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

He would be a humane ruler, Firuz resolved. ‘In the reigns of former kings … many varieties of torture were employed … All these things were practised so that fear and dread might fall upon the hearts of man, and that the regulations of government might be duly maintained … Through the mercy which god has shown to me, these severities and terrors have been exchanged [by me] for tenderness, kindness, and mercy. Fear and respect have thus taken firmer hold of the hearts of men, and there has been no need for executions, scourgings, tortures, or terrors,’ Firuz writes, and goes on to approvingly quote a poem:

This was not just a pious pretence. Firuz had a genuine concern for the welfare of the people. He reversed the prevailing royal view that people should serve the king, and held that the king should serve the people. The Delhi Sultanate under him was the closest that any government in medieval India came to being a welfare state. Firuz was especially caring towards the lowly — he was, according to Afif, ‘very kind and generous to the poor’—and he introduced several measures to succour the poor. One such measure was the setting up of a free hospital for the public. ‘I was by god’s grace enabled to build a hospital for the benefit of everyone of high or low degree,’ he states. ‘The cost of medicines and food is defrayed from my endowments. All sick persons, residents and travellers, highborn and commoner, bond and free, resort thither.’

In the same spirit, Firuz ‘founded an establishment for the promotion of marriages,’ reports Afif. ‘Many needy Muslims were distressed at having marriageable daughters, for whom they could provide no marriage portion … Notice was given that any man having a marriageable daughter might apply at the diwan-i-khairat (charity bureau) and state his case … to the officers of that establishment … who, after due enquiry, might fix an allowance [for them] … People, small and great, flocked to the city from all parts of the country, and received grants for purchasing housekeeping requisites for their daughters.’ The charity bureau also provided succour to widows and orphans.

FIRUZ WAS ESPECIALLY concerned with the welfare of his officers and soldiers and their families, motivated as much by humane considerations as by official responsibility. Thus, on learning about the distress of the families of the soldiers who perished in the Rann of Kutch during his disastrous Sind campaign of 1362, he ordered that the children of the dead soldiers should receive the allowances of their fathers, and ‘should not be troubled in any way,’ states Afif. The sultan even ‘directed that those who had deserted him in Gujarat [because of their sufferings in the Sind campaign] … and had returned home were to have their livelihood and villages continued to them. He was desirous that no one should suffer on that account.’ The deserters might be reproached, but not executed, banished or amerced, the sultan ordered.

The sultan also took care to substantially increase the salaries of government officers, for their loyalty was critically important for the success of his government. Whereas the highest pay given to an officer under Muhammad was only 200,000 tankas, Firuz assigned to his officers land grants yielding between 400,000 and 800,000 tankas, depending on their rank. His vizier was even assigned villages yielding 1,300,000 tankas!

Equally, Firuz showed earnest consideration for the welfare of his common soldiers, even in small matters. For instance, when he with his army finally emerged from the wilderness in which it had got trapped for six months while returning to Delhi from Orissa after one of his campaigns, and he then sent to Delhi a message about his safety, he also solicitously ‘gave public notice that all who wished to write to their families and friends might take this opportunity,’ states Afif. ‘This gave great satisfaction, and every man of the army, from the highest to lowest, wrote [to his family] some account of his condition,’ and a camel load of letters was sent to Delhi.

Firuz was equally solicitous about the welfare of his slaves, of whom he had an incredibly large number. ‘Altogether, in the city and in the various fiefs there were 180,000 slaves, for whose maintenance and comfort the sultan took especial care,’ notes Afif. ‘None of the sultan’s predecessors had ever collected so many slaves.’

But Firuz collected slaves to serve the state, not to serve his personal vanity, and he employed them in various productive works. ‘Some were placed under craftsmen and were taught the mechanical arts, so that about 12,000 slaves became artisans of various kinds … There was no occupation in which the slaves of Firuz Shah were not employed,’ continues Afif. ‘A clever and qualified superintendent was appointed over every class of [slave] artisans.’ The slaves were thus turned into economic assets of the state. ‘In some places they were provided for in the army, and villages were granted to them.’ Some 40,000 slaves were employed as royal guards.

Because of the vast number of royal slaves, and the diversity of their functions, Firuz set up a separate government department to administer their affairs. ‘A separate muster-master of the slaves, a separate treasury for the payment of their allowances … [and a separate group of] officers for administering the affairs of the slaves’ were instituted by Firuz, reports Afif. When the royal slaves became too numerous, many of them were distributed among the amirs, ‘who treated them like [their own] children, providing them with food and raiment, lodging them and training them, and taking every care of their wants. Each year they took their slaves to court and reported about their merits and abilities.’ Firuz was a slave owner, but not a slave driver.

Even in the treatment of defeated enemies, Firuz was humane and magnanimous, and that attitude often turned his enemies into his allies. This regard for others was also evident in the care that Firuz took to preserve and cherish the memory of the former sultans of Delhi, rather than remain egomaniacally focussed on himself. ‘It had been a rule among the sultans of Delhi that the name of the reigning monarch only was mentioned in the prayers of Sabbaths and festivals, and no reference was made to the former sultans,’ states Afif. ‘When Sultan Firuz came to the throne … he disapproved of the omission of the names of former kings, and ordered that a khutba should be said first in the names of former kings, and then one in which his own name was mentioned.’

FIRUZ WAS WILLING even to allow some laxity in official appointments, to favour those who served him. He therefore reintroduced the system of hereditary appointments to offices, a system that was disfavoured by Ala-ud-din and Muhammad, for it made birth, instead of competence, as the qualification for government employment, and it created a hereditary aristocracy which could challenge the authority of the sultan. Firuz disregarded those risks, and, according to Afif, ruled that ‘if an officer of the army died, he was to be succeeded by his son; if he had no son, by his son-in-law; if he had no son-in-law, by his slave; if he had no slave, by his nearest relation; and if he had no relations, by his wives.’

This policy was in a way logical — if the throne could be inherited, why not the lesser offices? The policy no doubt adversely affected the administrative and military efficiency of the Sultanate, but would have done that only marginally, as the normal mode of recruitment of officers in the Delhi Sultanate was quite haphazard and whimsical, except during the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji. Another deliberate laxity that Firuz introduced in administration was the reversion to the old practice of assigning fiefs to royal officers in lieu of cash payment, which again was a policy disfavoured by Ala-ud-din, to prevent officers from gaining territorial power bases independent of the sultan. Firuz also discouraged the use of spies, who were extensively used by previous sulans to keep track of what was happening in the empire and what the royal officers were doing; instead, he sought to build mutual trust between him and his officers.