Muhammad shook his head firmly, heartily sick of the vainglorious claims. ‘I intend to put an end to this farcical nonsense. It is futile to expend more of my men on a lost cause. By keeping up the war effort, there will be nothing but dead bodies on both sides, and the land itself will be ravaged and hardly worth taking. It is time to retreat and recoup.’
There was a time to fight and a time to retreat. Sometimes it was prudence that was needed to carry the day. Not false valour and bravado.
He had heard some of the members of his war council remark that ‘there is no greater satisfaction than to take the life of your enemies and defile their women even before the blood of the fallen has dried on your armour, watching their faces contorted with pain, fear and molten hatred.’ And they called him cruel and a tyrant. None of them seemed to care about the practical considerations that went into waging wars, and he would be damned if he allowed their bloodlust to dictate policy.
Muhammad’s decision was met with outrage. Even Ahmad was convinced he was making a grave error, and displayed his new-fangled penchant for expressing his thoughts. ‘We cannot ignore a defeat of this magnitude and escape unscathed, your majesty! How can you even suggest it! They have proved that the mighty imperial army is not only fallible but utterly incompetent as well. If the Sultan’s aura of invincibility is shattered, then he can expect a spate of rebellions, challenging his authority from every province in the realm. We simply cannot afford to let it happen.’
Muhammad was sick of these prophets of doom. Sick of being questioned all the time. Sick of the burden of expectations that weighed him down. Sick of the incompetent nincompoops who surrounded him and let him down every single time. Sick of their disappointment and distaste. Sick of all the things that went wrong because his subjects refused to make it right.
He spoke through gritted teeth, ‘Who dares question the authority of the Sultan? I will teach them all a lesson they will never forget! Since the imperial army has proved itself to be utterly and irrevocably incompetent, the soldiers will pay for their gross uselessness. I want every troop who abandoned his post at the garrison to be brought before me in chains. Every soldier with a black mark on his record—be it for sleeping on duty or farting during a parade—is to be hauled up. The sentence for the lot of them is death! Najib, I want you to behead every single one of them and display the heads around the fortress on sharpened stakes. Let everybody know that such is the fate of those who don’t tremble before their Sultan and treat his every word as a sacred command!’
Even Najib seemed taken aback. A deathly silence met the imperial decree. No one dared to even breathe, let alone protest. Good, Muhammad mused to himself, another word and I would have executed the stinking lot of them.
PART THREE
THE MAD MONARCH
‘My kingdom is diseased, and no treatment cures it. The physician cures the headache, but fever follows; he strives to allay the fever, and something else supervenes.’
Muhammad bin Tughlaq
1
Muhammad wished the soldiers weren’t dead. He really did. But it couldn’t be helped. Was it Bahram who had once told him that regret was useless in life and death? He couldn’t ask him now since he had banished the ghosts in his head ever since the lamentable passing of Shaikh Imamuddin.
Still, it was hard not to be filled with regret when confronted with the ghastly spectacle of hundreds of decapitated heads staring accusingly at him from various vantage points across his citadel. Dead though they indubitably were, he could feel their hatred. It was the hatred he felt for himself and which his subjects no doubt felt for him as well. On bad days, he couldn’t help wishing that his would-be assassins would just get the job done.
How could he expect his people to understand what it took to wield absolute power? They lived in dread of his sweeping reforms, oftentimes harsh proclamations and terrible punishments, but how was he different from every other conqueror or supreme ruler this world had seen? Did they think Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan or Kubilai Khan had managed their impossible achievements by being embodiments of reason and compassion? Of course they wouldn’t understand. Even so, he wouldn’t ever stop trying to implement the innovations that he was convinced would elevate this land to the very pinnacle of glory.
Then perhaps history would judge him more kindly. But he doubted it, not if the likes of Barani had anything to do with it. Besides, how would any of it matter once he was gone?
Only the present mattered to him, with the multitudes within and without who abhorred him. Even Saira had set aside her customary reserve to lambast him. ‘I have done my best to understand your position and have constantly looked for ways to help lighten the burden of rule . . .’
Really? And did she think her callous indifference to his love would help ease the burden of rule, as she called it? ‘. . . but I cannot hold my tongue any longer, unlike the others who surround you and daren’t speak because they fear for their lives and their precious fortunes!’
She took a few deep breaths to calm herself, and her magnificent bosom heaved with the exertion, reminding him that her body was a masterpiece of exquisite softness and lush curves, which still stirred him like nothing else could. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. More appealing. Feminine wile was a truly beautiful thing to behold.
‘Please don’t do this to yourself any more,’ she begged. ‘You have been blessed with a towering intellect and a good heart but ill-luck and misfortune have dogged your steps ever since you ascended to the throne. This has filled you with anger and hate, making you lash out at the innocent with a severity that is simply not acceptable.’
Her eyes were wet with tears. ‘I know in my heart that the flood of anger against you will vanish if only you were to set aside your own rage and stop yourself from hurting your people. They look upon you as a father! If only they are allowed to feel warmed by your benevolence, the mutual lack of trust will be replaced with goodwill. Once they know that they need not fear you, they will be more than happy to assist you in every single one of your endeavours. The empire will once again be blessed with peace and prosperity. Future generations will look upon you with love and admiration, and will no doubt be inspired to build upon the solid foundation you have provided to make their own dreams for this land come true.’
By God! Suppressed anger and passion enhanced her natural beauty a hundredfold, and he could not have resisted her even if he had been inclined to try. He reached out and drew her closer to him. She stiffened in silent protest but lay unresisting beneath him while he tried unsuccessfully to merge fully with her. As always, the enforced closeness of their bodies only served to accentuate the vast distance between them. At times like this, he despised himself for settling for whatever little she was willing to give him. Worse, he returned again and again, hoping to breach her unassailable defences.
It was a while before he rose to his feet. Saira lay still and silent as a corpse. He filled the gaping chasm between them with his own bleak thoughts. In the end, she was no different from the others. A hypocrite who would do whatever it took to hang on to her life and fortune. Yet she saw fit to advise him! But she had meant well. And so, he would forgive her. This one time.
Muhammad was feeling far from rested. Saira had been right about the problems erupting everywhere. The way things were going, one would be forgiven for thinking he did actually kill his father and bring down a curse upon his reign. His latest misstep had so angered his detractors, they had put aside their fear of royal retribution and were crying themselves hoarse blaming him.
It had all started with his reverence for the great Mongol emperor Kubilai Khan, who had managed to amass an empire that was thrice as big as Alexander’s had been. Muhammad had taken an interest in the system of token currency the Mongols had perfected, though it was the Hans who had been using it as early as the ninth century. Muhammad had quizzed Tarmashirin on the subject, and later, his son-in-law, Amir Nauroz, who had managed to procure samples for
him to scrutinize.
Under the great Khan, it was called flying money. The thing was made with paper indicating its value, which could be several tankas of silver or more, affixed with the signature and seal of the sovereign. ‘The lettering is done using a process called gathered writing,’ Amir Nauroz had told him, ‘whereby the words and characters are arranged on a form which is then locked in place. The form is then repeatedly inked and inscribed on the paper.’
‘Using this technique of gathered writing,’ he continued, ‘the Han inscribed all the characters of the alphabet on terracotta moulds, and these could be used to compose whole pages of writing, which could be made into many identical books. If they had the alphabets for other languages, the book could be available in other tongues! This way, they need not deal with the hassle of scrolls.’
It was a brilliant concept and Muhammad was consumed by it. There was endless potential to make a lasting difference here. He was convinced that in future, financial transactions made with gold mohurs and silver tankas would be obsolete. Instead, even large transactions could be conducted easily and conveniently without having to carry heavy treasure chests. The sheaves of paper would be easier to carry, store or hide away for a rainy day.
Since they would be available in all denominations, depending on a man’s need, he could go to a market stall and buy a meal for himself and flowers for his wife or the entire stall and its owner as well. And, of course, the paper could be exchanged for the exact value in gold or silver as well.
While mulling over how best to implement it, he realized there were a few problematic areas to be addressed. For one, the Persians under Kaikhatu Khan had tried to mimic this system with disastrous results. The Khan wound up with his treasury emptied and his people reduced to penury. Secondly, in order to ink the alphabet moulds, the Han used brushes made with bristles of the pig. If word got out that as the Muslim sovereign of his empire, he had given his blessing to such an unholy enterprise, his scheme would be sunk before he had a chance to set it afloat, and the Ulama would ensure that rivers of blood were shed for the express purpose of toppling him from the throne.
Having pondered over it at length, Muhammad decided to make innovations of his own to help launch the scheme in a manner that would not create too many ripples among the masses. Instead of paper, which his foolish citizenry would never accept as real money, perhaps they could issue thinly beaten copper coins.
Unlike silver, copper was plentiful, and once everybody got acclimatized to it, he could introduce the flying money with a suitable substitute, which did not involve either pig’s bristles or anything from a cow in order not to incense his Muslim and Hindu subjects. He was sure horse hair would do just as well, and though the Jains would be sad about his mistreatment of voiceless animals, at least they did not favour violence to express their antipathy.
Muhammad would send a group of emissaries to China, laden with rich presents for their king, with orders to learn the art of gathered writing and making fiery flowers and patterns in the sky. Then, once his people had mastered it, they would make flying money, books, and even perfect the art of using burning powder as a weapon.
If this scheme succeeded, his legacy as a great ruler with vision and enterprise would be cemented for all of eternity, and there was no reason it shouldn’t work. After all the effort he had put into its planning and implementation, what could possibly go wrong?
Everything, as it turned out. The entire thing was an unmitigated disaster—from the very start. By the time the naysayers and prophets of doom were done decrying the fact that copper would have the same value as gold and silver, there was widespread panic.
‘Gold and silver will no longer have any value if not exchanged for copper! This is madness, we will all be ruined!’
‘The Sultan is bankrupt after the disasters of the Khorasan and Qarachil expeditions so he seeks to defraud us and take our hard-earned gold and silver. Our children will starve because of our heartless ruler.’
‘His father would never have blundered like this, but the madman killed him too!’
‘The ferenghis become rich enough to buy their own kingdoms because the emperor is foolishly profligate. They take his money and laugh at him. We have to pay the price for his foolish adoration of the ferenghis!’
‘Ghiasuddin Tughlaq left him a treasury that was filled to overflowing and his son has squandered it all away . . . What will become of us? That father-killer has cursed us all! The mullahs are right. The end is near!’
‘Heaven save us all!’
Muhammad had expected some amount of resistance to his revolutionary scheme but even he was not prepared for the sheer scale of the mass hysteria that gripped his realm. His empire nearly came to a standstill in the throes of the anxiety that had gripped the populace. And then the situation steadily worsened.
After all the trouble he had taken to put the freshly minted coins into circulation, every petty thief and swindler in the empire crawled out of the woodwork to set up forges and issue fakes with very little effort. Now the market was flooded with counterfeit coins with no way to tell them apart from the originals.
Merchants and traders were crying fraud and accusing the Sultan of trying to impoverish them out of spite, insisting that the entire thing was a dastardly plot to keep them grovelling under his thumb. The treasury officials flooded him with complaints, insisting that the state exchequer was under enormous strain now that people were converting even their utensils into copper coins and making purchases or paying taxes with worthless currency.
His financial advisers had been at pains to inform him where exactly he had gone wrong.
‘The idea itself is sound, your highness,’ the prim voice of his finance minister murmured with infuriating condescension. ‘However, had you consulted us first, we would have informed you that precautionary measures to prevent forgery have to be taken. These include making the mint a monopoly of the state and designing special machinery with unique markers perfected by highly skilled specialists that the average artisan would be unable to replicate.’
‘Every counterfeiter and worthless infidel thief in the realm has profited from this enterprise.’ Another useless wastrel chimed in smugly, ‘The corrupt among the landowning classes have shamelessly been hoarding coins of gold and silver, while setting up forges to issue copper coins and spending lavishly.’
‘The ferenghi merchants and traders are happy to make purchases with copper coins, which have little intrinsic value of their own, but they refuse to accept the same for the sale of their own goods.’
‘There is widespread confusion and chaos everywhere. If we don’t do anything to address people’s concerns and restore order, the fallout will be more than we can handle.’
‘Unfortunately, it is the royal exchequer that has suffered the most. Drastic action must be taken at once, or it is only a matter of time before the treasury is emptied and the realm beggared.’
Muhammad hardly heard the pestilential voices of his accursed financial advisers. As always, the imbeciles were generous with their criticism when it came to his policies but far less forthcoming when it came to finding feasible solutions to an impending crisis. ‘Get out!’ he barked. ‘I want you all gone from my sight immediately, or I’ll have every single worthless coin in my realm melted and poured down your worthless throats!’
They fled in terror. All that had remained was the buzzing in his ears. It was the deafening sound of his enemies, laughing and pointing their fingers at him, glorying in his downfall.
2
The Sultan gazed forlornly out of the window at the mountains of copper coins that lay uselessly like trash, seeming to mock him. People walking past murmured that it was a fitting monument to the stupidity of their Sultan. ‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, this is not the first time you have made an utter fool of yourself, and I daresay it won’t be the last!’ Abu cackled away. The raucous sound made his temples throb.
He started slightly when his mot
her appeared by his shoulder. Muhammad knew that Haniya couldn’t see the mounds in his garden, but that wouldn’t stop her from knowing all about them. He was steeling himself for what was coming when Haniya gently took his hand in hers.
Muhammad had to stop himself from plucking it away from sheer shock. He had almost forgotten how soft his mother’s hands were. They felt frail, but there could be no doubting the strength of their owner. ‘What could you possibly hope to gain by blaming yourself for what is done?’ She squeezed his hand in a comforting gesture.
‘Even if I could go back in time, I would still do it all over again . . .’ he told her, his voice sounding childish and petulant even to him. ‘In the distant future, when flying money is the only thing in use, they will laud my vision! Then they will be forced to accept that I was right all along.’
‘No doubt! But will it be worth making the present and immediate future so miserable, I wonder?’ She was in no mood to let him off the hook. ‘There are still people waiting with copper coins by the cartload, demanding that they be exchanged for gold and silver. Will you allow yourself to be taken advantage of like that? You have announced that the copper coins will be removed from circulation. That ought to be enough.’
‘Will it, though?’ He extricated his hand in a sudden fit of pique. ‘I don’t mind being called a sadist or tyrant but I will not be accused of stealing from my own subjects. My people need to know that I can admit to mistakes and will recompense them accordingly.’
‘But you already proved that when you presented yourself to the Kazi and paid the price when a guilty verdict was given against you. If memory serves, weren’t you even willing to submit yourself for a beating, though, as it turned out, that was a mistake? My point is that these token gestures are entirely pointless when it comes to making amends. Wouldn’t it be more profitable if you were to learn from your mistakes instead?’
Muhammad Bin Tughlaq Page 14