Muhammad liked to spend time with the men. They taught him their bawdy battle songs and they would roar the words together in rough, hoarse voices with scant regard for tune or harmony. All of it warmed his heart. He questioned them about their families and wanted to know everything about their lives so that he could somehow make it all better for them. They seemed so grateful that he cared. He wished he could do more. He wished he had done more.
‘Being a soldier is not as easy as being a Sultan,’ one of the more insolent ones told him. ‘Maintaining a wife and mistress is a bloody business on the wages we are paid. It is why I have decided to content myself with the humble camp followers.’
The men around him fell silent and the chap clapped his hands over his mouth. They all knew of the Sultan’s famous disdain for sexual excesses, which was why camp followers had been banned, not that this imperial decree had been successfully enforced.
‘Am I going to be executed, sire?’ he asked in hushed tones.
‘Why should I bother?’ the emperor replied. ‘If you persist in pursuing the prurient, it is only a matter of time before the rot sets into your manly parts, causing them to blacken and fall off, and then you will be screaming for death.’ The Sultan left them to it, and not for the first time, his men wondered if he was serious or joking.
The citizens always gathered to see the Sultan, even though they had little fondness for marauding armies. However, the imperial forces were a disciplined lot. Muhammad liked conversing with those among the common folk who weren’t scared speechless in his presence. His legendary largesse was in full display as he handed over bags and bags of gold mohurs and silver tankas to the wretched masses who wept and insisted on kissing the ground before him.
He was not very fond of little boys. They were noisy and troublesome, with dried snot plugging one or both their nostrils, which was why he had never grieved over the lack of an heir in his life. But he adored the sweet little girls who showered carefully gathered flowers on his path, and had been known to present them with strings of pearls and sweetmeats. On one memorable occasion, he even entertained a request by a bold young girl who wanted to get atop his elephant. She had thrown her arms around him in a rapture. ‘If you come back when I grow big, I’ll marry you!’ she promised. The Sultan presented her with a magnificent necklace that he had worn around his own throat, much to the chagrin of his officials. They felt even his generosity was coloured with madness.
The Sultan’s retinue encamped at Broach, Gujarat and Malwa respectively. There were tax collectors to be appointed, administrative reforms to be made, traitors to be brutally disposed of during the day and raucous singing sessions with the troops at dusk. Nobody knew what to make of him and he didn’t either.
Muhammad marched to Daulatabad in pursuit of the rebels who had escaped him in Baroda to join those who had seized control of the fort. He arrived on the battlefield which he knew with the intimacy of a lover. His divisions of cavalry and foot soldiers stretched behind him and they charged at the enemy ahead. The archers fired and he saw the gaps open up in the opposing rank in bright bursts of blood.
The initial charge had been very successful and heartened his men, encouraging them to move in for the kill. Volley after volley was released into the massed ranks, scything through them. Then the mauling began in earnest as the two armies locked horns.
Muhammad circled round the fighting, heaving multitudes gauging the tempo of battle, bellowing instructions, sending in the reserves where they were needed and pulling back the troops when they risked being encircled. He did what was needed with the unerring precision of one whose instincts had been honed over the course of countless battles.
Soon, it was all over. The rebels fled in disarray, their army routed, while his foot soldiers gave chase. The Sultan, standing knee-deep in blood and bodies, knew that it wasn’t over. They could not make an end of it. His men deployed to chase down the rebels who had too much of a head start gave up all too soon, eager to begin celebrating their victory. A sizeable number of the rebels got away, headed by Hasan Gangu. It was not over. It never was.
Ensconced within the fortress, Muhammad was still restoring order and sorting out the mess made by the rebels when word reached him about yet another rebellion that had broken out in Gujarat, headed by Taghi. He set out again, heartsick and weary, but filled with a feverish energy born of his fierce will that always made him indefatigable.
This time he would make an end of it, he promised himself. It was his intention to secure peace for good or perish in the attempt. He had sent word to Altun Bahadur, the king of Tansoxiana, who had agreed to help him deal with the rebels once and for all. Fifty thousand Mongols were on the move and would join him soon. In the meantime, Taghi was also on the move, never staying long in one place as he raced from Broach to Asawal and then Patan to evade the wrath of his emperor.
Muhammad met with the Hindu muqqaddams at Naharwala and negotiated a truce with them. They feasted together and the rajas swore their allegiance to the emperor after they kept their word and chased Taghi out of Gujarat. The Sultan appreciated their efforts but would have appreciated it even more if they had presented him with Taghi’s head.
The rebels had gathered in Thatta. He was on his way there with the freshly arrived Mongol troops when the rains began, bringing with them his old foe: pestilence.
Muhammad was taken ill and laid low. Again. The fever wracked his body and Wasim attended to him night and day.
‘Have my enemies paid you to poison me, Wasim? You can tell me . . . I am too weak to have you executed.’
‘I am a merciful man, your majesty. If I wanted you dead, I would have given you a draught that would put you into a deep sleep from which you would never wake, rather than expend my considerable skill to coax you back to good health.’
‘My body aches so much. I always wanted to die in battle with a sword in my hand or go off gently while sleeping in my own bed, not in some swamp in the wilderness with mosquitoes buzzing in my ear.’
‘I would like to die having taken my pleasure with a beautiful woman nestled between her lush body and silk sheets. But let us talk about how we are going to live instead. You need to get better so that you can execute Taghi and his ilk at the earliest. Before you do that, you need to rest and focus on getting better,’ Wasim responded.
He offered him medicines and potions to dull the ache in his body, but Muhammad refused them, determined to live every single moment left to him. Pain was just another enemy to be conquered by the force of his iron will. But this was his last battle. He knew it and he was eager for the end. Finally.
He turned back for one last look. He had been derided as a tyrant and murderer and sinner. They had been wrong about that. The good he had done may not have wiped out the evil he had wrought but had neutralized it. And, as his mother would have said, that counted for something.
How he had lived! All he would take with him were the memories of the many truths and lies he had experienced. They would keep him company through the darkness of death and the endless corridors of eternity. Along with everyone he had loved and lost. Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq was thankful. And grateful.
Muhammad saw them all again as his eyes closed, never to open again. Abu, Mahmud, his father, Bahram and his mother. Even Saira held her hands out to him. They were smiling. His mother had tears in her eyes. They did not look angry or disappointed. All of them looked proud. Of him. It was such a relief. He had never been afraid in life, and after everything he had been through and survived, death held no terrors for him. Muhammad closed his eyes and let go with a gentle sigh. It was time to rest. At last.
Author’s Note
Muhammad bin Tughlaq is one of history’s ‘bad boys’ and has exerted a strange pull over me ever since I heard about him in Grade VI during Sister Fabiola’s history class. Being fascinated about him is one thing but writing a book on his life and travails was altogether a different kettle of fish, for the Sultan has put the complex in c
omplicated and the puzzling in paradoxical. What a character he was and still is (even if it is only in my own head)!
Modern historians concur that he has been terribly misunderstood, and so-called scholarly accounts from the likes of Ibn Battuta, Barani and Isami reek of bias. He was exceedingly unpopular among the followers of his own faith for daring to be tolerant to his subjects who belonged to other religions, failing to zealously guard the principles of Islam from idolatry and heresy, and raising non-believers to high posts instead of dealing with them using the savagery he was infamous for.
The Sultan had a rough time of it with the orthodoxy, who sought repeatedly to undermine his reign, and even tried to have him killed. But Muhammad bin Tughlaq refused to give in to their fanatical demands, choosing instead to provoke them further by killing key religious leaders in spectacularly barbaric fashion. Needless to say, he paid a heavy price for his belligerent attitude. This probably explains why he issued an extraordinary proclamation prohibiting public prayers in the empire for a period of five years, though by all accounts he himself was a devout practitioner of Islam.
In addition to this, the challenges of ruling an unwieldy empire where his subjects in the various provinces had their own language and customs, and all of whom were uniformly proud and prickly about their roots, proved too much for him. As a result of these differences, his subjects were given to endless bickering and ceaseless hostility, which often erupted in bouts of communal violence. The unrelenting pressures of governance and the lack of support from his officials and subjects made him bitter and cynical. Not that it stopped him from doing his utmost to implement his outré innovations and ‘madcap’ schemes, which were viewed with alarm and disbelief by his contemporaries. They only saw his trademark impulsiveness and recklessness, which effectively shrouded the sparks of genius that went into the making of his grandiloquent plans.
The man was an exceptional scholar, well-versed in theology, rhetoric, poetry, philosophy, economics and finance, with a keen mind imbued with the spirit of enquiry. Many of his ill-advised reforms—particularly the one where he sought to replace gold and silver coins with alternative currency—were sound, but the manner in which they were enforced left a lot to be desired. The failure to seek the counsel of his councillors and experts, anticipate problems in execution, the rampant corruption which derailed many of his projects before they could take off, and the careless cruelty with which he dealt with his subjects when they failed to fall in with his plans led to untold suffering.
The Sultan had neither the pragmatism nor the patience to see his revolutionary ideas pertaining to administration, agriculture and taxation through to a successful conclusion. When confronted with successive failures that led to a loss of face for the emperor, he became increasingly embittered and his mercurial temper led to savage reprisals. As a result, he was universally reviled.
Yet, even his harshest critics have conceded that Muhammad bin Tughlaq was also a kind, generous and benevolent ruler. He seemed to have genuinely cared about the welfare of his subjects and worked tirelessly to end their suffering during the terrible famine that beset his reign and laid waste to the countryside for long years. If only the Sultan had not been opposed at every turn by his subjects, circumstances and his own temperament—not to mention the rash of rebellions that robbed his empire of stability—he may have met with a modicum of success. He may even have changed the history of this land and realized his vision to make it a better place. If only . . .
This book is an attempt to recreate the life and times of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and clamber into the chaotic headspace of one who was considered to be a mad monarch. Painstaking research has gone into the foundation, and I am particularly grateful to Agha Mahdi Husain for his invaluable assistance. But when it came to building upon the character of this towering persona, I have taken some creative liberties. When confronted with conflicting versions of certain events, I have gone with what makes sense to me personally, or I have cobbled together missing fragments with chunks from my own imagination.
All chroniclers of Muhammad bin Tughlaq have been annoyingly negligent when it comes to the women in his life. His mother, Makhduma Jahan (Mistress of the World), is referred to with the said honorific, but no one saw fit to mention her real name, though she is believed to have been hugely influential and is known to have received foreign dignitaries and taken an active interest in governance. His sister, Khudawandzada, also gets a passing mention because the Sultan’s munificence was on display during her wedding, and she dared to make a bid for power on behalf of her son, Dawar Malik, during his successor Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s reign. There is next to nothing about his wife (or wives) or progeny, which is truly puzzling since everybody in those times had an unhealthy obsession with the love lives of their sultans and the fecundity of their wives (not that things have changed drastically in these enlightened times!).
Be that as it may, I have sought to give the royal ladies a voice, even if it is mostly my own. With regard to Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s love interest, Girish Karnad gave me the germ of an idea in his wonderful play on Tughlaq, and I ran with it, though in a different, much darker direction. Feel free to make of it what you will, dear reader.
Every time I make a date with history, I see the present in the past as well as the past in the present. This book is my attempt to make sense of both in order to get an inkling of the potential and perils held by the future. Does that make sense?
Notes
1. Alauddin Khalji’s son, Mubarak, by all accounts did not acquit himself with even the barest modicum of competence as a ruler. The Persian historian Ferishta went so far as to call him ‘a monster’. Apparently, his excesses were too sordid to even merit a mention, but Mubarak’s bizarre practice of ‘leading a gang of abominable prostitutes, stark naked, along the terraces of the royal palaces, and obliging them to make water upon the nobles as they entered the court’ (Keay, p. 260) has been recorded. It makes one wonder about the rest of those unspeakable sybaritic excesses, though, doesn’t it?
Mubarak Shah’s reign lasted four years. According to Ziyauddin Barani, a contemporary of Muhammad bin Tughlaq who served in his court and the author of the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, ‘the sultan attended to nothing but drinking, listening to music, debauchery and pleasure, scattering gifts, and gratifying his lusts . . . the sultan plunged into sensual indulgences openly and publicly, by night and by day’ (Eraly, p. 134). His debaucheries, utter dissipation, complete negligence of his many responsibilities as a ruler, recklessness and disregard for decorum and decency is generally believed to have brought about his ruin.
Curiously, the beginning of his reign was hopeful and Mubarak Shah was very popular. His downfall could have been brought about partly by his own inability to handle the pressures of rule, and those around him who sought to take advantage of his weaknesses by encouraging his fondness for intoxicants and inebriants to make him more malleable to their own will and in furtherance of vested interests.
2. In the words of Barani, ‘He [Mubarak] cast aside all regard for decency, and presented himself decked out in the trinkets and apparel of a female before his assembled company . . . Sometimes he made his appearance in company stark naked, talking obscenity’ (Eraly, pp. 134 –35). Historians have recorded with marked disapproval Mubarak Shah’s feelings for Nasiruddin Khusrau Khan. Barani noted that ‘his infatuation for this infamous and traitorous Parwari exceeded that of Ala-ud-din for Malik Kafur’ (Eraly, p. 136). He was so madly in love with Khusrau and trusted him so blindly he refused to listen to well-wishers who sought to warn him about his paramour’s treachery and even punished them severely for speaking against him.
Khusrau Khan, though perfectly happy to bask in the sunshine of Mubarak Shah’s favour, seemed not to have reciprocated his overlord’s amorous feelings, and it may be surmised that he did not have the same taste as the Sultan with regard to his sexual preferences and peccadilloes and may have been humouring him all along with an eye on the throne.
3. Chroniclers have made much of the prevailing tension between Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya and Sultan Ghiasuddin Tughlaq. It all started when Ghiasuddin clamped down on those who had profited at the expense of the throne or helped themselves to public funds during the rule of Nasiruddin Khusrau Khan. ‘Shaikh Nizam-ud-din Auliya, the famous saint of Delhi, was ordered to refund what he had received as a gift from the usurper. The saint’s inability to comply with this order led to strained relations between him and the emperor’ (Husain, p. 54).
There are those who attribute the untimely death of Sultan Ghiasuddin Tughlaq to his quarrel with the saint. It certainly did not help that the Shaikh had predicted that Prince Jauna’s rise to the throne was imminent during one of his trances. The news spread like wildfire and reached Ghiasuddin’s ears. The emperor was not happy and sent messengers with a warning that when he returned to his capital he expected to find Auliya gone since the city was too small to hold them both, to which the saint famously replied, ‘Hanuz Dihli dur ast’. That, as they say, is truly the stuff of legend!
4. Then, as now, it seemed to have been par for the course to manipulate religious sentiment for political purposes. Muslim historians of that period believed Khusrau’s coup to be a Hindu victory, though he had converted to Islam. Barani says, ‘preparations were made for idol worship in the palace . . . The flames of violence and cruelty reached to the skies. Copies of the Holy Book were used as seats, and idols were set up in the pulpits of mosques . . . Hindus rejoiced greatly . . . boasting that Delhi had once more come under Hindu rule’ (Eraly, p. 138).
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