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

GATHERING INTELLIGENCE AND maintaining an efficient communication network were matters of high priority for most Indian rulers. Battuta was greatly impressed by the intelligence network of the Delhi Sultanate, by which the sultan was kept regularly and speedily informed about all that was happening in the various parts of his empire. This system was initially set up by Ala-ud-din Khalji, but it fell into disuse after him, till it was restored by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq. According to Battuta, the postmaster (chief intelligence officer) of a region ‘is the person who keeps the sultan informed of the affairs in his town and district and all that happens in it and all who come to it.’

‘In India the postal service is of two kinds,’ continues Battuta. ‘The mounted couriers travel on horses belonging to the sultan, with relays at every four miles. The service of couriers on foot is organised in the following manner. At every third of a mile there is an inhabited village, outside which there are three pavilions. In these sit men girded up and ready to move off, each of whom has a rod a yard and a half long with brass bells at the top. When a courier leaves the town he takes the letter in … one hand, and the rod with bells in the other, and runs with all his might. The men in the pavilions, on hearing the sound of bells, prepare to meet him, and when he reaches them one of them takes the letter in his hand and passes on, running with all his might and shaking his rod until he reaches the next station, and so the letter is passed on till it reaches its destination. This post is quicker than the mounted post. It is sometimes used to transport fruits from Khurasan which are highly valued in India; they are put in covered baskets and carried with great speed to the sultan. In the same way they transport notorious criminals; they are each placed on a wooden frame and the couriers run carrying it on their heads. The sultan’s drinking water is brought to him by the same means when he resides at Daulatabad, from the river Kank (Ganga) … which is at a distance of forty days’ journey from there.’

Apart from this government postal system, there seems to have been also a private postal system in medieval India, presumably maintained by prominent trade guilds. The carriers of this system stationed themselves at markets and announced the names of those for whom he was carrying mail, so they could go to him and collect their letters.

The Delhi sultans were warlords. And so were most Hindu rajas. For instance, Vijayanagar, as Sastri comments, was ‘a war state … and its political organization was dominated by its military needs.’ Waging wars was the normal mode of life of most early medieval kings, as hunting is for predatory animals. And their hunger for land was generally insatiable. As the medieval Persian poet Saadi puts it:

Even if a king did not have any belligerent intentions, he had to be ever prepared for war, for his very survival depended on it, as medieval Indian kingdoms were all invariably bordered by potential aggressors. In that environment, it was inevitably the martial capabilities of a king that primarily defined his worth. This attitude is reflected in the Rajput custom of a newly enthroned king engaging in a battle, or at least in a mock battle, right after his accession, for him to prove his worthiness for the throne.

The incessant sweep of armies all across the subcontinent — invariably accompanied by ravaging, pillaging wild tribes — was fatally disruptive of normal life in India and was ruinous to its economy. Medieval Indian armies were all predatory by nature. Pillaging the enemy or rebel lands was part of their normal operations, and even their advance through their own kingdom was often devastating. Men in fact joined the army not so much for the salary they were given, as for the opportunity it offered for plunder during campaigns. For kings too, plundering the enemy or rebel lands was a normal and legitimate means for filling their treasuries. According to Ni’matullah, during Sikandar Lodi’s campaign against a rebel in Bayana, ‘the whole army was employed in plundering, and all the groves which spread their shade for seven kos around Bayana were torn up from their roots … He butchered most of the people who had fled for refuge to the hills and forests, and the rest he pillaged and put in fetters.’

Waging war on non-Muslims was considered as holy war in Islam, and it had the sanction of religion. But in most cases the claims made by sultans of waging holy wars were mere pretexts to mask their essentially predatory purpose. Their wars, even their wars against Hindu kings, usually had little or nothing to do with religion. In fact, sultans often waged pillaging wars against fellow Muslim kingdoms, just as they waged such wars against Hindu kingdoms. And rajas too often waged pillaging wars against fellow Hindu kingdoms, just as they waged such wars against Muslim kingdoms. In both cases, the invocation of religious spirit by kings at best served to rouse the combative fervour of their soldiers.

Medieval Indian wars were often unspeakably savage orgies of violence. In the case of Turco-Afghans, a relatively small troop of men in military occupation of a vast country teeming with alien people, ferocity was an essential survival requirement, to instil terror in their adversaries and thus gain a critical psychological advantage over them.

This, however, was only a contributing factor in the savagery of medieval wars. Wars, at all times and among all people everywhere in the world were savage. And Hindu kings were not far behind Turks in bestial ferocity in wars. Thus Bukka, the mid-fourteenth century king of Vijayanagar, during his campaign in the Raichur Doab, ordered all the inhabitants of a town there — men and women and even children — to be slaughtered. And when Bahmani sultan Muhammad Shah heard of this outrage, he, according to Ferishta, took a solemn oath ‘that till he had put to death one hundred thousand infidels, as an expiation for the massacre of the faithful, he would never sheathe the sword of holy war nor refrain from slaughter.’

In the ensuing battle the sultan routed the Vijayanagar army, and then set about slaughtering Hindus en-masse, ‘putting all to death without any distinction,’ reports Ferishta. ‘It is said that the slaughter amounted to 70,000 men, women and children … Not even pregnant women, or even children at the breast, escaped the sword … The slaughter was terrible … The inhabitants of every place around Vijayanagar … [were] massacred without mercy.’ Similarly, sultan Jalal-ud-din Khalji of Delhi during one of his campaigns ‘made the blood of the infidels flow in streams, and formed bridges with their heads,’ writes medieval poet Amir Khusrav.

SO IT WENT on and on. Thus when Devaraya of Vijayanagar fought against the Bahmani sultan Firuz Shah, ‘Hindus made a general massacre of Muslims, and erected a platform with their heads on the field of battle,’ recounts Ferishta. ‘And they wasted [the land] with fire and sword … demolished many mosques and holy places, slaughtered people without mercy … seeming to discharge their treasured malice and resentment of ages.’ Even Krishnadeva, one of the most cultured rulers of the age, burnt down villages and pillaged the countryside during his campaigns in Orissa and Bijapur.

European armies in India also indulged in the barbaric slaughter of innocent civilians at this time. Thus Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer, during his 1504 second Indian campaign, wantonly butchered several hundred people in a vessel he captured along the Kerala coast, and soon after, on reaching Kozhikode, immediately bombarded the city, and set about slaying in cold blood some 800 harmless fishermen at the port. Similarly, Albuquerque, the early sixteenth-century Portuguese governor of Goa, on being attacked by the Bahmani army once, decapitated 150 principal Muslims in the town, and also slaughtered their wives and children, before evacuating the port. And a few months later, when he recaptured the port, he had some 6000 Muslim men, women and children there mercilessly slain. On the whole the behaviour of Christian soldiers was no different from the behaviour of Hindu and Muslim soldiers. All were equally savage. As Sewell comments, ‘Europeans seemed to think that they had a divine right to pillage, rob, and massacre the natives of India … Their whole record is one of a series of atrocities.’