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

TIMUR HAD LAID waste a broad swath of land in North India, and he left Delhi in utter ruin and virtually depopulated. ‘After the departure of Timur, the neighbourhood of Delhi, and all those territories over which his armies had passed, were visited with pestilence and famine,’ observes Sirhindi. ‘Many died of sickness, and many perished of hunger, and for two months Delhi was desolate.’

And this material and human devastation was followed by political chaos. The Sultanate was now in shambles, and the authority of the sultan was virtually confined to the city of Delhi and its environs. And the tussle for the throne between the descendants of Firuz, which had raged before Timur’s invasion, now resumed. Soon after the departure of Timur from Delhi, the city was occupied by Nusrat Shah, a grandson of Firuz. But he was almost immediately driven out of the city by Mallu Khan, who then invited Mahmud to return to Delhi and reoccupy the throne. Mahmud, who had fled to Gujarat from Delhi on being routed by Timur, and had finally taken refuge in Malwa, then returned to Delhi. But he was miserable there, for Mallu Khan was the de facto ruler, and Mahmud a mere figurehead. So, chafing under the haughty dominance of Mallu Khan, Mahmud once again fled from the city, this time to Kanauj, where he lived as a virtual refugee, with just a few attendants.

Meanwhile Mallu Khan tried to recover some of the lost provinces of the empire, but this brought him into conflict with Khizr Khan, a former noble of the Sultanate but now the deputy of Timur in Multan. In the ensuing battle Khizr Khan defeated and killed Mallu Khan. A group of nobles headed by Daulat Khan Lodi then took charge of Delhi, and they persuaded Mahmud to reoccupy the throne of Delhi. Mahmud was not entirely without spirit and enterprise, and during this phase of his rule, which lasted seven years, he made several earnest efforts to recover some of the lost territories of the empire.

The reign of Mahmud in all lasted eighteen years, but during a good part of it he was only a nominal ruler, under the thumb of some dominant noble, and on a couple of occasions he was even a fugitive living under the protection of provincial rulers. The sultan died in early 1412, and with his death ended the history of the Tughluq dynasty.

The Delhi Sultanate was in an appalling state of disintegration at the close of the reign of the Tughluqs, and had fragmented into a number of independent kingdoms, some of which had larger territory and greater power than the Sultanate. But the Sultanate, though considerably attenuated, endured for 114 years more, till the invasion of Babur and the establishment of the Mughal rule in India in 1526. During this period, after a chaotic interregnum of two years following the death of sultan Mahmud in 1412, the Sultanate was ruled by two successor dynasties, Sayyids for thirty-seven years under four sultans, and Lodis for seventy-five years under three sultans.

The first of these two dynasties was founded by Khizr Khan, who bore the appellation ‘Sayyid’, which identified him as a descendant of prophet Muhammad, so the dynasty he founded came to be known as the Sayyid dynasty. The veracity of Khizr Khan’s claimed lineage is uncertain, but it is likely that his forebears were Arabs, who had migrated to India in the early Tughluq period and settled in Multan. The family prospered in India, gaining wealth and power. This advancement culminated in Malik Suleiman, Khizr Khan’s father, becoming the governor of Multan under the Tughluqs. When Suleiman died, Khizr Khan succeeded him to the post, but lost it during the political turmoil following the death of Firuz Tughluq.

Khizr Khan was however able to regain the post by casting his lot with Timur when he invaded India, and was rewarded by Timur with the governorship of Multan. According to Mughal chronicler Ferishta, Timur in fact appointed Khizr Khan as his viceroy in Delhi, but the Khan does not seem to have assumed that office. In any case, with the retreat of Timur from India, and the return of Mahmud Tughluq to the throne of Delhi, Khizr Khan had to be contented with Multan for the time being. But his ambition now was clearly to be the ruler of Delhi, the role that Timur had assigned to him. Over the next decade and half he considerably expanded his territory and power in western India, in preparation for the campaign to seize Delhi. During this period he in fact advanced on Delhi twice, but had to retreat on both occasions, because of the lack of provisions for his army in the devastated environs of Delhi. Then his fortune turned again. On the death of Mahmud, the last sultan of the Tughluq dynasty, the nobles of Delhi raised Daulat Khan Lodi, a powerful and respected noble, to the throne of Delhi. But before Daulat Khan could consolidate his power, Khizr Khan marched against him, occupied Delhi after a siege of four months, imprisoned Daulat Khan, and ascended the throne. Daulat Khan then disappeared from history.

THIS WAS IN June 1414. With the accession of Khizr Khan began the gradual recovery of the Sultanate from the quarter century of swirling chaos into which it had slid after the death of Firuz Tughluq. Khizr Khan had all the qualities needed to play the role of a political redeemer. ‘He was generous, brave, merciful, considerate, true to his word, and kind,’ writes Sirhindi, a medieval Indian chronicler. Adds Badauni: ‘The Sayyid was a man in whom were manifest the virtues of Muhammad … and the grace of Ali …’

Prudence and rectitude marked all the policies and actions of Khizr Khan. And he was unswerving in his loyalty to Timur (to whom he owed his rise to power) and his descendants. Though he exercised all the powers of a sovereign, he prudently refrained from assuming the royal title, but was content to be known as the viceroy of Shah Rukh, Timur’s son, to whom he took care to send tribute throughout his reign. In the first few years of his reign the khutba in Delhi was read only in the name of Shah Rukh, and it was only later that Khizr Khan added his own name in the khutba, and that too only after obtaining Shah Rukh’s permission to do so. Nor did Khizr Khan mint coins in his own name. He was not enamoured of the trappings of power; he had the substance of power, and that was what mattered to him. ‘Although he did not take royal titles, yet he ruled and administered his territories like a king,’ comments Nurul-Haqq, a sixteenth century chronicler.

In many respects Khizr Khan was like Firuz Tughluq, particularly in the caution, moderation, benevolence and sense of justice he displayed during his reign. Like Firuz, Khizr Khan also took care to win over his rivals and adversaries by treating them with fairness and generosity. Although he necessarily gave the key positions in government to his own trusted followers, he treated the top officers of the previous reign honourably. Equally, he showed a genuine concern for the welfare of his subjects, particularly for the poor.

The Delhi Sultanate was no longer an empire at the time of Khizr Khan’s accession, but only one of the many kingdoms into which the subcontinent had fragmented in the closing years of the Tughluq dynasty. Khizr Khan made some cautious moves to extend its territory, but he was not particularly successful in this, though in some cases he was able to force the local rulers to pay him the tribute due to him as their overlord. He had a good sense of what was possible in the prevailing circumstances, and he trimmed his policies to suit the constraints of his situation. He therefore often overlooked the actions of refractory provincial chieftains, for he knew all too well that even if he managed to overpower them, they would turn rebellious again when his forces withdrew from their territories. He was however particular about collecting the revenues due from the provinces, for that was the absolutely essential sustenance for his very survival as sultan. Often he had to take military action to enforce revenue collection, and in some extreme cases even had to resort to plundering the fief of the defaulter to collect the dues from him, with the royal soldiers acting like brigands.