The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople

by Bauer, Susan Wise

  While Firoz Shah prospered at home, the kingdoms that had broken away from his predecessor continued to expand.

  EAST OF DELHI, the Bengali kingdom ruled by Shams-ud-Din was evolving steadily away from its previous masters. Shams-ud-Din had expanded his reach, defeating the Hindu warlords around him; and as he did so, his kingdom was taking on a new character.

  Since at least the eleventh century, a mystical strain of Islam known as Sufism had threaded through Muslim practice worldwide. Practitioners of Sufi focused their efforts on the present, not on the hereafter; they sought inner purification, working hard to rise to higher and higher levels of piety. They fasted, meditated, prayed, gave alms; internally, they practiced gratitude to God, tried to exist in a constant awareness of the divine bond between God and the believer, strove for a heart-felt affirmation of the oneness of the divine.3

  In this, they were like mystics worldwide: like the contemplative monks of Europe, like the original White Lotus seekers in China. But Sufi believers also held, strongly, that those who had reached inward purity—the awliyâ’, Sufi saints—were the true rulers of men. “God has saints whom he has specially distinguished by His friendship,” wrote the eleventh-century Sufi scholar ‘Ali Hujwiri, “and whom He has chosen to be the governors of His Kingdom.”

  [He] has purged [them] of natural corruptions and has delivered [them] from subjection to their lower soul and passion, so that all their thoughts are of Him and their intimacy is with Him alone. . . . He has made the Saints the governors of the universe; they have become entirely devoted to His business. . . . Through the blessing of their advent the rain falls from heaven, and through the purity of their lives the plants spring up from the earth, and through their spiritual influence the Muslims gain victories over the unbelievers.4

  ‘Ali Hujwiri, born in Ghazni, had traveled throughout the old Persian lands where Sufism flourished; but then he had settled in the north Indian city of Lahore, and had found ready ears among both the Muslim poor and the Hindu underclass. To hear that the authority of a saint trumped the power of a king, to be given a chance to rise through spiritual discipline from the mud of their daily lives to such a dazzling high place in the world—that was a rare and wonderful promise.

  Sultan Shams-ud-Din was hardly powerless, but he had embraced Sufism as part of his break away from Delhi. He became a patron and follower of the Sufi teacher Shaikh ‘Ala al-Haq, a native Bengali who had achieved sainthood within the Sufi hierarchy. “He is the guide to the religion of the Glorious,” announced Shams-ud-Din, on a mosque inscription that still survives, “may his piety last long.” Sufism gave Shams-ud-Din a useful way to distinguish his rule from that of his former master; and with royal patronage behind it, Sufi mysticism spread throughout the Bengal kingdom.5

  Firoz Shah was unable to retrieve Bengal, either for orthodoxy or for the sultanate of Delhi. When Shams-ud-Din died in 1357, Firoz Shah marched into Bengal to confront his son and successor Sikandar. But he did not have the strength to compel the Bengali sultan, and he was forced to retreat after Sikandar offered him nothing more than a token tribute payment.6

  SOUTH OF DELHI, the breakaway kingdoms of Vijayanagara and Bahmani were more worried about each other than about the sultanate that had once ruled them.

  By the time of his death in 1356, the first Vijayanagara ruler, Harihara Raya I, had conquered himself a territory that reached from Kaveri to Krishna. His brother Bukka Raya succeeded him as sultan.

  Meanwhile, Bahman Shah (the former Delhi officer Zafar Khan) was also at war. He had moved his capital city to the safer town of Gulbarga (Karnataka), a well-watered area surrounded by hills, and built himself a massive citadel there; it still survives today. By the time of his death, in 1358, he had expanded the Bahmani kingdom until it stretched from from Bhongir in the east to Daulatabad in the west; and from the Wainganga river in the north to Krishna in the south.

  77.1 Citadel of Gulbarga.

  Credit: © R Sudhir Kumar

  Krishna marked the northern border of Vijayanagara, and Bahman Shah’s son and successor, Muhammad Shah I, began a war with his neighbor over possession of the fertile land between Krishna and Tungabhadra. It was the first of ten vicious and indecisive wars that would occupy the two kingdoms for more than a century.7

  Muhammad Shah himself was a no-holds-barred warrior, the first to use gunpowder in his wars in the Deccan. His gunpowder projectiles were inaccurate and unpredictable, valuable for noise and confusion more than for actual defense; they came from China, and the Indians called them hawai, “rockets.” Yet their use began to change the landscape. For the first time, the new forts being built across the contested land were given slit holes through which projectiles could be fired.8

  Muhammad Shah’s wars against the Hindu kingdom to the south were, in his eyes, religious contests. Contemporary chronicles say that in the fifteen years Muhammad Shah fought against Vijayanagara, half a million people died. (Finally, the two shahs came to an agreement: civilians would be spared, as would prisoners of war.) Temporary treaties were made, and then broken; land was given over, and then reclaimed; as in France and England to the west, the will to war kept both kingdoms on the edge.9

  77.1. Bahmani Expansion

  Faced with solid opposition on his northern border, Bukka Raya’s son and successor Harihara made a tentative prod to the south, crossing a few soldiers over the Palk Strait and landing them on the shores of Sri Lanka.

  Since the decay of Pandyan power in the previous century, the north of Sri Lanka had been independent under a king who ruled from Jaffna; the first Jaffna king may well have been a Pandyan general who remained in the island when his native country fell to Delhi. The kingdom of Jaffna had flourished, for a time; Ibn Battuta had visited the court of Jaffna sometime in the 1340s and had been given a tour of the kingdom’s pearl fisheries and ruby mines.

  The south of the island had never fallen under Pandyan control, but over several obscure decades, the center of power had migrated from Dambadeniya to the capital city of Gampola, a little farther to the south, and from there to the fortress city of Kotte. From the southern shores, Sri Lankan traders had struck out to ports all over the south, reaching as far as Cairo.10

  The island was rich, but not vulnerable. The Vijayanagara troops made a few incursions, but the troops committed to the north made it impossible for Harihara to follow up; the kings at Jaffna and Kotte were able to buy him off with an insignificant tribute. The conquest of the island would have to wait.

  IN 1388, Firoz Shah died.

  Once Delhi was firmly behind him, he had begun to make the traditional expeditions outwards, against neighboring kingdoms. These had, almost universally, failed; but his success at home continued: “Through the attention which the Sultan devoted to administration,” says Shams-i Siraj, “the country grew year by year more prosperous.”

  Firoz Shah himself believed that justice and compassion were the greatest qualities of his reign. “In the reigns of former kings,” he wrote,

  . . . many varieties of torture [were] employed. Amputation of hands and feet, ears and noses; tearing out the eyes, pouring molten lead into the throat, crushing the bones of the hands 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 that fear and dread might fall upon the hearts of men, and that the regulations of government might be duly maintained. . . . [But] through the mercy which God has shown to me, these severities and terrors have been exchanged for tenderness, kindness, and mercy. Fear and respect have thus taken firmer hold of the hearts of men.11

  He was right. Despite his unwarlike rule, Delhi had mostly held together; he had lost only one part of the empire, Khandesh, which rebelled under its governor six years before his death. But apart from Khandesh, general contentment prevailed. Firoz Shah was no general, but he had proved to be an excellent administrator, an
enthusiastic mosque builder and garden planner, a competent manager of the empire’s finances. Grain remained cheap in the capital; soldiers and officials were well paid; taxes were reasonable.12

  He died in 1388, aged eighty-one, and at once the remaining cohesion of the sultanate spun apart. The governors of Jaunpur, Malwa, and Gujarat joined Bengal and Khandesh in independence, while in Delhi, a handful of claimants battled over the weakened throne. Tenderness and kindness had not restored the empire’s greatness, but they had slowed the decay; now rot accelerated once more. “During the forty years that Firoz Shah reigned, all his people were happy and contented,” Shams-i Siraj concludes, “but when he departed, and the territory of Delhi came into the hands of others, by the will of fate, the people were dispersed.”13

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  The Union of Krewo

  Between 1364 and 1399,

  Hungary and Poland join briefly under one crown,

  and then Poland and Lithuania join under another

  IN 1364, Casimir the Great of Poland called a council, and the world came.

  Charles V of France, newly crowned, was there. So was the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, elected as king of Germany to replace the unpopular Louis in 1346 and then crowned emperor in 1355; he had just married the king of Poland’s own granddaughter Elizabeth. The king of Hungary was present; dukes and barons from German principalities, Polish duchies, and Mediterranean islands filled out the guest list.

  The council itself, the Congress of Krakow, was a bust. Casimir the Great had hoped to whip the assembled kings and aristocrats up into an enthusiasm for a new crusade, this one against the eastern threat of the Ottoman Turks. But calling for crusade had become a little bit like throwing a charity dinner and passing the hat; people paid lip service to the need, but looked the other direction when the actual demand was made. The assembled rulers were much more interested in jousting: “The king of Poland / Who holds Cracow in his domain . . . promised that he would help. . . . To put the holy crusade into execution,” wrote the French poet Guillaume de Machaut, who was among the attendees.

  And of all the princes who were there,

  Some avowed, and others swore on oath

  That they would willingly assist,

  And do everything in their power.

  But the heralds proclaimed the lists

  For they all wished to tarry

  To joust and to hold a great tournament.

  In short, they jousted together.1

  The tournament was as close to fighting as any of them would get; they went home, and that was the last of it.

  But the Congress of Krakow had fulfilled its more foundational purpose, which was to demonstrate to the world that Poland had joined the first rank of nations.

  Unity had not come easy to the land of the Polans. The first “King of Poland,” the eleventh-century Duke of Piast Boleslaw I, had controlled only a handful of Polish dukedoms, and none of his successors had done much better. Casimir’s father, the short but ambitious Wladyslaw the Elbow-High (also a Duke of Piast) had made a good try at rounding up all of the dukes, but the Polans in the north and east had remained outside of his control.

  Since his coronation in 1333, Casimir had worked at finishing the job. The Teutonic Order, between his domain and the Baltic Sea, had taken all of Prussia; he made a treaty with the order that settled an ongoing quarrel over his northern border. He paid off the king of Hungary and in return was given control over the duchy of Mazovia. He fought other duchies into submission, and built at least fifty new castles across Poland to help hold the newly expanded country together. He founded schools and convinced the pope to approve the charter of a new university in Krakow. He sponsored the massive revision and republication of a law code for all Polans. He threw himself into the renovation of his capital city: “He found Poland dressed in timber,” says an old Polish proverb, “and left her dressed in brick.”2

  The Congress of Krakow revealed to the world a new Poland: a third larger, prosperous and well educated, at peace. But Casimir had left one task undone: he hadn’t managed to produce a male heir. He had married three times, had two mistresses, and indulged in an illegal bigamous marriage with one girl from Prague, but his only legitimate children were girls.

  78.1. Poland under Casimir the Great

  Late in October 1370, the sixty-year-old king was out hunting on horseback when he took a hard fall. His physicians suggested that he recuperate in peace and quiet, but he refused to take to his bed. Soon he was suffering from fever and shortness of breath, probably pneumonia; at sunrise on November 5, Casimir the Great died.3

  His funeral was massive and elaborate, with a mile-long ceremonial procession of knights and courtiers and the distribution of silver coins to the people. At the end of the funeral mass, his royal standard was broken into pieces. “At this, there arose such a shriek from the congregation in the cathedral, such an outburst of weeping from young and old, from high and low alike, that they could hardly be calmed,” wrote the king of Hungary, who was present. “And no wonder! The death of the peace-loving king had caused them to fear that the peace to which they had all grown accustomed during his lifetime would now end.”4

  The king of Hungary, Louis of Anjou, had attended in order to register his claim to the Polish throne. He was the closest male relative of the dead king (his mother had been Casimir’s sister), and Casimir himself had promised him the crown. Louis soon managed to negotiate a compromise with the Polish dukes: they would recognize him as king of Poland, and in return he would leave them alone. He further sweetened the deal with a proclamation issued in 1374, the Privilege of Košice, that reduced their obligations to the crown to three duties (payment of a small land tax, military service within Poland only, and the upkeep of castles and fortifications). He also redistributed hundreds of acres of royal land among them. He then rarely came into Poland, and for twelve years, the united kingdoms of Hungary and Poland were a single realm only on paper.5

  Unfortunately, Louis shared his uncle’s inability to father a son. Before he died, in 1382, he had arranged for his oldest surviving daughter, ten-year-old Mary, to succeed him as queen of Hungary and Poland; he had also arranged her marriage to the Roman Emperor Charles IV’s teenaged second son, Sigismund.

  But after his funeral, the aristocrats of both countries objected to Mary’s rule. In Poland, a strong party of dukes argued for election of Mary’s younger sister Hedwig instead; this would break the union of the two crowns and preserve Poland’s separate existence. In Hungary, a dissenting party of Hungarian nobles who disliked the idea of female rule invited the king of Naples (the southern part of Italy, separate from Sicily for the last century) to come in and take the crown.6

  The Hungarian disagreement turned out much bloodier than the Polish. The king of Naples, Charles II, arrived in Hungary in 1386. He was assassinated a month later, by agents of Mary’s mother Elizabeth, who had hoped to rule as regent for her young daughter. In retaliation, the supporters of the dead king kidnapped Mary and her mother and dragged them off to Croatia, where, in a mountain fortress, Elizabeth was strangled in front of her daughter’s eyes.7

  Sigismund (with his father’s assistance) put together a force of German soldiers and Venetian sailors and arrived in Hungary a few months later. By a combination of force and concessions, he managed to negotiate Mary’s release and also claim the throne of Hungary for himself. The antiqueen contigent, pacified by his promise that Mary would have no more power than a queen consort, finally accepted his claim.

  Mary, suspecting that her new husband had been complicit in her mother’s death, refused to live with him. He was no more enthusiastic than she was; the two occupied separate households until her accidental death in a riding accident in 1395. She was twenty-four, pregnant with their first child; her death prevented the crown from passing out of Sigismund’s hands, and after that he reigned alone as king of Hungary.

  Meanwhile, little Hedwig, not yet eleven, had been crow
ned king on October 16, 1384. The Polans had no other way to designate a ruling queen, a queen regnant, since Polish queens had always simply been wives of the king. But the name king did not solve the primary problem: their country, newly enlarged, newly powerful, was now governed by a female child.

  For help, the Polish dukes turned to their most likely ally: the Grand Duke of Lithuania.

  The Teutonic Knights had originally been invited into the Polish duchies to help conquer the Lithuanians. But the Teutonic conquest of the Lithuanian-speaking region of Prussia had had the side effect of uniting the Lithuanians to the east into a stronger and stronger block of resistance, governed and directed by a Grand Duke who ruled from the capital city of Vilnius.

  Teutonic aggression had also convinced Casimir’s father that an alliance with the Lithuanians would provide good protection against both the German-Prussian state and the possible expansion of the Golden Horde. In 1325, he had arranged for Casimir to marry the daughter of the Grand Duke, creating a union between the two countries.

  Casimir’s wife, Aldona, converted to Christianity at the time of her marriage. But the Lithuanians remained unapologetically “pagan,” continuing in their traditional nature worship; the armed conversion of Prussia had not done much to convince them that Christianity would improve their condition. Now, however, the Polish dukes had a proposal for the Grand Duke of Lithuania. If he converted to orthodox Christianity and married Hedwig, he could become king of Poland and Lithuania, a strong country that would be vulnerable to neither Teutonics nor Mongols.

  The Grand Duke, Jogaila, was in his midtwenties and already showing signs of the political intelligence that would mark the rest of his reign. He was a man of moderate habits: he dressed plainly, ate sparingly, never drank, and entertained himself with hard-riding hunts. “A person of simple manners, better suitable for hunting rather than government,” the fifteenth-century chronicler Jan Dlugosz called him, scornfully; but Dlugosz was not a fan of the Lithuanian-Polish union, and even he had to pay grudging credit to Jogaila’s character, “sincere and honest, and without double dealing.”8