The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  Men and women of the upper classes, unlike the near naked common people, dressed luxuriously in most regions of India. Notes Varthema about the nobles of Vijayanagar: ‘Their dress is this: the men of condition wear a short shirt, and on their head a cloth of gold and silk in the Moorish fashion … The king wears a cap of gold brocade two spans long, and when he goes to war he wears a quilted dress of cotton, and over it he puts another garment full of gold piastres, and having all around it jewels of various kinds. His horse is worth more than some of our cities, on account of the ornaments which it wears.’ Barbosa also offers a similar description; according to him the affluent men in Vijayanagar wore a girdle and a short silk or cotton shirt, often brocaded; they also wore a small turban or a brocaded cap.

  As for upper class women, they, according to Barbosa, ‘wear white garments of very thin cotton, or silk of bright colours, five yards long, one part of which is girt round them below, and the other part is thrown over one shoulder and drawn across their breasts in such a way that one arm and shoulder remains uncovered … Their heads are uncovered and the hair is tightly gathered into a becoming knot on the top of the head, and in their hair they put many scented flowers … These women are very beautiful and very bold.’

  The reports of various foreign visitors in medieval India on the dress and ornaments of the people are, in general terms, consistent, but there are several inconsistencies in the details they provide. Thus, while Varthema states that the people of Vijayanagar, even the nobles, wore ‘nothing on their feet,’ Paes notes that though ‘the majority of the people there, or almost all, go about the country barefooted,’ the affluent men in Vijayanagar wore shoes with pointed ends, or sandals fitted with straps, ‘like those which of old the Romans were wont to wear …’ According to Barbosa, even women of the affluent families in Vijayanagar wore shoes, embroidered leather shoes. And they dressed luxuriously.

  One of the most commendable practices of the people of medieval India was that most of them, whatever their class and caste, generally maintained good personal hygiene. ‘It is their practice that everyone, male and female, washes their body twice every day,’ observes Marco Polo. According Barbosa, nobles in Vijayanagar after bath daubed their bodies with ‘white sandalwood, aloes, camphor, musk and saffron all ground fine and kneaded with rose water.’ And Chau Ju-Kua notes: ‘The inhabitants [of India] morning and evening besmear their bodies with turmeric so as to look like gold covered images.’

  MEDIEVAL INDIANS, THE elite as well as the commoners, men as well as women, generally paid more attention to ornaments than to garments. ‘All the inhabitants of the country, whether high or low, even down to the artificers of the bazaar, wear jewels and gilt ornaments on their ears and around their necks, arms, wrists, and fingers,’ notes Razzak. ‘In the side of one of their nostrils they make a small hole, through which they put a fine gold wire with a pearl, sapphire or ruby pendant,’ reports Barbosa about the ornaments worn by affluent women in Vijayanagar. ‘They have their ears bored as well, and in them they wear earrings set with many jewels; on their necks they wear necklaces of gold and jewels and very fine coral beads; bracelets of gold and precious stones and many good coral beads are fitted to their arms.’ A common luxury which nearly everyone in India could afford was to adorn themselves, and their homes, with flowers. Notes Razzak about Vijayanagar: ‘Sweet-scented flowers are always procurable fresh in that city, and they are considered as even necessary sustenance, seeing that without them people could not exist.’

  In medieval times there was some mutual influence in the sartorial styles of the Hindu and Muslim upper classes, especially in North India. Rajput chieftains, for instance, took to wearing a tight-fitting cloak under the influence of Muslim nobility, and their women adopted Muslim style tight-fitting trousers and a cloak over it. Muslims in turn adopted the Rajput headgear, took to wearing luxurious garments, and began to adorn themselves with elaborate jewellery. ‘Muslims clothe themselves in costly garments … and display various kinds of luxuries,’ notes Razzak.

  These ostentations in dress and ornaments by Muslims were disapproved by Firuz Tughluq; he considered them uncanonical, and sought to enforce orthodox Muslim dress regulations. ‘Under divine guidance I ordered that … [only] such garments should be worn as are approved by the Law of the Prophet,’ states Firuz in his autobiography.

  THE MEDIEVAL INDIAN society was characterised by several bizarre practices. The most conspicuous of these was the practice of ritual suicide, of which there were different forms. Though suicide in any form was considered a great sin by Muslims, the sultans generally tolerated its practice by Hindus, for they, as zimmis, were, according Muslim political tradition, free to follow their social and religious customs without any hindrance.

  One form of Hindu ritual suicide was for people in woe or debility, because of illness or old age, to end their life in fire or water, to escape from the miseries of life and to attain salvation. This was noted by Abu Zaid, a tenth century Iraqi chronicler, in his account of early medieval India: ‘When a person … becomes old, and his senses are enfeebled, he begs someone of his family to throw him into a fire, or to drown him in water; so firmly are the Indians persuaded that they shall return to [life on] the earth.’

  Jauhar,2 mass ritual suicide, was another practice of Hindus, but this was confined to the ruling class and the military aristocracy. Yet another form of ritual suicide, again practiced mainly, though not exclusively, by the Hindu aristocracy, was sati, the self-immolation by the widow or widows of a dead king or chieftain on his funeral pyre. ‘When the king dies four or five hundred women burn themselves with him,’ claims Barbosa. The number of royal women committing sati given by Barbosa is evidently a gross exaggeration, but it was not uncommon in medieval India for several queens to commit sati on the death of their lord.

  There is a detailed description of a sati rite in Vijayanagar in the report of Nuniz. ‘They place the dead man on a bed with a canopy of branches and covered with flowers,’ he writes. ‘Then they put the woman on the back of a worthless horse, and she [follows the funeral procession] … with many jewels on her, and covered with roses. She carries a mirror in one hand and in the other a bunch of flowers, and [is accompanied by] many kinds of music … A man goes with her playing on a small drum, and he sings songs to her telling her that she is going to join her husband, and she answers, also in singing, that so she will do. As soon as she arrives at the place where they are always burned, she waits with the musicians till her husband is burned … in a very large pit that has been made ready for it, covered with firewood. Before they light the pyre his mother, or one of his nearest relatives, takes a vessel of water on the head and a firebrand in the hand, and goes three times round the pit, and at each round makes a hole in the pot; and when these three rounds are done breaks the pot; which is small, and throws the torch into the pit.

  ‘Then they apply the fire. And when the body is burned, the wife comes with all the feasters and washes her feet. Then a Brahmin performs over her certain ceremonies according to their law; and when he has finished doing this, she draws off with her own hand all the jewels that she wears, and divides them among her female relatives, and if she has sons she commends them to her most honoured relatives. When they have taken off all she has on, even her good clothes, they put on her some common yellow cloths, and her relatives take her by hand, and she takes a branch in the other hand, and goes singing and running to the pit where the fire is, and then mounts some steps which are made high up by the pit. Before they do this, they go three times round the fire, and then she mounts the steps and holds in front of her a mat that prevents her from seeing the fire. They throw into the fire a cloth containing rice, and another in which they carry betel leaves, and her comb and mirror with which she had adorned herself, saying that all these were needed to adorn herself by her husband’s side.

  ‘Finally she takes leave of all, and puts a pot of oil on her head, and casts herself into the fire with such c
ourage that it is a thing of wonder. As soon as she throws herself in, her relatives, who are ready with firewood, … quickly cover her with it, and after this is done they all raise loud lamentations.’ Adds Barbosa: At the pyre the woman removes all her clothes ‘except a small piece of cloth with which she is clothed from the waist down. All this she does … with such a cheerful countenance that she seems not about to die … Then they place in her hands a pitcher full of oil, and she puts it on her head, and with it she … turns around thrice on the scaffold and … worships the rising sun. Then she casts the pitcher of oil into the fire and throws herself after it with as much goodwill as if she were throwing herself on a … [bed of] cotton … Then the kinsfolk all … cast into the fire many pitchers of oil and butter which they hold ready for this purpose, and much wood … [so that the pyre] therewith bursts into such a flame that no more can she be seen.3

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  Rich Land, Poor People

  The high period of Indian civilisation, in material prosperity as well as cultural efflorescence, was the thousand year period from the middle of the first millennium BCE to the middle of the first millennium CE. During that age India was one of the most urbanised, prosperous and civilised countries of the world. The scene changed altogether thereafter, as India slid into the Dark Ages, around the same time as Europe did. India’s commercial economy and urban culture then collapsed. Towns turned derelict. And India slid into a state of dreary rusticity. India then, like Europe, curled up in a several centuries long slumber. But while Europe woke up from the slumber in the fourteenth century, during Renaissance, and made rapid economic, social and cultural progress, India remained in a comatose state well into the twentieth century.

  Though there was some urban revival during the Sultanate period, India’s socio-economic and cultural progress remained sluggish. The preponderant majority of Indians during the Sultanate period lived in villages, as they had done in the preceding several centuries, and would continue to do in the succeeding several centuries. And the life of the villager remained very much the same all through these centuries. The urban affluence that had characterised classical India was mostly missing in medieval India.

  But despite its civilizational collapse, India remained a singularly enticing land in the eyes of foreigners virtually all through its history, well into modern times. This was largely because of India’s fabulous natural resources. ‘The whole of this country is very fertile, and the resources of Iran, Turan, and other lands are not equal to those of even one province of Hindustan,’ states Mukhtasiru-t Tawarikh. ‘In this country there are also mines of diamonds, ruby, gold, silver, copper, lead and iron. The soil is generally good, and is so productive that in a year it yields two crops, and in some places more. All kinds of grain, the sustenance of human life, are brought forth in such quantities that it is beyond the power of pen to enumerate … Men of refined and delicate taste find great relish in eating the fruits of Hindustan. A separate book would have to be written if a full detail were to be given of all the different kinds of fruits which are produced in spring and autumn, describing all their sweetness, fragrance and flavour.’

  There is a fair amount of exaggeration in this radiant medieval portrait of India, but in broad terms it is factual. India was indeed blessed with rich natural resources. And the basic survival requirements of the common people—food and shelter—were easily available there for all in normal times. But it is equally true that the common people of medieval India lived at a bare subsistence level. The land was rich, but the people were poor.

  And the richness of the land continued to fascinate foreigners, and it attracted many adventurers, migrants and invaders into India all through history, well into modern times. And foreign visitors continued to write glowingly about the riches of India.

  But there was a dark side to this luminous medieval image of India. India, like most other regions of the medieval world, was periodically ravaged by famine, for its agricultural production at this time was mostly dependent on the vagaries of weather. When weather failed, famine felled thousands and thousands of people in one sweep.

  And those who survived did so by eating whatever they could find, however filthy or rotten, even putrefied carrion, and by taking to cannibalism. ‘One day I went out of the city, and I saw three women … cutting in pieces and eating the skin of a horse which had been dead for some months,’ writes Battuta about the horrors of famine he witnessed in India. ‘Skins were cooked and sold in the markets. When bullocks were slaughtered, crowds rushed forward to catch the blood, and consumed it for their sustenance.’ Adds Barani: ‘Distress and anarchy reigned in all the country and towns … [In Delhi] famine was very severe, and man was devouring man.’

  On such occasions the sultans, despite their general indifference to the plight of the people, often did what they could to alleviate their sufferings. Even Muhammad Tughluq, a sultan not particularly known for his compassion, once, during a time acute scarcity, ‘ordered provisions for six months to be distributed to all the people of Delhi,’ reports Battuta. In normal times too Delhi sultans usually took care to open almshouses in towns to succour the poor, as a pious act. This was mainly for the benefit of poor Muslims, but low caste Hindus, who could eat the food cooked by Muslims, also benefited from it.

  THE EFFULGENT VIEW of India propagated by ancient and early medieval foreign visitors to India began to change gradually in the late medieval period, as the contrast between regressive India and progressive Europe sharpened, and as more and more European travellers visited India, and India became a familiar land to them. The fabled luminous images of India were then gradually replaced in their accounts with the images of the stark reality of India. Many visitors were now appalled by what they saw as the abysmal conditions of the life of the common people in India. Typically, Pelsaert, a Dutch traveller in India during the Mughal period, writes: The common people of India live in a ‘poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe. Their houses are built of mud, with thatch roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking.’

  These and similar reports about the abject conditions of life of the common people in medieval India are in many cases rather exaggerated, just as the earlier glowing reports about India were exaggerated. There was still great wealth in medieval India, and though most of it was in the hands of the small ruling class, there was enough of it left over for the subsistence of the common people. Daily provisions were usually quite cheap and abundantly available everywhere. The disparity between the incredibly luxurious lifestyle of the ruling class and the dreary life of the common people was of course shocking, but this was a common feature of human societies nearly everywhere in the premodern world, though in European countries the conditions of life of the underclasses were not as dismal as it was in India.

  Curiously, despite the growing awareness among Europeans of the abject poverty of the common people of India, many European powers were drawn to India in medieval times. This was because there were vast untapped natural resources in India to be exploited. And the very poverty and backwardness of Indians made the invasion of India seem easy. India thus remained, till modern times, a most enticing land in the eyes of foreigners, and migrants and invaders continued to stream into India.

  THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS in medieval India varied considerably from region to region, but most of the land was quite fertile and was extensively cultivated. ‘This is a vast country, abounding in rice, and nowhere in the world have I seen any land where prices are lower than there,’ notes Battuta about what he observed in fourteenth-century Bengal. And he goes on to report that an old inhabitant there once told him that he could maintain his family for a whole year with just eight dirhams, small silver coins. And Battuta found that in Kerala ‘there is not a foot of ground but is cultivated. Every man has his own orchard, with his house in the middle a
nd wooden palisade all around it.’

  Orissa too was luxuriantly verdant. Afif, who visited the region during the reign of Firuz Tughluq, found it ‘in a very flourishing state … [with] abundance of corn and fruit … The numbers of animals of every kind were so great that no one cared to take them. Sheep were found in countless numbers.’ The scene in Jammu too was similar. ‘The five or six kos which I traversed in this day’s march was entirely through a cultivated country; nowhere did I see any dry or waste land,’ writes Timur about Jammu in his autobiography. In addition to cultivating fields, most villagers in medieval India also maintained cattle-pens, for that involved virtually no expenditure, as there was plenty of open land in India for cattle-grazing.

  Most farmlands in early medieval India were rain fed. Though Indian villages generally had water tanks in them, these were usually small and were used only to provide drinking water to villagers. ‘They have a custom in those villages of making tanks in which the rain-water collects, and this supplies them with drinking water all the year round,’ notes Battuta about what he observed in North India. As for irrigation facilities, pre-medieval India had a system known as araghatt—the precursor of the Persian wheel—for lifting water from wells and channelling it into fields, and these were modified and made more efficient in medieval times under Turkish influence. The spread of tank irrigation, and the cultivation of cash crops like cotton and indigo, notably boosted the income of farmers, and improved the living conditions in rural India at this time, even in dry regions.

  The building of tanks to irrigate fields and to provide drinking water for people was a major community activity in ancient and medieval Indian villages. Kings also built them, huge reservoirs, to serve several villages. One of the oldest and largest of these reservoirs was the Sudarsana Lake in Gujarat built by Mauryan emperor Chandragupta in the fourth century BCE. Similar major irrigation works were constructed by kings in several other regions of India over the centuries. Paes saw a great reservoir being built in Vijayanagar by Krishnadeva, the embankment of which was a ‘falcon-shot wide.’ This reservoir, notes Paes, was built ‘at the mouth of two hills, so that the water which comes from either one side or the other collects there.’ In addition to rain water, the reservoir was also fed with water brought through pipes from a nearby lake. This was a gigantic enterprise, and it took several thousand men very many months to build it. ‘In the tank I saw so many people at work that there must have been fifteen or twenty thousand men there, looking like ants, so that you could not see the ground on which they walked, so many were there,’ states Paes. And while the dam was being constructed the raja had sixty men, presumably prisoners, and a number of horses and buffaloes sacrificed at the gate of the local temple, to appease gods and thus ensure the safety of the dam. Apart from this huge reservoir, the Vijayanagar rajas also built a number of other irrigation facilities, and this substantially increased the agricultural prosperity of the kingdom.