The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (45 page)

The pervasive attitude of fatalism among Indians of all classes was yet another factor affecting the spirit of Indian armies—victory and defeat were not in their hands, they believed; whatever was destined to happen would happen. This inculcated a negativist, defeatist attitude in Indian soldiers. They lacked the confident aggressiveness essential for success in battle. The enervating climate of India also played a role in desiccating the martial spirit of Indians. In the case of the Delhi Sultanate, regular fresh arrivals of men from Central Asia reinvigorated its army periodically, even as earlier migrants slowly lost their vigour and spirit. Not surprisingly, the dwindling of fresh arrivals of foreigners in the later part of the Sultanate history greatly weakened the kingdom.

VICTORY IN A BATTLE in medieval India was immediately followed by the victorious soldiers frenziedly rampaging through the enemy camp and the enemy country, indiscriminately slaughtering enemy soldiers as well as the common people, even women and children, and pillaging whatever valuables they could find, to glut their bloodlust and their lust for plunder. And this was, for the common soldiers, among Hindus as well as Muslims, the real
reward for risking their lives in battle. Says al-Biruni about Mahmud Ghazni’s Indian campaigns: ‘Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which Hindus became like atoms and dust, and scattered in all directions.’ Similarly, when Vijayanagar once invaded Ahmadnagar, its soldiers, according to Ferishta, ‘committed the most outrageous devastations, burning and razing buildings, putting up their horses in mosques, and performing their idolatrous worship in holy places.’ In the frenzy of war, soldiers often did not even spare their coreligionists. Thus when Muhammad Tughluq once stormed into Devagiri to suppress a rebellion there, his soldiers plundered ‘the inhabitants of Devagiri, Hindus and Muslims, traders and soldiers’ without any discrimination, reports Barani.

This mode of military operation persisted in India till late medieval times. Thus we repeatedly come across phrases like ‘attack and lay waste the country’, ‘ravage the country from end to end’, ‘kill and ravage as much as possible’, ‘plunder and lay waste all the country,’ ‘plunder and destroy every inhabited place’, in the orders given to the Mughal army during the reign of Shah Jahan, as recorded by the contemporary chronicler Abdul-Hamid Lahauri. The conditions in the countryside around the battlefield, as well as in conquered cities, usually remained anarchic for several months after a battle. Thus Caesar Frederic, a sixteenth-century Venetian traveller in India, was held up for seven months in Vijayanagar after the battle of Talikota, as brigands were then rampaging through the land.

Fair treatment of the defeated enemy was uncommon in medieval India, the attitude of the victor being that he who is an enemy today could be an enemy again tomorrow, so it was best to exterminate him. Theirs was a feral relationship. Sometimes the defeated king and his chief officers were gibbeted, as a warning to other potential enemies. Often the enemy soldiers were herded into prison camps and sold as slaves. Muhammad Ghuri during one of his Indian campaigns is said to have captured so many of the enemy soldiers that they glutted the slave market, and their price fell so sharply that they had to be sold for just a dinar each. It was only very rarely that the victor treated the people of a conquered region with fairness and compassion, as Krishnadeva, according to Nuniz, is said to done when he captured Raichur.

Sometimes a raja, defeated by a sultan, became a Muslim, even ate beef, to save his life and throne, as a king of Jammu is said to have done once. ‘Among these infidels there is no greater crime and abomination than eating the flesh of a cow or killing a cow, but he ate the flesh in the company of Muslims,’ writes Timur in his autobiography. Often the defeated raja gave one of his daughters in marriage to the victor as a peace offering.

There were however several exceptions to such servile conduct, instances of Hindu kings preferring death to the humiliation of defeat and servitude.
According to Al-Utbi, ‘there is a custom among … [some Hindu kings] that if any of them is taken prisoner by an enemy … it is not lawful for him to continue to reign … [So king Jayapala of Punjab, on being captured in war and later released by Mahmud Ghazni, decided that] death by cremation was preferable to shame and dishonour. So he commenced with shaving off his hair, and then threw himself upon the fire till he was burnt.’

A variation of this practice was jauhar, mass ritual suicide by the residents of a fort in imminent danger of being captured by the enemy. This involved the women and children of the raja, as well as the women and children of his nobles, immolating themselves, voluntarily or by force, in a funeral pyre built in the fort, and then the men storming out to fight the enemy, to kill and be killed.

The first known account of this practice is in
Chach-nama
. The custom was probably introduced into India by Central Asian migrants in the late classical period, and seems to have been initially confined to Rajputs, who were mostly migrants. In time the custom spread to the ruling class of some other people also. Thus, according to Battuta, the raja of Kampili in Karnataka, on the verge of his castle being stormed by the army of Muhammad Tughluq, ‘commanded a great fire to be prepared and lighted. Then … he said to his wives and daughters, “I am going to die, and such of you as prefer it, do the same.” Then it was seen that each one of these women washed herself, rubbed her body with sandalwood paste, kissed the ground before the raja … and threw herself upon the pyre. All perished. The wives of his nobles, ministers, and chief men imitated them, and other women also did the same. The raja, in his turn, washed, rubbed himself with sandalwood paste, and took his arms, but did not put on his breastplate. Those of his men who resolved to die with him followed his example. Then they sallied forth to meet the troops of the sultan, and fought till every one of them fell dead.’

‘India … is the most agreeable abode on the earth, the most pleasant quarter of the world,’ states Abdullah Wassaf, an early fourteenth-century Persian writer, in his long and fanciful paean on India. ‘Its dust is purer than air, and its air purer than purity itself; its delightful plains resemble the garden of paradise, and the particles of its earth are like rubies and corals … [It] is distinguished from all parts of the globe by its extreme temperateness, and by the purity of its water and air … Indeed, the charms of the country and the softness of the air, together with the variety of its wealth, precious metals, stones, and other abundant products, are beyond description … Its treasuries and depositories are like the oceans full of polished gems; its trees are in continual freshness and verdure; and the zephyrs of its air are pure and odoriferous; the various birds on its boughs are sweet-singing parrots; and the pheasants in its gardens are all graceful peacocks.

It is asserted that Paradise is in India,

Be not surprised because Paradise itself

is not comparable to it.’

All this was mere poetic fancy by a writer who had never been to India. But even Indian writers were susceptible to such mythifications, as in the case of poet Amir Khusrav extolling India as a heavenly country—‘Hindustan is like heaven,’ he writes—even though he could plainly see before his very eyes an entirely different reality. Similarly over-effulgent is the description of India by the fourteenth-century Syrian writer Shahab-ud-din. ‘India,’ he writes, ‘is a most important country, with which no other country in the world can be
compared in respect of extent, riches, the numbers of its armies, the pomp and splendour displayed by the sovereign in his progresses and habitations, and the power of his empire … Its inhabitants are remarkable for their wisdom and intelligence; no people are better able to restrain their passion, nor more willing to sacrifice their lives, for what they consider agreeable in the sight of god.’

Closer to reality, but still rather exaggerated, is the praise of medieval India given in
Mukhtasiru-t Tawarikh
, a chronicle by an anonymous writer who lived in India during the reign of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. ‘India is a very large country, and it is so extensive that the other countries are not equal to a hundredth part of it. Notwithstanding its extensive area, it is populated in all places. It abounds in all quarters and every district with cities, towns, villages, caravanserais, forts, citadels, mosques, temples, monasteries, cells, magnificent buildings, delightful gardens, fine trees, pleasant green fields, running streams, and impetuous rivers … In this country there are mines of diamonds, ruby, gold, silver, copper, lead, and iron.’

SUCH FANCIFUL IMAGES of India were common in the premodern world, and they played a key role in enticing numerous migrants and invaders into India all through history. And Indians themselves, like most other people, were addicted to self-mythification. But gradually a more realistic view of India began to emerge in the reports of medieval Turkish writers and European travellers, though there was still a good amount of fancy even in these accounts, and they were inevitably marred by the racial prejudice and socio-religious bias of the chroniclers. Typical of the dichotomous view of medieval foreigners about India was what a noble told Timur when he was planning to invade India. India, he said, was an excellent country to raid and plunder, for it was fabulously wealthy, but it would be self-destructive to occupy and rule it. ‘If we establish ourselves permanently therein, our race will degenerate and our children will become like the natives of those regions, and in a few generations their strength and valour will diminish,’ he cautioned.

There is a good amount of information about medieval India in the chronicles of the age by Muslim writers, far more than on any of the previous ages in Indian history, but these almost solely deal with political history, and there is hardly any information in them about the towns and villages of India, or about the way of life of the common people. Though there is some information on these matters in the accounts of contemporary European travellers in India, these are quite meagre, just some casual sketches of a few random places, communities and incidents.

The Indian city on which we have the most information in medieval chronicles is, predictably, Delhi. According to a widely held but unverifiable
tradition, Delhi was originally Indraprastha, City of Indra, mentioned in
Mahabharata
as the capital of Pandavas. In historical times the city, termed Dilli or Dillika, is believed to have been founded in the mid-eighth century by Tomaras (a Rajput clan ruling Haryana) as their capital. The name first occurs in an inscription in the late twelfth century.

But Delhi was at this time just an obscure provincial city. It was only in the early thirteenth century, after it became the capital of the Delhi Sultanate, that it gained subcontinental prominence. It would thereafter, except for a few short interludes, remain the political hub of India, first as the capital of the Delhi Sultanate, then of the Mughal empire, then of the British-Indian empire, and finally of the Republic of India.

The city became the capital of the Delhi Sultanate when Aibak, the Turkish general in India, assumed sovereign power in Delhi in 1206, on the death of his overlord, Muhammad Ghuri. The location of the city was ideal for the Delhi sultans, for it was near the centre of their extensive kingdom, which stretched from Punjab to Bengal across the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Further, Delhi had the advantage of being quite distant from the vulnerable western frontier of the Sultanate menaced by the Mongols, and yet close enough to the frontier to defend it.

Delhi grew immensely in size and prominence under the sultans, and in time it became a much admired city in the medieval Muslim world. It was ‘the envy of the cities of the inhabited world,’ claims Barani, an early medieval chronicler. Battuta, a Moroccan traveller who was in Delhi during the reign of Muhammad Tughluq, is equally lavish in his praise of the city. ‘Delhi, the metropolis of India, is a vast and magnificent city, uniting beauty with strength,’ Battuta testifies. ‘It is surrounded by a wall that has no equal in the world, and is the largest city in India, nay, rather largest city in the entire Muslim Orient. The city of Delhi is now made up of four neighbouring and contiguous towns. One of them is Delhi proper, the old city built by the infidels … The second is called Siri … The third is called Tughluqabad … The fourth is called Jahan Panah (Refuge of the World), and is set apart for the residence of the reigning sultan, Muhammad.’ Like all the cities and major towns of the age in India, Delhi was a fort city, and it had, according to Battuta, twenty-eight gates.

Towards the close of the history of the Delhi Sultanate its capital was shifted from Delhi to Agra by Sikandar Lodi. But Agra was not a lucky city for Sikandar, for on 6 July 1505, soon after he shifted his residence there, a violent earthquake shattered the town, reducing most of it to rubble. ‘Even the very hills quaked, and lofty buildings crashed to the ground,’ writes Ni’matullah, an early seventeenth-century chronicler. ‘The living thought that the Day of Judgment had arrived; the dead, the day of resurrection.’ The quake was so intense that it was felt nearly all over India, and even in far away Persia.

Very little is known about the early history of Agra. According to Abdullah, a seventeenth century chronicler, Agra before the time of Sikandar Lodi was ‘a mere village, but one of old standing.’ There was an old fort there, which was used by the raja of Mathura as a state prison before the advent of the Turks. Agra was ravaged by Mahmud Ghazni during one of his raids into India, and he so utterly devastated it that ‘it became one of the most insignificant villages in the land,’ states Abdullah. ‘After this, it improved from the time of Sultan Sikandar [Lodi], and at length, in Akbar’s time, became the seat of government … and one of the chief cities of Hindustan.’

ANOTHER MUCH ADMIRED early medieval Indian city was Vijayanagar, founded in 1336 by Harihara. In the beginning it was just a small fortified settlement in the hill country along the southern bank of the Tungabhadra, but in time it grew into a very large city, which probably had a population of half a million or more. The ruins of the city today cover nearly thirty square kilometres. ‘The city of Vijayanagar is such that eye has not seen nor ear heard of any place resembling it upon the whole earth,’ writes Abdur Razzak, the mid-fifteenth century Persian envoy in Vijayanagar. ‘It is so built that it has seven fortified walls, one within the other. Beyond the circuit of the outer wall there is an esplanade extending for about fifty yards, in which stone slabs are fixed near one another to the height of a man … so that neither foot nor horse … can advance with facility near the outer wall … The fortress [which is within the seventh enclosure of the city] is in the form of a circle, situated on the summit of a hill … In that is the palace of the king … Between the first, second, and third walls, there are cultivated fields, gardens and houses. From the third to the seventh enclosure, shops and bazaars are closely crowded together … There are many rivulets and streams flowing through channels of cut stone, polished and even.’

Some eight decades after Razzak, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, Portuguese traveller Domingos Paes visited the city and described it ‘as large as Rome, and very beautiful to the sight,’ having gardens and lakes in it. The city had, according to Paes, some 100,000 houses. Another Portuguese traveller, Duarte Barbosa, also visited Vijayanagar around this time. The king of Vijayanagar, he writes, has ‘very large and handsome palaces, with numerous courts … There are also in this city many other palaces of great lords … All the other houses of the place are covered with thatch. The streets and squares are very wide. They are constantly filled with innumerable crowd of all nations and creeds … There is an infinite trade in this city.’

About 600 kilometres to the north of Vijayanagar, in Maharashtra, is Daulatabad, a fort unlike any other in the world. Originally built by Yadavas around the turn of the twelfth century, the fort was captured by Ala-ud-din
Khalji towards the close of the thirteenth century. In 1327 Muhammad Tughluq shifted his capital from Delhi to it for a while, partly because of his resentment towards the truculent people of Delhi, but mainly because of the surpassing strength of the Daulatabad fort, which stands on a conical hill some 200 metres high. Daulatabad, writes Battuta, is an ‘enormous city which rivals Delhi … in importance and in the spaciousness of its planning … [Its fortress] is on a rock situated in a plain; the rock has been excavated and a castle built on its summit.’

The most detailed medieval description of the fort is given by Abdul-Hamid Lahauri, the official chronicler of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. ‘This fortress … is on a mass of rock which raises its head towards heaven,’ he writes. The sides of the hill at the bottom were chiselled away all around to form a sheer vertical barrier of about fifty metres high from the ground. And the barrier in turn was scraped smooth and even so that, according to Lahauri, ‘not even an ant or a snake could crawl up the slippery surface.’ For additional defence, the barrier was girded at its base by a broad and deep moat—‘40 cubits broad and 30 cubits deep’—hewn into solid rock. Further, the citadel, which was at the top of the hill, was itself girded by three concentric defensive walls, with bastions on them.

The only access to the citadel was through an iron gate at the base of the hill, which opened into a tortuous, zigzag cave passage hewn into the interior of the rock. ‘This passage,’ notes Lahauri, ‘is so dark that even on the brightest day you could not grope your way through it without lamps and torches … In order to obstruct this passage in case of emergency they have constructed some iron plates to close it up, which they can heat up with fire and thus render it utterly impossible for any living creature to pass through. From the middle to the crest of the hill, by way of additional security, strong forts have been erected of stone and quicklime.’

All this made Daulatabad entirely impregnable. ‘Thus the usual means for the reduction of forts—such as mines, covered galleries, and batteries—are all utterly useless in besieging such an impregnable fortress as this,’ concludes Lahauri. ‘In fact, its capture is impossible except through the agency of accidental or miraculous means; hence drought, famine and pestilence became the instruments of its final overthrow.’

THERE ARE A FEW brief descriptions of several other Indian cities in medieval chronicles. One such city is Gwalior, which Hasan Nizami, a contemporary of Qutb-ud-din Aibak, describes as ‘the pearl on the necklace of the castles of Hind.’ Adds Battuta: ‘The fort of Gwalior … is situated on the top of a high mountain, and appears … to be cut out of the rock itself … There are subterranean cisterns in it, and it contains also about twenty bricked
wells … Near the gate of the fort there is the figure of an elephant with its mahout, carved in stone, which when seen from a distance seems to be a real elephant. At the base of the fortress there is a fine town, built entirely of white hewn stone, mosques and houses alike. No wood is used except for the doors.’

Urban centres had generally become derelict in India in the late classical period, because of economic decline and the slide of India into the Dark Ages. Though there was some revival of urbanisation during the sultanate period, most of the towns in India were still in a dilapidated state at this time. This was the condition of many villages also, as Battuta in the fourteenth century found. Most medieval Indian villages were secluded settlements, surrounded by thickets or forests, which covered most regions of the subcontinent at this time. Battuta, for instance, found that the Tamil country ‘was an uninterrupted and impassable jungle of trees and reeds.’

Villages in early medieval India were just clusters of huts, with fields and pastures alongside them. They were often temporary habitations, as the population kept shifting periodically, abandoning old villages and setting up new ones, seeking fresh lands for cultivation. ‘In Hindustan hamlets and villages, even towns, are depopulated and set up in a moment,’ noted Mughal emperor Babur in the early sixteenth century. ‘If the people of a large town, one inhabited for years even, flee from it, they do it in such a way that not a sign or trace of them remains in a day, or a day and a half.’