The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  Meticulous care was taken in excavating and transporting the pillars, and this is described in detail by Afif.2 The pillars evoked the admiration of Timur when he occupied Delhi in 1398. ‘During his stay of some days in Delhi, he inspected all the monuments of former kings, and among them these two obelisks,’ writes Afif. ‘He declared that in all the countries he had traversed he had never seen any monuments comparable to these.’

  WE KNOW NOTHING about Firuz’s family life, but he had a number of sons, of whom his favourite was his eldest son, Fath Khan, who was born when the sultan was marching to Delhi after his accession in Sind. He was a talented prince, and when he died in 1374 it shattered the aged sultan, who was then in his late sixties, and he rapidly slid into mental and physical decline. For a while he even withdrew from his royal duties. Later he resumed work and carried on for over a decade. Towards the end of this period, in 1387, there was a virtual civil war fought in the streets of Delhi, between the supporters of Khan Jahan, the powerful minister who had become the de facto ruler of the empire during Firuz’s debility, and the supporters of Muhammad Shah, Firuz’s eldest surviving son and heir-apparent. In this, the prince prevailed. Firuz, now over eighty years old and rather senile, then appointed Muhammad Shah as his co-ruler, and conferred on him the royal title.

  Unfortunately, the prince was a sybarite; he had no serious interest in governance, but devoted himself almost entirely to sensual pleasures. And this once again led to a civil strife, a popular uprising in Delhi, which forced Muhammad to flee from the city. Firuz then appointed Ghiyas-ud-din, son of Fath Khan, as the co-ruler of the empire. Firuz died soon after, in September 1388, aged 83 and, according to contemporary chronicler Sirhindi, ‘worn out with weakness.’

  The reign of Firuz was the golden age of the Delhi Sultanate, especially in terms of the contentment of the people. ‘During the reign of Firuz Shah … all men, high and low, bond and free, lived happily and free from care … Things were plentiful and cheap, and the people were well to do … Nothing in the least degree unpleasant or disagreeable happened during his reign … The sultan being beneficent, all men, high and low, were devoted to him.’ states Afif. Confirms Sirhindi: ‘There has been no king in Delhi so just and merciful, so kind and religious, or such a builder [as Sultan Firuz]. His justice won for him the hearts of his subjects … It was in no way possible that during the reign of this sovereign any strong man could tyrannise the weak. God Almighty took this gentle, beneficent and just king to his everlasting rest, after a reign of thirty-seven years and nine months.’

  As an orthodox Muslim ruler over an alien, pagan people, Firuz obligatorily discriminated against his Hindu subjects, and was often oppressive and sanguinary towards them. But even in these matters his policies and actions were moderate compared to those of most other Delhi sultans, and were on the whole more than compensated by his general regard for the welfare of all his subjects. If Muslims had good reason to rejoice in the reign of Firuz, so had Hindus. Concludes modern historian Wolseley Haig: ‘The reign of Firuz … [marks] the most brilliant epoch of Muslim rule in India before the reign of Akbar.’

  {5}

  Timurid Tornado

  ‘The city of Delhi has been turned upside down,’ bemoans Afif about the conditions there following the death of Firuz. The subsequent story of the Tughluq dynasty is a dreary tale of assassinations, usurpations and rebellions; and of feckless, worthless sultans, and their overweening, faithless ministers, who treated their masters as puppets in their hands. During the twenty-four years between the death of Firuz Tughluq in 1388 and the overthrow of the Tughluq dynasty by Khizr Khan—the founder of the Sayyid dynasty—in 1412, as many as five sultans occupied the throne of Delhi. Of them, the longest reign was that of Nasir-ud-din Mahmud Shah, which lasted 18 years, while the shortest reign, that of Ala-ud-din Sikandar Shah, lasted just six weeks. The successors of Firuz are notable only for their utter insignificance.

  During this period there were sometimes two rival kings in the Sultanate, ruling from different cities at the same time. And on a couple of occasions the imperial capital itself was divided between contending sultans, and civil war raged through the streets of the city. And once when a sultan returned to Delhi after a military campaign he had to suffer the humiliation of the city gates being shut against him by a rebel officer, who kept him waiting there for about three months. Sometimes the royal officers sent to suppress rebellions themselves turned rebels. And as power weakened at the centre, the empire began to disintegrate, and several of its provinces became independent kingdoms.

  On the death of Firuz his grandson Ghiyas-ud-din, whom the sultan had designated as his successor, ascended the throne. But he turned out to be an utterly worthless ruler, frivolous and addicted to sensual pleasures. He ‘was young and inexperienced,’ comments Sirhindi. ‘He knew nothing of politics, and had seen none of the wiles of fickle fortune. So he gave himself to wine and pleasure. The business of government was entirely neglected, and the officers of the late sultan asserted their power so fearlessly that all control of the state was lost.’

  The only notable though not creditable political act of Ghiyas-ud-din was to imprison his brothers, fearing that they would turn out to be threats to his power. But that action, instead of securing his power, directly led to his downfall, as it sent shivers of anxiety through his cousins, and they manoeuvred to save themselves. Abu Bakr, one of his cousins, then secretly fled from Delhi and, joined by several disgruntled nobles, organised a cabal against the sultan.

  The cabal enjoyed wide support among the nobles of Delhi, and this enabled the rebels to enter the city one day without much opposition and storm into the royal palace. Ghiyas-ud-din tried to save himself by fleeing through the rear gate of the palace, but was caught and immediately beheaded. Several of his close associates were also then beheaded, and all these severed heads were then suspended from the gate of the palace, to publicise the overthrow of the sultan. The reign of Ghiyas-ud-din had lasted just six months and eighteen days.

  The rebel nobles then paraded Abu Bakr through the city, seated on an elephant with a canopy over his head, and proclaimed him as the sultan. But the enthronement of Abu Bakr did not end the turmoil in the empire. It merely opened another phase of it, for his accession was immediately challenged by a rival group of nobles, who invited Muhammad, Firuz’s eldest surviving son—who had been briefly the co-ruler of the empire during the last days of Firuz, but had been driven out of the city in a popular uprising because of his wild debauchery—to reclaim the throne. Muhammad then engaged Abu Bakr in a long seesaw tussle, in which he even managed to briefly gain a foothold in Delhi a couple of times, but was driven out on both occasions. However, he finally succeeded in overthrowing Abu Bakr and seizing the throne. Abu Bakr was then sent to prison, where he died a few years later. His reign had lasted nineteen months.

  The rule of Muhammad lasted three and a half years, but all through his reign he was beset with rebellions. ‘The business of the state day by day fell into greater confusion,’ states Sirhindi. ‘Affairs came to such a pass that there were amirs at just twenty kos from Delhi who shook off their allegiance [to the sultan], and made pretensions of independence.’

  Muhammad died in January 1394 and was succeeded by his son Ala-ud-din Sikandar Shah. ‘In a very short time,’ continues Sirhindi, ‘it became evident that the new sultan was even more negligent and incompetent than his father in the duties of government.’ Fortunately, he fell sick and died within a month and a half of his accession. He was then succeeded by his younger brother Nasir-ud-din Mahmud Shah, whose reign of eighteen years was the longest of the successors of Firruz, though it was interrupted by a couple of brief periods when he was out of power.

  Though his reign lasted long, Mahmud was as feckless a ruler as his immediate predecessors. He left the entire business of government to his nobles, particularly to Mallu Khan, a perfidious and overambitious noble who, according to Sirhindi, ‘kept Sultan Mahmud in his power as a
puppet, and himself directed all the affairs of government … The whole business of the state then fell into the greatest disorder. The sultan gave no heed to the duties of his station, and had no care for the permanency of the throne; his whole time was devoted to pleasure and debauchery.’ Inevitably, the disintegration of the empire accelerated under him, both in the loss of territories to rebels and the emasculation of the power of the sultan.

  The political scene in the Sultanate became further confounded at this time, as some nobles raised another grandson of Firuz, Nusrat Shah, to the throne in Firuzabad. So there were now for a time two sultans, one in Delhi and the other in nearby Firuzabad, and this led to a protracted civil war. ‘The government fell into anarchy; civil war raged everywhere, and a scene was exhibited, unheard of before, of two kings in arms against each other residing in the same capital,’ reports Ferishta. ‘Affairs remained in this state for three years.’

  THEN SUDDENLY THE scene changed dramatically. The cause of this change was the invasion of India by Timur. Timur belonged to the Barlas tribe, a Turco-Mongol people who traced their descent to the followers of Genghis Khan. The tribe had settled in Transoxiana in Central Asia, and had over the centuries become Turkish in language and identity, Persianised in culture, and Islamised in religion.

  Timur was the son of a petty chieftain in Transoxiana. This region, like most of the medieval world, was at this time swirling in military conflicts, and Timur was involved in them from his early youth. In one of these battles he was injured in the hip by an arrow, which made him lame, and he thereafter bore the Persian nickname Timur-e Lang: Timur the Lame. Despite that handicap, his career as a military leader progressed dramatically, and by the time he was in his late fifties, he had transformed his small patrimony into a vast empire stretching from the border of China to the Mediterranean, with Samarkand as its capital.

  These Central Asian campaigns occupied Timur most of his life, so it was only towards the end of his life, in 1398, when he was 62, that he turned to invade India. ‘About this time there arose in my heart the desire to lead an expedition against the infidels, and to become a ghazi,’ Timur writes in his autobiography. ‘But I was undetermined in my mind whether I should direct my expedition against the infidels of China or against the infidels and polytheists of India.’

  Timur then consulted his chieftains on this. But they were divided in their opinion. Some warned him against invading India, on the ground that India had four natural defences. ‘The first defence,’ they said, ‘consists of five large rivers, which flow from the mountains of Kashmir … and it is not possible to cross them without boats and bridges. The second defence consists of woods and forests and trees, which, interweaving stem with stem and branch with branch, render it difficult to penetrate into that country. The third defence is the soldiery, and landholders, and princes, and rajas of the county, who inhabit the fastnesses in those forests, and live there like wild beasts. The fourth defence consists of elephants, for the rulers of that country on the day of the battle cover their elephants with mail, and put them in the van of their army … They have trained them to such a pitch that, lifting with their trunks a horse and its rider, and whirling them in the air, they will dash them on the ground.’

  But this view was countered by other nobles, who pointed out that Mahmud Ghazni had ‘conquered … Hindustan with 30,000 horse … and had carried off many thousand loads of gold and silver and jewels from that county, besides subjecting it to a regular tribute.’ And that feat, they assured, could be repeated by Timur, especially as he had 100,000 valiant Tartar horsemen under his command. And the invasion of India would not only earn him heavenly blessings, but also countless material benefits, they asserted. ‘The army will be contented [with booty] and the [royal] treasury will be … well-filled, and with the gold of Hindustan our amir will become a conqueror of the world and famous among the kings of the earth.’ This view was seconded by Timur’s sons. ‘If we conquer India we shall become the rulers over the seven climes,’ a prince said. And another prince added: ‘India is full of gold and jewels, and in it there are seventeen mines of gold and silver, diamond and ruby and emerald and tin and iron and steel and copper and quicksilver etc, and there are there plants fit for making wearing apparel, and aromatic plants, and sugarcane, and it is a country which is always green and verdant, and the whole aspect of the country is pleasant and delightful. And, as the inhabitants [of India] are chiefly infidels … it is right for us to conquer them.’ A third view of the nobles was that it would be good to raid India, but not occupy it. ‘If we establish ourselves permanently therein, our race will degenerate and our children will become like the natives of those regions, and in a few generations their strength and valour will diminish.’

  Timur thought over these diverse views of his nobles and princes, and finally decided to invade India. ‘My object in the invasion of Hindustan,’ he told the assembled nobles, ‘is to lead an expedition against the infidels, so that … we may convert to the true faith the people of that country, and purify the land itself of the filth of infidelity and polytheism, and we may overthrow their temples and idols and become ghazis and mujahids.’

  This was Timur’s declared primary objective for invading India, but he also sought material rewards, the loot of the legendary riches of India, which no doubt was the primary motive of his soldiers. ‘My principal object in coming to Hindustan, and in undergoing all this toil and hardship, has been to accomplish two things,’ he candidly stated once in the midst of his Indian campaign. ‘The first was to wage war against the infidels … and by this religious warfare to acquire some claim to reward in the life to come. The other was a worldly object, that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels. Plunder in war is as lawful as their mothers’ milk to Muslims who wage war for their faith.’ He would, he decided, invade India, slaughter its infidels, plunder the land, and return home. He would not settle in India.

  ONCE THE DECISION to invade India was made, matters moved fast. Timur then mustered a huge army by bringing together contingents from the various provinces of his empire, and in the summer of 1398, ‘in the auspicious month of Rajab,’ he set out from Samarkand for India. ‘I placed my foot in the stirrup at a lucky moment, and quitting my capital Samarkand, directed my course towards Hindustan,’ he writes.

  Timur crossed the Indus on 24 September 1398, and swept towards Delhi. Most Indian rulers and their armies, as well as the common people, fled on the approach of Timur, as they would before a wildfire, though there were also a few instances of Rajputs engaging in desperate battles after performing the awesome rite of jauhar. ‘Many of the Rajputs placed their wives and children in their houses and burned them, then they rushed into the battle and were killed,’ writes Timur. ‘Such was the terror inspired by him (Timur) that Muslims and Hindus fled before him, some to the mountains, some to the deserts, some to the waves of the rivers, and some to Delhi,’ observes Sirhindi. And when Timur closed in on Delhi, the people in the surrounding areas fled pell-mell to the city for refuge—they ‘set fire to their houses and fled with their children and property and effects towards Delhi, so that the whole country was deserted,’ notes Timur. Even strong forts were abandoned without a fight.

  Timur’s passage through India was marked by incredible savagery. ‘I commanded my troops … to kill all men, to make prisoners women and children, and to plunder and lay waste all their property,’ he writes. ‘I directed towers to be built of the [severed] heads of those obstinate unbelievers … In the course of one hour the heads of ten thousand infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed with the blood of infidels.’ Typically, his order to a foraying contingent he sent to the environs of Delhi was ‘to plunder and destroy and kill everyone whom they met.’ Among the captives only the lives of Muslims were spared. ‘I gave orders that Muslim prisoners should be separated and saved, but the infidels should all be despatched to hell with the proselytising sword.’
<
br />   This ferocity was an essential part of Timur’s military tactic, to inspirit his soldiers with bloodlust, and to terrify the enemy and make them flee. Religious fervour was another key factor in the invincibility of Timur’s army in India, and so was its lust for plunder. ‘When the soldiers gave up killing the infidels, they secured great plunder in goods and valuables, prisoners and cattle … The plunder exceeded all calculation,’ Timur records. Yet another reason for the success of Mongols was Timur’s clear understanding of battle psychology, that victory and defeat depended as much on the spirit of soldiers as on the strength of arms. And he knew how to rouse the martial spirit of his soldiers, and how to dispirit the enemy. ‘I ordered my warriors to shout their battle-cry aloud, and drums and other instruments to be sounded,’ Timur states about the commencement of a battle. ‘The noise reverberated through the hills, and filled the hearts of the infidels with dismay and trembling, so that they wavered.’ And while the enemy thus turned timorous, Timur’s own soldiers became charged up, and they, ‘spurring their horses, shouting their war-cry, and brandishing their swords, fell upon the forces of the enemy like hungry lions upon a flock of sheep.’

  But more than all these—religious fervour, animal ferocity and lust for plunder—the reason for Timur’s success was that he was a brilliant military commander and an exceptionally clever tactician, who came up with an innovative solution to every military problem he faced. A potent combination of caution and daring marked Timur’s campaigns, and he took care to formulate his military tactics only after carefully analysing all the information about the military potential of the enemy provided by his spies. He also used spies to spread disinformation among the enemy, to weaken their morale with exaggerated stories about the size and fierceness of the Mongol army.