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 some
times, 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 me
dieval 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 Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate Page 11
