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

The character of Mahmud was a complex mixture of several contradictory elements. ‘He was very bigoted in religion … [and] was exceedingly covetous in seizing the riches of wealthy people,’ states Mir Khvand. Confirms Khondamir: Mahmud was ‘excessively greedy in accumulating wealth … [and he had an insatiable] thirst for worldly glory.’ Adds Ferishta: Mahmud had ‘the sordid vice of avarice.’

Yet, despite such vices, and the despotic power that he exercised, Mahmud had no hesitation to bow before the lowliest of his subjects when they charged him of misdeeds or incompetence. According to Zinatu-l Majalis , a late sixteenth century compilation of historical anecdotes, once when an old woman — whose son was killed along a caravan route in Ghazni — publicly rebuked Mahmud for the poor security conditions in his kingdom, and warned him to ‘keep no more territory than … [he could] manage,’ he bowed to her in humility and humbly accepted her rebuke.

There was a poignant trace of melancholy in Mahmud. Once, while drinking wine, his thoughts turned to his father, and with tears welling up in his eyes he said to a courtier: ‘My father had established very good rules for the management of the country, and took great pains in enforcing them. I thought that … [after my father’s demise] I would enjoy the exercise of my power in peace and security … I also considered that … I should become a great king. But the truth was revealed to me when he died … for since his departure I have not had one day’s happiness. You think I drink this wine for pleasure, but this is a great mistake. I take it merely as a device to gain … [some] peace.’

For all his savagery, there are aspects of the character and life of Mahmud that draw our sympathy. Part of the making of his complex persona was his self-consciousness about his unprepossessing looks. According to Ferishta, Mahmud’s face was heavily pock-marked. ‘His features were very ugly,’ states Hamdullah Mustaufi, a fourteenth century chronicler. ‘One day, regarding his own face in a mirror, he became thoughtful and depressed. His vizier inquired as to the cause of his depression, to which he replied, “It is generally understood that the sight of kings adds vigour to the eye, but the form with which I am endowed is enough to strike the beholder blind.” The vizier then consoled him, saying, “Scarcely one man in a million looks on your face, but the qualities of your mind cast their influence on every one. Study, therefore, to maintain an unimpeachable character, so that you may be the beloved of all hearts.”’

Mahmud was particularly diffident in matters of love. According to Muhammad Ufi, an early-thirteenth-century Persian chronicler, Mahmud ‘had been long enamoured … [of a slave-girl]. He was sincerely attached to her, and was anxious to espouse her. But it occurred to him that he might by this act incur the reproaches of the neighbouring kings and princes and forfeit the respect and esteem of his servants. He entertained this apprehension for a long time.’ But one day he told a courtier about his predicament. ‘Will not the neighbouring kings call me a fool?’ he asked the courtier. ‘And will not you also, my servants and slaves, speak ill of me in respectable society? I ask your advice in this matter. Have you ever heard or read in any history of kings wedding the children of their slaves?’ The courtier then reassured Mahmud, saying, ‘Many cases similar to this have occurred. Several kings … [have] married their own slave girls.’ It was only then that Mahmud had the courage to marry the girl.

ONE OF THE most redeeming qualities of Mahmud was that he was a man of wide cultural interests. A good part of the enormous treasure that he plundered from India was used to turn Ghazni into an elegant city of great architecture and high culture, one of the grandest cities of the age. The sultan set up there a great library — with books in many languages — and a museum, and he built there a magnificent Jami Masjid, which became renowned as the Bride of Heaven, one of the finest expressions of Islamic architecture.

Mahmud was an ardent patron of learning, literature and the arts. He had ‘a great propensity to poetry,’ observes Ferishta. ‘No king ever had more learned men at his court, kept a finer army, or displayed more magnificence.’ According to Mustaufi, the sultan ‘was a friend to learned men and poets, on whom he bestowed munificent presents, insomuch that every year he expended upon them more than 400,000 dinars.’ He is said to have maintained some 400 poets at his court, to one of whom he once gifted 14,000 silver coins as a reward for composing a single ode that pleased him. Similarly, on three occasions he is said to have poured pearls into the mouth of another poet, for composing elegant extempore verses. And once, when the Chandella king Vidyadhara sent to him an adulatory poem, he conferred on the king the command of 15 fortresses in India. There is probably some exaggeration in these accounts of Mahmud’s bounty, but there is no doubt he was a man of keen cultural interests.

Among the many litterateurs in Mahmud’s court the most renowned were Firdausi (the author of the great Persian epic Shah-nama ) and Al-Biruni (mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, historian and Sanskrit scholar). Firdausi would later fulminate against the sultan, and deride him as the niggardly son of a concubine, but that was an expression of the poet’s grudge against Mahmud, for having rewarded him, for Shah-nama , with silver coins instead of the gold coins he had expected. When Firdausi wrote the first 1000 verses of the epic, Mahmud had given him 1000 dinars (gold coins) as reward. His finished work had 60,000 verses, so he expected to be rewarded with 60,000 dinars, but got only 60,000 dirhams (silver coins). This greatly vexed Firdausi — perhaps not so much for not getting the reward he expected, as for not getting the recognition he desired — and he, according to Khondamir, peevishly gave away all the reward money in random gifts: 20,000 dirhams to a bath-keeper, 20,000 to a sherbet seller, and 20,000 to the officer who had brought him the money. He then composed about forty verses as a satire on the sultan, introduced them into Shah-nama , and then fled from Ghazni to Tus in Khurasan for safety. Some years later Mahmud is said to have regretted his niggardliness, and sent to Firdausi 60,000 dinars. But as the bearers of this reward entered Firdausi’s residence by one gate, his coffin was carried out by the other gate. ‘An only daughter was his heiress, to whom the emissaries of the sultan then offered … [the reward], but she, from the pride inherent in her disposition, refused the reward and said, “I have enough wealth to last me to the end of my days; I have no need for this money,”’ reports Khondamir.

MAHMUD’S DEATH WAS followed by a battle between two of his sons over the throne. The sultan had nominated his younger son Muhammad as his successor, preferring him over his eldest and ablest son Masud. But this choice — as in the case of Sabuktigin’s choice of Ismail over Mahmud to succeed him — was an expression of his sentiment, not of his judgement. Mahmud was well aware of this, and once told a noble who favoured Masud: ‘I know that Masud excels Muhammad in every respect, and after my death the kingdom will devolve upon him, but I take this trouble now on behalf of Muhammad, so that the poor fellow may enjoy some honour and gratification during my lifetime, for after my death it will not be so safe for him. May god have mercy on him.’ Mahmud seems to have disliked Masud, for ‘Masud, from his excessive haughtiness’ often spoke presumptuously and harshly to his father, notes Khondamir. According to Nizam-ul Mulk, an eleventh-century chronicler, ‘Sultan Mahmud was always on bad terms with his eldest son Masud.’