pargana. Here he was allowed to mint his own coins and was promised help from Bengal in recovering his kingdom. He died in 1505.

Sarkar (Hindi: सरकार, Urdu: سركار, Punjabi: ਸਰਕਾਰ, Bengali: সরকার also spelt Circar) was a historical administrative division, used mostly in the Mughal Empire. It was a division of a Subah or province. A sarkar was further divided into Mahallas or Parganas.

The Sarkar system was replaced in the early 18th century by the Chakla system.

The Sultanate of Bijapur was an early modern kingdom in the western Deccan and South India, ruled by the Muslim Adil Shahi (or Adilshahi) dynasty. Bijapur had been a taraf (province) of the Bahmani Kingdom prior to its independence in 1490 and before the kingdom's political decline in the last quarter of the 15th century. It was one of the Deccan sultanates, the collective name of the kingdom's five successor states. The Sultanate of Bijapur was one of the most powerful states on the Indian Subcontinent at its peak, second to the Mughal Empire which conquered it in 1686 under Aurangzeb.

After emigrating to the Bahmani Sultanate, Yusuf Adil Shah rose through the ranks to be appointed governor of the province of Bijapur. In 1490, he created a de facto independent Bijapur state which became formally independent with the Bahmani collapse in 1518.