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

The nobles then enthroned Iltutmish’s youngest son, Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, an affable and devout prince, who, according to Isami, ‘ruled the country righteously, not like the other foolish princes.’

With the accession of Nasir-ud-din Mahmud began the slow process of restoring the political stability of the Delhi Sultanate, which had been in an awful state of turmoil for a decade after the death of Iltutmish. But Mahmud, a mild and unassertive prince, himself had virtually nothing to do with this transformation. The crucial role in it was played by Ghiyas-ud-din Balban, an eminent Turkish noble, who assumed supreme power in the Sultanate on Mahmud’s accession, and wielded that power for forty years, from 1246 to 1287, first as the regent of Mahmud for two decades, and then, on Mahmud’s death, as sultan, for another two decades. During this entire period there was only one brief interruption in his career, during his regency, when he was out of power for about two years, due to the manoeuvres of his political rivals.

Mahmud, who was about seventeen years old at the time of his accession, had no aptitude for governing, no interest in it either, and was content to leave that responsibility entirely to Balban. Mahmud ‘was a mild, kind, and devout king, and he passed much of his time making copies of the Holy Book,’ notes Barani, a mid-fourteenth century historian of the Sultanate. Mahmud lived very frugally. It is said that once when his wife asked him to take some money from the treasury and buy a slave girl to do the domestic work in the royal quarters, he rejected the request saying that the treasury belonged to the people, and was not for the personal use of the sultan.

These retiring, saintly qualities, though commendable in themselves, were unsuited in a sultan in the turbulent environment then existing in the Sultanate. Though Iltutmish had made a serious effort to systematise the administration of the Sultanate, what he achieved was altogether lost in the chaos that followed his death. ‘During the reigns of his sons, the affairs of the country had fallen into confusion,’ observes Barani. ‘The treasury was empty, and the royal court had but little in the way of wealth and horses. The Shamsi slaves had become khans, and they divided among themselves all the wealth and power of the kingdom, so that the country came under their control.’

But these nobles themselves were divided into various cabals and were forever at each other’s throat. ‘None [of the nobles] would give precedence … to another,’ continues Barani. ‘In possessions and display, in grandeur and dignity, they vied with each other, and in their proud vaunts and boasts every one exclaimed to the other, “What art thou that I am not, and what will thou be that I shall not be?” The incompetence of the sons of Iltutmish, and the arrogance of the Shamsi slaves, thus brought into contempt that throne which had been among the most dignified and exalted in the world.’

The worst period in all this was the decade long interregnum between the death of Iltutmish and the accession of Mahmud, when royal authority was often impudently flouted by provincial governors and top nobles, some of whom nurtured the ambition of becoming sultans themselves. Besides that, there was at this time the persistent problem of resurgent Rajput rajas challenging the authority of the sultan to regain their independence. There was also the problem of turbulent hill tribes and bandits freely roaming around in the countryside, menacing traders and travellers as well as the common people. And above all, there was the ominous presence of Mongols in the northwest, threatening to engulf the Sultanate. The future of the Sultanate looked most uncertain.

The Delhi Sultanate at the time of Mahmud’s accession covered a broad swath of land in North India, but the territory had not yet been consolidated into a viable, stable state. Indeed, before Balban took charge of the situation soon after Mahmud’s accession, the Sultanate was in grave danger of disintegrating into total chaos. Balban stabilised the situation substantially, despite the jealousies and intrigues of rival nobles.

DURING ALMOST ALL the twenty years of Mahmud’s reign Balban served as the regent of the Sultan, and bore the grand title Ulugh Khan (Great Khan). ‘He, keeping Nasir-ud-din as a puppet, carried on the government, and used many of the insignia of royalty even while he was only a Khan,’ reports Barani. The rule of Mahmud was in fact the rule of Balban.

Balban began his career in India as a slave of Iltutmish, who purchased him in Delhi in 1233. He was of the lineage of a clan of chieftains in Turkistan, but was enslaved as a child and brought to Gujarat by a slave trader. There he was bought by a Turk who, according to Siraj, ‘brought him up carefully like a son. Intelligence and ability shone out clearly in his countenance … [so he was] treated with special consideration’ by his master, who eventually brought him to Delhi and sold him to Iltutmish. Balban, according to Battuta, ‘was short in stature and of mean appearance.’ But his high mental stature and talents more than compensated for his poor physical appearance. Iltutmish, Siraj notes, regarded Balban to be ‘a youth of great promise, so he made him his personal attendant, placing, as one might say, the hawk of fortune on his hand.’

Balban rose rapidly in the service of the Sultanate, and in time became a member of The Forty, the elite band of Turks serving the sultan. And even in that elite group Balban stood out, surpassing the other nobles by his ‘vigour, courage and activity.’ Raziya appointed him as her Chief Huntsman, an important and confidential post. ‘Fate proclaimed that the earth was to be the prey of his fortune, and world the game of his sovereignty,’ comments Siraj. Later, when Bahram became the sultan, he raised Balban to the post of Master of the Horse. ‘The steed of sovereignty and empire thus came under his bridle and control,’ remarks Siraj. ‘His success was so great that other nobles began to look upon him with jealousy, and the thorn of envy began to rankle in their hearts. But it was the will of god that he should excel them all, so that the more the fire of their envy burnt, the stronger did the incense of his fortune rise from the censer of the times.’ In 1243 Balban was appointed Amir-i-Hajib, Lord Chamberlain, by Sultan Masud.

Balban’s star rose even more rapidly when Masud was succeeded by Mahmud, especially after the sultan married his daughter. Balban was then appointed to the premier post of Naib-i-Mamlikat, and he in turn filled most of the key positions in the government with his nominees, and appointed his brother Kashli Khan as Lord Chamberlain. These posts were not, however, sinecures, for Balban demanded credible performance from all his officers, just as he himself worked untiringly.

But the very success of Balban created its own problems, for it roused the envy of rival nobles, who then worked in secret to oust him from his high office. The prime mover in the plot against Balban was Raihan, the Wakil-i-dar, superintendent of the sultan’s household establishment, a position that gave him easy access to the royal family. A wily conspirator, he won the support of the sultan’s mother and several disgruntled nobles, and, craftily working behind the scenes, he gradually roused resentment in Mahmud himself against Balban’s dominance. And eventually, in the winter of 1252–53, he persuaded the sultan to shift Balban out of Delhi and send him to his fief, and also to remove his brother, Kashli Khan, from his office. It was the hope of the conspirators that Balban would resist these slights, and thus give them the opportunity to destroy his power altogether. But to their disappointment, Balban obeyed the royal order without a murmur. Discomfited, Raihan then struck a second blow, and got the sultan to transfer Balban abruptly from his fief to another fief. But once again Balban obeyed without protest.