To discuss political relationships amongst personnel who were not always, strictly speaking, ‘unfree’. While these personnel could have been free, their relationships were also strongly touched with the paradigms of service associated with bandagi. On the other hand, the adjective naukari as a means to understand political culture may appear as more of a neologism. In its Persian usage the noun naukar carried some of the meanings present in its antecedent Mongol form, nökör (singular) / nököd (plural) – personal retainer, loyal friend, comrade in arms, bodyguard – and within the limited context of a dyadic relationship with a master, its meaning was very close to banda-i khāṣṣ. In its original Mongol sense, the nököd were free and honourable servants, who had voluntarily accepted service with a great lord; it had none of the pejorative meanings associated with slavery.