The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (15 page)

ALA-UD-DIN HEEDED THE Kotwal’s advice, and thereafter focussed his attention on realisable goals, such as expanding his empire and tightening its administration. And in both these he was exceptionally successful. There was a substantial expansion of the territory of the Delhi Sultanate during his reign, so the kingdom became the absolutely dominant political and military power in the subcontinent. But the sultan was not a rash adventurer. His military policy, as in everything else he did, was a potent combination of daring and caution. He took particular care to treat the conquered rajas honourably, and he cautioned his officers setting out on conquests that they should ‘avoid unnecessary strictness’ towards the rajas, and should treat them respectfully, so as to turn enemies into allies. And to ensure that his orders on all these matters were strictly carried out by his officers, Ala-ud-din kept himself fully informed about the movements and activities of his army, by setting up outposts all along its route, to carry news about the army to him, and to carry his instructions back to the army. As a result of these wise and benevolent and yet strict policies of the sultan, ‘subjugated countries and enemies became his ardent supporters,’ states Barani.

A major military concern of Ala-ud-din, as of most Delhi sultans, was to defend his kingdom against recurrent Mongol depredations across the north
western frontier of India. In the early part of his reign—in the eight years from 1298 to 1306—there were as many five major Mongol incursions into India, in some of which they plundered the very environs of Delhi, and in one instance even entered the city itself for looting.

The Mongol threat was primarily of plunder and carnage, not of territorial conquest. Their campaigns were rather like the raids of Mahmud Ghazni; and, like Mahmud, the only major Indian territory they seized was western Punjab, the gateway to India, which they had to keep open and under their control to facilitate their raids. Mongols were a mountain people, and they abhorred the hot, humid climate of the Indian plains. Nor did the prospect of a peaceful settled life in India suit their restless, turbulent nature. On the couple of occasions when bands of captured Mongols were induced by the sultan to settle down in the environs of Delhi, they could not bear to live there for long, and in time many of them fled back to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Even some two centuries later, when Babur invaded India and established the Mughal Empire, several of his chieftains disdained to settle down in India but returned to their homeland.

India was for the Mongols a fabulously rich land to plunder periodically, but not a desirable place to occupy and live. They raided India whenever they needed fresh loot, which was often, for plunder was essential for their sustenance, as preys were for predatory animals. There were presumably numerous Mongol raids into India during the Sultanate period, of which only the major ones are recorded in history. During most of these incursions they, when confronted by the Sultanate army, quickly fled back to Afghanistan, so as not to risk losing their loot by engaging in battles. It was only on very rare occasions that they stood their ground and fought. The many decisive Indian victories against Mongols that the Turkish chroniclers have recorded were in most cases quite probably hollow victories, merely chasing the fleeing Mongols.

The first recorded Mongol incursion into India during the reign of Ala-ud-din was in its second year, in early 1298, but they were as usual driven back by an army sent by the sultan. But they came again the very next year, a vast horde of some 200,000 men, who crossed the Indus and stormed towards Delhi, where they camped on the banks of the Yamuna, and besieged the city. On the approach of Mongols, the people in the suburbs of Delhi fled into the city for refuge, and that led to an acute shortage of provisions in the city and the near collapse of the civic order there. ‘Great anxiety prevailed in Delhi,’ reports Barani. ‘All men, great and small, were in dismay. Such a concourse had crowded into the city that the streets and markets and mosques could not contain them.’

The Mongol problem had to be met head-on, Ala-ud-din then decided, and he set out from Delhi with his army to confront the raiders, though he
was advised by the ever cautious kotwal to temporise with them rather than risk all in a battle. ‘If I were to follow your advice, to whom can I then show my face?’ the sultan asked the kotwal. ‘How can I then go into my harem? Of what account will the people then hold me? And what would then happen to the daring and courage which is necessary to keep my turbulent people in submission? Come what may, I will tomorrow march into the plain of Kili.’

Fortunately, Mongols were routed in the ensuing battle. But they swept into India again a couple of years later, again with a very large cavalry force, and they once again headed straight for Delhi and camped on the banks of the Yamuna, plundering the suburbs of the city and even foraying into the city itself, forcing Ala-ud-din to take refuge in the fort of Siri. ‘Such fear of Mongols and anxiety as now prevailed in Delhi had never been known before,’ notes Barani. Fortunately, Mongols suddenly retreated on their own accord after two months, apparently sated with plunder. ‘This … preservation of Delhi seemed, to wise men, one of the wonders of the age,’ concludes Barani.

THE MONGOL RAIDS were a direct challenge to the authority of the sultan. They could not be allowed to go on, Ala-ud-din decided. It was not enough to drive back Mongols whenever they raided India, he held; what was needed was to take strong deterrent measures to avert their raids altogether. He therefore had the old forts along the route of Mongols repaired, and also had some new forts built, and he provided them all with stockpiles of weapons, provisions and fodder. Frontier forts ‘were garrisoned with strong, select forces, and were ever kept in a state of defence preparedness; and the fiefs on the route of Mongols were placed under amirs of experience, and the whole route was secured by the appointment of tried and vigilant generals,’ reports Barani.

But none of that deterred the Mongols, and they raided India again in 1305. This time however they avoided the strongly defended Delhi, but rampaged through the Doab—the tongue of land between Ganga and Yamuna—pillaging, burning and butchering. But once again they were routed by the Sultanate army. A large number of Mongols were taken as prisoners in this battle, some 8000 of them, and they were all then ruthlessly slaughtered, and their severed heads cemented into the walls of Ala-ud-din’s fortress at Siri.

Despite that awful carnage, Mongols raided India again the very next year, but were once again routed. The slaughter in this battle, according to the early fourteenth century chronicler Wassaf, was several times greater than that in the previous battle, but the figure he gives seems exaggerated. ‘After the battle an order was issued by Ala-ud-din to gather together the heads of all those who had been slain,’ he writes. ‘On counting them … they were found to amount to 60,000, and … a tower was built of these heads before the Badaun Gate [of Delhi], in order that it might serve as a warning … to future generations.’
This tower, according to Ferishta, could be seen there even two and a half centuries later, during the reign of Akbar. The Mongols who were captured were thrown under elephants to be trampled to death, and their women and children were sold into slavery. ‘So many thousands [of Mongols] were slain in battle and in the city that horrid stenches arose’ from the rotting bodies, reports Barani. ‘Streams of blood flowed.’

This was the last major Mongol incursion into India during Ala-ud-din’s reign; India was free of their menace during the last ten years of his reign, except for a minor incursion in 1307–08. Mongols were evidently deterred by the severity of the Ala-ud-din’s reprisals against them; besides, they were at this time having internal troubles in Central Asia, which also hindered their activities. ‘The Mongols conceived such a fear and dread of the army of Islam that all fancy for coming to Hindustan was washed clean out of their breasts,’ comments Barani. ‘All fear of the Mongols entirely departed from Delhi and the neighbouring provinces. Perfect peace and security prevailed everywhere.’

ALA-UD-DIN, LIKE MOST kings of the age, considered it his indispensable royal duty to conquer new territories, to demonstrate his spirit and might. Besides that, waging wars served three essential requirements of the medieval state: that of gathering booty to replenish the royal treasury, inspiriting its soldiers with the prospect of plunder, and keeping the army in fighting trim. Ala-ud-din therefore sent out his army for conquests nearly every other year of his reign, except in his last few years, when illness incapacitated him. But because of his anxiety about Mongol raids, these campaigns were initially, in the first decade of his reign, confined to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, the regions close to Delhi. But later, after his apprehension about the Mongol raids waned, he sent his forces storming far afield, almost to the southern tip of India.

The first of the major expansionist military campaigns of Ala-ud-din was against Gujarat, in 1298, the second year of his reign. Though Gujarat had been raided and plundered by Turks several times previously, it had not yet been annexed by the Sultanate. The primary objective of Ala-ud-din too was to gather plunder, but he also intended to annex this commercially important region to his empire. The invading army ‘plundered … all Gujarat,’ reports Barani. ‘The wives and daughters, the treasure and elephants of Raja Karna (of the Vaghela dynasty that ruled Gujarat at this time) fell into the hands of Muslims,’ though the raja himself, along with a young daughter, managed to escape and take refuge with the king of Devagiri in Deccan.

After routing the raja, the Sultanate army advanced to the temple city of Somnath, plundered its renowned Shiva temple—which had been rebuilt after it was sacked by Mahmud Ghazni in the early eleventh century—and sent its
idol to Delhi, where its fragments were laid on the ground at the entrance of the Friday Mosque for the faithful to tread on.

From Somnath the Sultanate army proceeded to the flourishing port city of Khambhat (Cambay), plundered its merchants and obtained a vast booty—and, what turned to be far more valuable to the sultan, the army there seized a young, handsome and exceptionally talented slave eunuch named Kafur, who bore the nickname Hazardinari (Thousand Dinars), as his original price was one thousand dinars. Taken to Delhi, Kafur became an intimate of the sultan—his ‘beauty captivated Ala-ud-din,’ says Barani—and he would in time play a central role in the history of the times.

The invasion of Gujarat, like everything else that Ala-ud-din did, was remarkably successful, and the kingdom was annexed by the Sultanate. But the success of the campaign was somewhat marred by a mutiny in the Sultanate army when it was on its way back to Delhi. The trouble erupted, according to Barani, when the generals demanded that all soldiers should hand over to them one-fifth of the spoils they got in Gujarat, and ‘instituted inquisitorial inquiries about it’ to ensure that this was done. Though the mutiny was easily suppressed, its ringleaders managed to escape. So when the army returned to Delhi, the families of the rebel leaders were, in reprisal, subjected to dreadful punishments. ‘The crafty cruelty which had taken possession of Ala-ud-din induced him to order that the wives and children of the mutineers, high and low, should be cast into prison,’ states Barani. ‘This was the beginning of the practice of seizing women and children for the faults of men.’ Further, Nusrat Khan, one of the army generals, whose brother had been murdered by the mutineers, in revenge ‘ordered the wives of the assassins to be dishonoured and exposed to most disgraceful treatment; he then handed them over to vile persons to make common strumpets of them. Their children he caused to be cut to pieces on the heads of their mothers. Outrages like this are practised in no religion or creed. These and similar acts … filled the people of Delhi with amazement and dismay, and every bosom trembled.’

ALA-UD-DIN’S NEXT MILITARY target was the fort of Ranthambhor in Rajasthan. Though Rajasthan was not, in terms of spoils, a particularly inviting region for Turks to conquer, its control was of crucial strategic importance to the Sultanate, as the route from Delhi to central and peninsular India passed through the region. Rajasthan therefore had to be secured before the Sultanate could expand southward. Besides, it was dangerous for the Sultanate to let the turbulent Rajput rajas remain in power in the very backyard of Delhi. Moreover, Ranthambhor was an impregnable fort, which could serve as an excellent outpost of Delhi. All this made its conquest essential for the Sultanate.

Aibak had captured this fort during the early history of the Sultanate, but it had subsequently changed hands several times, and was at this time in the possession of a Rajput raja. Recognising the strategic importance of Ranthambhor, Ala-ud-din himself led the army against it, and he succeeded in capturing it after a protracted siege and much bloodshed. A factor in Ala-ud-din’s success at Ranthambhor was the defection of the raja’s minister, Ranmal, to him. Characteristically, after capturing the fort, Ala-ud-din executed Ranmal—the sultan had no tolerance for those who betray their masters, even in the instances in which he benefited from their defections. The raja of Ranthambhor, Hamir Deva, was also executed. The kingdom of Ranthambhor was then annexed by the Sultanate, and its fort was placed under the command of a Turkish general.

During the Ranthambhor campaign Ala-ud-din very nearly lost his life in a coup attempt by his brother’s son, Akat Khan. This happened on the sultan’s way to Ranthambhor, when he was diverting himself by hunting in a forest near his camp. It was early morning and he was sitting on a stool in a clearing in the woods, accompanied by just a few guards, waiting for the game to be driven towards him by his soldiers. As Barani describes the scene, seeing Ala-ud-din to be virtually defenceless, Akat Khan with a contingent of New Muslim cavalry soldiers galloped up to him, ‘shouting “Tiger! Tiger!” and began to discharge arrows at him. It was winter, and the sultan was wearing a large overcoat. He jumped up … and seizing the stool on which he had been sitting, made a shield of it. He warded off several arrows, but two pierced his arm, though none reached his body.’ Apparently he fainted then, because of the loss of blood. Meanwhile the sultan’s guards covered him with their bucklers, and, as the attackers galloped up, they shouted that the sultan was dead. ‘Akat Khan was young, rash and foolish. He had made a violent attack on his sovereign, but he lacked the decision and resolution to carry it through, and cut off the sultan’s head. In his folly and rashness he took another course.’