The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (25 page)

Firuz was equally solicitous about the welfare of his slaves, of whom he had an incredibly large number. ‘Altogether, in the city and in the various fiefs there were 180,000 slaves, for whose maintenance and comfort the sultan took especial care,’ notes Afif. ‘None of the sultan’s predecessors had ever collected so many slaves.’

But Firuz collected slaves to serve the state, not to serve his personal vanity, and he employed them in various productive works. ‘Some were placed under craftsmen and were taught the mechanical arts, so that about 12,000 slaves became artisans of various kinds … There was no occupation in which the slaves of Firuz Shah were not employed,’ continues Afif. ‘A clever and qualified superintendent was appointed over every class of [slave] artisans.’ The slaves were thus turned into economic assets of the state. ‘In some places they were provided for in the army, and villages were granted to them.’ Some 40,000 slaves were employed as royal guards.

Because of the vast number of royal slaves, and the diversity of their functions, Firuz set up a separate government department to administer their affairs. ‘A separate muster-master of the slaves, a separate treasury for the payment of their allowances … [and a separate group of] officers for administering the affairs of the slaves’ were instituted by Firuz, reports Afif. When the royal slaves became too numerous, many of them were distributed among the amirs, ‘who treated them like [their own] children, providing them with food and raiment, lodging them and training them, and taking every care of their wants. Each year they took their slaves to court and reported about their merits and abilities.’ Firuz was a slave owner, but not a slave driver.

Even in the treatment of defeated enemies, Firuz was humane and magnanimous, and that attitude often turned his enemies into his allies. This regard for others was also evident in the care that Firuz took to preserve and cherish the memory of the former sultans of Delhi, rather than remain egomaniacally focussed on himself. ‘It had been a rule among the sultans of Delhi that the name of the reigning monarch only was mentioned in the prayers of Sabbaths and festivals, and no reference was made to the former sultans,’ states Afif. ‘When Sultan Firuz came to the throne … he disapproved of the omission of the names of former kings, and ordered that a khutba should be said first in the names of former kings, and then one in which his own name was mentioned.’

FIRUZ WAS WILLING even to allow some laxity in official appointments, to favour those who served him. He therefore reintroduced the system of hereditary appointments to offices, a system that was disfavoured by Ala-ud-din and Muhammad, for it made birth, instead of competence, as the qualification for government employment, and it created a hereditary aristocracy which could challenge the authority of the sultan. Firuz disregarded those risks, and, according to Afif, ruled that ‘if an officer of the army died, he was to be succeeded by his son; if he had no son, by his son-in-law; if he had no son-in-law, by his slave; if he had no slave, by his nearest relation; and if he had no relations, by his wives.’

This policy was in a way logical—if the throne could be inherited, why not the lesser offices? The policy no doubt adversely affected the administrative and military efficiency of the Sultanate, but would have done that only marginally, as the normal mode of recruitment of officers in the Delhi Sultanate was quite haphazard and whimsical, except during the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji. Another deliberate laxity that Firuz introduced in administration was the reversion to the old practice of assigning fiefs to royal officers in lieu of cash payment, which again was a policy disfavoured by Ala-ud-din, to prevent officers from gaining territorial power bases independent of the sultan. Firuz
also discouraged the use of spies, who were extensively used by previous sulans to keep track of what was happening in the empire and what the royal officers were doing; instead, he sought to build mutual trust between him and his officers.

Firuz was very tolerant—too tolerant, perhaps—of human frailties, and he had a tendency to condone or overlook inefficiency, corruption and misdeeds among government employees. Thus when he was told that ‘many of his soldiers were old and feeble, and unfit for duty,’ and that they should be removed, he, according to Afif, refused to do so, saying, ‘If I remove the old and inefficient men … the poor old men will be greatly troubled and be reduced to distress in their old age. I do not approve of dismissing them and putting their sons in their places … Let an order therefore be promulgated that when a soldier grows old and incapable, his son shall succeed him, [but only] as his deputy. If he has no son, his son-in-law, and failing any son-in-law, his slave shall represent him. The veteran may thus remain at home at ease …’

Similarly, horses of little value were often taken to the registry office by soldiers, and were there passed as serviceable by conniving officers. Reports about this often reached the ears of the sultan, but he ignored them. And when soldiers failed to produce their horses on time at the registry office, and the matter was brought before the sultan, he granted the defaulters a grace time of two months to produce their horses. Reporting these and other such stories, Afif comments that ‘the kindness of the sultan for his people was such as no father or brother could show.’

ALL THIS HOWEVER did not turn Firuz into a weak ruler. Rather, they made him a sensible ruler, who had the self-confidence to leave some laxity and flexibility in administration for the play of human foibles without feeling threatened by it. There is no evidence that his liberal policies had notably weakened the Sultanate. He was doing what was necessary to rule efficiently in the prevailing circumstances of the Sultanate. Firuz was not a weak ruler, but a wise ruler.

Indeed, Firuz had to his credit the introduction—or revival—of certain measures to improve the efficiency of the administration, as in the case of the accounting procedures he enforced. ‘In this reign there were audits of the accounts of the fiefs,’ states Afif. ‘When the feudatory came up from his fief to the court, he was brought before the exchequer, where an audit of his accounts was held, and the results were reported to the throne … The managers of the
kar-khanas
also had to present the abstracts of their accounts to the exchequer at the end of every year, showing the balance of cash and the stores of goods with them.’

While thus tightening the revenue administration, Firuz also took care to abolish or reduce several taxes, as part of his policy of liberalising the government. He lists as many as twenty-three taxes that he abolished. ‘In former reigns they used to collect frivolous, unlawful and unjust cesses … I had all these abolished and removed from the accounts,’ he states in his autobiography, and goes on to quote a couplet expressing his principle:

Better a people’s weal than treasures vast,

Better an empty chest that hearts downcast.

‘Sultan Firuz made the laws of the Prophet his guide, acting zealously upon the principles they laid down, and prohibiting all that was inconsistent therewith,’ states Afif. ‘No demand in excess of the regular government dues was to be made, and the officer who made any such exaction had to make full reparation…. Such rules were made that the
raiyats
grew rich … Wealth abounded and comforts were general.’ Similarly, while former sultans used to take for themselves four-fifth of the battle spoils, and give only one-fifth to the soldiers, Firuz reversed this ratio, in conformity with Islamic law. And when fief holders during their visit to the sultan offered him various presents, Firuz had those presents appraised, and he deducted their value from the dues payable by the fief holders to the government, so that they might not suffer any deprivation.

Firuz also abolished the benevolences that the provincial governors were previously required to give to the sultan at the time of their appointment and every year thereafter, for that burden ultimately fell on the shoulders of the common people. In the same spirit, he cancelled the debts that people owed to the treasury on the advances that were given to them by Muhammad for restoring agriculture after a devastating famine in the Doab; in fact he had the records of the debts brought to him at the court, and had them publicly cancelled.

These were not impulsive acts, but carefully planned measures. Firuz was munificent, but he was not a wastrel. He made sure that state funds were not squandered or misappropriated in any way, but served the purpose for which they were allotted, and he exercised strict control over all state expenditures. Typical of this was his control over public works. Though he was a compulsive builder of forts, palaces, mosques, and so on, he looked into every detail of the execution of those projects to make sure that these structures conformed to their approved plans in all respects, and that there was no misappropriation of the funds allotted for them.

And just as he was careful about expenditure, he was also careful about revenue collection. To systematise revenue administration, he conducted, along
the lines of what Muhammad had attempted, a comprehensive survey of the revenue potential of the empire and appointed a revenue assessor to supervise the project. When the group produced its report after a survey lasting six years, Firuz made certain changes in revenue administration, particularly in lowering the revenue demand and making it uniform over the years.

THESE LIBERAL AND wise policies of Firuz galvanised economic growth and led to the spread of prosperity in the Sultanate. ‘In the houses of peasants so much grain, horses and goods accumulated that one cannot describe them,’ states Afif. ‘Everyone had large amounts of gold and silver and countless goods. None of the women-folk of the peasantry remained without ornaments; in every peasant’s house, there were clean bed-sheets, excellent bed-cots, many articles and much wealth.’ According to Barani, ‘cattle, food-grains and goods’ filled the houses of village headmen during the reign of Firuz.

The economic expansion of the Sultanate was also stimulated by Firuz’s policy of undertaking various developmental works. Of these, the most important was the construction of five major irrigation canals, the longest of which was the 241 kilometre-long canal that carried the waters of the Yamuna to Hisar in western Haryana. Firuz also built a number of reservoirs, dams and wells. All these substantially increased the area under cultivation and contributed significantly to the prosperity of the people. ‘Not one village remained barren … nor one span of land uncultivated,’ states Afif with becoming exaggeration. The government also benefited directly from the public works, as it collected an additional levy of ten percent from the cultivators who used water from the irrigation facilities built by the state.

In addition to these promotional activities, the sultan directly participated in agricultural expansion by setting up a large number of state farms producing commercial crops. Firuz, according to Afif, ‘had a great liking for laying out gardens,’ and he set up over a thousand of them, where fruits were grown.

As in agriculture, so too in trade, the policies of Firuz, such as the abolition of several octroi duties and the introduction of small denomination coins—which broadened everyday market activities—stimulated the expansion of trade. Firuz was also a zealous builder, who founded a number of new towns and built many palaces, caravanserais, bridges, hospitals, colleges, mosques, mausoleums, public baths, wells, and so on, and these construction projects also stimulated the expansion of economy.

All these activities of Firuz served a dual purpose—while people benefited from them, the state also benefited, as the expansion of the economy led to a substantial increase in the state revenue. Equally, the prosperity and contentment of the people resulting from the progressive policies of Firuz led to peace and stability in the empire. Firuz acted on the sound principle that
the prosperity of the king, if it is to endure, has to be based on the prosperity of the people, and that the best means to increase the revenue of the state was not through extortionate tax exactions but through mild taxation that would stimulate economic growth. On the whole, the economic and revenue policies of Firuz were well-suited to promote the welfare of the people as well as of the state. According to Afif, ‘no king of Delhi had ever been in receipt of such an income as Sultan Firuz.’

Gods too favoured Firuz. A good part of the prosperity of the medieval Indian state depended on agricultural prosperity, and this was as much dependent on the favour of the rain gods as on government policies. Firuz, like Ala-ud-din, was very lucky in this. ‘By the blessing of god favourable seasons and abundance of the necessaries of life prevailed in the reign of Firuz Shah, not only in the capital, but throughout his dominions,’ comments Afif. ‘During the whole forty years of his reign there was no appearance of scarcity, and the times were … [as] happy’ as during the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji, which was the most prosperous period in the history of the Delhi Sultanate. And all goods and provisions at this time were as cheap as they were under Ala-ud-din. But while Ala-ud-din had to make great exertions and adopt coercive measures to achieve it, Firuz achieved it ‘through the favour of god … without any [great] effort on his part … The good fortune of the sultan prevailed … Perfect happiness did the kingdom enjoy in those days.’

FIRUZ WAS ESSENTIALLY a man of peace. He was content with the territories he inherited, and waged no wars of conquest. He was not tempted even when he was invited by rebels in other kingdoms to invade their lands. ‘Keep no more territory than you can manage,’ an old woman had once warned Mahmud Ghazni. This was the wise policy that Firuz followed. His religious orthodoxy was also a factor that influenced his military policy. Typically, when one of his nobles once berated him for shedding the blood of Muslims in wars, and warned him that ‘drawing the sword against the people of Islam had ten evils for every advantage … [the sultan’s] eyes were suffused with tears … and he resolved never again to make war upon [fellow] Muslims,’ states Afif.