The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  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-ud-din 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 thems
elves, 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.