The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  This egalitarianism of Muslim society was particularly evident in the early history of the Delhi Sultanate, during which there was, till the reign of Balban, no great status difference even between the sultan and his nobles. The sultan was then more a leader than a ruler, a primus inter pares. Later however sultans generally claimed that the occupation of the throne endowed them with farr, divine effulgence, which distinguished them from all others. But whatever be their pretence, the real basis of royal authority, of sultans as well as of rajas, was their military might, their ability to coerce others to submit to their will. In principle the primary duty of kings was to protect their subjects and to provide for their welfare, but in practice their primary concern, often their sole concern, was to preserve and expand their power.

  The throne however was no bed of roses. The sultan, for all his great power, led a perilous life, for the sword of an enemy or a rebel always hung over his head. But these perils were more than compensated by the incredible powers and privileges that he enjoyed, particularly his godlike power over the lives and fortunes of his subjects.

  The primary concern of most medieval rulers, sultans as well as rajas, was to retain their seat on the throne. But some of them were also, commendably, keen and knowledgeable patrons of art, literature and learning, and some were distinguished scholars and writers themselves. These cultural accomplishments however made virtually no difference in their performance as rulers; in that it was only their administrative and military capabilities that really mattered. Muhammad Tughluq was probably the most erudite of the Delhi sultans, but he was a pathetic failure as a ruler; on the other hand, Ala-ud-din Khalji was illiterate, but was the most successful of the Delhi sultans.

  But even under capable rulers, the story of most medieval Indian kingdoms was marred by internal upheavals. The politics of the Delhi Sultanate during most of its history was, typically, a dizzying whirl of Byzantine conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, in which life was nightmarish for those in the inner circle of power. No one, including the sultan, was ever secure in his office, or even safe in his life. For instance, among the five descendants of Iltutmish who sat on the throne of Delhi, all except one were overthrown and killed.

  The main reason for this ever-swirling political chaos was that there were no well-defined and generally accepted rules of royal succession. The throne belonged to whoever could seize it. Imprisoning or killing one’s rivals—even one’s father or brother—to gain or to secure the throne was not considered a crime, but as legitimate and normal political conduct. Kings were often murderers. In India, as Mughal emperor Babur would later remark in his memoirs, ‘there is … this peculiarity … that any person who kills the ruler and occupies the throne becomes the ruler himself. The amirs, viziers, soldiers and peasants submit to him at once and obey him.’

  MEDIEVAL INDIAN STATES were all essentially military dictatorships, established and preserved through military action. The primary occupation of most of their kings was waging wars, to suppress rebellions, to defend or expand their kingdom, and to gather plunder. They were all warlords. They ruled over the kingdom, but rarely governed it. Civil administration, except revenue collection, had only a low priority for most kings. With very rare exceptions, providing good government and caring for the welfare of the people hardly ever concerned them.

  Even the maintenance of law and order had only a low priority for most medieval Indian kings. Lawlessness was therefore widely prevalent in medieval India. There were countless robber bands in jungles all over India at this time, and whenever the political authority weakened they rampaged through the countryside, at times even through towns, pillaging and killing people. Protection against them was primarily the concern of the local people, seldom that of the king. And when the king acted against brigands, it was mainly to safeguard his revenue, hardly ever to protect the people. Indeed, kings themselves at times acted like brigands, pillaging their own subjects, to collect the overdue taxes from them.

  One of the most disturbing aspects of the medieval Indian kingdoms was the universality of corruption in them, from the highest to the lowest level. Taking bribes was not a secret, devious act in India at this time, but was done openly, and was widely accepted as the normal and natural state of affairs by everyone. 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 they received were treated as presents, not bribes. And just as subordinates gave bribes to their superiors to win favours from them, superiors often gave bribes to their subordinates to secure their loyalty, except that these offerings were also called presents, not bribes. Loyalty was invariably on sale in medieval India. Nearly everyone, at all levels of government and society, was perfidious.

  Curiously, despite all the socio-political turbulences in medieval India, normal life seems to have been fairly comfortable for most people there, though only at the very basic level. India was blessed with rich natural resources, so the one essential survival requirement of the common people, food, was easily available for all at affordable prices in normal times. What is shocking about the medieval Indian society is the appalling disparity between the incredible opulence and wanton lifestyle of the ruling class and the dreary subsistence level existence of the common people. ‘Those in the country are very miserable, whilst the nobles are extremely opulent and delight in luxury,’ observes Athanasius Nikitin, a Russian traveller in India in the fifteenth century.

  The worst horror that the common people in medieval India had to face in their normal life was the visitation of famine which ravaged the land periodically. Agricultural production at this time was almost wholly dependent on the monsoon, so when the rains failed, famine felled thousands and thousands of people in one sweep. And those who survived did so by eating whatever they could find, however filthy or rotten, even putrefied carrion, and by taking to cannibalism. ‘One day I went out of the city, and I saw three women … cutting into pieces and eating the skin of a horse which had been dead some months,’ reports Battuta. ‘Skins were cooked and sold in the markets. When bullocks were slaughtered, crowds rushed forward to catch the blood, and consumed it for their sustenance.’ Adds Barani: ‘Famine was very severe, and man was devouring man.’

  THE SOCIO-CULTURAL AND political profile of India changed radically with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. Never before in its millenniums-long history had India faced a challenge as potent and irreconcilable as that of Turco-Afghans, and never before had it failed to absorb invaders and migrants smoothly into its society and culture.

  India at the time of the Turkish invasion had been in a dormant state for several centuries, remaining hermetically sealed within the subcontinent, with virtually no contact with the outside world. One would have expected that the Turkish invasion would awaken India from its slumber and stimulate it to transform itself to meet the Turkish challenge. But what happened was the opposite of this: instead of responding to the challenge of Islam, Hindu society curled up tighter into itself.

  The aggressive presence of Turks in India made virtually no difference in the life and culture of most Indians. Nor did the contact with Hindus make any notable difference in the life and culture of most Muslims. Their civilisations were totally unlike each other in every respect to have any major influence on each other.

  Hindus were treated as second class citizens in Muslim states, but as citizens nevertheless. They had their own rights. In any case, the discriminatory treatment that Hindus received at the hands of Muslim rulers would not have troubled them much, for most Indian communities were subject to worse discrimination in their own sharply stratified caste society. True, Hindus and Muslims did live separately and did not mix socially; but then so did the different Hindu castes live separately and did not mix socially. Even in the matter of jizya, not many Hindus would have felt it as a particularly discriminative tax, for Muslims too had to pay a community tax, zakat. Besides,
jizya was usually imposed on individuals only in towns, while in villages, where most Hindus lived, it was assessed as a collective tax. Muslim rulers did slaughter a large number of Hindus, and demolish many of their temples and shrines, but Hindus seem to have taken all that fatalistically, as they normally did with nearly everything else in their lives.

  There was hardly any display of resentment by Hindus against Turks. Nor were there any notable communal clashes during the many-centuries-long Muslim rule in India. This was largely because the establishment of Muslim rule in India made no notable difference in the lives of most Hindus, as most of them lived in villages, where there were scarcely any Muslims, and the lives of the people there were largely unaffected by the establishment of Muslim rule.

  The only Hindu class that suffered any great material or social deprivation under Muslim rule was the ruling class, particularly the rajas, most of whom lost of their wealth and power. But several of the rajas saved some of their status and wealth by serving the sultans in subordinate positions. Similarly, most Hindu zamindars and chieftains served the sultans in various administrative capacities. And so did Brahmins, presumably in large numbers, and they were therefore rewarded by the sultans (except Firuz Tughluq) by exempting them, as a community, from the payment of jizya. As for Hindu commoners, very many of them served in the army and the administration of the sultans. Hindus quite probably constituted the majority of government employees in Muslim states. In a sense it was Hindus who ran the government for the sultans.

  HINDUISM, BEING A non-proselytizing religion, posed no threat to Islam. Rather, being a polymorphic religion, it was tolerant and accommodative towards Islam, as it was towards its own diverse castes and sects. But the tolerance of Hindu society was tolerance by segregation; it was in fact a form of intolerance. Every community was free to live in whichever way it liked, but none was allowed to intrude into the cultural or social space of other communities. This meant that Hindu society, despite its appearance of tolerance, was in fact a highly discriminatory, inequitable and intolerant society, which sharply and unalterably segregated people by religion, sect and caste, and treated each group differently.

  However, Hindu caste segregation involved no overt oppression, as it was birth determined, and was not the result of any social action by any group. Nor did caste segregation lead to any notable social tension. Even though segregation was an oppressive practice, lower caste Hindus did not generally feel oppressed by it, but accepted the circumstances of their life fatalistically, as a natural and inevitable outcome of the transmigratory process, the conditions of their life being predestined by their acts in their previous lives. Besides, the pervasive fatalistic attitude of the Indians of the age made them passively accept the conditions of their life, whatever those conditions were, and not struggle against them, as they believed that those conditions were inexorably fated by their karma.

  And, paradoxical though it might seem, India’s social diversity was the basis of its social cohesion and efficiency, for the different castes, though they were rigidly segregated from each other socially, were tightly integrated with each other in their functions, with each caste, from the highest to the lowest, including the outcastes, occupying a specific social niche and providing an exclusive and indispensible service in society. The different castes were like the different organs and limbs of a living being.

  The caste society was a cooperative society. The diverse castes in it were not adversaries, but co-operators. And together they all constituted one cohesive society. The caste system thus enabled Hindu society, despite its diversity and appalling inequity, to function efficiently and peacefully for very many centuries.

  Unfortunately, the caste system had a negative side to it, which nullified most of its benefits—it was a singularly unjust system, and was awfully wasteful of human resources, for its division of labour was based not on the merit of individuals, but on their birth. And it kept society sedated, in a state of coma, precluding mutation and progress.

  In contrast to this birth-determined social segregation in Hindu society, Muslim society was basically egalitarian. Similarly, though both Hindu and Muslim societies had slaves, their treatment of slaves was entirely different from each other. Being a slave in Muslim society, unlike in Hindu society, was not an insurmountable handicap or degradation, for all professional and political avenues were open to slaves, depending on their ability.

  As in the case of slaves, Hindu and Muslim societies differed greatly in their treatment of women. In upper-class Muslim society, women had to observe purdah, and were secluded in the zenana, the female quarters of their home. They were not allowed to have any contact with any men other than the members of their immediate family. And when they appeared in public, they had to wear the burqa, a shapeless, sack-like outer garment that covered their entire body from head to foot, leaving only a narrow veiled opening over the eyes. There were no such restrictions on Hindu women. However, Hindu women were not normally allowed to own property or to divorce their husband, but these rights were enjoyed by Muslim women.

  Another difference in the social practices of Hindus and Muslims was that while some Hindu communities, such as Rajputs, considered the birth of a girl child as a misfortune, and female infanticide was widespread among them, that practice was strictly prohibited in Muslim society. Similarly, while polyandry and matrilineal families were common in some Hindu communities—particularly among Nairs in Kerala—these were virtually unknown in Muslim society. On the other hand, deviant sexual practices, like homosexuality and pederasty, were very rare among Hindus, but were fairly common among Muslims. Even some of the sultans were bisexual or homosexual, and some held court dressed as women.

  A SOCIAL PRACTICE that was widely prevalent in medieval India, among Hindus as well Muslims, was polygamy. Muslims were however permitted to have only four wives, but in Hindu society there was no restriction at all about the number of wives a man could have. As for concubines, both societies permitted men to have as many of them as they desired or could afford, with some kings and nobles maintaining incredibly large harems. For instance, the sultan Begarha of Gujarat, according to contemporary chroniclers, had as many as 4000 women in his harem.

  As for prostitution, Hindus and Muslims held totally opposite views on it. Islam considered prostitution as a major sin, but Hindus viewed it as a normal and legitimate aspect of social life. In ancient India, in the Mauryan Empire for instance, there were even state run brothels. Similarly, in medieval India brothels were run as a government sanctioned service in Vijayanagar.

  Another oddity in medieval Hindu society was the practice of ritual suicide, in which people in woe or debility, because of illness or old age, drowned themselves in a holy river, such as Ganga, to escape from the miseries of life and to attain salvation. Jauhar, mass ritual suicide, was yet another Hindu practice, but this was restricted to the ruling class and the military aristocracy. Another form of ritual suicide—again practised mainly, though not exclusively, by the Hindu aristocracy—was sati, self-immolation by the widow or widows of a dead king or chieftain on his funeral pyre.

  Islam considered all these as abominable practices, but it was only very rarely that sultans intervened in them, for Hindus as zimmis were normally free to practice their traditional customs without any interference. It was in any case impossible to lay down uniform rules in dealing with Hindu social and religious practices, for there were countless variations in them, depending on sect and caste and region.

  As in social practices, so also there were great variations in the cuisine and dining practices of Indians, and these had become quite rigid in early medieval times. Society in ancient and early classical India was quite permissive in the matter of food, and allowed all, irrespective of their class and sex, including the priestly class, the freedom to eat whatever they liked, even beef, drink alcohol, and take psychotropic drugs. The scene changed altogether in the middle of the first millennium CE, when the caste system tightened its iron
grip on Hindu society. Caste regulations then defined and enforced the rules about food and drink applicable to each caste, and these rules played a crucial role in segregating castes. The old adage that you are what you eat thus acquired a new meaning in India.

  Some of the nobles of early medieval India were incredible gluttons. Battuta, for instance, speaks of an Ethiopian officer in India who ‘was tall and corpulent, and used to eat a whole sheep at a meal, and … [drink] about a pound and a half of ghee.’ Even more fantastic were the dietary practices attributed to Sultan Begarha of Gujarat, a man of gigantic size and gargantuan appetite, who, according to legend, ate about fourteen kilos of food every day, and, most curious of all, his daily diet included a swig of poison!

  HINDU CIVILISATION WAS in an awful state of degeneration in early medieval times, especially when compared with its marvellous effulgence in the preceding age. This decline affected all facets of Indian civilisation. Culture putrefied. The caste system straitjacketed society, thereby hampering human enterprise and thwarting social progress. Commercial economy collapsed, and India gradually subsided into a stagnant, barely self-sustaining agrarian economy. Towns decayed; many of them were deserted, and they turned into crumbling relics. Instead of the urban sophistication that had characterised the classical Indian civilisation, now, in the early medieval period, crude rusticity characterised it. There was no more any creative energy in Indian civilisation. ‘I can only compare their mathematical and astronomical literature, as far as I know it, to a mixture … of pearls and dung, or of costly crystals and common pebbles,’ comments Al-Biruni.

  This dismal state of Indian culture worsened further during the Delhi Sultanate period, because the main sustenance of cultural activity in pre-modern times was royal patronage, and Indian culture lost that patronage at this time, as most of the Hindu kingdoms had been conquered by Turks. Indian culture at this time also suffered from the vandalization and destruction of some of India’s ancient cultural institutions and religious structures by Turks, most notably the demolition of the renowned Buddhist university of Nalanda in Bihar. Fortunately such destruction was mostly confined to the early period of the Delhi Sultanate. Some later sultans even took special care to preserve India’s cultural heritage. The contribution of Firuz Tughluq in this was particularly commendable, such as he arranging for the translation of several ancient Sanskrit texts into Persian, and the meticulous care with which he had two Asoka pillars—they were over one and a half millenniums old—transported from the provinces to Delhi and erecting them there. Another commendable trans-cultural activity of the age was the contribution of some Muslim scholars, Al-Biruni in particular, in deferentially studying Indian culture and writing books on them.