The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (38 page)

Among officers of state, the sultan’s energy, wilfulness, and fabulous generosity invited toadyism and corruption. On the other hand, the ’
ulama
, though not as a group highly distinguished, leaned to rigidity and ultra-conservatism in their Sunni orthodoxy, an attitude brought on partly by Islam’s precarious dominance in an overwhelmingly infidel land. Consequently, the sultan’s continuing flirtations with unacceptable, even pagan, philosophies, his strange reform ideas, and finally his failure to hold on to all the territory won for the faith in South India produced a swell of outrage, private mutterings, and secret
resistance. Muhammad was undeterred. “My remedy for rebels, opponents, disobedient persons and evil-wishers is the sword,” he says in a hypothetical conversation with the chronicler Barani. “I will continue punishing and striking with my sword till it either cuts or misses. The more the people oppose me, the greater will be my punishments.”
¹⁹
Ibn Battuta indeed bears witness to a desperate crescendo of brutality far worse than anything he had seen in other lands.

In spite of all that we have related of his humility, his sense of fairness, his compassion for the needy, and his extraordinary liberality, the sultan was far too free in shedding blood . . . [He] used to punish small faults and great, without respect of persons, whether men of learning or piety or noble descent. Every day there are brought to the audience-hall hundreds of people, chained, pinioned, and fettered, and those who are for execution are executed, those for torture tortured, and those for beating beaten.

Open-hearted, eager to please, and far too gregarious for his own good, the young
qadi
soon found himself enmeshed in the morbid, dangerous politics of the imperial court. The sultan remained in Delhi only about seven months — from June 1334 to the following January. During this period neither Ibn Battuta nor his two “substitutes” got around to hearing any legal cases. Rather he occupied his time attending at court or accompanying his master on the great gaudy hunting expeditions for which all Turkish and Mongol warrior kings were known. These colossal promenades in the Delhi hinterland required the participation of almost the entire ruling establishment. Courtiers and high officials were expected to purchase their own outing equipment, as it were, in diminutive imitation of the sultan’s splendid encampment. Like everyone worthy of esteem, Ibn Battuta felt obliged to buy a large tent with a white fabric enclosure, together with food, utensils, clothing, carpets, animals, and a corps of servants sufficient to haul and supervise all this matériel. A team of eight men had to be hired to carry the
dula
, or decorated palanquin, in which a notable rode when not preferring his horse or elephant. In the
Rihla
Ibn Battuta makes much of the “vigor and energy” he showed in always being ready to leave Delhi the same day the sultan did and how he was honored during these
excursions with invitations to sit or ride in close proximity to the Shadow of God.

Keeping up with the ruling class of India, however, was frighteningly expensive. Like the Turko–Mongol states, the sultanate was an extremely personal system of power. Bonds of loyalty and respect between social groups were maintained through a chain of favor starting with the sultan and extending downward through the political ranks to the lowliest servant. What the ruler expended in gifts and stipends his officeholders were expected to give back in future presents to him or redistribute to their own servants, clients, and suppliers. This medieval version of “trickle down theory” kept the political system reasonably stable, but it also put tremendous pressure on men of position to spend freely. Spectacular donations and purchases strengthened a man’s authority over those below him and his prestige among those above. Caution and frugality invited scorn. Any temptation to invest in long-term capital enterprise or save for a rainy day was easily resisted, for the state could part a man from his riches with devastating suddenness. Everyone in the elite circles, and especially the governors and senior military officers, were thus encouraged to compete feverishly with one another in stupendous, ceaseless spending. “If one of the nobles bestowed fifty horses in his wine party and gave robes to two hundred persons,” says Barani, “another noble hearing this would feel jealous, and would try to give away a hundred horses and to bestow robes on five hundred persons.”
²⁰

Ibn Battuta was not of course in the same league with the great commanders of the realm, but he lost no time piling up debts to finance his gifts to the sovereign and a properly luxurious household. He confesses frankly in the
Rihla
that he developed a reputation for extravagance and that the sultan was well aware of it. We should not conclude, however, that he was necessarily a bigger spender than other men of comparable status. He admits freely of his prodigality, not to confess humbly to a bad habit, but to show that he lived generously and expansively as befitting a
qadi
of Delhi. Nonetheless, he had to find a way to pay off the merchants who had staked him to his début in the capital because they were preparing to leave the country on a commercial venture. The amount in question was 55,000 silver dinars. The
Rihla
rather tires the reader with its lengthy description of his strategies for getting Muhammad Tughluq to pay his bills for
him, suggesting that he spent a good part of his first half year in Delhi preoccupied with his personal finances. To broach the subject before his master he composed a praise poem to him in Arabic that ended, candidly enough, with the lines:

Make speed to aid the votary to thy shrine,
And pay his debt — the creditors are dunning.

The sultan was pleased with the ode and agreed to pay, but the disbursement from the treasury was held up. Ibn Battuta then got his creditors to make an appeal to Muhammad on his behalf. Success again, but payment was delayed a second time because of certain procedural improprieties involving another official. Ibn Battuta appealed once more, this time sending the sultan three camels, two gilded saddles, and plates of sweets. At long last the money was released, not only the 55,000 dinars for the debt but also the 12,000 the sultan had earlier agreed to give him.

By the time all this was settled Muhammad Tughluq was preparing to leave the capital once again. Sometime in 1334 rebellion had broken out in Ma’bar, the Tamil-speaking region in the far southeast of the subcontinent that had been annexed to the empire by Muhammad Tughluq’s father only eleven years earlier. The leader of the rising was not a Hindu prince but Jalal al-Din Ahsan Shah, the sultan’s own governor. Rallying the support of the Muslim
amirs
and soldiers under his authority, he proclaimed himself Sultan of Ma’bar. Despite the political perils of campaigning 1,300 miles from the capital, Muhammad mustered an army to march to Daulatabad, then on to Madurai, chief city of Ma’bar. Ibn Battuta expected to be ordered to go along on the expedition. To his surprise and relief, the sultan instructed him to remain in Delhi and, aside from his judgeship, appointed him administrator of the mausoleum of Qutb al-Din Mubarak, the Khalji sultan who reigned from 1316 to 1320 and under whom Muhammad Tughluq had entered military service as a young man. Just before the royal departure on 5 January 1335,
²¹
Ibn Battuta gained one more audience with his master, this time persuading him to allot extra funds for the upkeep of the tomb, not to mention money to repair his own residence.

During the next two and a half years, he resided in Delhi, refurbishing his house, building a little mosque next to it, and running up more debts. He even spent, much to his later
embarrassment, 1,060 dinars a friend had left in his trust before leaving with the sultan. He and his substitutes may have heard legal cases in Delhi during this period, but he makes no mention of them. His principal interest seems to have been the mausoleum. The burial place of a sultan was often an important royal endowment. It was first of all a mosque but might also have associated with it a college, a Sufi retreat, and facilities to dispense food and lodging to wayfarers and the needy. Ibn Battuta had to supervise all these functions. He recalls that this complex employed 460 persons, including Qur’an reciters, teachers, theological students, Sufis, mosque officials, clerks, and various classes of cooks, servants, and guards. All of these people were supported from the revenue of 30 villages whose crops were assigned to the tomb and with funds allocated directly from the state treasury. He also busied himself overseeing construction of a dome over the sepulchre.
²²

His responsibilities were made even greater by the disastrous famine that hit North India in 1335 and lasted seven years. Barani reports that “thousands upon thousands of people perished of want,”
²³
and Ibn Battuta speaks of Indians being reduced to eating animal skins, rotten meat, and even human flesh. As the famine became general and starving country folk poured into Delhi to find relief, Ibn Battuta distributed quantities of food from the stores allocated to the mausoleum. He presents a picture of himself in this work as an exemplary administrator, mentioning that the sultan sent him a robe of honor from Daulatabad after hearing from one of his officers about the fine job the Maghribi was doing dispensing welfare to the stricken.

Some time during this period, probably in the summer of 1335 or 1336, he left Delhi for two months to make an official inquiry in the region of Amroha, a town located across the Ganges about 85 miles east of Delhi.
²⁴
He traveled with a proper retinue, including 30 companions and “two brothers, accomplished singers, who used to sing to me on the way.” Charges had been made that ’Aziz al-Khammar, the district’s tyrannical tax-collector, was holding back on grain shipments assigned from a number of villages to the mausoleum. Meeting first with the notables of Amroha, Ibn Battuta learned that al-Khammar was to be found in a village on the Sarju River, requiring a journey of another 190 miles or so eastward across the north Gangetic plain.
²⁵
Finally catching up with his man, he succeeded in having him arrange for transport of a large quantity of grain to Delhi.

But more revealing of the young
qadi’s
authority was his official investigation of a violent feud that had broken out between al-Khammar and the
amir
of the military district. Al-Khammar presented a number of complaints against the officer, including the charge that one of the
amir
’s servants, a man named al-Rida, had broken into his house, stolen 5,000 dinars, and drunk some wine.

I interrogated al-Rida on this subject and he said to me “I have never drunk wine since I left Multan, which is eight years ago.” I said to him “Then you did drink it in Multan?” and when he said “Yes” I ordered him to be given eighty lashes and imprisoned him on the charges preferred, because of the presumptive evidence against him.

Ibn Battuta was not behaving with arbitrary severity here. Rather he was imposing the precise
shari’a
punishment for imbibing wine — 80 lashes, no more, no less. It was a religious infraction falling within a
qadi
’s normal authority. On the charge of burglary, however, the man was to suffer the penalty of the sultan’s law and thus sent off to Delhi in chains. If Ibn Battuta sentenced other malefactors to the lash while he served in Delhi, we have no way of knowing, for this is the only judgment he reports having made during his years in India.

Some time in 1337 or 1338 the sultan returned north. Because of the famine that still raged around Delhi, he apparently stopped there only briefly before moving to a temporary capital at a place on the west bank of the Ganges some distance north of the town of Kanauj (Qinnawj).
²⁶
Intending to remain there several months, he ordered construction of a modest palace and called it Sargadwari, the Gate of Paradise. It was hardly so happy a residence, for the expedition against Ma’bar had ended in total failure. Muhammad had advanced as far as the central Deccan when an epidemic broke out among his troops, forcing him to return to Daulatabad and leaving the traitorous Ahsan Shah still on his throne in Madurai. Not only did the embattled sultan lose any hope of preventing the secession of Ma’bar, but between the time he left Delhi and returned to the north, several other defecting Turkish or Afghan commanders raised rebellions, effectively terminating imperial rule over much of South and Central India.

The empire disintegrating around him, the sultan summoned
many of his Delhi officials to join him at Sargadwari, Ibn Battuta among them. Some time after the
qadi
and his entourage arrived there, ’Ain al-Mulk, the Indo–Muslim governor of the province immediately east of the Ganges, revolted out of fear that the emperor wrongly suspected him of disloyalty. After boldly raiding the army’s stocks of elephants and horses, ’Ain al-Mulk, four of his brothers, and a force of Hindu soldiers escaped eastward across the river to safety. At this point the sultan contemplated marching back to Delhi to reinforce his depleted army and deal with the rebels at some later time. Ibn Battuta, who was in the thick of the crisis and an eye witness to all that occurred, reports that Muhammad’s commanders urged him to strike back at the rebels before they had time to consolidate their position. If Muhammad Tughluq was a disaster as a politician, he had proven himself a skillful soldier and tactician from the time of his father’s reign. Taking his officers’ advice, he advanced by forced march along the west bank of the Ganges to Kanauj to secure the town ahead of ’Ain al-Mulk. Ibn Battuta was traveling in the vanguard under the command of the vizier Khwaja Jahan. In the meantime ’Ain al-Mulk and his company crossed the river again. Foolishly overestimating his own military talents and the likelihood of defections from the sultan’s ranks, ’Ain al-Mulk attacked the imperial vanguard near Kanauj in the early hours of the morning.

The troops, then, drawing their swords, advanced towards their adversaries and a hot battle ensued. The sultan gave orders that his army’s password should be “Dilhi” [Delhi] and “Ghazna”; each one of them therefore on meeting a horseman said to him “Dilhi” and if he received the answer “Ghazna” he knew that he was one of his side and if not he engaged him. The aim of the rebel had been to attack only the place where the sultan was, but the guide led him astray and he attacked the place of the vizier instead . . . In the vizier’s regiment there were Persians, Turks and Khurasanians; these, being enemies of the Indians, put up a vigorous fight and though the rebel’s army contained about 50,000 men they were put to flight at the rising of the day.