The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (38 page)

Similar professions were made by king Krishnadeva of Vijayanagar in his poetic opus
Amukta-malyada
. Pay particular attention to the welfare of your subjects, he counsels rajas; keep the company of sages and scholars; cultivate piety; avoid vices like womanising and gambling; ensure administrative efficiency and strictly supervise the work of officers; and maintain a strong army as well as an efficient spy network. Krishnadeva further directs kings to promote the prosperity of their kingdom by constructing irrigation networks to facilitate the expansion of agriculture, and by encouraging trade, particularly foreign trade. They are also advised to try to reform criminals, rather than punish them summarily, and that in any case their punishments should not be too harsh. Above all, kings should tend their kingdoms with devoted care, like a farmer tending his field with care, the raja advises.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In contrast to the generally ostentatious lifestyle of sultans, the traditional lifestyle of rajas was relatively simple. But in time many of the rajas adopted some of the Turko-Afghan royal practices. While most Hindu kings customarily held court sitting on a mat or carpet, or on a low stool or chair, during the medieval period many of them gradually took to sitting on opulent and elaborately bejewelled thrones in the style of the sultans. According to Abdur Razzak—who visited India in mid-fifteenth century as an envoy of Timur’s son Shah Rukh—the throne of king Devaraya II of Vijayanagar ‘was of an extraordinary size; it was made of gold, and was enriched with precious stones of extreme value … The king was seated in great state in the forty-pillared hall, and a great crowd of Brahmins and others stood on the right and left of him. He was clothed in a robe of green satin, and he had around his neck a collar composed of pure pearls of regal excellence, the value of which a jeweller would find difficult to calculate.’ And when the raja travels ‘not less than a hundred thousand warriors go with him,’ states Barbosa, an early sixteenth century Portuguese traveller, rather exaggeratedly.

Unlike the opulence of the North Indian and Deccani kings, the lifestyle of the Dravidian kings of South India, particularly of the Chera kings of Kerala, was quite simple. Battuta, a fourteenth century Moorish traveller in India, saw the king of Kozhikode on the beach ‘wearing a large white cloth round his waist and a small turban, barefooted, with a parasol carried by a slave over his head and a fire lit in front of him.’ According to Barbosa, when the king of Kerala travels, he ‘comes forth in his litter borne by two men, which is lined
with silken cushions … [The litter] is hung on a bamboo pole covered with precious stones.’ The bearers of the litter run at a jog-trot pace, all the while humming and grunting ‘in a curious antiphonic manner.’ Barbosa also notes the curious Kerala custom in which, when a raja dies and has been cremated, all the members of the royal family ‘shave themselves from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, saving only their eyelashes and eyebrows. This they do from the prince to the least heir of the kingdom.’

A commendable attribute of the early medieval Indian rulers, of sultans as well as rajas, in Delhi as well as elsewhere, is that many of them were keen and knowledgeable patrons of art, literature and learning, and some of them were distinguished scholars and writers themselves. But erudition in itself made little difference in the performance of a ruler; it was only his pragmatism, as well as his administrative and military capabilities, that really mattered. Muhammad Tughluq was probably the most erudite of the Delhi sultans, but he was a pathetic failure as a ruler; on the other hand, Ala-ud-din Khalji was illiterate, but was the most successful of the Delhi sultans.

MOST OF THE medieval Indian sultans and rajas were polygamous; they had several wives, and in addition maintained huge harems, as befitting their Olympian stature and lifestyle. This was mainly for pomp, but partly also for pleasure. Yet another reason for a king to have a large number of wives was for him to beget many children, to ensure that he would have enough sons to survive him in the perilous political environment of the age, so that his dynasty may endure.

Islamic convention allowed only four lawful wives to a man, whatever be his status, but among Hindus there was no such restriction. Achyutadevaraya, the king of Vijayanagar, according to a probably exaggerated account of Nuniz, had as many as 500 wives. ‘And when he journeys to any place he takes with him twenty-five or thirty of his most favourite wives … each one in her palanquin with poles. The palanquin of the principal wife is all covered with scarlet cloth tasselled with large and heavy work in seed-pearls and pearls, and the pole itself is ornamented with gold.’ More credible is what Domingos Paes, an early sixteenth-century Portuguese traveller, says about Krishnadeva. ‘This king,’ he reports, ‘has twelve lawful wives, of whom there are three principal ones … [The three] are in all respects treated and provided for equally,] so that there may never be any discord or ill feeling between them. All of them are great friends, and each one lives by herself … The king [too] lives by himself inside the palace, and when he wishes to have with him one of his wives, he orders a eunuch to go and call her.’

The queens of Vijayanagar, particularly the three chief queens, were sumptuously provided with all luxuries. ‘Each one of these wives has her
house to herself, with her maidens and women of the chamber, and women guards, and all other women servants necessary; all these are women, and no man enters where they are, save only the eunuchs, who guard them,’ continues Paes. ‘These women are never seen by any man except perhaps by some old man of high rank by favour of the king. When they wish to go out they are carried in litters shut up and closed, so that they cannot be seen.’

This evidently was a practice that spread to the Hindu royal families under Turko-Afghan influence, for previously there was no such seclusion of the royal women in Hindu kingdoms. ‘Most of the princes of India, when they hold court allow their women to be seen by the men who attend it, whether they be natives or foreigners,’ writes Abu Zaid, an early medieval Arab historian. ‘No veil conceals them from the eyes of the visitors.’ However, whether the royal women remained in the zenana and behind the veil, or appeared openly in public, they usually played an important role in public affairs, through their influence on kings.

Apart from the queens, a large number of women, including several foreigners, lived in the royal harem. Some of them served as royal concubines—there was no restriction on the number of concubines a raja or a sultan could have—while the others provided various routine services in the palace. All the king’s female relatives, such as his mother, unmarried aunts, sisters and daughters, as well as his young sons, lived in the harem. His adult sons lived apart. There were also several female entertainers in the harem. According to Nuniz, the raja of Vijayanagar had ‘within his gates more than 4000 women, all of whom live in the palace; some are dancing girls, and others are bearers … He has also women who wrestle, and others who are astrologers and soothsayers; and he has women who write all the accounts of expenses that are incurred inside the gates, and others whose duty it is to write all the affairs of the kingdom … He has women also for music, who play instruments and sing. Even the wives of the king are well versed in music.’ Paes reports that Krishnadeva had 12,000 women in his harem, some of whom ‘handle sword and shield, others wrestle, and yet others blow trumpets and others pipes, and [various] other instruments … [There were also there] women bearers and washing-folk …’ The sultans too maintained huge harems. Portuguese sources report that sultan Ghiyas-ud-din Mahmud Shah of the mid-sixteenth century Bengal, had 10,000 women in his harem.