Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

Marco Polo, medieval Venetian world traveller, noted the use of paper currency in China, and wrote about it: ‘All these pieces of paper are issued with as much solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or silver; and on every piece [of paper currency] a variety of officials … have to write their names, and to put their seals. And when all is duly prepared, the chief officer deputed by the Khan smears the Seal entrusted to him with vermilion, and impresses it on the paper … The money is then authentic. Anyone forging it would be punished with death.’

The use of paper money and its variants gradually spread westward from China, and eventually, after five centuries, it came into use in Persia. A few centuries later the practice finally spread to Europe, where paper currency was first issued in Sweden in the seventeenth century. Then, over the next century and half, the practice spread to the other parts of Europe as well as to America.

In India token currency — brass or copper coins marked as of the same value as silver coins — was first introduced by Muhammad Tughluq in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. But the reform failed utterly, like all his other innovations.

Muhammad Tughluq had two daughters in his early youth, but a surgery afterwards made him impotent. Consequently, according to Isami, a severely critical medieval chronicler, the sultan wished to see the whole world impotent like him. Perhaps the aberrations of his character had something to do with his sexual impotence.

Muhammad, according to Isami, was ‘full of deceit and fraud,’ and was ‘a first-class hypocrite … who, while he made a display of justice, exercised oppression.’

Robert Sewell, an early modern historian, on Muhammad Tughluq: ‘His whole life was spent on visionary schemes pursued by means equally irrational.’

The seventeenth-century English satirist Samuel Butler on Mahmud Begarha of Gujarat:

According to the fifteenth-century Italian adventurer Varthema, the title ‘Zamorin’ of the raja of Kozhikode means ‘Lord of the Seas … The King of Calicut is a Pagan, and worships the devil.’

Ferishta on Parthal, the farmer’s daughter, with whom Devaraya I of Vijayanagar got involved: ‘There resided in the town of Mudgal a farmer, who was blessed with a daughter of such exquisite beauty, that the creator seemed to have united all his powers in making her perfect.’ An old Brahmin told Devaraya about her, and the raja then sent opulent presents to her through the Brahmin and sought her for his harem. This overjoyed the girl’s parents, but she refused the offer, as she did not want to be secluded in the royal harem, where even her parents would not be allowed to visit her. The Brahmin then returned to Vijayanagar, and told the raja about what had transpired. But the rejection by Parthal only inflamed the raja’s passion, and he raided Mudgal to seize her. But by then Parthal and her parents had fled to Bahmani kingdom. The affair led to yet another war between Vijayanagar and the Sultanate.

Harihara and Bukka, according to Sewell, belonged to the Kuruba caste of Hindus, a warrior caste mostly living in Karnataka.

The Vijayanagar army in camp was found to have 120,000 infantry, 18,000 cavalry, and 150 elephants, reports Nuniz.

Ambassadors in medieval times enjoyed virtually the same status as they do in modern times. According to Wassaf, a fourteenth-century Indian chronicler, ‘To bring trouble on an ambassador is, under every system of religious faith, altogether opposed to the principles of law, social observance and commonsense.’

Battuta on he being confronted by brigands: ‘I threw myself to the ground and surrendered, as they do not kill those who do that.’

A popular medieval Indian saying: All kings go to hell.

When Hasnak, a high official favoured by Mahmud Ghazni, was disfavoured and executed by Masud, Mahmud’s successor, the victim’s mother commented: ‘What a fortune is my son’s! Sultan Mahmud gave him this world, and Sultan Masud the next!’

Abu Zaid, an early medieval Arabic writer: When a king of Sri Lanka dies, his body is carried on a very low carriage so that his head, placed at the back, touches the ground and his hair drags in the dust. A woman follows the carriage with a broom and ‘sweeps the dust [of the road] on to the face of the corpse, and cries out, “O men, behold! This man yesterday was your king … See now what he is reduced to.”’

A medieval Indian saying: ‘A common man with faults harms only himself with his faults, but through the faults of a king all his subjects too suffer destruction.’

Battuta: In Kerala ‘there are twelve infidel sultans, some of them strong with armies numbering fifty thousand men, and others weak with armies of three thousand. Yet there is no discord whatever between them, and the strong does not desire to seize the possessions of the weak.’

The land revenue assignments, given to soldiers and officers by the Delhi sultans, instead of cash salaries, were in turn often reassigned by the assignees. ‘It was the practice of certain persons in those days to buy up these assignments,’ notes Afif. ‘The purchasers of these assignments carried on a traffic in them, and gaining good profit, many of them got rich and made fortunes.’

Just as Muslim nobles kept Hindu mistresses, sometimes, though rarely, Hindu officers kept Muslim mistresses.

Mughal emperor Aurangzeb on jizya: ‘By this means idolatry will be suppressed, the Muhammadan religion and the true faith will be honoured, our proper duty will be performed, the finances of the state will be increased, and infidels will be disgraced.’

Abdur Razzaq: ‘The manner in which they catch elephants is this: they dig a pit in the way by which the animal usually goes to drink [water], which they cover over lightly. When an elephant falls into it, no man is allowed to go near the animal for two days; at the end of that period, a man comes up and strikes him several hard blows with a bludgeon, when suddenly another man appears who drives off the striker, and seizing the bludgeon, throws it away. He then retires, after placing some forage before the elephant. This practice is repeated for several days; the first lays on the blows, and the second drives him away, until the animal begins to have a liking for its protector, who by degrees approaches the animal, and places before it the fruits which elephants are partial to, and scratches and rubs the animal, until by this kind of treatment it becomes tame, and submits its neck to the chain.’