The Delhi Sultanate, at the peak of its territorial expansion during the reign of Muhammad Tughluq, was the largest empire in the history of India in the two-millennium-long period between the Mauryan empire at its zenith under Asoka in the mid-third century BCE and the Mughal empire at its zenith under Aurangzeb in the late seventeenth century CE, and it covered virtually the entire Indian subcontinent, except Kerala in the far south, Kashmir in the far north, and a few pockets here and there in between.
But bulk did not mean stability. Or even strength. The Delhi Sultanate was in fact the least stable of all the great empires in Indian history, and was ever roiling with rebellions and usurpations. Nor did it have the administrative capacity needed to effectively govern its vast and diverse realm. The only notable exception to this dismal state of affairs was the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji, whose empire was extensive, and his government administratively and militarily strong.
Waging wars was the primary occupation of medieval Indian sultans and rajas, to suppress rebellions, to defend or expand their kingdom, and to seize plunder. Civil administration, except revenue collection, had only a low priority for most of them. With very rare exceptions, providing good government and caring for the welfare of the people hardly concerned the sultans or the rajas.
Most kings in medieval India were just warlords. In the entire history of the Delhi Sultanate, there were no notable periods of stability and peace, except for a time during the reigns of Ala-ud-din Khalji and Firuz Tughluq. Normal life in the Delhi Sultanate was hardly normal. Everything there was ever in a turbulent state, ever seething with violence. This was true of all political relationships in the Sultanate, such as the relationship between the sultan and his nobles and provincial governors, between the sultan and the Hindu chieftains, even between the sultan and his family members. Anyone at any time could be anyone’s adversary. No loyalty could be ever taken for granted.
The government of the Delhi Sultanate was a minimum government. The sultans occupied the realm, but hardly governed it. Brigands and wild hill tribes often rampaged through the land, swooping down from their inaccessible forest habitats. At times they even menaced major towns. Protection against them was mainly the concern of the local people, seldom that of the sultan. And when the sultan acted against brigands, it was mainly to safeguard his revenue, hardly ever to protect the people. Indeed, the sultans themselves at times acted like brigands, pillaging their own subjects, to collect the overdue taxes from them. And at times even common villagers turned into rampaging brigands.
The usual means of the Delhi sultans to pacify their refractory subjects was to devastate their lands and slaughter the people there en-masse. In the case of Vijayanagar, even its most successful king, Krishnadeva, found it difficult to control the depredations of marauding hill tribes. So he sought to placate them, or to divert their raids into other kingdoms, holding that, as he wrote in Amukta-malyada, ‘if the king grows angry with them, he cannot wholly destroy them, but if he wins their affection by kindness and charity, they serve him by invading the enemy’s territory and plundering it.’
MEDIEVAL INDIAN STATES had no fixed frontiers—their frontiers were what their army controlled at any given time. So the territory of the state varied from reign to reign, and even from time to time during the reign of each sultan or raja. And the control of the central government over the provinces of the kingdom also varied from reign to reign. The sultans and the rajas usually kept a certain portion of their kingdom, its richest districts, under their direct administration. The rest of the kingdom was divided into provinces, and given to royal favourites to govern and collect revenue.
During the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji the Delhi Sultanate was divided into twelve provinces (subas), each under a governor. Each province in turn was divided into a number of districts (sarkars), and the districts again into taluks (parganas). Each taluk was made up of a number of villages, which were the basic administrative units of the state all through pre-modern history of India. Villages were virtually autonomous, and royal officers did not normally intrude into their affairs as long they paid their revenue dues to the king, and did not create any major law and order problem, like breaking out into rebellion or taking to brigandage.
The other divisions of the state—provinces, districts and taluks—also, like villages, enjoyed considerable autonomy in medieval India, in Muslim as well as Hindu kingdoms. Provinces were in fact semi-independent states, and provincial governors functioned like semi-independent rulers, except that the king exercised hegemonic control over them. In Vijayanagar, as Sewell notes, each provincial chief ‘was allowed entire independence in the territory allotted to him so long as he maintained the quota of horse, foot, and elephants . . . [assigned to him, and kept them] in perfect readiness for immediate action, and paid his annual tribute to his sovereign. Failing these he was liable to instant ejection, as the king was lord of all and nobles held [their office] only by his goodwill.’
The ultimate authority in the Sultanate in all matters was the sultan. In theory he was expected to rule according orthodox Islamic laws and conventions, but in practice he was usually an autocrat, who did whatever he pleased and could get away with. Autocracy did not however necessarily mean tyranny. Though several of the sultans were indeed dreadful tyrants, there were also several sultans who were benevolent rulers. And some of the tyrannical sultans—Ala-ud-din, for instance—were exceptionally caring about the welfare of the common people.
Next to the sultan in authority was the wazir, chief minister. The entire civil administration of the empire was under his purview, and it was he who appointed all the top civil servants and oversaw their work. The management of the finances of the empire—the collection of revenue and the allocation of funds to various government departments—was his particular responsibility. He also had the responsibility of getting the accounts submitted by various government departments and provinces audited, and of taking measures to recover from officers the funds they had misappropriated or squandered. And it was he who disbursed funds to deserving scholars and writers, and sanctioned charitable payments to the indigent. The responsibilities and powers of the wazir were so wide and important that his role in the state was held to be as crucial for its survival as the role of the soul for the survival of a man.
Alongside the wazir there were three other senior ministers in the Delhi Sultanate, each in charge of a crucial government department: Diwan-i-risalat, which administered religious institutions and allotted financial support to the pious and the scholarly; Diwan-i-arz, which controlled the military establishment; and Diwan-i-insha, which handled the state correspondence, collected intelligence reports from the various provinces of the empire, and supervised the transactions between the central government and the provincial officials. These three officers, along with the wazir, were considered the four pillars of the government.
These officers, like all the other top officers of the state, held their posts at the pleasure of the sultan. So what mattered most to them, in terms of their career prospects, was their ability to please the sultan, rather than their ability to discharge their official duties efficiently. And no one was ever secure in his office, his position being subject to the whims of the sultan as well as the conspiratorial intrigues of rival officers. Inevitably, it was the most earnest and efficient officers who were in the greatest peril, as they most roused the envy of their fellow officers.
IN THE EARLY period of the Delhi Sultanate, till the reign of Balban, the relationship of the nobles with the sultan was of camaraderie than of subservience. Balban changed that, and raised the status of the sultan far above that of the nobles. Consequently most of the nobles became abjectly servile towards the sultan, though there were still a few rare instances of royal officers boldly asserting themselves before the sultan. Such was the case of Ainu-l Mulk, ‘a wise, accomplished . . . [and] clever man,’ as Afif describes him. He held a senior position in the government under Firuz Tughluq, but had a personality clash with the wazir and was therefore dismissed from service. However, a few days later, the sultan, unwilling to lose the services of this able officer, assigned to him the charge of three fiefs along the critically important north-west frontier of the empire. But Ainu-l Mulk submitted that he would accept the appointment only if he was allowed to submit his reports directly to the sultan, and not through the wazir, and he took charge of the assignment only when the sultan acceded to that condition.
That was an exceptional case. The normal attitude of the nobles towards the sultan was of obsequiousness, and this was evident even in the manner in which provincial governors formally received royal orders. ‘It was the custom for every chief when he heard of the coming of a royal order to go out two or three kos to meet its bearer,’ records Abdullah, a late medieval chronicler, about the practice in the Sultanate during the reign of Sikandar Lodi. ‘A terrace was then erected, on which the messenger placed himself, whilst the nobleman standing beneath received the firman in the most respectful manner with both hands, and placed it on his head . . . If it was to be read privately he did so, and if it was to be made known to the people, it was read from the pulpit of the mosque.’
Such shows of servility by the nobles were however just pretences in most cases—if the sultan grew weak, or the noble grew powerful, the noble’s attitude towards the sultan changed from servility to defiance. Provincial insubordination and rebellion were in fact perennial problems in the Delhi Sultanate.
The provincial governments of the Delhi Sultanate were virtual replicas of its central government, with the governor in the provincial capital occupying a position similar to that of the sultan in Delhi. The main duties of the governor were to collect revenue from his province, and to maintain law and order there. From the revenue of his province the governor had to remit a specified portion to the royal treasury, and with the rest of the revenue meet his administrative expenses, maintain a military contingent for the sultan, and also meet his personal expenses. The provincial governor in turn farmed out his territory to his subordinates, to administer and to collect revenue.
A BAFFLING FEATURE of the Delhi Sultanate was the open and rampant corruption in its government at all levels, from the highest to the lowest. ‘It was well known in the world that government clerks and servants were given to peculation,’ states Afif. And they often indulged in venality right under the sultan’s nose. ‘It usually happens that there is a long delay in the payment of the money gifts of the sultan,’ grouses Battuta, who once had to wait for six months before receiving the twelve thousand dinars awarded to him by Muhammad Tughluq. ‘They have a custom also of deducting a tenth from all the sums given by the sultan.’ Once when the sultan sanctioned a payment to Battuta and ordered the treasurer to pay it, ‘the treasurer greedily demanded a bribe for doing so and would not write the order,’ states Battuta. ‘So I sent him two hundred tankas (silver coins), but he returned them. One of his servants told me from him that he wanted five hundred tankas, but I refused to pay it.’ Eventually the sultan had to intervene before the money was paid to Battuta.
Provincial governors and other high government officials, even the sultan himself, were not above seeking recompense for doing favours, the only difference being that in their case the offerings were treated as presents, not as bribes. Also, with them it was the rarity of the items offered, and the sentiment behind the offering, that were esteemed more than the cash value of what was offered. Thus when Battuta first arrived in India he presented to the governor of Sind ‘a white slave, a horse, and some raisins and almonds.’ Of these, what the governor appreciated most were the raisins and almonds. ‘These,’ comments Battuta, ‘are among the greatest gifts that can be made to them, since these do not grow in their land and are imported from Khurasan.’
Another aspect of the medieval Indian custom of giving presents was that just as subordinates gave presents to their superiors to win favours from them, superiors often gave presents to their subordinates to secure their loyalty. This was done even by the sultans. Loyalty was invariably on sale in medieval India. All were equally perfidious, at all levels of government and society. Probity was a luxury that virtually no one in medieval India could afford, neither kings nor nobles, nor the common people. Thus Ala-ud-din Khalji, who usurped the throne by murdering his uncle, had no difficulty in winning over to his side the top officers of the empire by liberally presenting to them large sums of money. And ‘those unworthy men, greedy for gold . . . and caring nothing for loyalty . . . joined Ala-ud-din,’ observes Barani. Similarly, Ala-ud-din won over the common people of Delhi by showering gold stars on them with a portable catapult. ‘He scattered so much gold that the faithless people easily forgot the murder of the late sultan, and rejoiced over his succession,’ concludes Barani. And, according to Mughal chronicler Yadgar, Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, who faced opposition from a brother on his accession, one day ‘summoned all the nobles into his private apartment and gained them to his side by making them presents in gold, and giving them titles and dignities.’
THE ATTITUDE OF the sultans towards their nobles during most of the Delhi Sultanate history was a bizarre mixture of two contrary modes, tyrannical as well as complaisant. The scene was however quite different in the first phase of the history of the Sultanate, for at that time there was no great difference in the status of the sultan and of the nobles, and the relationship between them was like that of comrades, rather than that of a king and his subjects, as it became later. This amity was in part because of the egalitarian ethos of early Islam, and also because the early sultans of Delhi were, like several of their top officers, manumitted slaves or their descendants.
In early Islamic society it was no disgrace or handicap for one to be a slave, for slaves could rise to any position—including that of the sultan—that they merited by their abilities. Though hardly anyone initially became a slave by choice, and most of them had been sold into slavery as children, or were captured and enslaved by marauders or conquerors, many slaves rose to high positions by their ability, dedication and hard work.
Many slaves no doubt led degrading lives, but being a slave was not in itself a disability or disgrace in early medieval Muslim society. There was no social or political prejudice against slaves as a class. Indeed, to be the favourite slave of a monarch or a high noble was a great advantage for a careerist, for that opened up major avenues for professional advancement for him, and several such slaves rose to be top officers in the Delhi Sultanate. Some nobles, even some sultans, honoured their favourite slaves by giving their daughters in marriage to them. Indeed, being a royal slave was a high honour and distinction, and three of them—Aibak, Iltutmish and Balban—succeeded their masters to the throne.
Another curious feature of the Delhi Sultanate was that the sultans generally preferred to appoint foreign migrants—Arabs, Turks and Persians—to top administrative and military posts in their government, reflecting their disdain for native Indians. And they usually treated foreign visitors with high regard. ‘It is a custom of the sultan of India . . . to honour strangers, to favour them, and to distinguish them in a manner quite peculiar, by appointing them to . . . [high government posts],’ records Battuta about what he observed in Delhi in the fourteenth century. ‘Most of his (sultan’s) courtiers, chamberlains, wazirs, magistrates, and brothers-in-law are foreigners.’ Battuta himself, a Moorish adventurer, was appointed by Muhammad Tughluq as a judge in Delhi on a high salary of 12,000 dinars a year. And when he left to continue his travels, he was designated as the royal ambassador to China.
This partiality of the sultans for foreigners sometimes led to tension between foreign and native officials, and, in the case of Bahmani Sultanate, it even led to a few gory riots. However, despite the bias of the sultans in favour foreign migrants, paths for the advancement of talented natives remained open in Muslim kingdoms, and several Hindu converts to Islam rose to high positions in those states over time. The prominence gained by Raihan, a mid-thirteenth century Hindu convert to Islam, who became powerful enough in royal service even to overshadow Balban, the then topmost royal officer in the Delhi Sultanate, was indicative of the growing prominence of Indian Muslims in government. From the reign of Khaljis on the number and importance Indian Muslims in government increased considerably. This was partly because of the proven ability of the Indian Muslim officers, like Malik Kafur under Ala-ud-din Khalji, and partly because their appointment to high offices had become a practical necessity for the sultans from the thirteenth century on, because the interposition of Mongols between India and the Turko-Persian homelands drastically reduced the migration of foreign Muslims into India.
One of the most remarkable of the Indian Muslim officers of the Delhi Sultanate was Khan-i Jahan Maqbul, a Hindu convert from Telingana, who, though illiterate, rose to the highest position in the Sultanate by his sheer ability. He joined the service of the Sultanate during the reign of Muhammad Tughluq who, recognising his merit, raised him rapidly in official positions, and finally appointed him as the deputy wazir. ‘Although he had no knowledge of reading and writing, he was a man of great common sense, acumen and intelligence, and was an ornament of the court,’ reports Afif. Firuz Tughluq appointed Maqbul as his wazir, and left him as his deputy in Delhi whenever he set out on military campaigns.
Maqbul was in every respect a most extraordinary person—his physical prowess matched his mental prowess, and so did his sexual prowess. ‘He was,’ according to Afif, ‘much devoted to the pleasures of the harem, and sought eagerly for pretty handmaids. It is reported that he had 2000 women of Europe and China in his harem, where he spent much of his time notwithstanding his onerous official duties,’ and he fathered a great many children. And to cap it all, Maqbul lived in so grand a style that Firuz Tughluq was often heard jocularly remarking that Maqbul was indeed ‘the grand and magnificent king of Delhi.’
APART FROM THE Hindu converts to Islam, Hindus themselves also played vital roles in the affairs of the Delhi Sultanate. Right from the beginning of the Sultanate, in fact even from the time of Mahmud Ghazni, several Hindu chieftains served as captains in the armies of Muslim kings, and they sometimes played crucial roles in the campaigns of sultans, leading their own contingents into battle. And a good number of the common soldiers in the armies of the sultans in India were Hindus.
In civil administration, the preponderant majority of the staff of the Delhi Sultanate, at all but the top one or two levels, were Hindus, particularly in the provinces. The sultans did not have the manpower from their own people to man the entire administration, or even to man all the crucial offices of their extensive Indian empire with its vast and diverse population. Nor did they have the local knowledge needed to run the local administration. They therefore necessarily had to depend heavily on Hindus to run the government.
At the district and village levels the administration in Muslim states was almost entirely manned by Hindus, and there the traditional indigenous administrative institutions and hereditary officers generally—except during the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji—continued to function as they had done for centuries before the Muslim invasion. This was particularly true of village administration. Villages were virtually autonomous during the medieval period, as they had been for very many centuries. The government of the sultans did not normally intrude into village administration at all, except for revenue collection and for the maintenance of law and order. But even in these functions, Muslim officers and fief-holders generally played only a supervisory role, for villages policed themselves in normal times, and revenue collection was mostly managed by the traditional local functionaries.
In a very real sense, it was Hindus who ran the government in Muslim kingdoms. What Dubois said of India in the early nineteenth century—that ‘the rule of all the Hindu princes, and often that of the Mahomedans, was properly speaking, Brahminical rule, since all posts of confidence were held by Brahmins’—was substantially true of the early medieval period as well. The rule of the sultans was sustained—indeed, was made possible—by the service of Hindu officers and staff.
The majority of Hindu officers in the service of Muslim kings were in subordinate positions. There were however a few notable exceptions to this, of Hindu officers rising to the top echelons of government in Muslim states. For instance, in the early sixteenth century Hindus held several top positions in the Muslim kingdom of Malwa, and one of them, Basanta Rai, even rose to be the wazir. This dominance of the Hindus in the government led to a conflict between the Hindu and Muslim officers of the state, resulting in the murder of Basanta Rai. But presently another Hindu officer, Medini Rai, rose to dominance in the state, and he grew so powerful and overweening that the sultan himself was forced to flee from the state and take refuge in Gujarat. Similarly, the de facto ruler of Bengal in the early fifteenth century was a Hindu officer named Ganesa; his son, who became a Muslim, even ascended the throne of Bengal.
The appointment of Hindus to high official positions was fairly common in the Deccan sultanates at this time—Bahmani sultan Firuz Shah, for instance, appointed several Brahmins and other Hindus to crucial offices in his government. Generally speaking, the establishment of the Turko-Afghan rule made no significant difference in the lives and functions of most Hindu officials from what they had been before the Muslim invasion.
NOR DID THE life of the common folk in India change in any notable way consequent of the displacement of rajas by sultans. This was partly because the Sultanate did not have the administrative capacity or the manpower needed to intrude in any significant manner into rural India, where most Indians lived, and partly also because the rajas were nearly as exploitative of the common people as the sultans were. It was mainly the Hindu political elite who suffered loss—the loss of power and prestige and wealth—because of the Turko-Afghan invasion.
And what the Hindu political elite lost was gained by the Muslim political elite—the gain of power and prestige and wealth. The top Turko-Afghan officers of the Sultanate were paid fabulous salaries; in fact, what they received were not just salaries, but what amounted to be shares in the revenues of the empire. The wazir under Firuz Tughluq, for instance, received, ‘exclusive of the allowance for his retainers, friends and sons . . . a sum of thirteen lakh tankas—or, instead of it, sundry fiefs and districts,’ states Afif. Not surprisingly, when Malik Shahin Shahna, a senior officer of the Sultanate, died and his effects were examined by royal auditors, it was found that he had accumulated ‘a sum of fifty lakh of tankas in cash . . . besides horses, valuables, and jewels in abundance.’
The normal practice of most Delhi sultans was to assign to their officers, and sometimes even to the soldiers of their central army, lands in lieu of cash salaries, lands from which they could collect taxes. This reinforces the impression that the sultan was not merely paying salaries to his officers, but sharing the revenues of the empire with them. This practice also had a major advantage for kings, in that it considerably reduced the tax collection burden of their rudimentary administrative organisation.
Under this system, soldiers were usually assigned villages, while officers received districts, or even provinces, depending on their rank. The principal assignees in turn often sub-assigned parts of their territory to their subordinates, on terms similar to those on which they received their assignments from the sultan. In all these cases what was given to the assignees was only the revenue from the allotted land, not the land itself. The assignee had no hereditary ownership right over the land. Besides, the land assignments were transferable, and were usually reassigned every four years or so, so that the assignees did not get rooted in their jagirs and turn themselves into zamindars. The land revenue assignment system, termed iqta, therefore did not lead to feudalism.
The iqta system was a highly inefficient system of revenue administration, and it led to a great deal of corruption, as well as to the exploitation of peasants by the assignees. But it was the only workable system in most medieval Indian kingdoms, because of their poor administrative capability. Even Ala-ud-din, who sought strict administrative control over his empire, had to retain the iqta system in the provinces, even though he abolished it in his central army, whose soldiers and officers were paid in cash directly from the royal treasury. Muhammad Tughluq also sought to tightly control iqta assignments, but his successor Firuz reverted to the old practice of general iqta assignments. In Vijayanagar land assignments to Nayaks (chieftains) was the common practice; there were, according to Nuniz, over 200 such assignments in the kingdom.
THE REVENUE AND military departments were the most important departments of the Delhi Sultanate, as in any medieval state. These were interdependent departments—there could be no army without revenue, and quite often the army was needed to enforce revenue collection. And just as the sultans maintained a large army, so also they maintained a large finance department with numerous accountants, to keep track of the state’s income and expenditure. The accounts submitted by the officers of the fiefs were regularly audited by this department; similarly the accounts of the various royal establishments were also regularly audited.
There were four legitimate sources of revenue for the sultan, sanctioned by Sharia: tax on agricultural produce, poll tax on non-Muslims, income tax on Muslims, and war booty. Of these, the primary source of revenue of the Delhi Sultanate, as of all medieval Indian states, was agricultural tax. The sultans also received a good amount of income from the produce of the crown lands, the khalisa, which was remitted directly into the royal treasury. All the lands of the empire other than the crown lands were assigned to royal officers as iqta lands, from the revenue of which they were to take their salary, meet their administrative expenses, and maintain the military contingents assigned to them.
In addition to the four revenue sources sanctioned by Islam, most Muslim kingdoms also collected a variety of minor taxes, which varied from kingdom to kingdom, even from ruler to ruler. Many of these additional taxes were in violation of Islamic regulations, and were therefore abolished by Firuz Tughluq.
Hindu kingdoms also collected a wide variety of taxes in addition to agricultural tax; they indeed generally collected a far wider variety of taxes than Muslim kingdoms, such as tax on forest produce, customs duties, octroi, police or military protection taxes, profession taxes (such as on barbers, goldsmiths, leather-workers, dhobis, etcetera), tax on workshops, social taxes (such as marriage tax), taxes on herdsmen, commercial taxes on merchants and artisans, and so on. In fact, virtually all productive activities in the kingdom, however trivial, were taxed—the government took a share of whatever money anyone made in any activity. Besides all these, rajas often charged special taxes to meet temple expenses.
The orthodox Muslim view of state revenue was that it belonged to the state, and was not the sultan’s personal income, and that it should to be used only to meet state expenses. Sultans were however permitted to spend a good part of the state revenue on themselves and their families, to maintain their exalted status, which was considered an essential requirement for maintaining the authority of the state. ‘Whatever is expended on your family could be increased a thousand fold, in order that the royal dignity might be thereby enhanced in the eyes of the people,’ a qazi once advised Ala-ud-din Khalji. ‘This enhancement of the royal dignity is politically essential and expedient.’ This in effect meant that the sultan could treat the kingdom as his private property, use the state revenue as his personal income, and spend it as he pleased.
THE MOST IMPORTANT source of revenue for the medieval state was agricultural tax. This was collected soon after each of the two harvests normally gathered in India: rabi, the winter harvest, and kharif, the rainy season harvest. The state usually sought to enhance its agricultural tax revenue by encouraging farmers to expand the land under their cultivation, and to plant more valuable crops.
The agricultural tax rates charged by kings varied considerably from kingdom to kingdom, and from king to king. The normal tax rate in Muslim states was probably around one-fifth of the gross farm produce, but some sultans, Ala-ud-din Khalji for instance, collected much higher taxes. Sometimes, where special facilities had to be built by the farmer for irrigation, like the bucket or wheel system, there, unlike in the rain-fed fields, taxes were sometimes reduced by kings to as much as one-twentieth of the produce, to compensate the farmer for the extra labour he had to put in to cultivate his field.
In Hindu kingdoms, the tax rate demanded by the rajas varied considerably with the exigencies of their situation, from the traditional one-sixth to as much as one-half of the gross produce. The Agricultural tax rate in Vijayanagar was between one-sixth and one-third of the gross produce. A complicating factor in the tax system of Vijayanagar and of several other Hindu kingdoms— often of Muslim kingdoms as well—was the practice of the state farming out tax collection to the highest bidders. This was a pernicious practice, for the speculators who bid for tax collection were usually exploitative towards cultivators, so the tax burden on them in kingdoms like Vijayanagar was usually very high and oppressive.
A curious practice of the Delhi sultans was that they sometimes raised agricultural tax exorbitantly to punish unruly villagers. Thus Muhammad Tughluq once raised ‘the taxes on the inhabitants of the Doab by ten or twenty per cent, as they had shown themselves refractory,’ notes Mughal chronicler Badauni. ‘He instituted also a cattle-tax, a house tax, and several other imposts of an oppressive nature, which entirely ruined and desolated the country, and brought its wretched inhabitants to destruction.’ And this led to a vicious cycle of rebellion by peasants and brutal repression by the sultan—driven to extremities, peasants sometimes rose in rebellion, burned their grain stacks and drove away their cattle; and the sultan responded to that by desolating the villages, and slaughtering or blinding the villagers.
This was typical of the eccentric policies and actions of Muhammad Tughluq. On the other hand some of the Delhi sultans did indeed take elaborate measures to systematise land revenue assessment and collection. Thus Ala-uddin Khalji had all the cultivated land in his empire measured and categorised, and fixed the tax on them on the basis of their standard yields. His tax demands were high—he demanded half the agricultural produce as tax, based on the average yield of a particular area; in addition he also collected tax on pastures. But despite these high tax demands, peasants were on the whole better off under Ala-ud-din than under most other sultans, for his high tax demands were balanced by measures providing security to villagers from marauders, protecting them from exploitation by village headmen, and encouraging them to expand cultivation.
Unlike most other sultans, Ala-ud-din collected agricultural taxes directly from peasants though his officers, and did not depend on village chieftains for tax collection, because the vested interests of the chieftains clashed with the interests of the state as well as of the cultivators. He also rescinded the tax exemptions and privileges that village chieftains traditionally enjoyed, and treated all farmers on par. Further, he abolished the system of collective tax on villages, but taxed each farmer individually, so that the village chieftains did not transfer their tax burden on to the common villagers, as they used to do.
All this considerably increased the administrative burden of the state, but Ala-ud-din met that challenge by appointing an army of officers to deal with land revenue assessment, collection, and audit. Later Firuz Tughluq also sought to systematise land revenue assessment and collection. One of the radical measures he took in this matter was to organise a six-year survey of agricultural production in the empire, which enabled him to make an informed estimate of the revenue potential of the empire, and tailor his tax demand accordingly.
JIZYA WAS ANOTHER source of revenue for the Muslim state. This was a tax imposed by Muslim states on zimmis, protected non-Muslims, and its collection was mandatory for Muslim rulers. It was a discriminatory communal tax, but its collection imposed certain reciprocal obligations on Muslim rulers, to protect the life and property of non-Muslims, to grant them the freedom to live according to their traditional way of life, and to perform their customary religious rites without any hindrance. In the early history of Islam the zimmi privilege was granted only to Jews and Christians, but it was extended to the followers of other religions when the political power of Muslims extended beyond Arabia.
Did Hindus merit to be treated as zimmis? Some Muslim theologians held that they did not, and that they should be forced to become Muslims or be killed. But this was not a sensible or practical idea. Hindus were far too many to be exterminated. Besides, they had a crucial and indispensable role in Indian economy, particularly in agriculture, which was entirely dependent on their labour. It was in fact the labour of Hindus that that provided the Muslim state its sustenance. Hindus also provided many essential services in the Muslim army and administration. Their contributions were an absolute requirement for the very survival of the Sultanate.
But there was a curious anomaly in the collection of jizya in India, for Brahmins, who headed the Hindu society, were exempted from this tax. This was presumably because Brahmins played an important and essential role in running the administration of Muslim states, as officers and clerks. Further, Brahmins were not considered an economically productive people, so they could be exempted from jizya, just like the other people considered to be non-productive, such as women, were exempted from it. It was also probably feared that antagonising Brahmins, the most revered people in Hindu society, would antagonise a large section of the Indian population, and make the administration of the country difficult. Most sultans therefore exempted Brahmins from jizya. But these considerations did not influence hyper-orthodox Firuz Tughluq, and he imposed jizya on Brahmins, as on other Hindus, though at a reduced rate.
Jizya was a poll tax, not an income tax. However, for the fair distribution of the burden of jizya, non-Muslims were divided into three economic groups—the affluent, the middle class, and the commoners—paying different amounts of the tax. The actual amount charged on the people of each of these categories is given variously in different medieval texts, but their ratio seems to have been the same as what Arabs charged on non-Muslims during their rule in Sind, requiring the affluent to pay 48 dirhams a year, the middle class 24 dirhams, and the others 12 dirhams. Women, children, and the disabled, as well as government servants, were exempted from this tax. In towns jizya was collected separately from each individual, but in villages it was usually assessed as a collective tax. The collection of jizya does not seem to have been rigorously enforced in the Delhi Sultanate, and it does not seem to have been a major source of revenue for the state.
Similar to jizya paid by Hindus, Muslims paid an alms tax called zakat. The revenue from zakat was not allowed to be used for state expenses, but was for distribution in charity among needy Muslims and Muslim institutions. In fact, under Firuz Tughluq the revenue from zakat was remitted into a separate treasury. Zakat was not a poll tax, but a wealth tax, and was collected as a percentage of the wealth of individual Muslims. But it was charged only on the wealth that was in the possession of an individual for at least one full year. This provision was often misused by people to evade the tax, by transferring their property to a wife at the end of a year and then repossessing it at the beginning of the following year.
Yet another source of income for the Muslim state was booty, collected during wars. The Sharia prescription on this was that one-fifth of the booty collected may be kept by the sultan for charitable and religious purposes, and that the rest should be distributed among soldiers. But the Delhi sultans (except Firuz Tughluq) usually reversed this ratio, and took four-fifth of the booty for themselves, and gave only one-fifth to soldiers. This reversal was justified by the sultans on the ground that while Muslim soldiers had originally received no salary but only a share of the booty—as they were not employees, but partners in a common endeavour—later, as soldiers were recruited as employees of the state, they merited only one-fifth share of the booty, for they were then paid regular salaries by the state all through the year, whether they were deployed in war or not.
Plunder, similar to war booty, was another major source of revenue for the state. Plundering raids were a legitimate state activity in medieval India, and the sultans as well as the rajas periodically launched these raids into neighbouring kingdoms, to replenish their treasury. The other normal revenue sources for the state were judicial fines, and the presents that the king received from favour seekers.
Tax collection was a difficult task for the state in early medieval India, because of the general laxity of administration in those days, in Hindu as well as Muslim kingdoms. Besides, people everywhere and at all times were reluctant to pay taxes, especially so in medieval India, as very few people there had any disposable income, and in any case they received hardly any benefits from their rulers. Kings therefore often had to use force to collect taxes; sometimes they even had to send their soldiers into the refractory villages to plunder the people there, as that was the only way to collect the tax dues from them.
The state was usually assisted in tax collection by the village headmen, who normally received 2.5 per cent of the collection as their reward. The headmen themselves did not normally (except under the rigorous rule of Ala-ud-din) pay any taxes, or even pay jizya (presumably because they considered themselves to be government officers) but enjoyed various perquisites. In the Delhi Sultanate tax collection was sometimes farmed out to officers, who were required to remit a fixed annual amount into the state treasury, irrespective of their actual revenue collection, whether high or low.
Despite all the irregularities and inefficiencies in revenue administration, sultans and rajas usually had overflowing coffers. ‘In the king’s treasury there are chambers, with excavations in them, filled with molten gold, forming one mass,’ writes Razzak about Vijayanagar. The raja there maintained two treasuries, one to meet the current expenditure of the kingdom, and the other to store savings to meet emergencies. Under Krishnadeva, the ideal was to divide the state revenue into four equal parts: one part for palace expenditure and charity, two parts for the army, and the remaining part for depositing in the reserve treasury.
THE LAWS THAT applied to Hindus and Muslims in a Muslim state were entirely different—while Muslims were subject to Sharia (the prescriptions of the Koran and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad) it was caste rules and local conventions that applied to Hindus. Though Hindus were normally subject only to their own laws, if one of the litigants in a case was a Muslim, the matter had to be taken to a Muslim court, and judged according to Sharia.
The Hindu legal system was incredibly complex, as its laws and legal conventions, as well as its legal institutions and practices, varied from place to place and caste to caste. An act considered as an abominable crime in one caste could be considered as a perfectly legitimate act in another caste, and what was considered as the lawful punishment for a crime in one caste could be considered as entirely unlawful for the same crime in another caste. And, as these rules were enforced by caste courts, political authority had only a marginal role in the process.
Even in the case of the Muslim legal system there was a good amount of variability in the law that was applicable in any given situation. Though Muslim law everywhere in the world was based on Sharia, these were only guidelines, and what law applied in any specific case depended on the interpretations of Sharia by the ulama (religious scholars), and these interpretations varied from country to country, sect to sect, and from scholar to scholar.
The sultan, advised by his chief qazi (judge), was the highest judicial authority in a Muslim state. In the case of capital punishments, the judgements of the lower courts had to be brought before the sultan, and his confirmation was required before the sentence could be executed. Further, the sultan could intervene in the administration of justice at any point, and when he did that, his decision, whether it was in conformity with conventions or not, invariably prevailed.
In Delhi the sultans usually set aside certain days in the week to deal with people’s complaints—Muhammad Tughluq, for instance, heard complaints on Mondays and Thursdays—but they were normally accessible to suppliants on other days too. Iltutmish even set up at the entrance of his palace a great bell that people could ring to draw his attention and seek justice. People could even sue the sultan in a court of law—there are recorded instances of Muhammad Tughluq appearing humbly in a qazi’s court and submitting to its judgement against him. On the other hand, if anyone, however great he might be, incurred the wrath of the sultan, he was often summarily executed without any trial.
As in Muslim kingdoms so also in Hindu kingdoms the highest judicial authority was the king. And in both systems there was a hierarchy of courts beneath the king. In the Hindu system, the lowest courts were the village panchayat courts and the caste courts. Appeals could be made against the judgement of a lower court to a higher court, and ultimately to the king. The rajas, like the sultans, were usually accessible to anyone seeking justice. In Vijayanagar, according to Nuniz, ‘when anyone suffers wrong and wishes to represent his case to the king he shows how great is his suffering by lying flat on his face on the ground till they ask him what it s he wants.’ In the Muslim judicial system there were normally four types of courts: the Diwan-i-mazalim, the court of complaints, presided over by the sultan or his representative; the qazi’s court, which administered the law of Islam; the court of the muhtasib, which dealt with issues of public morals and offenses against religious ordinances; and the shurta, police courts.
Despite all these elaborate legal systems and hierarchy of courts, the treatment of criminals in early medieval India, in Hindu as well as in Muslim states, was usually arbitrary and often horribly barbarous. Suspects were invariably tortured to extract confession from them—and tortured so savagely that they often confessed even to the crimes they had not committed, preferring execution to torture. ‘People consider death a lighter affliction than torture,’ notes Battuta.
The punishment of rebels by the state in medieval India was particularly savage, and involved mutilation, impalement, flaying alive, hacking off limbs, trampling by elephants, being shot through a cannon, and so on. Sometimes an entire group of people was summarily executed, on suspicion of being rebels or thieving tribes. Thus Balban, when he was serving Sultan Nasir-ud-din Mahmud as the Lord Chamberlain, slaughtered the entire lot of hill tribes living in the environs of Delhi, because they were all, according to Siraj, a thirteenth-century chronicler, ‘thieves, robbers, and highwaymen.’ This carnage went on for twenty days, butchering all who were caught. Balban, according to Siraj, offered his soldiers ‘a silver tanka for every [severed] head, and two tankas for every man brought in alive.’ Many of those captured were cast under the feet of elephants. ‘About a hundred met their death at the hands of flayers, being skinned from head to foot; their skins were all then stuffed with straw, and some of them were hung over every gate of the city.’
Battuta, who was in Delhi during the reign of Muhammad Tughluq, has left a vivid description of how elephants were used to execute rebels and criminals. ‘The elephants which execute men have their tusks covered with sharp irons, resembling the coulter of the plough . . . and with edges like those of knives . . . When a person is thrown in front [of the elephant], the animal winds its trunk round him, hurls him up into the air, and catching him on one of its tusks, dashes him to the ground . . . [And then it] places one of its feet on the breast of the victim’ and crushes him to death.
The punishments meted out to traitorous royal relatives and high nobles were particularly fiendish in the Delhi Sultanate, because they posed the greatest threat to the sultan. According to Battuta, Muhammad Tughluq once had a rebellious prince ‘skinned alive . . . His flesh was then cooked with rice, and some of it was sent to his children and his wife, and the remainder was put in a great dish and given to elephants to eat, but they would not touch it. The sultan ordered his skin to be stuffed with straw, and . . . exhibited throughout the country.’
THE DREAD OF such savage punishments by kings was the primary means for preserving law and order in early medieval India, as it was in ancient India, for, as the Hindu lawgiver Manu held, ‘the whole world is controlled by punishment, for a guiltless man is hard to find.’ This was acknowledged even by Firuz Tughluq, one of the most humane of the Delhi sultans. ‘In the reigns of former sultans the blood of many Mussulmans had been shed, and many varieties of torture employed,’ writes the sultan in his memoirs. ‘Amputation of hands and feet, ears and noses, tearing out the eyes, pouring molten led into the throat, crushing the bone of the hand and feet with mallets, burning the body with fire, driving iron nails into the hands, feet, and bosom, cutting the sinews, sawing men asunder; these and many similar tortures were practised . . . All these things were practised so that fear and dread might fall upon the hearts of man, and that the regulations of government might be duly maintained.’
Not only were the punishments savage, but its savagery was ostentatiously put on display to horrify people, and thus to deter them from committing offences. Thus when a top official in Ghazni, who had incurred the displeasure of Sultan Masud, was executed, his body was kept on the gibbet for seven years, so ‘his feet dropped off and his corpse entirely dried up, so that not a remnant of him was left to be taken down and buried,’ records Baihaqi. And in Delhi, according to Battuta, ‘it is the custom with this people that whenever the sultan orders the execution of a person, he is despatched at the door of the hall of audience, and his body left there for three days . . . It was only rarely that the corpse of someone who had been executed was not seen at the gate of the palace.’ This was done even to the princes who were suspected of disaffection. Nor were royal ladies spared—thus during the reign of Muhammad Tughluq a princess, who was suspected of debauchery, was stoned in public at the entrance of the durbar hall. The only sultan of Delhi who abolished these barbaric practices was Firuz Tughluq. ‘Through the mercy which god has shown to me these severities and terrors have been exchanged for tenderness, kindness and mercy,’ he writes.
Vijayanagar and Bahmani kings also inflicted barbarous punishments similar to those inflicted by the Delhi sultans. ‘The punishments that they inflict in this kingdom are these: for a thief, whatever theft he commits, however little it be, they forthwith cut off a foot and a hand, and if his theft be a great one he is hanged with a hook under his chin,’ notes Nuniz about the practices in Vijayanagar. ‘If a man outrages a respectable woman or a virgin, he has the same punishment . . . Nobles who become traitors are sent to be impaled alive on wooden stakes thrust through the belly. And people of the lower orders, for whatever crime they commit, . . . [the raja] forthwith commands to cut off their heads in the market-place. And the same [is done] for a murder, unless the death was the result of a duel.’ In the Bahmani Sultanate during the reign of Nizam Shah, when a rebel noble was executed, ‘his body was hewn in pieces, which were affixed on different buildings,’ records Ferishta.
THE ROUTINE POLICING of their kingdoms was not an onerous burden for Indian kings, for Indian villages were self-administering, and they generally policed themselves. The main policing task of Indian states was therefore confined to the cities. In this, the scene varied considerably from city to city. According to a rather incredible report of Abdur Razzak, Kozhikode in north Kerala was a haven of peace and security in the mid-fifteenth century. ‘Security and justice are so firmly established in this city,’ he writes, ‘that the most wealthy merchants bring thither from maritime countries considerable cargoes, which they unload, and unhesitatingly send them into the market and bazaars, without thinking in the meantime of any necessity of checking the account, or of keeping watch over the goods.’
The scene in most other Indian cities was entirely different, and they required elaborate law enforcement setups to preserve order in them. The head of the town police in Muslim states was the kotwal, who worked in tandem with the military officers in the town. His main responsibility was to maintain law and order in the city, but he was also responsible for the upkeep of public utilities and for the regulation of markets. He also had diverse social responsibilities, such as the prevention of the circumcision of boys under twelve years age, the prevention of forced sati, the expulsion of religious impostors and charlatans, and so on. At night the towns were patrolled by the police. ‘Throughout the night the town of Bidar is guarded by 1000 men . . . mounted on horses in full armour, each carrying a light,’ reports Nikitin. The town gates were usually closed at sunset for security reasons, and would not be opened again till morning; those who arrived at the town after its gates were closed had to spend the night outside the town walls, but there were inns there for their accommodation.
Protecting the frontiers of their kingdom was a major concern of Indian rulers, and the Delhi sultans paid special attention to this, particularly in guarding their ever-vulnerable north-west frontier. ‘When we reached this river called Panj-ab, which is the frontier of the territories of the sultan of India and Sind, the officials of the intelligence service came to us and sent a report about us to the governor of the city of Multan,’ reports Battuta about his experiences at the frontier. ‘When the intelligence officials write to the sultan informing him of those who arrive in his country, he studies the report very minutely. The reporters therefore take utmost care in this matter, telling the sultan that a certain man has arrived of such-and-such appearance and dress, and noting the number of his party, salves and servants and beasts, his behaviour both in action and at rest, and all his doings, omitting no detail. When the new arrival reaches the town of Multan, which is the capital of Sind, he stays there until an order is received from the sultan regarding his entry and the degree of hospitality to be extended to him. A man is honoured in that country according to what may be seen of his actions, conduct, and zeal, since no one knows anything about his family or lineage . . . On the road to Multan . . . [at a river crossing] the goods and baggage of all who pass are subjected to a rigorous examination. Their custom at the time of our arrival was to take a quarter of everything brought in by merchants, and exact a duty of seven dinars for every horse.’
GATHERING INTELLIGENCE AND maintaining an efficient communication network were matters of high priority for most Indian rulers. Battuta was greatly impressed by the intelligence network of the Delhi Sultanate, by which the sultan was kept regularly and speedily informed about all that was happening in the various parts of his empire. This system was initially set up by Ala-ud-din Khalji, but it fell into disuse after him, till it was restored by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq. According to Battuta, the postmaster (chief intelligence officer) of a region ‘is the person who keeps the sultan informed of the affairs in his town and district and all that happens in it and all who come to it.’
‘In India the postal service is of two kinds,’ continues Battuta. ‘The mounted couriers travel on horses belonging to the sultan, with relays at every four miles. The service of couriers on foot is organised in the following manner. At every third of a mile there is an inhabited village, outside which there are three pavilions. In these sit men girded up and ready to move off, each of whom has a rod a yard and a half long with brass bells at the top. When a courier leaves the town he takes the letter in . . . one hand, and the rod with bells in the other, and runs with all his might. The men in the pavilions, on hearing the sound of bells, prepare to meet him, and when he reaches them one of them takes the letter in his hand and passes on, running with all his might and shaking his rod until he reaches the next station, and so the letter is passed on till it reaches its destination. This post is quicker than the mounted post. It is sometimes used to transport fruits from Khurasan which are highly valued in India; they are put in covered baskets and carried with great speed to the sultan. In the same way they transport notorious criminals; they are each placed on a wooden frame and the couriers run carrying it on their heads. The sultan’s drinking water is brought to him by the same means when he resides at Daulatabad, from the river Kank (Ganga) . . . which is at a distance of forty days’ journey from there.’
Apart from this government postal system, there seems to have been also a private postal system in medieval India, presumably maintained by prominent trade guilds. The carriers of this system stationed themselves at markets and announced the names of those for whom he was carrying mail, so they could go to him and collect their letters.