No More Learning

The country was
1 In this account of Ulugh Khān's rebellion Ibn Batūtah has been followed.
Barani's confused and perplexing account, which has been followed by other Indian
historians is coloured by his own and Firūz Shāh's regard for Muhammad's
memory. Vide J. R. A. S. , for July, 1922.
9-2


## p. 132 (#172) ############################################

132
(CH.
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
divided into fiefs and districts which were allotted to Muslim nobles
and officers, and Warangal, now renamed Sultānpur, became the
capital of a province of the empire. The news was received at
Delhi with great rejoicings and Ulugh Khān remained for some
time at Sultānpur-Warangal to establish the administration of the
province. His restless activity led him into the ancient Hindu
kingdom of Utkala in Orissa, called by Muslim historians Jājnagar,
the ancestors of whose rulers had stemmed the advance of the earlier
Muslim governors of Bengal. His expedition was a mere raid,
undertaken with no design of permanent conquest, and its only
immediate result was the capture of forty elephants, but the raja,
who had lived for some time at peace with the quasi-independent
rulers of Bengal, of the line of Balban, was disturbed by the discovery
that the Turks were in a position to menace his southern as well as
his northern frontier.
During the prince's absence in the south an army of Mughuls
invaded the kingdom of Delhi from the north-west, but was defeated,
its two leaders being captured and brought to Tughluq's court.
Almost immediately after this event the king received reports from
Bengal which led him to form the resolution of invading that country
in person for the purpose of restoring order and asserting the
supremacy of Delhi, and he called his son from Telingāna to act as
regent during his absence.
It was a civil war arising from conflicting claims to the throne
that summoned Tughluq to Bengal. Shams-ud-din Firūz Shāh of
that country, third son of Nāsir-ud-din Mahmūd Shāh Bughrā and
grandson of Balban, had died in 1318, after a reign of sixteen years,
leaving five sons, of whom the three eldest only need occupy our
attention. These were Shihāb-ud-din Bughrā, who succeeded his
father on the throne at Lakhnāwati, Nāsir-ud. din, and Ghiyās-ud-
din Bahādur, who, having been appointed by his father governor of
Sonārgāon, or Eastern Bengal, had proclaimed his independence in
that province in 1310 and, on his father's death, disputed the title of
his elder brother, Shihāb-ud-din Bughrā, and in 1319 overcame him
and usurped his throne, the succession to which was then claimed
by Nāsir-ud-din, who appealed to Tughluq. The king eagerly
seized so favourable an opportunity of intervention in Bengal, the
allegiance of which to Delhi had been severely shaken by the
downfall of the Khalji dynasty and the rulers of which were bound
by no ties either to Khalj or to Tughluq, but had, on purely
hereditary grounds, a better claim than either to the throne of
Delhi,


## p. 133 (#173) ############################################

V]
EXPEDITION TO BENGAL
133
Tughluq Shāh marched to Bengal by way of Manaich, the town
which had been stormed by Mahmûd of Ghazni. In the year
following his 'accession he had appointed to the government of
this district Tātār Malik, whom he had entitled Zafar Khān. The
governor's first task had been to crush the local Rājput chieftain
who, during the short interval of Hindu supremacy, had established
himself in the district. According to tradition the Rājput was in-
vited to a conference at which the merits of Islam and Hinduism
were discussed and, being convinced of the truth of the former,
accepted it and submitted, thus rendering unnecessary an appeal to
arms. Zafar Khān renamed Manaich Zafarābād? and was firmly
established in the district when the king passed through it on his
way to Bengal. He accompanied the royal army into Tirhut, where
Nāsir-ud-din waited upon Tughluq and did obeisance to him, and
was sent in command of the force dispatched against Lakhnāwati.
All opposition was crushed and Ghiyās-ud-din Bahādur was captured
and brought before the king with a rope around his neck. The
elephants from the royal stables at Lakhnāwati were appropriated
by Tughluq and his army took much plunder, but Nāsir-ud-din
was placed as a vassal monarch on the throne of Western Bengal.
Eastern Bengal, which had for thirteen years been independent
under Bahādur, was annexed and administered as a province of
the kingdom af Delhi.
Meanwhile disquieting news of his son's behaviour in the capital
reached Tughluq. Ulugh Khān. had purchased vast numbers of
slaves and had formed a party by extravagant gifts and grants
to those who he believed could be converted by this means into
adherents. His chief crime appears to have been his intimate
association with the obnoxious Shaikh Nizām-ud-din Auliyā, whose
disciple he had become, and who was believed to have prophesied,
in one of his ecstatic trances, his imminent accession to the throne.
It was also reported that astrologers had prophesied that the king
would never return to the capital alive. Reports of these conver-
sations and machinations reached Tughluq in his camp, and enraged
him. He wrote to the astrologers, menacing them with his dis-
pleasure ; to his son, threatening to deprive him of his office and
to exclude him from any participation in public business ; and to
;
the Shaikh, to whom he addressed the threat that when he returned
from Bengal Delhi would be too small to hold both of them. The
Shaikh is said to have replied with the prophetic menace, which
1 Zafarābād is situated in 25° 42' N. and 82° 44' E. , in the Jaunpur
District of the United Provinces.


## p. 134 (#174) ############################################

134
(ch.
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
has since become proverbial, Hanüz Dihli dûr ast, 'Delhi is yet
afar off,' and so it proved to be.
Tughluq sent Bahādur a prisoner to Delhi and himself set out
for Tughluqābād, the capital which he had built for himself to the
south of Old Delhi. He attacked on his way the raja af Tirhut,
whose loyalty was doubtful, and reduced him to submission, and
from Tirhut travelled towards the capital by forced marches, leaving
the army to follow at its leisure.
Tughluqābād was elaborately decorated and Ulugh Khān pre-
pared a welcome for his father by building for his reception at
Afghānpur', a few miles from the city, a temporary kiosk, where
he might take rest and refreshment after his toilsome journey and
before his state entry into his capital.
Ulugh Khān caused this building, which was chiefly of wood, to
be erected from his own designs, employing in the construction of
it one Ahmad, son of Ayāz, known as Malikzāda, an inspector of
buildings whom, on his accession to the throne, he made his minister,
with the title of Khvāja Jahān. The building was so designed as
to fall when touched in a certain part by the elephants, and it
appears that the device was a projecting beam. Ulugh Khān wel.
comed his father at the kiosk, and entertained him at a meal, at
the conclusion of which he begged that the elephants from Bengal
might be paraded and driven round the building. His father ac-
ceded to his request and Ulugh Khān, before the elephants were
brought up, suggested to Shaikh Rukn-ud-din, for whom he had
a special regard, that he should leave the kiosk for his prayers. Im-
mediately after the Shaikh's departure the elephants were brought
up, came into contact with that part of the building which had
been designed to effect its collapse and the whole structure fell
on the old king and crushed him. Diggers were summoned, but
their arrival was purposely delayed, by Ulugh Khān, and the king's
body was discovered, when the debris was removed, bending over
that of his favourite sen, Mahmūd Khān, as though to protect him.
It was commonly believed that the king still breathed when his
body was discovered and was dispatched under the orders of his
He was buried at night in the tomb which he had selected
for himself at Tughluqābād and Ulugh Khān ascended the throne
under the title of Muhammad Shāh? .
1 Probably the village, about five and a half miles to the south-cast of
Tughluqābād, which appears in the Indian Atlas as Aghwanpur.
2 This account, which differs from that of the contemporary Barani and
Indian historians who have followed him, is taken from the narrative of Ibn
Batūtah, whose informant was Shaikh Rukn-ud-din. Vide J. R. A. S. , for
July, 1922.
son.
a


## p. 135 (#175) ############################################

VI)
ACCESSION OF MUHAMMAD TUGHLUQ
135
a
old age.
The death of Ghiyās-ud-din Tughluq occurred in February or
March, 1325, and Shaikh Nizām-ud-din soon followed him, dying
on April 31. Almost at the same time died the greatest of all the
poets of India who have written in Persian, Yamin-ud-dīn Muham-
mad Hasan, known as Amir Khusrav, at the age of seventy-two.
He was of Turkish origin, his father having been a native of the
green-domed city' of Kash, in Turkistān, who, driven from his
home early in the thirteenth century by the horde of the Mughul,
Chingiz Khān, had found an asylum in India. The poet was born
at Patiāla in A. H. 651 (A. D. 1253) and entered the service of 'Alā.
ud-din Khalji as court poet, but later in his life became the disciple
of Shaikh Nīzām-ud-din Auliyā, abandoned the court and worldly
ambitions, and lived in religious retirement, but still wrote poetry.
He was a most prolific writer and estimated the number of couplets
which he had written at more than 400,000 but less than 500,000,
dividing his poems into four classes, youthful effusions ; poems of
early middle age, written when he was putting off childish things
and turning his thoughts to religion; poems written when he had
attained the dignity of a religious teacher; and the poems of his
Each of the four classes bears, as might be expected, the
impress of his views on this world and the next during the period
of his life in which it was produced, but in the second class there
are to be found poems sufficiently courtly to be acceptable to the
vanity of a royal patron.
Amir Khusrav had a deep veneration for Sa'di, whom he enter-
tained when he visited India, and the great poet of Persia repaid
his admirer by recommending him very warmly to 'Alā-ud-din. As
Khusrav himself says in one of his verses, with a play upon words
which cannot be preserved in translation:
The volume of my verse hath the binding of Shirăz.
Amir Khusrav was survived by another poet, Shaikh Najm-ud-
din Hasan, known as Hasan-i-Dihlavi, whose works, less widely
known than Khusrav's, were much admired. Both poets are honour-
ably mentioned in the Tazkirat-ush-Shu'arā and in the Atashkada.
Hasan died in 1338 at Daulatābād in the Deccan, and was buried
there. The celebrated Jāmi refers in highly complimentary terms
to these two poets of Delhi, and they are among the few Indian-
born writers of Persian verse whose works have been read and
admired beyond their own country.
1 Ibn Batūtah says that the Shaikh died before the king's return from Bengal,
and that Ulugh Khān incurred his father's wrath by helping to bear the corpse to
the grave.


## p. 136 (#176) ############################################

136
( ch.
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
6
Tughluq, following the example of other founders of dynasties
at Delhi, had left an interesting monument of his short reign in the
fortress capital of Tughluqābād, which he built for himself on a
rocky eminence nearly ten miles to the south of the site afterwards
selected by Shāh Jahān for his city. He founded this town imme-
diately after his ascent to the throne and completed it before he
received the news of the conquest of Telingāna. 'Here,' said Ibn
Batütah, 'were Tughluq's treasures and palaces, and the great
palace which he had built of gilded bricks, which, when the sun
rose, shone so dazzlingly that none could gaze steadily upon it.
There he laid up great treasures, and it was related that he con-
structed there a cistern and had molten gold poured into it so that
it became one solid mass, and his son Muhammad Shāh became
possessed of all of it when he succeeded him. ' Tughluq's mausoleum
in red sandstone and white marble, connected with his town by
a bridge carried on arches, and the massive walls of his fort still
remain, but no palace now dazzles the eye, and the once brilliant
town is entirely deserted.
Muhammad, after remaining for forty days at Tughluqābād,
went in state to the old city of Delhi and there took his seat on
the throne in the palace of the former kings. The city was deco-
rated for his reception and the acclamations of the people were
stimulated by a lavish distribution of gold and silver coins.
The delineation of a character so complex and contradictory as
that of Muhammad Tughluq is no easy task. He was one of the
most extraordinary monarchs who ever sat upon a throne. To
the most lavish generosity he united revolting and ir. discriminate
cruelty ; to scrupulous observance of the ritual and ceremonial
prescribed by the Islamic law an utter disregard of that law in all
public affairs; to a debasing and superstitious veneration for all
whose descent or whose piety commanded respect a ferocity which
when roused respected neither the blood of the prophet nor per-
sonal sanctity. Some of his administrative and most of his military
measures give evidence of abilities of the highest order, others are
the acts of a madman. His protégé Ziya. ud-din Barani, the his-
torian, whom he admitted to a considerable degree of intimacy
and whom he often deigned to consult, attributes many of the
atrocities which he commanded or sanctioned to the evil influence
of twelve wicked counsellors, stigmatized as 'miserable,' 'accursed,'
or 'most accursed,' whose delight was to shed the blood of Muslims,
but Muhammad Tughluq was no weakling, and was never a tool in
the hands of his counsellors. If his advisers were vile and blood.


## p. 137 (#177) ############################################

VI )
CHARACTER OF MUHAMMAD TUGHLUQ
137
thirsty men it was he that chose them, and if he followed evil
counsels he did so because they commended themselves to him. In
like manner Barani attributes his disregard of the Islamic law in
administrative and punitive measures to his early association with
Sa'd, the heretical logician, 'Ubaid, the infidel poet, and 'Alim-ud-
din, the philosopher, but this is mere special pleading. His associa-
tion with these freethinkers never diminished his faith in Islam, his
careful regard in other respects for its laws, or his veneration for its
traditions. It was not the fault of logicians, poets, or philosophers
that he scandalised the orthodox by deliberately preferring human
reason to divine revelation as a guide in mundane matters, and by
openly avowing his preference. His private judgement misled him,
but this was due to his temperament. His peculiar vice as a judge
and administrator was his inordinate pride, which deprived him of
the power of discriminating between offences. All his command-
ments were sacred and the slightest deviation from an impracticable
regulation and the most flagrant act of defiance and rebellion were
alike punished by a cruel death. This policy acted and re-acted
with cumulative effect on the monarch and his people. Disgusted
by their sovereign's barbarity they grew ever more refractory;
exasperated by their disobedience he grew ever more ferocious.
His wide dominions were seldom free from rebellion during his
reign, and at his death the whole kingdom was in a ferment.
Barani, notwithstanding his gratitude and his fears, is surpris-
ingly frank. So overweening, he says, was the king's pride that he
could not endure to hear of a corner of the earth, hardly even of a
corner of heaven, which was not subject to his sway. He would be
at once a Solomon and an Alexander ; nor did mere kingship
content him, for he aspired to the office of prophet as well. His
ambition was to make all the kings of the earth his slaves, and
Barani would liken his pride to that of Pharaoh and Nimrod, who
claimed divinity as well as royalty, but that his scrupulous personal
observance of the law and firm adherence to the faith of Islam
cleared him of the suspicion of blasphemy and infidelity. He would
compare him with Bāyazid of Bustām and Husain, son of Mansur-
ul. Hallāj, who, in the ecstacy of their devotion, believed themselves
to have been absorbed into the Godhead, but that his barbarous
cruelty deprived him of any claim to sanctity.
Against his overweening pride must be set the grovelling
servility with which he received at his court the great-great-
grandson of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir of Baghdād, the miser


## p. 138 (#178) ############################################

138
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
(CH
Ghiyās-ud-din, whom he received with more than royal honours,
whom he compelled, much against his will, to place his foot upon
his neck, and on whom he lavished wealth with astonishing pro-
fusion ; his abasement before Hāji Sa'id Sarsari, envoy from the
phantom Abbasid Caliph al-Mustakfi of Egypt, whose name
appeared on the currency of his kingdom and of whose envoy's
utterances he spoke as though they were divine revelations; and the
extravagant veneration for the temporal, as well as the spiritual
authority of the Caliphate which led him to strike from the formal
Friday sermon the names of all his predecessors but such as had
been formally recognised by one of the Caliphs.
Against his barbarous punishments and indiscriminate blood-
shed may be set a few instances, related by Ibn Batūtah, of a
fantastic display of reverence for abstract justice and the forms of
law. On one occasion a Hindu complained to the qāzi that the
king had slain his brother without a cause, and the king, having
previously ordered the magistrate not to rise at his entrance, ap-
peared unarmed in court and made his obeisance. He heard with
humility and obeyed with promptitude the sentence directing him
to compensate the complainant. In another cause a Muslim com- .
plained that the king had unjustly retained some of his property,
and in obedience to the qāzi's order restitution was made. In a
third case a young man, son of one of the great officers of the king-
dom, complained that the king had arbitrarily caused him to be
beaten for no fault, his complaint was found to be true, and accord.
ing to the Islamic law of retaliation he was permitted to take his
revenge. A stick was placed in his hand and he gave the royal
offender twenty-one strokes. The chastisement was probably purely
formal, but the king's head-dress fell to the ground.
These rare displays, made probably in the early years of the
reign, and possibly collusive, cannot palliate the arbitrary cruelty
of a monarch whose punishments were as revolting as they were
frequent, and whose gateway was seldom unpolluted by the corpse
of a freshly slain victim, but they illustrate some of the extra-
ordinary contradictions of his character. It may be that Muhammad
thus compounded with his conscience for many barbarities. The
severest condemnation of his cruelty is the remorse of his old
servant Barani, who bitterly laments his own cowardice and that
of his fellow-courtiers. "We were traitors,' he says, 'who were pre-
pared to call black white, though not devoid of that knowledge
which ennobles a man. Avarice and the desire of worldly wealth
led us into hypocrisy, and as we stood before the king and witnessed


## p. 139 (#179) ############################################

vi )
MUHAMMAD'S CRUELTY
139
punishments forbidden by the law, fear for our fleeting lives and
our equally fleeting wealth deterred us from speaking the truth
before him. '
A catalogue of the atrocities committed by Muhammad during
his reign, such as that given by Ibn Batūtah, would be tedious and
revolting, but it will be necessary from time to time to refer to the
punishments inflicted by him. One of the early acts of his reign
was the murder of his brother, Masóūd, whose only offence seems
to have been that he was handsome and popular. Muhammad pro-
fessed to suspect him of treasonable designs, and the unfortunate
prince discovered, as did so many of the tyrant's victims, that it
was better to court a speedy death by a false confession than to
suffer day by day the barbarous tortures devised by the perverted
ingenuity of Muhammad.
Against this unnatural act may be set a display of foolish
generosity. In the year of his accession Muhammad permitted
Ghiyās. ud din Bahādur, the worthless and turbulent prince whom
his father had brought in chains from Bengal, to return to Sonār-
gāon, where he was associated in the government of Eastern Bengal
with Tátār Khān, who had been entitled Bahrām Khăn and left
at Sonārgāon as governor by Ghiyās-ud-din Tughluq. In the fol-
lowing year Nāsir-ud-din, who was reigning at Lakhnāwati as
Muhammad's vassal, died, and Qadr Khān was appointed by Mu-
hammad governor of Western Bengal.
Muhammad may be compared, in his devotion to the details of
administration, with Philip II of Spain, and one of his earliest acts
was to order the compilation of a register of the revenue and ex-
penditure of the provinces of his kingdom. The governors of
provinces were directed to send to the capital all the materials for
the compilation of such a register, and during the first few years
of the reign a large number of clerks and officials was employed in
the Palace of the Thousand Pillars at Delhi in the work of com-
pilation. The object of the measure seems to have been to intro-
duce a uniform standard of land revenue and to ensure that no
village in the kingdom remained unassessed or unvisited by col-
lectors. The register already maintained for the districts in the
neighbourhood of the capital served as a model for the larger work,
and the revenue exacted from these districts as a standard for the
assessment of the more distant provinces, but we have unfortunately
no details of the principles on which allowance was made for the
different classes of soil, for distance from markets and the other con-
siderations which affect the assessment of the land revenue in India.
a


## p. 140 (#180) ############################################

140
THE TUGHLUQ DINASTI
(CH.
were
a
In the second year of the reign a most serious rebellion broke
out in the Deccan. Bahā-ud-din Gurshāsp, sister's son to Ghiyās-
ud-din Tughluq, and therefore first cousin to Muhammad, held
the fief of Sāgar, about ten miles north of Shorāpur, and enjoyed
great influence among the Muslim officials of the Deccan. He
refused to recognise the new king and appears to have believed
that he might be able to establish a claim to the throne, though
relationship in the female line seldoni counts for much in the east.
He exerted all his influence, and the whole of the Deccan was soon
aflame. The rebels advanced towards Deogir, but were met by the
minister, Khvāja Jahān, and the brutal Mujīr-ud-din, Abu Rijā,
who defeated them. Gurshāsp fled to Sāgar and thence to Kampalī,
on the Tungabhadra, where he took refuge with the raja. The
imperial troops sustained a reverse before this place, but
reinforced, and the noble raja, seeing that he could no longer
protect his guest, sent him to Dvāravatipura with a letter com-
mending him to the protection of Vira Ballāla III, and performed
the awful rite of jauhar. After the women had been destroyed
the raja led his bravest warriors in a charge on the royal army, in
which all the Hindus perished. Khvāja Jahān then entered Kampli
and carried off the principal inhabitants, including the dead raja's
eleven sons, into slavery. The Hindu princes were forced to accept
Islam, but were otherwise treated with the distinction due to their
high birth and their father's valour. Ibn Batūtah, while at Mu-
hammad's conrt, met three of these princes and describes one of
them as an intimate friend of his own.
Vira Ballāla was made of less stern stuff than the raja of Kamplī,
and tamely complied with Khvāja Jahān's demand for the surrender
of the fugitive, who was carried to Deogir where Muhammad had
now arrived, to receive his punishment. After being subjected to
the insults of the women of the harem he was flayed alive. His
flesh was cooked with rice and offered to the elephants, after
portions of it had been sent to his wife and children, and his skin
was stuffed with straw and exhibited in the principal cities of the
kingdom.
It was probably the rebellion of Gurshāsp that impressed upon
Muhammad the desirability of a more central situation than that
of Delhi for the capital of a kingdoin which included the Deccan
and the Peninsula, and it was now, in 1327, that he decreed that
Deogir, which he renamed Daulatābād, or the abode of wealth,
should replace Delhi as the capital. Not only the great officers of
state and the courtiers but apparently also provincial governors


## p. 141 (#181) ############################################

VI]
DAULATĀBAD IS MADE THE CAPITAL
141
*
were
were commanded to build for themselves houses at Daulatābād, to
send their families thither, and to make it their home. The king
spared neither pains nor expense to beautify his new capital and
to make it a worthy substitute for Delhi. · Spacious bazars
laid out and handsome buildings erected, and Ibn Batūtah, who
visted Daulatābād several years later, described it as a great and
magnificent city equal to Delhi. But the king's greatest work was
the marvellous citadel, an ancient stronghold of the rajas of Deogir,
which was strengthened and improved by him. The fort, probably
as Muhammad left it, was described as follows, more than three
centuries later, by 'Abu-ul-Hamid Lāhori, the official chronicler of
Shāh Jahān's reign. “This lofty fortress, the ancient names of which
were Deogir, and Dhārāgir, and which is now known as Daulatābād,
is a mass of rock which raises its head towards heaven. The rock
has been scarped throughout its circumference, which measures
5000 legal yards, to a depth which ensures the retention of water
in the ditch at the foot of the escarpment. The escarpment is so
smooth and even that neither an ant nor a snake could scale it.
Its height is 140 cubits, and around its base a ditch forty cubits in
width and thirty in depth has been dug in the solid rock. Through
the centre of the hill a dark spiral passage like the ascent of a
minār, which it is impossible to traverse, even in daylight, without
a lamp, had been cut, and the steps in this passage are cut out of
the rock. It is closed at the foot of the hill by an iron gate, and
after passing through this and ascending the passage one enters the
citadel. At the head of the passage is a large grating of iron which
is shut down in case of necessity, and when a fire is lighted upon it
the ascent of the spiral passage becomes impossible owing to
intense heat. The ordinary means of reducing fortresses, such as
mines, covered ways, batteries, etc. , are useless against this strong
fortress. '
This passage still exists, and is the only work the attribution
of which to Muhammad is doubtful, for Ibn Batūtah, who visited
Daulatābād late in 1342 or early in 1343, records that access to
the citadel was then gained by means of a leathern ladder.
Besides officers of state and courtiers numbers of tradesmen and
others who gained their livelihood by serving or supplying the
court followed it to Daulatābād, and encouragement was given to
any who could be persuaded voluntarily to transfer their domicile
to the new capital, but the steps taken in this year must not be
confounded, as some historians have confounded them, with those
adopted two years later, when the whole of the population of Delhi


## p. 142 (#182) ############################################

142
[. CH
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
was transported, as a punitive, not an administrative measure, to
Daulatābād.
From the new capital as a base of operations it was possible to
establish order more completely in the Deccan, and Muhammad's
troops were occupied for eight months in the siege of the strong
fortress of Kondhāna, now known as Sinhgarh. The fort, which was
held by a Koli chieſtain, surrendered at the end of that time.
Muhammad was not allowed to repose long at Daulatābād. In
1328 he was disturbed by news of the rebellion of Malik Bahrām
Aiba, Kishlū Khān, the governor of Multān and Sind. The position
of this governor was peculiar. He had been on terms of the closest
intimacy with Ghiyās-ud-dīn Tughluq, had co-operated most cor-
dially with him in the campaign against the usurper Khusrav, and
had had a friendly contest with his comrade, in which each had
urged the other to ascend the throne. Kishlū Khān had eventually
prevailed by warning Tughluq that if he hesitated his ambitious
son would certainly forestall him, and his old friend left him in
virtual independence at Multān. The circumstances of Tughluq's
death had not improved the relations between Muhammad and
Kishlũ Khān, who rose in arms against his sovereign. Of the
circumstances of his rebellion there are two accounts. According
to one he incurred the king's wrath by decently interring the
stuffed skin of the unfortunate Gurshāsp instead of sending the
miserable relic on for exhibition in another province, and according
to the other Muhammad ventured to send 'Alī, a collector of revenue,
to Multān to inquire when Kishlū Khān proposed to obey the order
to build for himself a house at Daulatābād and to send his family
thither. 'Ali's insolence in delivering this message so inflamed the
wrath of Kishlū Khān's son-in-law that he slew the messenger, and
Kishlũ Khān raised the standard of revolt.
Muhammad hastened in person from Daulatābād to crush the
rebellion, marching by way of Delhi. Kishlũ Khān marched east-
ward from Multān and the armies met in the desert plain of Abohar',
where Muhammad defeated his adversary by means of a stratagem,
Shaikh 'Imād-ud-din, who closely resembled him in personal appear-
ance, was placed in the centre of the army, under the royal umbrella,
and Muhammad himself, with 4000 horse, lay in ambush. The
rebels naturally directed their chief efforts against the centre of
the royal army, and in an impetuous charge broke the line and
slew the Shaikh. The army retired in real or ſeigned confusion
and the rebels dispersed to plunder the camp. The king then
1 In 30° 8' N. and 74° 11' E.


## p. 143 (#183) ############################################

VI)
A MUGHUL INVASION
143
emerged from his ambush, fell upon Kishlū Khān, who was but
scantily attended, slew him, and severed his head from his body.
The positions were now reversed, and the rebels broke and fled.
Muhammad marched on to Multān, about 160 miles distant, occu-
pied the city, and prepared to take punitive measures against the
inhabitants, whom he condemned as the accomplices of Kishlū Khān.
He seized the gāzi, Karim-ud-din, caused him to be flayed alive,
and ordered a general massacre, but this calamity was averted by
the intercession of the saint, Shaikh Rukn-ud-din. Muhammad sent
his minister, Khvāja Jahān, towards the coast of Sind, to repress
disorders which had arisen in that province, and was almost
immediately recalled to Delhi by the news of disturbances in the
Gangetic Doāb. Before leaving Multān he distinguished the house
which he had occupied by hanging over its gate the head of the
rebel, Kishlù Khān, which was seen by Ibn Batūtah when he
,
visited Multān five years later.
In 1328, or early in 1329, very shortly after Muhammad's reiurn
to Delhi, his dominions were invaded by Tarmāshirin the Mughul,
who may be identified with the Chaghatai, 'Alā-ud-din Tarmāshirin,
who reigned in Transoxiana from 1322 until 1330 or 1334. The
invader passed through Lahore and Sāmāna to Indril, and thence
to the borders of the Budaun district, traversing the Doāb to the
banks of the Ganges and plundering and devastating the country
on their way. The incursion was a mere raid and it is probable
that the invaders lost no time on their homeward journey, but
Muhammad pursued them as far as Kalānaur, a few miles south of
the Rāvi, afterwards to become famous as the town where the
youthful Akbar ascended the imperial throne, and to have left Abu
Rijā there to destroy the fort which had afforded a refuge to the
marauders, while he returned to Delhi. According to another
account he was on this occasion mean spirited enough to bribe the
Mughuls to retire, but the inconsistency of such conduct with his
character is sufficient to discredit the record.
After the retirement of the Mughuls the king remained for
some time at Delhi, where he had an account to settle with his
people. The citizens were enraged against their sovereign, whose
removal of the court to Daulatābād had gone far towards ruining
Delhi and depriving those who had preferred to remain of their
livelihood. Open resistance to a bloodthirsty tyrant who could
count on the fidelity of his troops was not to be thought of, and
the citizens vented their spleen by the characteristically oriental
1 A pargåna town in 29° 53' N. and 77° 5' E. , near the western bank of the Jumna.


## p. 144 (#184) ############################################

144
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
( CH.
means of anonymous letters, filled with reproaches, invective, and
abuse, which were thrown at night into the hall of audience. The
tyrant avenged himself by issuing the monstrous decree that every
soul should leave Delhi and migrate to Daulatābād, more than six
hundred miles distant to the south. Some attempt was made to
provide funds for the journey and accommodation on the way, but
the decree was rigorously enforced and these measures were utterly
inadequate to relieve the sufferings of the inhabitants of a whole
city. "The king ordered all the inhabitants to migrate from Delhi
to Daulatābād, and on their hesitating to obey, issued a proclama-
tion that nobody should remain in the city for more than three
days longer, and the greater part of them moved out, but some of
them hid themselves in their houses, and he ordered a search to
be made for those who had remained, and his slaves found in the
narrow streets of the city two men, one of whom was a cripple and
the other blind, and they brought them before him, and he ordered
that the lame inan should be cast from a balista and that the blind
man should be dragged from Delhi to Daulatābād, which is forty days'
journey, and he was rubbed to pieces on the way, so that nothing
but his foot reached Dulatābād. When he did this all the people
departed from Delhi and left their goods and their wealth, and the
city was left without inhabitants and deserted". Large numbers
perished by the way and the greater part of those who reached
their journey's end never ceased to mourn for their old homes. It
was nothing to them that they dwelt in a city of which the courtly
poet sang that the heavens were the anvil of the knocker of its
door, that its gates were the eight gates of paradise, and much
more in the same strain of exaggeration. To them the city was a
foreign land, and the magnificence of its buildings, the fertility of
the soil, and the beauty and majesty of the landscape could not
appease their longings for the imperial city of the Jumna. After
the wretched citizens had been driven forth on their perilous and
toilsome journey the king, standing by night on the roof of his
palace and looking over the city which he had made desolate
rejoiced to see that no smoke rose and that neither lamp nor fire
shone in its deserted dwellings. “Now,' said he, 'is my heart content
'
and my soul appeased. '
His vindictive wrath had blazed against his people, not against
his city, and efforts were made, by persuading or compelling the
people of other towns and of the surrounding country to move to
Delhi, to repopulate the city, but these efforts were not successful.
a
1 Ibn Batūtah.


## p. 144 (#185) ############################################

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III
Map 3

18
17
76
80
24
kib
mom
Jbelum
P
Cbarab
Beos
Raci
30
Multan
Sutlej
ah
DELHI
Genges
Barsa
KATEHR
Indus
lumna
OUDH
SIND
Ranthambhore
Ganges
25
Chambal
BENGAL Cour
Tropic of
Cliter
•Ashevica
Cascer
Natbado
Mabánadi
20
Doogie
ORISSA
(Dollatakad)
Baimo|
Warangalo
Krubro,
Tungabbadra
Penner
Dihapura
INDIA
1318-1338
The land frontier of the Kingdom of Delhi
shown thus: RETSENTERA
10 Countries and Peoples thus BENGAL
Towns
Kabul
River
Mahanadi
10
Madura
Rameshwara
Sulo
B00 50 100
English Miles
100
100 Son 3M
Kilometres
72
76
BO
24
63


## p. 144 (#186) ############################################

1


## p. 145 (#187) ############################################

VI ]
THE FICTITIOUS CURRENCY
145
Ibn Batütah, who arrived at Delhi five years later, describes the
splendours of the royal palace and the pomp of the court, but of
the city itselı he says, “When I entered Delhi it was almost a desert.
. . . Its buildings were very few and in other respects it was quite
empty. '
The transportation of the population of Delhi has been des-
cribed as a punitive rather than an administrative measure. A
measure adopted in the following year, the enhancement of the
assessment on land in the Doāb and the introduction, with a view
to further taxation, of a census of the houses and cattle, partook of
both characters. The Hindus of the Doāb were disaffected and
turbulent, but it is inconceivable that they should have been guilty
of the folly, imputed to them by Muhammad, of inviting the
Mughuls to invade th country. They had had experience of
Mughul raids, and would not have prepared a scourge for their own
backs, but the measure was designed to replenish the treasury as
well as to punish the people, and it failed of both its objects.
The extent of the enhancement is uncertain. The statement
that the demand was increased ten fold and twenty-fold is almost
certainly hyperbolical, and the statements of Firishta, who says that
it was increased three-fold and four-fold, and of Budauni, who says
that it was doubled, are probably nearer the truth ; but whatever
the extent of the enhancement may have been the cultivators were
unable to meet the demand, and abandoned their holdings and took
to brigandage, so that the treasury suffered and the guilty went
unpunished. The reprisals ordered by the king converted one of
the richest and most fertile provinces of the kingdom into the seat
of a war between the royal troops and the inhabitants.
Some means of replenishing the treasury had to be devised, and
it was now that Muhammad conceived the idea of his famous
fictitious currency. He may have heard of the paper currency of
Khubilāı Qā-an in China, and the fictitious money of the Mughuls
in Persia, and it was perhaps in imitation of these fiscal measures
that he issued brass or copper tokens which were, by his decree, to
pass current for the silver tanga of 140 grains. Mr. Thomas, in his
Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi' has contended that
Muhammad's vast power and the great wealth of his dominions
justified, or almost justified, this measure, and that its failure was
due to unforeseen causes, but the contemporary historian Barani
asserts that it formed a part of the kings' extravagant design of
bringing under his away the whole habitable world, for the execution
1 Edition of 1871, pp. 239-47.
C. H. I. III.
10


## p. 146 (#188) ############################################

146
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
[ CH.
a
of which boundless wealth would be necessary, and from this state-
ment it would appear that Muhammad had no clear notion of the
uses and limitations of a fictitious currency, but believed that he
could, by his decree, virtually convert brass and copper into silver
and gold. He was rudely undeceived. With the almost worthless
tokens the people purchased the gold and silver coins for which
they were legal tender. The revenue was paid in the tokens, which
were also freely used by foreign merchants in their disbursements
but refused by them in payment for their goods, but the principal
factor in the collapse of the scheme was the wholesale counterfeiting
of the tokens. As Mr. Thomas says, 'There was no special machinery
to mark the difference of the fabric of the royal mint and the handi-
work of the moderately skilled artisan. Unlike the precautions
taken to prevent the imitation of the Chinese paper notes there was
positively no check on the authenticity of the copper tokens, and no
limit to the power of production of the masses at large. ' The
justice of these remarks will be appreciated by those acquainted
with the appearance and workmanship of the copper coinage of
India before the introduction of European methods of minting.
An artisan with a few simple tools and a moderate degree of skill in
· their use could sell at the price of silver any brass or copper which
fell into his hands, and this result might have been foreseen. The
enormous extent to which counterfeiting was carried on is described
in graphic terms by all the historians, and Barani merely paints the
picture in somewhat vivid colours when he writes that every Hindu's
house became a mint.
The tokens were not current for more than three or four years,
and as an oriental despot, who is, in fact, the state, cannot be
expected to understand that public funds are held in trust for the
public, some credit is due to Muhammad for his prompt acknow-
ledgement of his error by the recall of the tokens, though it is
doubtful whether he had any conception of the cost of the measure.
It was proclaimed that silver coins would be issued to the public
from all treasuries in exchange for brass and copper tokens, so that
the state began by buying copper at the price of silver and ended by
virtually distributing silver gratis, for so vast was the quantity of
tokens which poured in that no use could be found even for the
metal. Mountains of them arose at the treasuries and lay there for
years. The remains of them were still to be seen, a century later,
in the reign of Mu'izz-ud-din Mubārak Shāh. As Budaunī says,
* After all, copper was copper, and silver was silver. '
Discontent now manifested itself among a very different class of


## p. 147 (#189) ############################################

VI ]
CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY
147
>
>
Muhammad's subjects. It was three years since he had compelled
his courtiers to transfer their families to Daulatābād, and he had
already been absent for two years and a half from his new capital.
Those in attendance on him began to murmur that they might as
well have been permitted to keep their families at Delhi if they
themselves were to be compelled to live there, but Muhammad was
probably obeying his own impluse rather than their importunity
when he returned, in 1330, to Daulatābād.
In the following year Ghiyās-ud-din Bahādur rose in rebellion
at Sonārgāon, but the rising was crushed by Bahrām Khān, and
the rebel was put to death. His skin, like that of Gurshāsp, was
stuffed with straw and exhibited in the principal cities of the
kingdom.
The following year, 1331-32, passed uneventfully at Daulatābād,
but the king's tyranny was bearing its fruit in the Doāb, and in
1333 he returned to Delhi and led a punitive expedition into that
region, which he treated in all respects as a hostile country. Baran,
now Bulandshahr, was first attacked, and the whole district was
plundered and laid waste. The inhabitants were slaughtered like
sheep, and rows of Hindu heads decked the battlements of the city
of Baran. Those who escaped fled into the jungles, where they
were hunted like wild beasts. Continuing his march in a south-
easterly direction the king plundered and devastated, in like manner,
the districts of Kanauj and Dalmau', where he was still engaged
when Ibn Batūtah arrived at Delhi late in 1333 or early in 1334.
The Moorish traveller's account in his Tuhfat-un-Nuzzār fi
Gharaib-il-Amsār, of his journeys and sojourn in India, throws
much light on the condition of the country, the character of its
sovereign, and many details. He arrived at the mouth of the Indus
on September 12, 1333, and his arrival, as he was a foreigner, had to
be reported to Qutb-ul-Mulk, the governor of the city of Multān.
He describes a rebellion at Sihwān, not mentioned in the general
histories of the reign, which had been suppressed shortly before
his arrival. The king had appointed to the government of Sihwān
a Hindu named Ratan, who was well skilled in accounts, and whom
he entitled 'Azim-us-Sind. The appointment gave great offence to
Wunār, chief of the Sūmras, and to a noble named Qaisar-ur-Rūmi
living at Sihwān, who resented the appointment of a Hindu governor
over them. Having involved him in hostilities with some brig-
ands or tribesmen in the neighbourhood of Sihwān, they attacked
him by night, slew him, and afterwards plundered the treasury.
1 The town of Dalmau is situated in 25° 4' N. and 81° 6' E.
10-2


## p. 148 (#190) ############################################

-148
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
[CH
'Imād-ud-Mulk Sartiz, governor of Sind, marched against the rebels,
and Wunār fled to his tribe, but Qaisar sustained a siege of forty
days in Sihwān and eventually surrendered on receiving an assurance
that his life would be spared, but 'Imād-ul-Mulk broke faith with
him, and put him and large numbers of his followers to death.
Many were flayed, and their skins, stuffed with straw, were sus-
pended from the walls and public buildings of the city. The sight of
these miserable relics so horrified Ibn Batūtah, who was compelled
by the heat of the weather to sleep in the open air, as to hasten his
departure from the city. After some stay at Multān he travelled
by way of Abohar, Pakpattan, Sirsa, and Hānsi to Delhi. His
account of the journey illustrates Muhammad's lavish hospitality
to foreigners visiting his dominions and the disorder prevailing in
the country.
When he reached Delhi Muhammad was in the Kanauj district,
but the minister, Khvāja Jahān, saw that he and his fellow travel.
lers were well received at the capital. The king's generosity to
these strangers, who had no claims on him, was fantastic. Ibn
Batūtah himself received 6000 tangas in cash, a grant of three
villages within thirty miles of Delhi which gave him an annual
income of 5000 tangas, and ten Hindu slaves.
Some months later Muhammad returned from Kanauj, and on
June 8, 1334, reached Tilpat. Ibn Batūtah was among those who
went forth to meet him, and describes the king's kindly reception
of himself and others, his ceremonial entry into the capital, and the
great honour shown to foreigners, whom he was ever solicitous to
attract to his court. They were offered appointments, which few
were prepared to accept, for they were, for the most part, mere
beggars, who had visited India with the object of amassing wealth
as quickly as possible and carrying it back to their own countries.
Ibn Batūtah, to whose original grant two other villages were added
and whose annual stipend was fixed at 12,000 tangas, was willing
to work for his bread, but hesitated to accept the post of gāzi of
Delhi on the ground of his ignorance of the language of the country
and of his attachment to the Māliki sect of the Sunnis whose
practice differed somewhat from that of the Hanafi sect, whose
religion was established in India. The king removed both obstacles
by offering to appoint two assistants, who would perform the duties
of the post while Ibn Batūtah enjoyed the stipend.
The king had enjoyed but a brief period of repose at Delhi
when he was summoned southward by the news of a serious rebel.
lion. He had appointed Sayyid Jalāl-ud-din Ahsan of Kaithal to the


## p. 149 (#191) ############################################

VI]
THE KINGDOM OF MADURA
149
a
government of Ma'bar, the most southerly province of his kingdom.
Ahsan now raised the standard of rebellion at Madura, proclaimed
his independence under the style of Jalāl-ud-din Ahsan Shāh, and
struck coin in his own name. On January 5, 1335, Muhammad left
Delhi for southern India, travelling by way of Daulatābad, where
he levied heavy contributions to the expense of equipping his army.
He marched thence for Madura by way of Bidar and Warangal,
but at the latter place his further progress was stayed by a pesti-
lence, probably cholera, which broke out in his army. The disease
raged in the camp, smiting alike the great noble and the humble
camp follower, and the mortality was appalling. The king himself
ſell sick and his health was not restored for several months. All
thought of a further advance was abandoned, and Muhammad,
leaving Malik Qabül at Warangal as governor of Telingāna, began
to retrace his step. He never had another opportunity of recover-
ing the lost province of Ma'bar, which remained a petty kingdom
for the next forty years. All that is known of its history is to be
ascertained from its coins", from the narrative of Ibn Batūtah, who
was son-in-law to its founder, and from a few inscriptions, and may
be related in the course of a brief digression.
Jalāl-ud-din Ahsan Shāh, having declared his independence in
A. H. 735, was slain in A. H. 740 by one of his officers, who usurped
the throne under the title of 'Alā-ud-din Udauji but had not
reigned a year when he was slain by a stray arrow which pene-
trated his head when he had removed his helmet after a victory
over the infidels,' that is to say the subjects either of the Pandya
or of the Kerala kings, and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Qutb-
ud-din Firūz Shāh, who was slain in a revolt after a reign of forty
days. On his death the throne was seized by Ghiyās-ud-din Dāma.
ghånī, who had been a trooper in the service of Muhammad Tughluq,
and now assumed the title of Ghiyás-ud-din Muhammad Dāmaghān
Shāh. He married a daughter of Ahsan Shāh, and thus became
the brother-in-law of the wife of Ibn Batūtah, who was a guest at
his court after leaving that of Muhammad Tughluq, and records
some of the atrocities committed by him, such as the torture and
massacre of a great number of Hindu captives, men, women, and
children. He also records Dāmaghān Shāh's victory over Vira
Ballāla III of Dväravatipura, who was over eighty years of age and
was captured, strangled, and flayed by his adversary, who had
learnt some lessons at the court at Delhi, and hung the stuffed skin
of the raja on the wall of Madura. The death of Dāmaghān Shāh's
1 See J. A. S. B. , Pt. I, Ixiv, 49, and J. R. A. S, 1909, p. 667.


## p. 150 (#192) ############################################

150
[ch.
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
a
6
only son from cholera on his return to Madura and his own death
a fortnight later from the effects of an aphrodisiac were regarded
as the due punishment of his cruelties.
He was succeeded in A. H. 745 (A. D. 1344) by his nephew, Nāsir-
ud-din, who had been a domestic servant at Delhi before his uncle's
elevation to the throne of Madura, and now assumed the title of
Mahmud Ghāzi Dāmaghān. He slew all the officers, of the kingdom
likely to disturb his possession of the throne, and among them the
husband of his predecessor's daughter, whom he married immedi-
ately after her husband's death. It was during his reign that Ibn
Batūtah, though pressed by him to stay, left the court of Madura.
He was succeeded by . Adil Shāh, whose coins were dated A. H.
757 (A. D. 1356), and he by Fakhr-ud-din Mubārak Shāh, whose
earliest coins are dated in A. H. 761 (A. D. 1360), and who apparently
reigned until A. D. 1368-69, or perhaps until A. D. 1372-73, when he
was succeeded by 'Alā-ud-din Sikandar Shāh, whose latest coin is
dated in A. H. 778 (A. D. 1377-78). The rising power of the great
Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar had, some years before, begun to
overshadow the small Muslim state of Madura, and an inscri tion
of Sangama I, the founder of the first dynasty of Vijayanagar,
records a victory over that proud lord of Madura, the valiant
Turushka. ' In another inscription of 1371 Goppana, commanding
the army of Bukka I, son of Sangama and third raja of Vijayanagar,
claims a victory over the Turks of Madura, and the date of
Sikandar's latest coin is probably that of the extinction of the
Muslim dynasty of Madura by Bukka I.
We now return the movements of Muhammad Tughluq, who
retired from Warangal to Bidar, of which city and province he
appointed Shihab-ud-din governor, conferring on him the title of
Nusrat Khān. This appointment marks the introduction of the
pernicious system, which was soon to become general, of farming
the revenue. Muhammad's lavish profusion and wild and disastrous
schemes of conquest so impoverished him as to render him des-
perate, and the system of farming the revenue was introduced with
the object of wringing from the wretched cultivator the utmost
farthing. His experience in the Gangetic Doāb should have taught
him the axiom that there is a point beyond which demands cannot
be raised, and that human beings will not labour to till the soil
unless they are allowed to retain a proportion of its fruits sufficient
to maintain life. In the later years of the reign no experienced and
conscientious official would enter into the unholy competition for
6


## p. 151 (#193) ############################################

vi ]
THE FARMING OF THE REVENUE
151
governorships, for the government of districts and provinces was
virtually put up to auction, and he who promised to pay the largest
annual sum to the treasury obtained the prize. The successful
bidders were usually men of mean origin, devoid of knowledge,
experience, and compassion, who, without staying to consider what
men could or would pay, made the most extravagant promises,
only to discover that they could not meet their obligations. It was
well known that the king would make no allowance for circum-
stances, and the defaulter was left with no remedy but rebellion.
Nusrat Khān agreed to pay the treasury, for the districts placed
under his charge, the annual sum of ten millions of tangas, and
Muhammad continued his retreat. At Bir he suffered from a severe
toothache, and his vanity caused to be erected over the spot where
the tooth, when extracted, was buried, a domed tomb, which is still
standing and is known as the Dome of the Tooth.
Reports of the king's sickness at Warangal had been exagger-
ated into rumours of his death, which had been believed by Malik
Hüshang of Daulatābād, a noble with whom he had been on terms
of peculiar affection and intimacy. Hūshang had risen in rebellion,
but on learning that Muhammad was alive and was returning to
Daulatābād fled and sought an asylum with a Hindu chieftain in
the Western Ghāts, who subsequently surrendered him. The rebel,
strange to say, was pardoned.
Muhammad had for some time past deliberately encouraged
foreigners of all nations to settle in his dominions. He cherished
the insane design of subjugating the whole world. His knowledge
of geography was scanty and he could form no conception of the
magnitude of the task which he proposed to himself, but he under-
stood that the first step to be taken would be the conquest of the
neighbouring countries of Transoxiana and Persia, and with this
object in view he encouraged wealthy and influential Mughuls and
natives of Khurāsān to enter his service in the hope that they would
assist him in the conquest of their native lands. Later in his reign,
when he had succeeded in obtaining the formal recognition of al-
Hākim II, the Abbasid Caliph in Egypt, he obliged these foreigners
to swear allegiance to him as the only lawful Muslim sovereign.
For the conquest of Persia he raised an enormous army, the
maintenance of which so depleted his treasury that in the second
year of the army's existence no funds remained for its payment,
and it melted away.
Not all the foreigners so freely welcomed and so liberally
remunerated proved to be faithful, and during the king's absence


## p. 152 (#194) ############################################

152
THE TUGHLUQ DYNASTY
(CH.
in the south Hulāgů, a Mughul noble at Lahore, proclaimed his
independence, appointed Gul Chandar, Chief of the Khokars, his
minister, and slew the governor, Tātār Khān the elder. Khvāja
Jahān, the minister, assembled an army at Delhi and marched
towards Lahore, taking with him, among others, Ibn Batūtah, who
has left an account of the expedition which, though brief, is the
most circumstantial which has come down to us. Hulāgū and Gul
Chandar marched to meet Khvāja Jahān, and the two armies met
and fought on the banks of one of the great rivers of the Punjab,
probably the Sutlej. Hulāgū was defeated and fled, and large
numbers of his army were drowned in the river. Khvăja Jahān
advanced to Lahore, where he punished, after his master's manner,
the remnant of the rebels and their partisans. Many were flayed
alive and many were slain in other ways, and three hundred of the
widows of the victims were sent into imprisonment at Gwalior.
Before leaving Daulatābād the king gave general permission to
those who had been transported from Delhi eight years before to
return to their former home, and most of them returned joyfully,
but some had become attached to the land of their exile, and
remained there.
During Muhammad's absence from Delhi a heavy calamity had
befallen northern India, and famine was sore in the land. It lasted,
like that recorded in the Book of Genesis, for seven years, and was
the most severe famine of which we have any record in India. It
is attributed by historians to natural causes, and Budauni goes as
far as to say that ‘for seven whole years not a drop of rain fell from
the heavens. ' This is, of course, mere hyperbole, and must be inter-
preted to mean that the rainfall was deficient for seven years, but
it is certain that the famine was not due to natural causes alone,
or the province of Oudh would not have been able to afford relief
during that period to the inhabitants of Delhi and the Doāb.
Muhammad's exactions, which extinguished cultivation in large
tracts of the Doāb, and his severity, which destroyed those who
might have cultivated the land, contributed in no small measure to
the calamity, which is always mentioned in connexion with, though
not directly attributed to, his ill-treatment of his subjects in the
Doāb.
His way to Delhi lay through the usually fertile province of
Mālwa, and here he had an opportunity of observing the havoc
which famine had wrought upon his people. Towns and whole
districts were depopulated and even the postal runners were con-
strained to abandon their posts, so that the royal mails no longer


## p. 153 (#195) ############################################

VI]
FAMINE AND REBELLION
153
ran between Delhi and Daulatăbăd. A pound of grain cost twenty-
two or twenty-three grains of silver, and the people were reduced
to eating unnatural and loathsome food. Ibn Batūtah saw some
women cutting strips from the skin of a horse which had been dead
for some months, and eating them, cooked hides were exposed for
sale in the bazars, and people thronged round the butchers to
catch and drink the blood of slaughtered cattle.