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

ONE OF THE major reasons for the upheavals and instabilities in medieval Indian kingdoms, of Hindus as well as of Muslims, was that there were no well-defined and generally accepted rules of royal succession. The throne belonged to whoever could seize it. Contested royal succession was therefore the norm in India. And these contests were invariably marked by much brutality and bloodshed, even though the rivals were often brothers or other close relatives. Killing a father, brother, cousin or uncle for the throne was not considered a crime or a sin, but as a normal and legitimate action in royal politics. Kings were often murderers.

The career path of men in royal families was often from prison to throne or death, or from throne to prison or death. Those who ascended the throne by murdering its occupant, or their succession rivals, were themselves in turn often murdered by other aspirants for the throne. And nobles played an equally ignominious role in this vicious game; they usually had no enduring loyalty to anyone, and the usurper invariably won their support by scattering gold among them. Those who were obsequious towards a sultan one day, were equally obsequious towards his assassin-successor the next day. In India, as Mughal emperor Babur would later remark in his memoirs, ‘there is … this peculiarity … that any person who kills the ruler and occupies the throne becomes the ruler himself. The amirs, viziers, soldiers and peasants submit to him at once and obey him.’

One reads with dismay about the pervasive political violence and criminality of the age. But these were not considered as deviant and condemnable conduct in that age; rather, they were widely accepted as the norm, and it is seldom that we hear any voice raised against such acts in the chronicles of the age.

In ancient Indian kingdoms there was a custom of kings in their old age handing over their power to a successor and leading a retired life, and this sometimes happened even in medieval times also. And in some dynasties — among the Pandyas, for instance — the king shared his power with his brothers. But there were hardly any instances of such practices in Muslim kingdoms. In the entire history of the Delhi Sultanate there is only one case of a sultan voluntarily, by his own will, giving up his throne — that was Alam Shah of the Sayyid dynasty, who relinquished his throne and moved to a small town well away from Delhi, where he lived for three full decades in contentment and tranquillity.

THE THRONE WAS no bed of roses. The sultan, for all his great power, led an ever-harried, perilous life. The sword of an enemy, or of a rebel or usurper, ever hung over his head. There were of course compensating rewards for taking these risks: the enjoyment of power itself — the highest of the highs that any political animal could aspire for — as well as the enjoyment of matchless luxuries, the very best that the contemporary world could provide. The sultans also found some diversion from the pressures of their life in various pastimes, particularly in hunting, which was the favourite means of relaxation for most sultans, as it had the excitement of a battle without its peril. The other common pastimes of the sultans were playing polo and horse-racing. Some sultans also enjoyed the pastimes of the common people. The favourite summer pastime of Sikandar Lodi, for instance, was fishing. According to Ni’matullah, an early seventeenth century chronicler, in summer the sultan often pitched his tents on the banks of the Yamuna, ‘whither he retired in order to avoid the heat, and amuse himself with fishing … He [also] enjoyed himself in field sports.’ And once when he was in Mathura, he travelled by boat on the Yamuna, ‘amusing himself on the way with various kinds of sport.’

Several of the sultans were vain enough to build new cities and palaces of their own, named after themselves. Even Firuz Tughluq, a relatively modest sultan, built, according to Afif, a fourteenth-century chronicler, as many as ‘thirty-six royal establishments, for which enormous supplies of articles were collected … [Some of these palaces were very large, with] elephant, horse, and camel stables, the kitchen, the butlery, the candle department, the dog-kennels, the water cooling department, and other similar establishments.’

The Delhi sultans normally, with rare exceptions, lived in a grand style in huge fortified palaces, and had vast domestic establishments to take care of their every need. In addition, the royal palaces were served by various ancillary establishments that met the diverse requirements of the sultan and his court. Muhammad Tughluq, for instance, employed 4000 silk weavers, who supplied the materials for making the great number of the robes of honour that the sultan needed for distributing to his favourites. In a related activity, he had 500 craftsmen working on gold embroidery. ‘In the winter season six lakh tankas were expended on the [royal] wardrobe, besides the outlay for spring and summer,’ notes Afif about Firuz Tughluq. There were similar expenditures in other departments also. The royal workshops also served the needs of the army.

The royal kitchen, like everything else associated with royalty, was a large and tightly organised establishment. ‘The king has ten cooks for his personal service, and has others kept for times when he gives banquets; and these ten prepare the food for no one save for the king,’ reports Fernao Nuniz, a sixteenth century Portuguese traveller, about the practice in Vijayanagar. ‘He has a eunuch for guard at the gate of the kitchen, who never allows anyone to enter for fear of poison. When the king wishes to eat every person withdraws, and then come some of the women whose duty it is, and they prepare the table for him. They place for him a three-footed stool, round, made of gold, and on it put the messes. These are brought in large vessels of gold, and the smaller messes in basins of gold, some of which are adorned with precious stones.’

And all these palace-related services were supervised by a high-ranking official, Wakil-i-dar, through whom ‘all orders were issued to the respective establishments’, and salaries and allowances paid to the personal staff of the sultan.

A PRODIGAL AND EXTRAVAGANT lifestyle was considered indispensable for kings, to demonstrate their unique status in society. As Barani would comment, overweening pride, haughtiness and self-glorification were normal and essential qualities in monarchs. In the view of the eleventh-century Ghaznavid chronicler Baihaqi, it was essential for the sultan to have ‘pomp, servants, officers of the state, lords of the sword and pen, countless armies, elephants and camels in abundance, [and] an overflowing treasury.’ Similarly, according to Barani, nobles in Delhi held that ‘two things were required in kings: firstly, princely expenditure and boundless liberality … and, secondly, dignity, awe and severity, by which enemies are repulsed and rebels put down …’ The lifestyle of most of the Delhi sultans matched these prescriptions, and was indeed often extravagantly flamboyant.

One could not be a sultan and be self-effacing. This was the general view. But there were a few sultans in medieval India who were quite modest in their lifestyle. For instance, Jalal-ud-din, the late-thirteenth-century founder of the Khalji dynasty, was so unostentatious that his nobles scorned his conduct as unbecoming for a sultan. Even more modest was the lifestyle of the early fifteenth century Bahmani sultan Firuz Shah, even though he was one of the most adventurous and successful of the Bahmani sultans — he met his personal expenses by copying the Koran, and required the ladies of his harem to support themselves ‘by embroidering garments and selling them.’ There were a couple of other kings like them in medieval India. But these were truly exceptional cases.