The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (23 page)

Muhammad renamed Devagiri (Mountain of Gods) as Daulatabad (Abode of Prosperity) and in a few of years it did indeed become, true to its new name, a great and splendid city, as royal officers and others dependent on the court built their residences there, and opulent bazaars and other facilities suitable for a royal capital were set up there. Battuta, who visited Daulatabad some years later, found it to be an ‘enormous city which rivals Delhi … in importance and in the spaciousness of its planning.’

MUHAMMAD’S DECISION TO shift his residence to Devagiri would have been quite upsetting to the people of Delhi, for the royal court was the very heart of Delhi, and its transfer from there would have rendered the city lifeless. The people of Delhi therefore had good reason to resent the sultan’s decision, and they seem to have expressed their feelings about it by sending anonymous abusive letters to him, and that was probably what roused his wrath and prompted him to order the complete evacuation of Delhi.

According to Battuta, the people of Delhi ‘used to write missives reviling and insulting’ the sultan, seal them and throw then into the audience hall at night, with a warning written on them that they should be opened only by the sultan. ‘When the sultan broke their seal [and opened the letters] he found them full of insults and abuse. He [therefore] decided to lay Delhi in ruins, and having bought from all the inhabitants their houses … and paid them the price of them, he commanded them to move to Daulatabad. But they refused. So a crier was sent around the city to proclaim that no one should remain in the city after three nights. The majority [of the residents there] then complied with the order, but some of them hid in the houses. The sultan then ordered a search to be made for any persons remaining in the town, and his slaves found two men in the streets, a cripple and a blind man. They were brought before him and he gave orders that the cripple should be flung from a mangonel, and that the blind man dragged from Delhi to Daulatabad, a distance of forty days’ journey. He fell to pieces on the road and of him all that reached Daulatabad was his leg. When the sultan did this, every person left the town, abandoning furniture and possessions, and the city remained utterly deserted … [Then] one night the sultan mounted to the roof of his palace and looked out over Delhi, where there was neither fire nor smoke nor lamp, and he said, “Now my mind is tranquil and my wrath appeased.” Afterwards he wrote to the inhabitants of the other cities commanding them to move to Delhi to repopulate it. The result was only to ruin their cities and leave Delhi still unpopulated, because of its immensity, for it is one of the greatest cities in the world. It was in this state that we found it on our arrival, empty and unpopulated, save for a few inhabitants.’

Barani concurs with Battuta that the shifting of the capital to Devagiri was disastrous. ‘It brought ruin upon Delhi, the city which … had grown in prosperity, and rivalled Baghdad and Cairo,’ he writes. ‘So complete was its ruin that not a cat or a dog was left among the buildings of the city, in its palaces or in its suburbs. Troops of the natives, with their families and dependents, wives and children, men servants and maid servants, were forced to move [to Devagiri]. The people, who for many … generations had been … the inhabitants of … [Delhi], were broken-hearted. Many, from the toils of the long journey, perished on the road, and those who arrived at Devagiri could not endure the pain of exile. They pined to death in despondency.’

Though Muhammad took care to provide various facilities for the migrants on their long journey, and helped them to settle in Devagiri, none of that compensated them for their mental agony due to the loss of their traditional domicile. ‘The sultan,’ continues Barani, ‘was bounteous in his liberality and favours to the emigrants, both on their journey and on their arrival; but they were tender, and could not endure the exile and suffering … Of all the
multitudes of emigrants, few only survived to return to their home’ when the sultan later re-shifted the capital to Delhi.

Daulatabad remained the capital of the Sultanate for eight years. When Muhammad finally gave permission to the migrants to return to Delhi, most of them joyfully went back, though some, ‘with whom the Maratha country agreed, remained in Devagiri with their wives and children,’ notes Barani. But even with the return of a large number of people to Delhi, ‘not a thousandth part of the [original] population [of Delhi] remained.’

MUHAMMAD HAD MUCH more success in his military campaigns for expanding the territory of his empire than in his administrative reforms. This was partly because his reign was relatively free of Mongol raids. There was only one major incursion into the Sultanate by Mongols during his reign. This was in 1327, early in Muhammad’s reign, when they invaded India under the command of the Chagatai chief Tarmashirin, a Buddhist turned Muslim. The Mongol objective, as usual, was to gather plunder, not to conquer territory, so they stormed eastward through the Indo-Gangetic Plain and advanced as far as Meerut close to Delhi, pillaging and ravaging the land all along the way, and slaughtering people indiscriminately. According to Ferishta, Muhammad then bought them off with a huge ransom, and they sped back home, once again pillaging and ravaging the land all along the way. According to another account, Muhammad made a show of pursuing the Mongols up to Kalanaur in Punjab, a town that now enters history for the first time, where Mughal emperor Akbar would be born 215 years later.

Another aspect of Muhammad’s policy towards Mongols was to try and absorb them into Indian population. According to Barani ‘the sultan supported and patronised Mongols,’ and he induced many thousands of them to come with their families and settle in India, by conferring on them various favours and spending vast sums of money on them, probably in the hope that these fierce warriors would strengthen his army and help him to achieve his various ambitious plans for conquest. But rather than adding to the strength and stability of the Sultanate, Mongol migrants only added to the turmoil of Muhammad’s reign.

Despite that setback there was, during Muhammad’s reign, a significant expansion of the territory of the Sultanate, deep into South India. But in the end even that turned out to be counterproductive. Unlike Ala-ud-din Khalji’s sensible policy of not annexing distant territories that he could not effectively rule, but only of establishing his suzerainty over them, Muhammad sought to annex all the lands he conquered, and early in his reign he extended his direct rule deep into the peninsula as far as Madurai. Virtually all of India, except
Kashmir and Kerala at the far ends of the subcontinent, and a few small tracts in between, then came under the direct rule of Delhi.

But Muhammad was not content with this. ‘The sultan in his lofty ambition had conceived it to be his mission in life to subdue the whole habitable world and bring it under his rule,’ notes Barani. Shortly after the Mongol invasion early in his reign, Muhammad dreamed up a plan to conquer Central Asia—if Central Asians could invade India, why not Indians invade Central Asia? For this project the sultan recruited a vast army of 370,000 cavalry, which was maintained by him for a year, but was not deployed in any campaign, so that ‘when the next year came around there were not sufficient funds in the treasury … to support them,’ so they were disbanded, records Barani.

The sultan did however launch a military campaign into the western Himalayan foothills, perhaps in preparation for an invasion of Central Asia, as Barani states, or for an invasion of China, as Ferishta states. But this turned out to be an absolute disaster, as heavy rains impeded the army’s progress, and diseases ravaged soldiers and horses. Beset by these troubles, the hapless army retreated in disorder, but they were then brutally set on by the local people. ‘The whole force was thus destroyed … and out of all this chosen body of men only ten horsemen returned to Delhi to tell the news of its discomfiture,’ reports Barani. The net result of Muhammad’s plans for foreign conquests was that, as Barani comments, ‘the coveted countries were not acquired, but those which he possessed were lost; and his treasure, which is the true source of political power, was expended.’

MUHAMMAD WAS BEDEVILLED by endless problems in the latter part of his reign. His vast empire then began to disintegrate, and large chunks of it broke away. And he had little control even over the remaining territories, as countless rebellions raged through the empire like wild fires. The man who wanted to rule the world could hardly control his own backyard.

‘Disaffection and disturbances arose on every side,’ Barani reports, ‘and as they gathered strength, the sultan became more exasperated and more severe with his subjects. But his severities only increased the distress of the people … Insurrection followed upon insurrection … The people were alienated. No place remained secure, all order and regularity were lost, and the throne was tottering to its fall.’ Muhammad was well aware that his repressive measures were counterproductive, but still would not modify his policy. ‘When I collect my forces and put them (the rebels) down in one direction, they excite disturbance in some other quarter,’ he once told Barani. ‘My kingdom is diseased, and no treatment cures it. The physician cures the headache, but fever follows; he strives to allay the fever, and something else supervenes.’

The empire was clearly swirling into anarchy. What could be done about it? What had former kings done in similar circumstances, the sultan once asked Barani. Barani replied in detail to that query, and concluded: ‘Of all political ills, the greatest and the most dire is the general feeling of aversion … among all ranks of people.’ But Muhammad asserted that he would not change his ways, whatever be the reaction of the people. ‘At present I am angry with my subjects, and they are aggrieved with me,’ he told Barani. ‘The people are acquainted with my feelings, and I am aware of their misery and wretchedness. No treatment that I employ is of any benefit. My remedy for rebels, insurgents, opponents, and disaffected people is the sword. I employ punishment and use the sword, so that a cure may be affected by suffering. The more the people resist, the more I inflict chastisement.’

Barani could have then told the sultan that the problem was not with the people, but with the sultan. But he dared not say that. ‘I could not help feeling a desire to tell the sultan that the troubles and revolts which were breaking out on every side, and this general disaffection, all arose from the excessive severity of His Majesty, and that if punishments were suspended for a while, a better feeling might spring up, and mistrust be removed from the hearts of the people,’ Barani confesses. ‘But I dreaded the temper of the king and could not say what I desired.’

THE FIRST NOTED rebellion against Muhammad was in the second year of his reign, and that was by his cousin Baha-ud-din Gurshasp, who held a fief near Gulbarga in northern Karnataka. This was a minor rebellion, and Gurshasp was easily defeated by the imperial forces sent against him. He then fled southward and took refuge with the raja of Kampili, on the banks of the Tungabhadra. As the imperial forces pursued the rebel there, the raja shut himself in the fort of Hosdurg, and when attacked there, the royal women there performed the awesome suicidal rite of jauhar, and the raja himself and several of his officers fought to death against the enemy. Those who survived—some princes and officers—were captured by the Sultanate army and taken to Delhi, where they embraced Islam. Among these converts were two brothers, Harihara and Bukka, who would later revert to Hinduism, return to the peninsula, and found the powerful Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar.

Meanwhile, on the fall of Hosdurg, Gurshasp fled to the Hoysala kingdom, but the raja there timidly handed him over to the Sultanate army. Gurshasp was then taken to Daulatabad, where the sultan had arrived, and he was there flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed with straw, was exhibited in the chief cities of the empire as a warning to other potential rebels.

But that did not prevent rebellions. Rather, as Muhammad’s reign advanced, so did the number of rebellions against him multiply, particularly
in the last phase of his reign. And, as rebellions spread, so did the harshness of the sultan’s response to them intensify, in an ever tightening vicious circle of rebellion and suppression.

The sultan spent his last years obsessively scurrying around fighting rebels. But it was all utterly futile, for when he put down rebellion in one place, it broke out elsewhere, and when he moved to suppress the new rebellion, rebellion broke out again in the previous place. This went on and on. The sultan’s efforts were all utterly futile, like cutting off the heads of a hydra, each of which, when cut off, immediately grew back as two.

Soon the Sultanate lost most of its territory in the peninsula, where three new kingdoms then came up: the Madurai Sultanate, the Bahmani Sultanate, and Vijayanagar. Warangal too became independent. There were serious rebellions in North India also at this time. Predictably Bengal now became an independent kingdom. Oudh and north-west India too were plagued by insurgencies. And in Gujarat and Maharashtra a group of foreign migrant officers, often described as the Centurions, broke out in rebellion.

Muhammad set out from Delhi in 1345 to suppress the rebellion of the Centurions. He would never return. All circumstances now turned adverse to the sultan. During this campaign his army was plagued by famine and epidemics. And in Gujarat he was confronted by a resourceful and tenacious adversary, a cobbler turned rebel leader named Taghi, who had, according to Barani, won over to his side several of the amirs of Gujarat. Muhammad defeated Taghi, but could not capture him, as he fled to Sind.

When the sultan was in Gujarat he caught fever and was prostrated for some months. On recovery, he set out for Sind in pursuit of Taghi. In late 1350 he crossed the Indus and advanced along the banks of the river towards Tattah, where Taghi had taken refuge. On the way he kept the fast of the tenth day of Muharram, ‘and when it was over he ate some fish. The fish did not agree with him, so his illness returned and fever increased,’ records Barani. Though Muhammad continued his advance on Tattah by travelling by boat on the Indus, his ailment soon turned critical, and on 20th March 1351 he ‘departed from this life on the banks of the Indus, at 14 kos (45 kilometres) from Tattah.’ He had reigned for 26 years.