The use of paper money and its variants gradually spread westward from China, and eventually, after five centuries, it came into use in Persia. A few centuries later the practice finally spread to Europe, where paper currency was first issued in Sweden in the seventeenth century. Then, over the next century and half, the practice spread to the other parts of Europe as well as to America.
In India token currency—brass or copper coins marked as of the same value as silver coins—was first introduced by Muhammad Tughluq in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. But the reform failed utterly, like all his other innovations.
Muhammad Tughluq had two daughters in his early youth, but a surgery afterwards made him impotent. Consequently, according to Isami, a severely critical medieval chronicler, the sultan wished to see the whole world impotent like him. Perhaps the aberrations of his character had something to do with his sexual impotence.
Muhammad, according to Isami, was ‘full of deceit and fraud,’ and was ‘a first-class hypocrite … who, while he made a display of justice, exercised oppression.’
Robert Sewell, an early modern historian, on Muhammad Tughluq: ‘His whole life was spent on visionary schemes pursued by means equally irrational.’
Part VI: Three Kingdoms
The seventeenth-century English satirist Samuel Butler on Mahmud Begarha of Gujarat:
The King of Cambay’s daily food
Is asp and basilisk and toad.
According to the fifteenth-century Italian adventurer Varthema, the title ‘Zamorin’ of the raja of Kozhikode means ‘Lord of the Seas … The King of Calicut is a Pagan, and worships the devil.’
Ferishta on Parthal, the farmer’s daughter, with whom Devaraya I of Vijayanagar got involved: ‘There resided in the town of Mudgal a farmer, who was blessed with a daughter of such exquisite beauty, that the creator seemed to have united all his powers in making her perfect.’ An old Brahmin told Devaraya about her, and the raja then sent opulent presents to her through the Brahmin and sought her for his harem. This overjoyed the girl’s parents, but she refused the offer, as she did not want to be secluded in the royal harem, where even her parents would not be allowed to visit her. The Brahmin then returned to Vijayanagar, and told the raja about what had transpired. But the rejection by Parthal only inflamed the raja’s passion, and he raided Mudgal to seize her. But by then Parthal and her parents had fled to Bahmani kingdom. The affair led to yet another war between Vijayanagar and the Sultanate.
Harihara and Bukka, according to Sewell, belonged to the Kuruba caste of Hindus, a warrior caste mostly living in Karnataka.
The Vijayanagar army in camp was found to have 120,000 infantry, 18,000 cavalry, and 150 elephants, reports Nuniz.
Part VII: Polity
Ambassadors in medieval times enjoyed virtually the same status as they do in modern times. According to Wassaf, a fourteenth-century Indian chronicler, ‘To bring trouble on an ambassador is, under every system of religious faith, altogether opposed to the principles of law, social observance and commonsense.’
Battuta on he being confronted by brigands: ‘I threw myself to the ground and surrendered, as they do not kill those who do that.’
A popular medieval Indian saying: All kings go to hell.
When Hasnak, a high official favoured by Mahmud Ghazni, was disfavoured and executed by Masud, Mahmud’s successor, the victim’s mother commented: ‘What a fortune is my son’s! Sultan Mahmud gave him this world, and Sultan Masud the next!’
Abu Zaid, an early medieval Arabic writer: When a king of Sri Lanka dies, his body is carried on a very low carriage so that his head, placed at the back, touches the ground and his hair drags in the dust. A woman follows the carriage with a broom and ‘sweeps the dust [of the road] on to the face of the corpse, and cries out, “O men, behold! This man yesterday was your king … See now what he is reduced to.”’
A medieval Indian saying: ‘A common man with faults harms only himself with his faults, but through the faults of a king all his subjects too suffer destruction.’
Battuta: In Kerala ‘there are twelve infidel sultans, some of them strong with armies numbering fifty thousand men, and others weak with armies of three thousand. Yet there is no discord whatever between them, and the strong does not desire to seize the possessions of the weak.’
The land revenue assignments, given to soldiers and officers by the Delhi sultans, instead of cash salaries, were in turn often reassigned by the assignees. ‘It was the practice of certain persons in those days to buy up these assignments,’ notes Afif. ‘The purchasers of these assignments carried on a traffic in them, and gaining good profit, many of them got rich and made fortunes.’
Just as Muslim nobles kept Hindu mistresses, sometimes, though rarely, Hindu officers kept Muslim mistresses.
Mughal emperor Aurangzeb on jizya: ‘By this means idolatry will be suppressed, the Muhammadan religion and the true faith will be honoured, our proper duty will be performed, the finances of the state will be increased, and infidels will be disgraced.’
Abdur Razzaq: ‘The manner in which they catch elephants is this: they dig a pit in the way by which the animal usually goes to drink [water], which they cover over lightly. When an elephant falls into it, no man is allowed to go near the animal for two days; at the end of that period, a man comes up and strikes him several hard blows with a bludgeon, when suddenly another man appears who drives off the striker, and seizing the bludgeon, throws it away. He then retires, after placing some forage before the elephant. This practice is repeated for several days; the first lays on the blows, and the second drives him away, until the animal begins to have a liking for its protector, who by degrees approaches the animal, and places before it the fruits which elephants are partial to, and scratches and rubs the animal, until by this kind of treatment it becomes tame, and submits its neck to the chain.’
According to Barbosa, fighting duels was a sport in Vijayanagar. ‘They are accustomed to challenge one another to duels, and when a challenge has been accepted, and the king gives his permission, the day for the duel is fixed …’ The weapons to be used by both contestants were required to be of the same size. The king appointed seconds for the fight, which took place in a field allotted by the king. The contestants entered the field ‘naked, covered only with some cloth wrapped round their middles, with very cheerful faces. Then after saying their prayers they begin to fight, and as they are bare it is over in a few strokes in the presence of the king and his court. No man may speak to them while they are fighting, except the seconds, each of whom stands by his own man. This is such a common practice among them, that some are slain daily.’
Private individuals in Indian kingdoms were not allowed to own elephants without royal permission; unauthorised ownership of elephants by individuals was considered an act of rebellion.
Part VIII: Socio-economic Scene
A legendary history of Delhi is given in Khulasatu-t Tawarikh by Munshi Subhan Rai Khattari, a late-seventeenth-century scholar living in Punjab. The text uses a lot of material copied from Mukhtasiru-t Tawarikh, an early seventeenth century anonymous work.
‘In ancient times the city of Hastinapur was the capital of the rulers of Hindustan,’ writes Subhan Rai. ‘The city stood on the bank of the Ganga … When dissension broke out between Kauravas and Pandavas, the latter moved from Hastinapur to the city of Indarprast on the Yamuna, and made it their capital. A long while afterwards, in the year 440 of Bikramajit, Raja Anang Pal Tomar built the city of Delhi near Indarprast. Afterwards Rai Pithaura, in the year twelve hundred and something of Bikramajit, built a fort and city to which he gave his own name. Sultan Kutbu-d din Aibak and Sultan Shamsu-d din Altmash occupied the fort of Rai Pithaura. In the year 666 Hijra (1267–8 AD) Sultan Ghiyasu-d din Balban built another fortress, which he called Shahrzaghan. In the year 686 Hijra (1287 AD) Sultan Muizzu-d din Kai-Kubad built another city of handsome edifices on the Yamuna, to which he gave the name of Kilu-gari … Sultan Jalalu-d din
Khilji founded the city of Kushk-lal (Red Palace) and Sultan Alau-d din the city of Kushk-Siri, and made them their respective capitals. Sultan Ghiyasu-d din Tughlik Shah, in the year 725 Hijra (1325 AD) raised the city of Tughluqabad. His son, Sultan Muhammad Fakhru-d din Jauna, founded another city, and erected in it a palace of 1000 pillars. He also built some other fine mansions of red stone. In the year 755 Hijra (1354 AD) Sultan Firoz Shah built the large city of Firoz-abad, and having cut the river Jumna, he conducted the water to his city … Sultan Mubarak Shah founded the city of Mubarak-abad. In the year 943 Hijra (1536 AD) … Humayun Badshah, having restored and repaired the fort of Indarprast, gave it the name of Din-panah, and made it his royal residence. Sher Shah Afghan, having pulled down the city known as Kushk-Siri, built another one. Salim Shah, his son, in the year 953 Hijra (1546 AD) built the fort of Salim-garh … In the year 1048 Hijra (1638 AD), and in the twelfth year of his reign … [Shah Jahan] built a city near Delhi, which he named Shah-jahan-abad.’
This text lists fourteen cities built on the site of Delhi, but tradition speaks of only seven cities of Delhi, to which the British added the eighth. The oldest of the seven cities of Delhi, according to archaeologist Johan Marshall, is Qala-i-Rai Pithaura, within which is a fort called Lal Kot.
Battuta on Tughluqabad, the city that Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq built to the south of Old Delhi: ‘Here 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 constructed there a cistern and had molten gold poured into it so that it became a solid mass, and his son Muhammad Shah became possessed of all of it when the succeeded him.’
Battuta on Khambhat (Cambay): The city ‘is situated on an arm of the sea resembling a river; it is navigable for ships and its waters ebb and flow … This city is one of the finest there is in regard to the excellence of its construction and the architecture of its mosques. The reason for this is that the majority of its inhabitants are foreign merchants, who are always building fine mansions and magnificent mosques and vie with one another in doing so.’
Nizami: The Yamuna ‘from its exceeding purity, resembled a mirror.’
Wassaf on Gujarat: It has ‘70,000 villages and towns, all populous, and the people abound in wealth and luxuries. In the course of the four seasons of the year seventy different species of beautiful flowers grow within that province … Its air is pure, its water clear, and the circumjacent country beautiful and charming both in scenery and buildings.’
Nikitin on the people of Bidar: ‘They are all black and wicked, and the women are all harlots, or witches, or thieves and cheats, and they destroy their masters with poison.’
Abu Zaid: ‘The Chinese are men of pleasure; but Indians condemn pleasure and abstain from it.’
Timur in his autobiography offers brief descriptions of some of the Indian communities he came across. The Jats, he writes, are ‘a robust race … [They] had not their equals in theft and highway robbery … Jats were as numerous as ants or locusts, and … no traveller or merchant passed unscathed from their hands.’ Timur decided to suppress them in order to secure the roads, and he claims that, marching into jungles, he ‘slew 2,000 demon-like Jats, made their wives and children captives, and plundered their cattle and property.’ Timur is more respectful in his description of Rajputs, the military aristocracy of North India, whom he describes as ‘a class which supplies the most renowned soldiers of India.’
Chach-nama on Jats: ‘They have the disposition of savages, and always rebelled against their sovereign. They plunder on the roads.’
Battuta, a keen admirer of female charms, is all praise for Maratha women: ‘God has endowed Maratha women with special beauty, particularly in their noses and eyebrows.’ And about Malwa he writes that ‘their women … are exceedingly beautiful and famous for their charms of company.’
Idrisi, a twelfth-century Sicilian chronicler: ‘Indians are naturally inclined to justice and never depart from it in their actions. Their good faith, honesty and fidelity to engagements are well-known, and they are so famous for these qualities that people flock to their country from every side; hence the country is flourishing.’
Siraj on the role of astrologers in India: In one instance, when a queen was about to deliver, astrologers cautioned that the child would be unlucky if born just then, ‘but if the birth occurred two hours later the child would reign for eighty years. When his mother heard this opinion of the astrologers, she ordered her legs to be tied together, and caused herself to be hung with her head downwards. She also directed the astrologers to watch for the auspicious time. When they all agreed that the time for delivery had come, she ordered herself to be taken down, and Lakhmaniya was born directly, but he had no sooner come into the world than his mother died from the anguish she had endured.’
Battuta on a reservoir outside Delhi: It is ‘a large reservoir … from which the inhabitants draw their drinking water. It is supplied by rain water, and is about two miles in length and half that in breadth. In the centre there is a great pavilion built of squared stones, two stories high. When the reservoir is filled with water it can be reached only in boats, but when the water is low the people go into it. Inside it is a mosque, and at most times it is occupied by mendicants … When the water dries up at the sides of the reservoir, they sow sugarcanes, cucumbers, green melons and pumpkins there. The melons and pumpkins are very sweet but of small size.’
Tome Piers on Kerala: ‘In Malabar it is the custom for woman to have her eyes on the bed during coitus, and for man to have his eyes on the ceiling. This is the general practice among the great and small, and they consider anything else to be strange and foreign to their condition … The Nair women of Malabar have no virtue, nor do they sew and work, but only eat and amuse themselves.’
Barbosa: Among Nairs in Kerala, when a girl comes of age, her ‘mother goes about searching and asking some young man to take her daughter’s virginity … They regard it among themselves as a disgrace and a foul thing to take a woman’s virginity … These Nayre women at their periods shut themselves up in a house apart for three days, touching no one, and prepare their food in separate pans and dishes … It is an article of faith with them (Nairs) that every woman who dies virgin is damned.’
Barbosa: ‘The distinctive kudumi knot of the Malayali … does not hang down behind as with Tamils, but lies on the top of the head or is drawn around to the left of the forehead.’
Sati is not mentioned in Manu-Smriti, but it says that a widow ‘may, if she so chooses, emasculate her body by subsisting on flowers, roots and fruits.’ Kautilya prohibited sati as a punishable crime. In medieval times Sankaracharya condemned sati.
Mahatma Gandhi in Young India, 21 May 1931: ‘If the wife has to prove her loyalty and undivided devotion to her husband, so had the husband to prove his allegiance and devotion to his wife. Yet, we have never heard of a husband mounting the funeral pyre of his deceased wife.’
Barbosa on coconut: Coconut is ‘very sweet … when green … and each one when green has within it a pint of fresh and pleasant water, better than that from a spring. When they are dry this same water thickens within them into a white fruit as large as an apple which also is very sweet and dainty. The coconut itself after being dried is eaten, and from it they get much oil by pressing it … And from its shell … is made charcoal for the goldsmiths who work with no other kind. And from the outer husk … they make all the cord which they use … And from the sap of the tree itself they extract a must, from which they make wine … From this same must they make very good vinegar, and also a sugar of extreme sweetness which is much sought after in India. From the leaf of the tree they make many things, in accordance with the size of the branch. They thatch the houses with them … No house is roofed with tiles save temples or palaces … From the same tree they get timber for their houses and firewood as well …’
Par
t IX: Culture
In Islamic countries medical studies were part of the general curriculum in educational institutions, and some of the sultans—Muhammad and Firuz Tughluq, for instance—were hakims. The system of medicine they used was the Unani system, a Graeco-Arabic system formulated by Avicenna in the early eleventh century. Avicenna’s system became increasingly popular in Delhi from the time of Sikandar Lodi.
Medieval writers were not given to modesty. Nizami, for instance, claimed that his work was ‘superior to anything written by ancients or moderns.’
Poet Amir Khusrav was extolled as the Parrot of Hind. ‘Amir Khusrav … is the prince of poets and the first among philosophers, for he was one of those steeped in spiritual wisdom, and such skill as he possessed in every kind and manner of literary composition, both in the use of ordinary or unusual phraseology, and of plain or obscure terms, has seldom been allotted to anyone,’ comments medieval writer Abdu-l Hakk Dehlawi.
Khusrav on Indian literature: ‘The language of Hind is like Arabic … If there is grammar and syntax in Arabic, there is not one letter less of them in Hindi. If you ask whether there are the sciences of exposition and rhetoric, I answer that Hindi is in no way deficient in these respects.’
Khusrav on Sanskrit: ‘The common people know nothing of it. Brahmins know it, but Brahmin women do not understand a word of it. It bears a resemblance to Arabic in some respects, in its permutations of letters, its grammar, its conjugations, and polish.’
Khusrav: ‘Brahmins here are as learned as Aristotle and there are among them many scholars in various fields …’
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate Page 59