With the accession of Nasir-ud-din Mahmud began the slow process of restoring the political stability of the Delhi Sultanate, which had been in an awful state of turmoil for a decade after the death of Iltutmish. But Mahmud, a mild and unassertive prince, himself had virtually nothing to do with this transformation. The crucial role in it was played by Ghiyas-uddin Balban, an eminent Turkish noble, who assumed supreme power in the Sultanate on Mahmud’s accession, and wielded that power for forty years, from 1246 to 1287, first as the regent of Mahmud for two decades, and then, on Mahmud’s death, as sultan, for another two decades. During this entire period there was only one brief interruption in his career, during his regency, when he was out of power for about two years, due to the manoeuvres of his political rivals.
Mahmud, who was about seventeen years old at the time of his accession, had no aptitude for governing, no interest in it either, and was content to leave that responsibility entirely to Balban. Mahmud ‘was a mild, kind, and devout king, and he passed much of his time making copies of the Holy Book,’ notes Barani, a mid-fourteenth century historian of the Sultanate. Mahmud lived very frugally. It is said that once when his wife asked him to take some money from the treasury and buy a slave girl to do the domestic work in the royal quarters, he rejected the request saying that the treasury belonged to the people, and was not for the personal use of the sultan.
These retiring, saintly qualities, though commendable in themselves, were unsuited in a sultan in the turbulent environment then existing in the Sultanate. Though Iltutmish had made a serious effort to systematise the administration of the Sultanate, what he achieved was altogether lost in the chaos that followed his death. ‘During the reigns of his sons, the affairs of the country had fallen into confusion,’ observes Barani. ‘The treasury was empty, and the royal court had but little in the way of wealth and horses. The Shamsi slaves had become khans, and they divided among themselves all the wealth and power of the kingdom, so that the country came under their control.’
But these nobles themselves were divided into various cabals and were forever at each other’s throat. ‘None [of the nobles] would give precedence . . . to another,’ continues Barani. ‘In possessions and display, in grandeur and dignity, they vied with each other, and in their proud vaunts and boasts every one exclaimed to the other, “What art thou that I am not, and what will thou be that I shall not be?” The incompetence of the sons of Iltutmish, and the arrogance of the Shamsi slaves, thus brought into contempt that throne which had been among the most dignified and exalted in the world.’
The worst period in all this was the decade long interregnum between the death of Iltutmish and the accession of Mahmud, when royal authority was often impudently flouted by provincial governors and top nobles, some of whom nurtured the ambition of becoming sultans themselves. Besides that, there was at this time the persistent problem of resurgent Rajput rajas challenging the authority of the sultan to regain their independence. There was also the problem of turbulent hill tribes and bandits freely roaming around in the countryside, menacing traders and travellers as well as the common people. And above all, there was the ominous presence of Mongols in the northwest, threatening to engulf the Sultanate. The future of the Sultanate looked most uncertain.
The Delhi Sultanate at the time of Mahmud’s accession covered a broad swath of land in North India, but the territory had not yet been consolidated into a viable, stable state. Indeed, before Balban took charge of the situation soon after Mahmud’s accession, the Sultanate was in grave danger of disintegrating into total chaos. Balban stabilised the situation substantially, despite the jealousies and intrigues of rival nobles.
DURING ALMOST ALL the twenty years of Mahmud’s reign Balban served as the regent of the Sultan, and bore the grand title Ulugh Khan (Great Khan). ‘He, keeping Nasir-ud-din as a puppet, carried on the government, and used many of the insignia of royalty even while he was only a Khan,’ reports Barani. The rule of Mahmud was in fact the rule of Balban.
Balban began his career in India as a slave of Iltutmish, who purchased him in Delhi in 1233. He was of the lineage of a clan of chieftains in Turkistan, but was enslaved as a child and brought to Gujarat by a slave trader. There he was bought by a Turk who, according to Siraj, ‘brought him up carefully like a son. Intelligence and ability shone out clearly in his countenance . . . [so he was] treated with special consideration’ by his master, who eventually brought him to Delhi and sold him to Iltutmish. Balban, according to Battuta, ‘was short in stature and of mean appearance.’ But his high mental stature and talents more than compensated for his poor physical appearance. Iltutmish, Siraj notes, regarded Balban to be ‘a youth of great promise, so he made him his personal attendant, placing, as one might say, the hawk of fortune on his hand.’
Balban rose rapidly in the service of the Sultanate, and in time became a member of The Forty, the elite band of Turks serving the sultan. And even in that elite group Balban stood out, surpassing the other nobles by his ‘vigour, courage and activity.’ Raziya appointed him as her Chief Huntsman, an important and confidential post. ‘Fate proclaimed that the earth was to be the prey of his fortune, and world the game of his sovereignty,’ comments Siraj. Later, when Bahram became the sultan, he raised Balban to the post of Master of the Horse. ‘The steed of sovereignty and empire thus came under his bridle and control,’ remarks Siraj. ‘His success was so great that other nobles began to look upon him with jealousy, and the thorn of envy began to rankle in their hearts. But it was the will of god that he should excel them all, so that the more the fire of their envy burnt, the stronger did the incense of his fortune rise from the censer of the times.’ In 1243 Balban was appointed Amir-i-Hajib, Lord Chamberlain, by Sultan Masud.
Balban’s star rose even more rapidly when Masud was succeeded by Mahmud, especially after the sultan married his daughter. Balban was then appointed to the premier post of Naib-i-Mamlikat, and he in turn filled most of the key positions in the government with his nominees, and appointed his brother Kashli Khan as Lord Chamberlain. These posts were not, however, sinecures, for Balban demanded credible performance from all his officers, just as he himself worked untiringly.
But the very success of Balban created its own problems, for it roused the envy of rival nobles, who then worked in secret to oust him from his high office. The prime mover in the plot against Balban was Raihan, the Wakil-i-dar, superintendent of the sultan’s household establishment, a position that gave him easy access to the royal family. A wily conspirator, he won the support of the sultan’s mother and several disgruntled nobles, and, craftily working behind the scenes, he gradually roused resentment in Mahmud himself against Balban’s dominance. And eventually, in the winter of 1252–53, he persuaded the sultan to shift Balban out of Delhi and send him to his fief, and also to remove his brother, Kashli Khan, from his office. It was the hope of the conspirators that Balban would resist these slights, and thus give them the opportunity to destroy his power altogether. But to their disappointment, Balban obeyed the royal order without a murmur. Discomfited, Raihan then struck a second blow, and got the sultan to transfer Balban abruptly from his fief to another fief. But once again Balban obeyed without protest.
But Balban was not withdrawing from power politics, only biding his time. Presently, the envy of the nobles about Balban came to be overshadowed by their growing resentment over Raihan, a Hindu convert to Islam, lording over them, the Turkish nobles. A group of these nobles then appealed to Balban to return to Delhi. In the ensuing manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres, and in the face of the threat of a military conflict between rival factions, the sultan was persuaded by his advisers to dismiss Raihan from the court and reappoint Balban and his brother to their previous posts.
The sultan acted on that advice, and Balban returned to his old office in January 1255, after having been out of it for about two years. He then held that post till Mahmud’s death in February 1266.
MAHMUD WAS THE only one of Iltutmish’s descendants to have a long reign—of twenty years—while all the others ruled only for short periods, the shortest reign, of just seven months, being that of Rukn-ud-din Firuz, the first successor of Iltutmish. In fact, among the five descendants of Iltutmish who sat on the throne of Delhi—three sons, one daughter, and one grandson—all except Mahmud were overthrown and killed by the nobles.
Mahmud however was sultan only in name, for during virtually his entire reign it was Balban who actually ruled the kingdom. So Balban’s accession to the throne on the death of Mahmud was a natural and inevitable transition, from being the de facto ruler to being the de jure ruler. Mahmud is said to have designated Balban to succeed him; the choice was in any case inevitable, for no prince of Iltutmish’s lineage was then alive, and a ruler of the calibre and experience of Balban was essential at this time to prevent anarchy from engulfing the kingdom.
Balban reinforced his entitlement to the throne by claiming to be a descendant of Afrasiyab, the legendary Turkish royal hero, and thus placing himself well above all the other nobles of the Sultanate (his potential rivals) in social status. And this claim of royal lineage by Balban was a crucial determinant of the nature of his rule, for it enabled him to assume an exalted posture as sultan, and to adopt a demeanour and conduct to match the high pedigree that he claimed and the high office that he occupied.
The primary characteristics of Balban as sultan were his high sense of responsibility and unremitting hard work. He would not allow carelessness or sloth to erode his power in any way. As sultan, he gave up all the convivial pleasures that he had previously enjoyed, maintained his distance from nobles, and showed no intimacy with anyone. ‘Sultan Balban, while he was a khan, was addicted to wine drinking, and was fond of giving entertainments; two or three times in a week he would give banquets and gamble with his guests . . . But after he came to the throne he allowed himself no prohibited indulgences,’ observes Barani. His only remaining addiction was hunting, but that too he used to subserve his political purpose, as a means of exercising his army preparatory to launching military campaigns. In all matters he now strictly followed Islamic regulations. And at meals he preferred the company of Muslim clerics, with whom he discussed theological matters.
Balban now took care to present a forbiddingly stern, impassive façade to the public. Though behind this façade he still remained subject to common human dispositions and emotions, he kept them all under the strict control of his iron will. But if self-control and implacability are indispensable qualities required in a sultan, so was magnanimity. So Balban did sometimes, though rarely, condone the incompetence of his officers, and once even pardoned army deserters. And we are told that he often wept at sermons in the mosque. Balban’s general outward appearance of cold-blooded efficiency was a triumph of will over nature.
BALBAN, UNLIKE MOST of his predecessors on the throne, had a very lofty concept of kingship. Most of the sultans of Delhi who preceded Balban, except Iltutmish, were little more than first among equals. This, Balban felt, was a major weakness of the Sultanate, which led to laxity in administration and disarray in the empire, with courtiers and provincial governors constantly trying to tussle with the sultan and erode his power. From his long experience as regent—and perhaps under the influence of the ancient Persian concept of monarchy—Balban felt that the throne had to be raised well above the level of the nobles. And to do that, he enunciated the concept of the sultan as the vicegerent of god. This claim was not just an expression of royal vanity—the high status that Balban claimed was not for himself as a person, but for the office of the sultan, and it constituted a political concept of broad practical significance, which found expression in Balban’s own impeccable conduct, and in the strict manner in which he ran the government.
An essential expression of Balban’s exalted concept of kingship was his insistence that courtiers on approaching the sultan should prostrate before him and kiss the throne or the sultan’s feet. Court etiquette now became rigidly formal, and it was required to be strictly observed by all. In court, and in public, Balban was always escorted by a praetorian guard with drawn swords, which helped to create the needed physical and psychological distance between the sultan and all others. ‘No sovereign,’ concludes Barani, ‘had ever before exhibited such pomp and grandeur in Delhi . . . [Through all the] years that Balban reigned he maintained the dignity, honour, and majesty of the throne in a manner that could not be surpassed. Certain of his attendants who waited on him in private assured me they never saw him otherwise than fully-dressed. During the whole time that he was khan and sultan . . . he never conversed with persons of low origin or occupation, and never indulged in any familiarity, either with friends or strangers, by which the dignity of the sovereign might be lowered. He never joked with anyone, nor did he allow anyone to joke in his presence; he never laughed aloud, nor did he permit anyone in his court to laugh.’ In Balban’s court, frivolity was a serious misdemeanour, if not a crime.
BALBAN’S LONG YEARS as the de facto ruler of the Sultanate had given him ample time to reflect on the changes that were needed in government to consolidate royal power and to ensure efficient administration. He therefore introduced a number of administrative reforms soon after his accession. One of his key measures was to set up an elaborate network of carefully selected confidential spies and news reporters at all the sensitive spots in the empire and among all potential rebels, including his sons, for he believed that the crucial requirement for maintaining effective control over the empire was to have accurate and detailed information about all the significant developments everywhere in the empire.
Balban also took a number of decisive measures to systematise administrative procedures and to reform the army—he abolished many of the sinecures that had proliferated in the Sultanate over the decades, confiscated the lands of the fief-holders who were no longer rendering the services for which grants had been given to them, and cashiered a number of worthless or superannuated military officers. ‘Many of the grantees were old and infirm, many more had died, and their sons had taken possession of the grants as an inheritance from their fathers,’ notes Barani. ‘All these holders of service lands called themselves proprietors, and professed to have received the lands as free gift form Sultan Iltutmish . . . Some of them went leisurely to perform their military duties, but the greater part stayed at home making excuses, the acceptance of which they secured by presents and bribes of all sorts to the deputy muster-master and his officials.’ Balban initially ordered all these grants to be taken back by the state and the grantees to be given subsistence allowances, but later, rather uncharacteristically, he rescinded the order on compassionate grounds.
Such shows of clemency were rare in Balban. He normally insisted on unremitting efficiency from his officers, and treated inefficiency and failure to perform assigned duties as unpardonable offences. And he was utterly ruthless in enforcing discipline and hard work among his officers, and in punishing the tardy, for that, he believed, was the only way to ensure dependable service from them. Thus, when Amin Khan, the governor of Oudh, who was sent to suppress a rebellion in Bengal, was defeated by the rebel and he tamely retreated, Balban ordered him ‘to be hanged over the gate of Oudh,’ reports Barani.
Balban was equally stern and uncompromising in the administration of justice, and would, according to Barani, show ‘no favour to his brethren or children, to his associates or attendants.’ Thus when Malik Baqbaq, a top noble and governor of Budaun, flogged to death one of his servants, Balban, on receiving the complaint about it from the servant’s wife, had the noble himself flogged to death, and had the news-writer, who had failed to report the noble’s crime to Balban, hanged over the city gate. Similarly, when another top noble, Haibat Khan, slew a man in a drunken rage, Balban had 500 lashes given to the noble, and then handed him over to the widow of the slain man, saying, ‘This murderer was my salve, he is now yours. Do you stab him as he stabbed your husband.’ Though the khan then managed to purchase his life from the widow for 20,000 tankas, he thereafter never again appeared in public, out of shame.
BALBAN DID NOT have the common vanity of kings to gain glory through conquests. This was not because he was averse to military campaigns, but because he considered that it would be imprudent for him to seek fresh conquests when the territories that were already in the empire were not properly consolidated, and the empire itself was periodically menaced by Mongol raids. Balban’s primary focus during his entire rule, as regent and as sultan, was on the consolidation of the empire, its proper administration, and its protection against Mongol raids, and not on seeking fresh conquests. Once when some of his courtiers suggested that he should seek renown through conquests, he outright rejected the proposal. ‘I have devoted all the revenues of my kingdom to the equipment of my army, and I hold all my forces ever ready and prepared to . . . [meet the threat of Mongol invasion]. I will never leave my kingdom, nor will I go to any distance from it. In the reigns of my patrons and predecessors there was none of this problem with the Mongols, so they could lead their armies wherever they pleased, subdue the dominions of Hindus, and carry off gold and treasures, staying away from their capital a year or two. If this anxiety [about the Mongols] . . . were removed, then I would not stay one day in my capital, but lead forth my army to capture treasures and valuables, elephants and horses, and would never allow the Rais and Ranas to repose in security at a distance.’
Mongols had first forayed into India during the reign of Iltutmish, and had since then raided India several times, and were a constant menacing presence in western Punjab. ‘No year passed without the Mongols forcing their way into Hindustan and . . . [raiding] different towns,’ notes Barani. The Mongol threat to the Sultanate was not so much of the conquest of territory as of plunder, destruction and carnage. As the early medieval chronicler Juwaini puts it, ‘Mongols came, razed, burnt, slaughtered, plundered, and departed.’
In India the Mongol depredations were largely confined to the Indus Plain west of the Sutlaj. When they advanced further east, they, despite their fearsome reputation for savagery, were invariably routed by the Sultanate forces, for the Mongol army was not a professional army but a horde, and was no match to the trained and disciplined army of the Sultanate. Often, on the approach of the Sultanate army, Mongols fled without fighting, not wanting to risk losing the plunder that they had already gathered.
Turks detested Mongols as uncouth savages. ‘Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole into a brass vessel, and their stench was more horrible than their colour,’ writes medieval poet Amir Khusrav, colouring his description with bardic fancy. ‘Their heads were set on their bodies as if they had no necks, and their cheeks resembled leathern bottles, full of wrinkles and knots. Their noses extended from cheek to cheek, and their mouths from cheekbone to cheekbone; their nostrils resembled rotten graves, and from them the hair descended as far as the lips. Their moustaches were of extravagant length, but the beards about their chins were very scanty. Their chests, in colour half black, half white, were covered with lice which looked like sesame growing on a bad soil. Their whole bodies, indeed, were covered with these insects, and their skins were as rough-grained as shagreen leather, fit only to be converted into shoes. They devoured dogs and pigs with their nasty teeth . . . The king marvelled at their beastly countenances and said that god had created them out of hellfire.’
By the mid-thirteenth century, Lahore had become a Mongol dependency, with its Turkish governor acknowledging the suzerainty of Mongols and paying tribute to them. Around this time the governor of Sind also transferred his allegiance from the Sultanate to Mongols. It was feared that Mongols might even advance on Delhi. Balban, who was the regent of the Sultanate at this time, met the challenge of Mongols with a combination of astute diplomacy, unwinking vigilance, and display of military might, and he was able to avert any serious damage to the empire to be caused by them. With Mongols dominant in Afghanistan and Central Asia, Turks in India had at this time nowhere to retreat to—India was now their homeland, and they had to protect it at all cost in order to survive. Balban therefore took care to maintain good relationship with Hulagu Khan, the Mongol viceroy in Iran and a grandson of Chingiz Khan, and obtained from him the assurance that Mongols would not advance beyond Satluj. This rapport prompted Hulagu to send, in 1259, a goodwill mission to Delhi, which was accorded a grand reception by Balban, which included also a cautionary demonstration of the military might of the Sultanate.
The peace with the Mongols did not however last long. Occasional Mongol forays into the Sultanate continued, and by around 1279 major Mongol incursions resumed. But Balban had by then, during the period of relative peace with the Mongols, reorganised his western frontier defences under the command of his eldest son Muhammad, who was appointed as the supreme commander of the frontier forces. Mongols were not therefore allowed to operate beyond Satluj, and their raids were mostly confined to the region west of Indus.
BALBAN WAS AS much concerned with internal security as with external security. The countryside, even the neighbourhood of Delhi, was at this time periodically marauded by predatory tribes and bands of brigands. Of particular menace were Meos of Mewat, the heavily forested region on the southern and western flanks of Delhi. ‘At night they used to come prowling into the city, giving all kinds of trouble, depriving the people of their rest; and they plundered the country houses in the neighbourhood of the city,’ states Barani. ‘In the neighbourhood of Delhi there were large and dense jungles, through which many roads passed. The disaffected . . . and the outlaws . . . [of this region] grew bold and took to robbery on the highway, and they so beset the roads that caravans and merchants were unable to pass through them . . . [Because of their ravages] the western gates of the city were shut at afternoon prayer, and no one dared to go out of the city in that direction after that hour . . . [The Mewatis would assault] the water-carriers and the girls who were fetching water, and would strip them and carry off their clothes. These daring acts . . . caused a great ferment in Delhi.’
This was an affront that Balban could not tolerate, and he personally set out on a campaign to exterminate the Mewatis. For twenty days he had his soldiers ravage the Mewati habitats with deliberate and ruthless savagery, slaughtering the people there wholesale, the frenzy of the soldiers being roused by Balban’s offer of a tanka for every severed head, and two tankas for every living prisoner. Several Mewati leaders were captured and taken to Delhi, and were executed there in various gruesome ways—some were thrown under elephants to be trampled to death, while others were cut to pieces or flayed alive. Despite all this, the Mewatis became active again a few months later, so Balban once again marched out against them, and this time massacred some 12,000 people there. Then, to prevent the recurrence of the problem, he cleared the forests around Delhi, set up military outposts there, and settled Afghan soldier-farmers in vulnerable areas, giving them tax-free lands.
Elsewhere in the Sultanate too Balban was ruthless in dealing with any kind of turmoil. Thus when lawlessness broke out in Katehr in north-western Uttar Pradesh, Balban, according to Barani, personally led a contingent of soldiers into the region, and ordered them to ‘burn down Katehr and destroy it, to slay every man, and to spare none but women and children . . . He remained for some days in Katehr and directed the slaughter. The blood of the rioters ran in streams, heaps of the slain were to be seen near every village and jungle, and the stench of the dead reached as far as Ganga.’ And, as in Mewat, in Katehr too, to secure the region, Balban cleared the jungles, laid new roads, and constructed several forts in vulnerable areas. These measures led to a general improvement of law and order in the Sultanate, which in turn led to greater material prosperity, as commercial transport became secure, and farmers were freed from the harassment of brigands.
EVEN MORE SERIOUS than the problems of brigandage was the problem of the insubordination of provincial governors that perennially bedevilled the Sultanate. Bengal was particularly vulnerable to this hazard, so that its capital, Lakhnawati, earned the sobriquet Bulghakpur, City of Rebellion. ‘The people of this country had for many long years evinced a disposition to revolt,’ observes Barani. ‘And the disaffected and evil disposed among them generally succeeded in alienating the loyalty of the governors.’ Balban therefore appointed Tughril, one of his most ‘cherished slaves,’ as the governor of Bengal. Tughril was, according to Barani, ‘a very active, bold, courageous and generous man,’ and Balban believed that Bengal would be safe under his governorship. But soon after Tughril settled in Bengal, ‘ambition laid its egg in his head,’ and he broke out in rebellion. Balban then directed Amin Khan, the governor of Oudh, to suppress the rebellion, but he was easily routed by Tughril. Balban probably suspected treachery in Amin Khan’s tame retreat from Bengal, and it so roused his wrath that he had him executed forthwith. But the two other contingents that he thereafter sent against Tughril also suffered defeat. These reverses were humiliating to Balban, and a threat to his authority, so he himself then proceeded to Bengal, with the awful resolve never to return except with the rebel’s head.
That unnerved Tughril, and on Balban’s approach he fled eastward from Lakhnawati, hoping that the sultan would not pursue him there. But Balban was relentless in his pursuit. So, as the royal army closed in on him, Tughril retreated further eastward, towards Tripura. But he was pursued there too, and was soon overtaken and captured by a small band of royal soldiers, who immediately beheaded him. Balban then returned to Lakhnawati with a large number of captured rebel soldiers. There, to serve as a warning to other potential rebels, Balban ‘ordered gibbets to be erected along both sides of the great bazaar, which was more than a kos (two miles) in length,’ reports Barani. ‘He ordered all the sons and sons-in-law of Tughril, and all the men who had served him or borne arms for him, to be slain and placed upon the gibbets . . . This so horrified the beholders that they themselves nearly died of fear.’
Balban then appointed his son Bughra Khan as the governor of Bengal, after taking from him an oath ‘that he would recover and secure the country of Bengal and that he would not hold convivial parties, nor indulge in wine and dissipation.’ The sultan also warned him about the awful fate that awaited anyone rebelling against royal authority.
Balban then set out for Delhi, herding a large number of captured deserters from the royal army who had joined Tughril. He intended to gibbet them all in Delhi, but was dissuaded from that dreadful reprisal by the qazi, who, according to Barani, threw himself at the feet of the sultan and interceded for the prisoners. The appeal moved the sultan, and he pardoned most of the deserters, and even the others he banished or imprisoned only for short periods. Balban’s Bengal campaign altogether took three years.
‘FROM BEING A MALIK he became a khan, and from being a khan he became a king,’ writes Barani, describing the career of Balban. ‘When he attained the throne he imparted to it new lustre; he brought the administration into order, and restored to efficiency institutions whose power had been shaken or destroyed. The dignity and authority of government was restored, and his stringent rules and resolute determination caused all men, high and low, throughout his dominions, to submit to his authority . . . [He ruled the empire] with dignity, honour and vigour.’
On the whole Balban had very substantial achievements to his credit. And, though he was utterly ruthless in enforcing his will, he was never rash or capricious, but deliberate in all that he said and did, and always in perfect self-control. By the end of his reign security and order by and large prevailed in the sultanate, in so far as they could prevail anywhere in India in the thirteenth century.
Then tragedy struck.
In 1285, Balban’s eldest and favourite son, Muhammad, the heir apparent—whom ‘his father loved . . . dearer than his own life,’ according to Barani—was killed in Multan in a battle against Mongols. Balban was devastated by the tragedy, although he maintained a façade of imperturbable composure in public. ‘The sultan was now more than eighty years old, and though he struggled hard against the effects of his bereavement, day by day they became more apparent,’ notes Barani. ‘By day he held his court, and entered into public business as if to show that his loss had not affected him; but at night he poured forth his cries of grief, tore his garments, and threw dust upon his head . . . The reign of Balban now drew to a close, and he gradually sank under his sorrow.’
The death of Muhammad was not just a personal loss for the sultan, but an irreparable loss for the dynasty, for Muhammad was a highly cultured, earnest and able prince. ‘The court of the young prince,’ reports Barani, ‘was frequented by the most learned, excellent and accomplished men of the time . . . [Poets] Amir Khusrav and Amir Hasan served at his court . . . [They were richly rewarded by the prince, and they used to say that] they had very rarely seen a prince so excellent and virtuous . . . [as Muhammad]. At his entertainments they never heard him indulge in foolish or dirty talk, whether wine was drunk or not; if he drank wine, he did so in moderation, so as not to become intoxicated and senseless.’
In 1287, two years after Muhammad’s death, Balban himself died. The major concern of Balban in his last days was to decide on who should succeed him. His initial choice was Bughra Khan, his second son. Balban summoned him from Lakhnawati, and said to him: ‘Grief for your bother has brought me to my deathbed, and who knows how soon my end may come? This is no time for you be absent, for I have no other son to take my place. [My grandsons] Kaikhusrav (son of Muhammad) and Kaiqubad (son of Bughra Khan) . . . are young, and have not experienced the heat and cold of fortune. Youthful passions and indulgence would make them unfit to govern my kingdom, if it should descend to them. The realm of Delhi would again become a child’s toy, as it was under the successors of Iltutmish . . . Think over this. Do not leave my side. Cast away all desire of going to Lakhnawati.’
Bughra Khan did not heed the advice. He was, comments Barani, ‘a heedless prince,’ who did not care for the throne of Delhi with all its onerous responsibilities and endless problems, and yearned for a life of ease in Lakhnawati. So after a couple of months in Delhi, when Balban’s health improved a little, he returned to Lakhnawati ‘without leave from his father.’ Balban then summoned some of his intimate nobles and told them to raise Kaikhusrav to the throne. ‘He is young and incapable of ruling as yet, but what can I do?’ Balban lamented. Three days later the sultan died.
On his death the nobles wilfully set aside Balban’s choice and raised Kaiqubad to the throne, and there followed several years of chaos in the Sultanate. ‘From the day that Balban, the father of his people, died, all security of life and property was lost, and no one had any confidence in the stability of the kingdom,’ comments Barani.
Kaiqubad was seventeen or eighteen years old at this time. According to Barani, the prince ‘was a young man of many excellent qualities. He was of an equable temper, kind in disposition and very handsome. But he was fond of pleasure and sensual gratifications. From his childhood till the day he came to the throne, he had been brought up under the eye of the sultan, his grandfather. Such strict tutors had been placed over him that he never had the idea of indulging in any pleasure, or the opportunity for gratifying any lust. His tutors . . . watched him so carefully that he never cast his eyes on any fair damsel, and never tasted a cup of wine. Night and day his austere guardians watched over him. Teachers instructed him in the polite arts and manly exercises, and he was never allowed to do any unseemly act, or to utter any improper speech. When, all at once, and without previous expectation, he was elevated to such a mighty throne . . . all that he had read, heard and learned, he immediately forgot; his lessons of wisdom and self-restraint were thrown aside, and he plunged at once into pleasure and dissipation of every kind . . . His ministers likewise, and the young nobles of his court, his companions and friends, all gave themselves up to pleasure. The example spread, and all ranks, high and low, learned and unlearned, acquired a taste for wine drinking and amusements . . . Night and day the sultan gave himself entirely to dissipation and enjoyment.’ Vice and immorality became widespread. Mosques were empty of worshippers, but wine shops flourished. Adds Ferishta: ‘There were ladies of pleasure everywhere, and every street rang with music and mirth.’
IN THAT CHAOTIC environment, Nizam-ud-din, the able, crafty and ambitious nephew and son-in-law of the kotwal of Delhi, assumed the supreme power in the empire as Naib-i-mulk, deputy ruler of the sultanate. ‘The government of the country was in his hands,’ observes Barani. Nizam-ud-din filled all the key positions in the government with his own men, eliminated many of the rival nobles, executing or imprisoning them, and even had the prince Kaikhusrav murdered. And he encouraged Kaiqubad to sink ever deeper into debauchery, presumably hoping that this would eventually enable him to seize the throne.
These developments in Delhi troubled even the easygoing Bughra Khan, who now ruled as the sultan of Bengal. He wrote to Kaiqubad to mend his ways, and, getting no satisfactory response, set out with his army to confront his son. And Kaiqubad too set out with his army to meet his father. In a while both armies, advancing from opposite directions, came face to face with each other, and camped on the opposite banks of Gogra (Sarayu), a tributary of Ganga at the frontier of the two kingdoms. Fortunately there was no clash between the two armies, quite probably because of the indulgent nature of Bughra Khan, whose objective in any case was not to subjugate or overthrow his son, but to induce him to be assertive and strong as a ruler. It was then decided that father and son should meet to resolve matters. There was however some squabble between the two camps about protocol, whether the sultan of Delhi should go to meet the sultan of Bengal, or whether the sultan of Bengal should go to meet the sultan of Delhi. But eventually Bughra Khan, affable as ever, crossed the river (at a time fixed by astrologers as auspicious) and went to Kaiqubad’s camp
Kaiqubad received his father with regal pomp, in court, sitting on the throne and attended by arrayed nobles. Approaching the throne, Bughra Khan, as Barani describes the scene, ‘bowed his head to the earth, and three times kissed the ground, as required by the ceremonial of the Delhi court.’ But the sight of his father prostrating before him so overwhelmed Kaiqubad with emotion that he flung aside all formalities, and, ‘descending from the throne, cast himself at his father’s feet . . . Father and son then burst into tears and embraced each other . . . and the sultan rubbed his eyes upon his father’s feet. This sight drew tears also from the eyes of the beholders too. The father then took his son’s hand and led him to the throne, intending himself to stand before it for a while; but the sultan got down, and conducting his father to the throne, seated him there on his right side. Then, getting down, he bent his knees, and sat respectfully before him . . . Afterwards they had some conversation together in private. And then Bughra Khan retired across the river to his own camp.’
Would the father’s advice be heeded by the son? Bughra Khan was sceptical. Returning to his camp he commented: ‘I have said farewell to my son and to the kingdom of Delhi, for I know full well that neither my son nor the throne of Delhi will long exist.’
That presentiment came true. The gist of Bughra Khan’s advice to his son was to mend his easy-going ways, get rid of Nizam-ud-din, and take charge of the government. Returning to Delhi, Kaiqubad did indeed for a while heed his father’s advice; he transferred Nizam-ud-din to Multan, and, when he hesitated to leave, had him poisoned. But the change of his ways did not last long. In an engaging story told by Barani, one day ‘a lovely girl met him on the road, and addressed some lines of poetry to him . . . The sultan was overpowered by her charms . . . [He] called for wine, and, drinking it in her presence, himself recited some verses, to which she in turn replied in verse.’
The incident signalled Kaiqubad’s reversion to his old self-indulgent ways; indeed, he now immersed himself deeper in debauchery, to make up for the lost days of pleasure. He thereafter paid no attention at all to the affairs of the state. That created a power vacuum in Delhi, and presently the empire swirled into total chaos. ‘What little order had been maintained in the government was now entirely lost,’ comments Barani. ‘The affairs of the court now fell into the greatest confusion.’
Kaiqubad himself came to a wretched end. He was now struck by paralysis, and was confined to bed, barely alive. The nobles then placed his three-yearold son, Kayumars, on the throne, and set up a regency council to administer the empire. But there were divisions and deadly rivalries among the nobles, and the contending cabals plotted against each other, and drew up black lists, planning to eliminate their opponents.
Out of this churning chaos, a new leader rose to the top, Malik Jalalud-din Khalji, the commander of the army. As the political chaos in Delhi became worse confounded, Khalji, who was stationed in a suburb of Delhi, sent his sons in a daring foray into the city, and had the infant sultan seized and brought to his camp. ‘The sons of Jalal-ud-din, who were all audacious fellows, went publicly at the head of 500 horse to the royal palace, seized the infant sultan, and carried him off to their father,’ writes Barani. ‘This created great excitement in the city; the high and low, small and great, poured out of the twelve gates of the city, and took the road . . . to rescue the young prince.’ But the kotwal (whose sons were held as hostages by Jalal-ud-din) appeased them and persuaded them to return to the city.
Jalal-ud-din then assumed the office of Naib, and ruled the kingdom in the name of Kaiqubad. This charade went on for three months. Then one day Jalal-ud-din sent one of his officers and had Kaiqubad murdered. ‘This man . . . found the sultan lying at his last gasp in the room of mirrors,’ records Barani. ‘He despatched him with two or three kicks, and threw his body into Yamuna.’
It was a sordid end to a sordid life. Nothing is known about what happened to the infant sultan. Jalal-ud-din then formally ascended the throne. And with that began a new epoch in the history of the Delhi Sultanate.