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

However, though Sikandar avoided wars of conquest, he, following the policies of his father, launched a number of campaigns to assert his authority over the provinces of the kingdom and to consolidate the state, so that the Sultanate under him became the most powerful state in the subcontinent, though still a dwarf compared to what it had been under Khaljis and Tughluqs. One of the main military challenges that Sikandar faced was to keep under control the ever turbulent Rajput chieftains, but he was largely successful in that endeavour. In 1504 he shifted his capital from Delhi to the new township he founded in Agra, partly to keep the Rajputs under close watch, but also because Delhi had by this time become quite dilapidated.

On the whole Sikandar’s reign was marked by peace and prosperity. Comments Ni’matullah: ‘During the springtime of his rule, the garden of the world blossomed forth anew … On the cradle of his rule people lived in peace, security and contentment.’ The sultan, by his wise and moderate policies, ‘won the hearts of both the high and the low,’ states Abdullah. ‘During his reign everything was cheap, and safety and security prevailed … The public roads in his territory were so well secured that there was not a sign of highwaymen and robbers throughout his dominions … Grain, merchandise and goods of all description were so cheap during his reign that even people with small means could live comfortably … In his reign business was carried on in a peaceful, honest, straightforward way. A new sort of life obtained, for people high and low were polite, and self-respect, integrity, and devotion to religion prevailed, such as had never been the case in former reigns …

Sikandar died in November 1517, at the age of 46, after a reign of 28 years and some months. ‘Sikandar was taken ill with a disease of the throat, which daily became worse,’ writes Abdullah. ‘[He] became weaker every day … [and] by degrees his illness arrived at such a pitch that his throat would allow him neither to swallow food nor to drink water, and the passage of his breath was choked.’

SIKANDAR WAS SUCCEEDED on the throne by his eldest son Ibrahim. His coronation was one of the grandest celebrations in the history of the Delhi Sultanate. ‘On that day, all those who were attached to the royal person prepared the tents, embroidered with gold and adorned with jewels, and spread carpets of various colours, worked with gold thread,’ writes Ahmad Yadgar, an early seventeenth century chronicler. ‘They placed the throne … covered with costly gems and jewels of great value, on a colourful carpet. The tributary kings and nobles wore beautiful dresses and embroidered garments … Horses and elephants were decked with the most magnificent trappings. So splendid a coronation had never been witnessed, and the people … long remembered the day on which this fortunate and youthful monarch obtained the crown.’ This was the last hurrah of the Delhi Sultanate.

On the accession of Ibrahim some of the nobles in Delhi persuaded him — presumably hoping to clip his power — to partition the empire and give Jalal Khan, his uterine brother, the independent charge of Jaunpur. Ibrahim acted on this suggestion. But a few months later some other nobles in Delhi warned him that he had committed a grave error in dividing the kingdom, because

So Ibrahim revoked the arrangement with his brother and sought to repossess Jaunpur. Jalal naturally would not agree to this. ‘Sultan Ibrahim, of his own accord, gave me a portion of the inheritance which our father left, because I was his own brother, the son of the same mother,’ he asserted. ‘He has now broken the phial of the connection which we derived from our parent’s womb with the stone of unkindness.’ The issue evidently could be settled only on the battlefield. But Jalal was no match to Ibrahim, who chased him from place to place, finally captured him, and sent him to be imprisoned in the fort of Hansi, where his other four brothers were confined. But Jalal was assassinated on the way to Hansi, presumably on the order of Ibrahim.

Except for this ruthless act, the reign of Ibrahim was relatively clean, in so far as the reign of any medieval ruler could be clean. The prosperity that the Sultanate enjoyed under Buhlul continued under Ibrahim for a while. According to Abdullah, during Ibrahim’s reign ‘corn, clothes, and every kind of merchandise were cheaper than they had ever been known to be in any other reign, except perhaps in the time of Sultan Ala-ud-din Khalji, but even that is doubtful. Moreover, in the time of the later, the cheapness was achieved by means of every kind of disgusting interference and oppression, and by a hundred thousand enforcements and punishments; whereas the cheapness of … [farm produce in] this reign was occasioned by abundant harvests … Rain fell in the exact quantity that was needed, and the crops were consequently luxuriant, and the produce increased tenfold beyond the usual proportion.’

This state of peace and prosperity did not however last long. Presently one trouble after another began to beset the kingdom. ‘Sultan Sikandar’s death was followed by an internecine strife,’ notes Ni’matullah. ‘All his regulations were undone, low and mean persons won ascendency over the high and the noble, and caused disorder and disturbance. Administrative and financial affairs were thrown into total disorder. Although Sultan Ibrahim devised ways and adopted measures to rectify matters, these [very] steps unwittingly caused the undoing of his Sultanate.’

These problems were in part caused by the odd personality of Ibrahim. But the views of medieval chroniclers on this are rather confusing. According to Ni’matullah, the ‘wrath and violence of the sultan,’ his implacability and ‘ill temper, kept the courtiers and nobles of the realm in perpetual dread and suspicion.’ On the other hand, Yadgar states that Ibrahim was ‘celebrated for his personal beauty and excellent disposition,’ though a few pages later he notes that some nobles held that the sultan was ‘fickle’ and of ‘evil disposition.’ Some even held that ‘the king had gone mad.’

These harsh condemnations of Ibrahim by the nobles probably have a good amount of exaggeration in them, and were tainted by their resentment of the disciplinary measures that the sultan imposed on them. Ibrahim was indeed a medieval tyrant, but he was not very much worse so than most other Delhi sultans. But he clearly did not trust his nobles, and suspected, rightly, malice in them towards him, and he sought to keep them on a tight leash.

Ibrahim wanted total subservience from his nobles, and, to achieve that goal he sought to create a suitable psychological distance between himself and them. This led to a further tightening of the formal court etiquette introduced by Sikandar. According to Ferishta, Ibrahim declared that ‘kings should have no relations or clansmen, but all should be considered as subjects and servants of the state. The Afghan chiefs, who had hitherto been allowed to sit in the [king’s] presence, were now constrained to stand in front of the throne, with their hands crossed on the breast.’

ALL THIS CREATED considerable resentment among the nobles, whose support was the very base on which the royal throne rested. The situation became worse after Ibrahim’s conquest of Gwalior, a Rajput kingdom that had long defied his predecessors. ‘When the sultan had conquered Gwalior … he waxed very proud, so that he began to maltreat and punish the nobles of his father,’ writes Yadgar. ‘[He] has put 23 of them … to death without any cause … Some he suspended from walls, and caused others to be burnt alive.’ Once he had a whole group of troublesome nobles exterminated by blowing up with gunpowder the building where they had assembled.