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

On the death of Firuz his grandson Ghiyas-ud-din, whom the sultan had designated as his successor, ascended the throne. But he turned out to be an utterly worthless ruler, frivolous and addicted to sensual pleasures. He ‘was young and inexperienced,’ comments Sirhindi. ‘He knew nothing of politics, and had seen none of the wiles of fickle fortune. So he gave himself to wine and pleasure. The business of government was entirely neglected, and the officers of the late sultan asserted their power so fearlessly that all control of the state was lost.’

The only notable though not creditable political act of Ghiyas-ud-din was to imprison his brothers, fearing that they would turn out to be threats to his power. But that action, instead of securing his power, directly led to his downfall, as it sent shivers of anxiety through his cousins, and they manoeuvred to save themselves. Abu Bakr, one of his cousins, then secretly fled from Delhi and, joined by several disgruntled nobles, organised a cabal against the sultan.

The cabal enjoyed wide support among the nobles of Delhi, and this enabled the rebels to enter the city one day without much opposition and storm into the royal palace. Ghiyas-ud-din tried to save himself by fleeing through the rear gate of the palace, but was caught and immediately beheaded. Several of his close associates were also then beheaded, and all these severed heads were then suspended from the gate of the palace, to publicise the overthrow of the sultan. The reign of Ghiyas-ud-din had lasted just six months and eighteen days.

The rebel nobles then paraded Abu Bakr through the city, seated on an elephant with a canopy over his head, and proclaimed him as the sultan. But the enthronement of Abu Bakr did not end the turmoil in the empire. It merely opened another phase of it, for his accession was immediately challenged by a rival group of nobles, who invited Muhammad, Firuz’s eldest surviving son — who had been briefly the co-ruler of the empire during the last days of Firuz, but had been driven out of the city in a popular uprising because of his wild debauchery — to reclaim the throne. Muhammad then engaged Abu Bakr in a long seesaw tussle, in which he even managed to briefly gain a foothold in Delhi a couple of times, but was driven out on both occasions. However, he finally succeeded in overthrowing Abu Bakr and seizing the throne. Abu Bakr was then sent to prison, where he died a few years later. His reign had lasted nineteen months.

The rule of Muhammad lasted three and a half years, but all through his reign he was beset with rebellions. ‘The business of the state day by day fell into greater confusion,’ states Sirhindi. ‘Affairs came to such a pass that there were amirs at just twenty kos from Delhi who shook off their allegiance [to the sultan], and made pretensions of independence.’

Muhammad died in January 1394 and was succeeded by his son Ala-ud-din Sikandar Shah. ‘In a very short time,’ continues Sirhindi, ‘it became evident that the new sultan was even more negligent and incompetent than his father in the duties of government.’ Fortunately, he fell sick and died within a month and a half of his accession. He was then succeeded by his younger brother Nasir-ud-din Mahmud Shah, whose reign of eighteen years was the longest of the successors of Firruz, though it was interrupted by a couple of brief periods when he was out of power.

Though his reign lasted long, Mahmud was as feckless a ruler as his immediate predecessors. He left the entire business of government to his nobles, particularly to Mallu Khan, a perfidious and overambitious noble who, according to Sirhindi, ‘kept Sultan Mahmud in his power as a puppet, and himself directed all the affairs of government … The whole business of the state then fell into the greatest disorder. The sultan gave no heed to the duties of his station, and had no care for the permanency of the throne; his whole time was devoted to pleasure and debauchery.’ Inevitably, the disintegration of the empire accelerated under him, both in the loss of territories to rebels and the emasculation of the power of the sultan.

The political scene in the Sultanate became further confounded at this time, as some nobles raised another grandson of Firuz, Nusrat Shah, to the throne in Firuzabad. So there were now for a time two sultans, one in Delhi and the other in nearby Firuzabad, and this led to a protracted civil war. ‘The government fell into anarchy; civil war raged everywhere, and a scene was exhibited, unheard of before, of two kings in arms against each other residing in the same capital,’ reports Ferishta. ‘Affairs remained in this state for three years.’

THEN SUDDENLY THE scene changed dramatically. The cause of this change was the invasion of India by Timur. Timur belonged to the Barlas tribe, a Turco-Mongol people who traced their descent to the followers of Genghis Khan. The tribe had settled in Transoxiana in Central Asia, and had over the centuries become Turkish in language and identity, Persianised in culture, and Islamised in religion.

Timur was the son of a petty chieftain in Transoxiana. This region, like most of the medieval world, was at this time swirling in military conflicts, and Timur was involved in them from his early youth. In one of these battles he was injured in the hip by an arrow, which made him lame, and he thereafter bore the Persian nickname Timur-e Lang: Timur the Lame. Despite that handicap, his career as a military leader progressed dramatically, and by the time he was in his late fifties, he had transformed his small patrimony into a vast empire stretching from the border of China to the Mediterranean, with Samarkand as its capital.

These Central Asian campaigns occupied Timur most of his life, so it was only towards the end of his life, in 1398, when he was 62, that he turned to invade India. ‘About this time there arose in my heart the desire to lead an expedition against the infidels, and to become a ghazi,’ Timur writes in his autobiography. ‘But I was undetermined in my mind whether I should direct my expedition against the infidels of China or against the infidels and polytheists of India.’

Timur then consulted his chieftains on this. But they were divided in their opinion. Some warned him against invading India, on the ground that India had four natural defences. ‘The first defence,’ they said, ‘consists of five large rivers, which flow from the mountains of Kashmir … and it is not possible to cross them without boats and bridges. The second defence consists of woods and forests and trees, which, interweaving stem with stem and branch with branch, render it difficult to penetrate into that country. The third defence is the soldiery, and landholders, and princes, and rajas of the county, who inhabit the fastnesses in those forests, and live there like wild beasts. The fourth defence consists of elephants, for the rulers of that country on the day of the battle cover their elephants with mail, and put them in the van of their army … They have trained them to such a pitch that, lifting with their trunks a horse and its rider, and whirling them in the air, they will dash them on the ground.’

But this view was countered by other nobles, who pointed out that Mahmud Ghazni had ‘conquered … Hindustan with 30,000 horse … and had carried off many thousand loads of gold and silver and jewels from that county, besides subjecting it to a regular tribute.’ And that feat, they assured, could be repeated by Timur, especially as he had 100,000 valiant Tartar horsemen under his command. And the invasion of India would not only earn him heavenly blessings, but also countless material benefits, they asserted. ‘The army will be contented [with booty] and the [royal] treasury will be … well-filled, and with the gold of Hindustan our amir will become a conqueror of the world and famous among the kings of the earth.’ This view was seconded by Timur’s sons. ‘If we conquer India we shall become the rulers over the seven climes,’ a prince said. And another prince added: ‘India is full of gold and jewels, and in it there are seventeen mines of gold and silver, diamond and ruby and emerald and tin and iron and steel and copper and quicksilver etc, and there are there plants fit for making wearing apparel, and aromatic plants, and sugarcane, and it is a country which is always green and verdant, and the whole aspect of the country is pleasant and delightful. And, as the inhabitants [of India] are chiefly infidels … it is right for us to conquer them.’ A third view of the nobles was that it would be good to raid India, but not occupy it. ‘If we establish ourselves permanently therein, our race will degenerate and our children will become like the natives of those regions, and in a few generations their strength and valour will diminish.’