Ala-ud-din then advanced on Delhi, even though it was, as Barani notes, ‘the very height of the rainy season’ and roads had turned into marshes. But his progress was slow, and it was only towards the end of 1296, some five months after he murdered his uncle, that he reached Delhi.
ALA-UD-DIN ENTERED DELHI with great pomp, and was formally enthroned there, and he took up his residence in the Red Palace of Balban. His immediate concern was to win over to his side the prominent people of the city, and this he successfully did by liberally scattering gold and honours among them. ‘He had committed a deed unworthy of his religion and position, so he deemed it … [prudent] to cover up his crime by scattering honours and gifts upon all classes of people,’ states Barani, whose own father and uncle were among the principal beneficiaries of Ala-ud-din’s bounty. ‘People were so deluded by the gold which they received that no one ever mentioned the horrible crime that the sultan had committed.’
After securing his position in Delhi, Ala-ud-din sent an army to Multan, where it captured Arkali Khan and Qadr Khan along with their principal followers. The princes were, on the orders of Ala-ud-din, immediately blinded, and were later put to death, and their mother was taken to Delhi and locked up in a prison. ‘The throne was now secure. The revenue officers, the elephant keepers with their elephants, the kotwals with the keys of the fort, the magistrates, and the chief men of Delhi went over to Ala-ud-din, and a new order of things was established,’ records Barani. ‘His wealth and power were great, so whether individuals gave their allegiance or whether they did not, mattered little, for the khutba was read and coins were struck in his name.’
In the second year of his reign Ala-ud-din turned to the task of firming up his authority over the nobles. He had, during the early stages of his usurpation, distributed vast wealth among the nobles to win them over to his side, but he was sagacious enough to know that, though this was crucially beneficial to him initially, it entailed a major risk, as it inflated the ego of the nobles with the feeling that the sultan had come to power because of their support, and that he was now indispensably dependent on them for remaining in power. Ala-ud-din therefore, now that he was secure on the throne, wanted to make it clear to the nobles that instead of he being dependent on their support, they were dependent on his favour.
To prove this point he dismissed from service or otherwise disgraced several of his top officers. He was particularly severe with the nobles who had switched sides and had opportunistically joined him as he usurped the throne, deeming them to be untrustworthy men—those who had betrayed their former master could very well betray their present master as well, he felt. ‘The maliks of the late king, who deserted their benefactor and joined Ala-ud-din, and received gold by mans and obtained employments and territories, were all seized in the city and in the army, and thrown into forts as prisoners,’ records Barani. ‘Some were blinded and some were killed. Their houses were confiscated … and their villages were brought under the public exchequer. Nothing was left for their children … Of all the amirs of Jalal-ud-din, only three were spared by Ala-ud-din … These three persons had never taken money from Sultan Ala-ud-din. They alone remained safe, but all the other Jalali nobles were exterminated root and branch.’ Ala-ud-din spared the three high-principled loyalists of Jalal-ud-din, because he felt that such people could be trusted, and that their unfailing loyalty to their master merited respect.
ALA-UD-DIN WAS IN many respects a most unusual person—and a most unusual monarch. And he was amazingly successful in all that he did, even in the many revolutionary reforms that he introduced, some of which were far, far ahead of his times. ‘The character and manners of Sultan Ala-ud-din were strange,’ states Barani. ‘He was bad-tempered, obstinate, and hard-hearted, but the world smiled upon him, fortune befriended him, and his schemes were generally successful. So he became … more reckless and arrogant … He was by nature cruel and implacable, and his only concern was for the welfare of his kingdom. No consideration of religion, no regard for the ties of brotherhood or filial relationships, no care for the rights of others, ever troubled him.’ He was entirely unsentimental and ruthlessly efficient. Success was all that mattered to him.
And, most unusual of all in that age of minimal governments, Ala-ud-din ran a maximal government. There was hardly anything in the empire that he did not seek to control and manipulate. And he had to his credit the introduction of several daringly innovative and brilliantly successful administrative and economic reforms. Curiously, he was illiterate—as was the great Mughal emperor Akbar—but that proved to be an advantage for him, as he could innovate freely, without being burdened by conventional wisdom.
‘He was a man of no learning and he never associated with men of learning. He could not read or write a letter,’ scorns Barani. ‘But when he became king, he came to the conclusion that polity and government are one thing, and the rules and decrees of religion are another. Royal commands belong to the king, legal decrees rest upon the judgment of kazis and muftis. In accordance with this opinion, whatever affair of the state came before him, he only looked to the public good, without considering whether his mode of dealing with it was lawful or unlawful. He never asked for legal opinions on political matters, and very few learned men visited him.’
Barani’s comment that Ala-ud-din ‘only looked to the public good’ was meant as a criticism, but to the modern reader it would seem to be a high compliment. The sultan ruled his vast empire with firmness and energy, even with wisdom, and on the whole his rule was beneficial to the people, and under him they lived in greater security and comfort than under any other king of the Delhi Sultanate.
Ala-ud-din was undeniably one of the greatest rulers in Indian history. Unfortunately, in contrast to his splendid public achievements, he had to endure much misery in his private life. He had married his cousin, Jalal-ud-din’s daughter, but she turned out to be a veritable shrew, as was her mother, and the two of them together made his domestic life utterly wretched. ‘The wife of Ala-ud-din tormented him,’ states Ibn Battuta, a fourteenth century Moorish traveller in India. The sultan was a maniac for control, but he could not control his wife. Though he had other wives, domestic disharmony would have been galling to him, especially as he was obsessed with being in control of everything.
The sultan compensated the miseries of his private life with outstanding achievements in his public life. ‘One success followed another,’ reports Barani. ‘Despatches of victory came in from all sides; every year he had two or three sons born; affairs of the state went on according to his wish and to his satisfaction; his treasury was overflowing, boxes and caskets of jewels and pearls were daily displayed before his eyes; he had numerous elephants in his stables and 70,000 horses in the city and environs; two or three regions were subject to his sway; and he had no apprehension of enemies to his kingdom or of any rival to his throne.’
Ala-ud-din had several major military achievements to his credit. But he was not rapacious in his conquests, and was usually generous and honourable in his treatment of the rajas he subjugated, and he often reinstated them on their thrones as subordinate rulers. He was no doubt a despot, as the rulers of the age invariably were, but he was not a whimsical despot. All his policies were formulated, and actions taken, only after very careful consideration, not on impulse. He, as even Barani admits, usually ‘consulted and debated with wise men by night and by day as to the best means’ for achieving his goals. He was even amenable to criticism, and often rewarded those who boldly gave him sensible though unpalatable advice. And, most unusual and laudable of all, he had a genuine concern for the welfare of the common people. Also, contrary to what Barani says, Ala-ud-din enjoyed the company of scholars and creative people, and was a patron of Amir Khusrav and Amir Hasan, renowned poets.
ALA-UD-DIN WAS INVARIABLY successful in all his ventures, and his successes, if we are to believe Barani, fantastically inflated his ambition. ‘His prosperity intoxicated him,’ states Barani. ‘Vast desires and great ai
ms beyond him, or a hundred thousand like him, laid their seeds in his brain, and he entertained fancies which had never occurred to any king before him. In his exaltation, ignorance, and folly, he quite lost his head, forming the most impossible schemes and nourishing the most extravagant desires.’
Some of Ala-ud-din’s schemes, as reported by Barani, were certainly megalomaniacal. ‘If I am inclined, I can … establish a new religion and creed; and my sword, and the swords of my friends, will bring all men to adopt it,’ he once told his nobles. He also dreamed of world conquest. ‘I have wealth and elephants and forces beyond calculation. My wish is to place Delhi in charge of a vicegerent, and then I myself will go out into the world, like Alexander, in pursuit of conquest, and subdue the whole habitable world,’ he vaunted. ‘Every region that I subdue I will entrust to one of my trusty nobles, and then proceed in quest of another. Who is there that will stand against me?’ He even assumed the title Sikandar Sani (Second Alexander), and had the title stamped on his coins and inserted in the khutba read at Friday prayers. ‘His companions, although they saw his … folly and arrogance, were afraid of his violent temper, and applauded him,’ comments Barani.
It was Barani’s uncle Ala-ul Mulk, the kotwal of Delhi and one of the close associates of Ala-ud-din from the time before his accession, who finally opened the sultan’s eyes to the absurdity of his chimeric schemes. This noble used to attend the royal court only on the new moon days because of his ‘extreme corpulence,’ but one day when he attended the court, the sultan asked his opinion about his grand projects. And the kotwal made bold to submit: ‘Religion and law and creeds should never be made the subjects of discussion by Your Majesty, for these are the concerns of prophets, not the business of kings. Religion and law spring from heavenly revelation; they are never established by the plans and designs of man … The prophetic office has never appertained to kings, and never will … though some prophets have discharged the function of royalty. My advice is that Your Majesty should never talk about these matters.’ The sultan, according to Barani, ‘listened, and hung down his head in thought … After a while he said, “Henceforth no one shall ever hear me speak such words.”’
But what about his plan for world conquest, Ala-ud-din then asked. ‘The second design is that of a great monarch, for it is a rule among kings to seek to bring the whole world under their sway,’ the kotwal admitted, but cautioned that what was possible for Alexander might not be possible for any king anymore. ‘These are not the days of Alexander,’ the kotwal cautioned. ‘But what is the use of my wealth, and elephants and horses, if I remain content with Delhi, and undertake no new conquests?’ the sultan persisted. ‘What will then be said of my reign?’ The kotwal then advised the sultan that before planning world conquest he should first effectively defend his kingdom against persistent Mongol incursions, and then conquer the vast unconquered regions of the Indian subcontinent. But even these practicable goals, the kotwal warned, would be difficult to achieve ‘unless Your Majesty gives up drinking excessively, and keeps aloof from convivial parties and feasts.’ Ala-ud-din was pleased with this frank and sensible counsel, and he honoured the kotwal with a robe of honour and various other valuable gifts.
ALA-UD-DIN HEEDED THE Kotwal’s advice, and thereafter focussed his attention on realisable goals, such as expanding his empire and tightening its administration. And in both these he was exceptionally successful. There was a substantial expansion of the territory of the Delhi Sultanate during his reign, so the kingdom became the absolutely dominant political and military power in the subcontinent. But the sultan was not a rash adventurer. His military policy, as in everything else he did, was a potent combination of daring and caution. He took particular care to treat the conquered rajas honourably, and he cautioned his officers setting out on conquests that they should ‘avoid unnecessary strictness’ towards the rajas, and should treat them respectfully, so as to turn enemies into allies. And to ensure that his orders on all these matters were strictly carried out by his officers, Ala-ud-din kept himself fully informed about the movements and activities of his army, by setting up outposts all along its route, to carry news about the army to him, and to carry his instructions back to the army. As a result of these wise and benevolent and yet strict policies of the sultan, ‘subjugated countries and enemies became his ardent supporters,’ states Barani.
A major military concern of Ala-ud-din, as of most Delhi sultans, was to defend his kingdom against recurrent Mongol depredations across the northwestern frontier of India. In the early part of his reign—in the eight years from 1298 to 1306—there were as many five major Mongol incursions into India, in some of which they plundered the very environs of Delhi, and in one instance even entered the city itself for looting.
The Mongol threat was primarily of plunder and carnage, not of territorial conquest. Their campaigns were rather like the raids of Mahmud Ghazni; and, like Mahmud, the only major Indian territory they seized was western Punjab, the gateway to India, which they had to keep open and under their control to facilitate their raids. Mongols were a mountain people, and they abhorred the hot, humid climate of the Indian plains. Nor did the prospect of a peaceful settled life in India suit their restless, turbulent nature. On the couple of occasions when bands of captured Mongols were induced by the sultan to settle down in the environs of Delhi, they could not bear to live there for long, and in time many of them fled back to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Even some two centuries later, when Babur invaded India and established the Mughal Empire, several of his chieftains disdained to settle down in India but returned to their homeland.
India was for the Mongols a fabulously rich land to plunder periodically, but not a desirable place to occupy and live. They raided India whenever they needed fresh loot, which was often, for plunder was essential for their sustenance, as preys were for predatory animals. There were presumably numerous Mongol raids into India during the Sultanate period, of which only the major ones are recorded in history. During most of these incursions they, when confronted by the Sultanate army, quickly fled back to Afghanistan, so as not to risk losing their loot by engaging in battles. It was only on very rare occasions that they stood their ground and fought. The many decisive Indian victories against Mongols that the Turkish chroniclers have recorded were in most cases quite probably hollow victories, merely chasing the fleeing Mongols.
The first recorded Mongol incursion into India during the reign of Ala-ud-din was in its second year, in early 1298, but they were as usual driven back by an army sent by the sultan. But they came again the very next year, a vast horde of some 200,000 men, who crossed the Indus and stormed towards Delhi, where they camped on the banks of the Yamuna, and besieged the city. On the approach of Mongols, the people in the suburbs of Delhi fled into the city for refuge, and that led to an acute shortage of provisions in the city and the near collapse of the civic order there. ‘Great anxiety prevailed in Delhi,’ reports Barani. ‘All men, great and small, were in dismay. Such a concourse had crowded into the city that the streets and markets and mosques could not contain them.’
The Mongol problem had to be met head-on, Ala-ud-din then decided, and he set out from Delhi with his army to confront the raiders, though he was advised by the ever cautious kotwal to temporise with them rather than risk all in a battle. ‘If I were to follow your advice, to whom can I then show my face?’ the sultan asked the kotwal. ‘How can I then go into my harem? Of what account will the people then hold me? And what would then happen to the daring and courage which is necessary to keep my turbulent people in submission? Come what may, I will tomorrow march into the plain of Kili.’
Fortunately, Mongols were routed in the ensuing battle. But they swept into India again a couple of years later, again with a very large cavalry force, and they once again headed straight for Delhi and camped on the banks of the Yamuna, plundering the suburbs of the city and even foraying into the city itself, forcing Ala-ud-din to take refuge in the fort of Siri. ‘Such fear of Mo
ngols and anxiety as now prevailed in Delhi had never been known before,’ notes Barani. Fortunately, Mongols suddenly retreated on their own accord after two months, apparently sated with plunder. ‘This … preservation of Delhi seemed, to wise men, one of the wonders of the age,’ concludes Barani.
THE MONGOL RAIDS were a direct challenge to the authority of the sultan. They could not be allowed to go on, Ala-ud-din decided. It was not enough to drive back Mongols whenever they raided India, he held; what was needed was to take strong deterrent measures to avert their raids altogether. He therefore had the old forts along the route of Mongols repaired, and also had some new forts built, and he provided them all with stockpiles of weapons, provisions and fodder. Frontier forts ‘were garrisoned with strong, select forces, and were ever kept in a state of defence preparedness; and the fiefs on the route of Mongols were placed under amirs of experience, and the whole route was secured by the appointment of tried and vigilant generals,’ reports Barani.
But none of that deterred the Mongols, and they raided India again in 1305. This time however they avoided the strongly defended Delhi, but rampaged through the Doab—the tongue of land between Ganga and Yamuna—pillaging, burning and butchering. But once again they were routed by the Sultanate army. A large number of Mongols were taken as prisoners in this battle, some 8000 of them, and they were all then ruthlessly slaughtered, and their severed heads cemented into the walls of Ala-ud-din’s fortress at Siri.
Despite that awful carnage, Mongols raided India again the very next year, but were once again routed. The slaughter in this battle, according to the early fourteenth century chronicler Wassaf, was several times greater than that in the previous battle, but the figure he gives seems exaggerated. ‘After the battle an order was issued by Ala-ud-din to gather together the heads of all those who had been slain,’ he writes. ‘On counting them … they were found to amount to 60,000, and … a tower was built of these heads before the Badaun Gate [of Delhi], in order that it might serve as a warning … to future generations.’ This tower, according to Ferishta, could be seen there even two and a half centuries later, during the reign of Akbar. The Mongols who were captured were thrown under elephants to be trampled to death, and their women and children were sold into slavery. ‘So many thousands [of Mongols] were slain in battle and in the city that horrid stenches arose’ from the rotting bodies, reports Barani. ‘Streams of blood flowed.’
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate Page 14