Iqta System and the Administration of the Delhi Sultanate

The Sultan and the Nature of the Delhi Sultanate

Position of the Sultan: The Caliph, Succession and Justice

The Sultan held absolute authority as the political and military head of the state. Contemporary chronicles listed his duties as defending the territories of Islam, collecting fees and taxes, and keeping in touch with the condition of the people. He was the commander-in-chief, appointed the judges, heard appeals from them, and could be petitioned directly against any official.

Many Sultans called themselves lieutenants of the Abbasid Caliph at Baghdad and read his name in the Friday prayer. This did not make the Caliph their ruler. He had only a moral position, and the Sultans used his name to show that they belonged to the Islamic world.

No clear law of succession developed. Any son of a successful ruler could claim the throne, and some Sultans nominated an heir; Iltutmish even chose his daughter over his sons. The nobles had to accept the choice, so military strength decided most successions. Public opinion still counted. For fear of it, the Khaljis kept out of Delhi for a long time after deposing Balban's successors and built a new town, Siri.

Nature of the Sultanate State: Militaristic, Aristocratic, Formally Islamic

The Turkish state in India was militaristic and aristocratic. At first the Turkish nobles tried to keep the high offices to themselves, shutting out Tajiks, Afghans and other non-Turks; the nobility widened under the Tughlaqs, but noble birth stayed a key qualification. Most Muslims and Hindus therefore had little chance of high office.

In form the state was Islamic. The Sultans did not allow open violation of Islamic law and gave posts and revenue-free land to Muslim divines, but they did not let the divines dictate policy. They added their own regulations, the zawabit, to the Muslim law. Alauddin Khalji told the leading qazi of Delhi that he framed laws to meet the needs of the state, which is why Barani called the state one of worldly considerations (jahandari).

The state rested on a tacit sharing of power. Hindus dominated trade, formed the rural aristocracy and filled the lower administration, without whose cooperation the state could not work, and the local machinery of government remained almost entirely in their hands.

Delhi Sultanate Administration: The Central Departments

The Wazir: Head of Revenue and Finance

The wazir was the key figure in the administration. In the early years wazirs were mainly military leaders, but by the fourteenth century the wazir was seen as an expert in revenue affairs, heading a large department that dealt with both income and expenditure. An Auditor General scrutinised expenditure and an Accountant General inspected income under him.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq paid close attention to the revenue department, and his wazir, Khwaja Jahan, was left in charge of the capital when the Sultan went out against rebels. Firuz Tughlaq's wazir, Khan-i-Jahan, a converted Telugu brahmana, held the post for eighteen years, the high-water mark of the wazir's influence.

Under Firuz's policy of making offices hereditary, Khan-i-Jahan was succeeded by his son, Khan-i-Jahan II. The son's attempt to play king-maker after Firuz's death failed and set the office back, and the wazir's importance revived only under the Mughals.

The Sultans also tried to standardise the currency in which revenue was reckoned, with the tanka as the unit of account and the jital as the smaller coin, and the money economy expanded considerably.

Diwan-i-Arz: The Military Department of the Sultanate

The diwan-i-arz, the military department, was the most important department after the wazir's. Its head, the ariz-i-mamalik, was not the commander-in-chief, since the Sultan commanded all the armed forces himself; no king could have kept his throne if he gave the chief command to someone else. The department recruited, equipped and paid the army.

Balban was the first to set up a separate ariz's department in India, and he and later Alauddin Khalji paid close attention to it. Alauddin insisted on a regular muster, introduced the branding (dagh) of horses so that soldiers could not bring poor horses to the muster, and kept a descriptive roll of each soldier.

• Largest army: Alauddin had the largest standing army of the Delhi rulers; Barani's figure of 3,00,000 seems an exaggeration.
• Cash salaries: Alauddin was the first Sultan to pay his soldiers fully in cash, 238 tankas a year to a trooper; earlier, soldiers had been assigned villages in the doab.
• Training: Balban kept his army fit with long marches on the pretext of hunting.
• Other arms: The army also kept trained war elephants and a corps of sappers and miners to clear its road.
• Who served: Turks and Afghans dominated the prestigious cavalry; Hindus served mostly in the infantry.

Diwan-i-Risalat, Diwan-i-Insha and the Barids

Other departments handled religion, correspondence, intelligence and the royal household. The diwan-i-risalat dealt with religious matters, pious foundations and stipends to scholars and men of piety. It was headed by the chief sadr, usually a leading qazi and often also the chief qazi, who headed the department of justice.

Qazis across the empire dispensed civil law based on the sharia. Hindus were governed by their own personal laws, applied by panchayats in the villages and by caste leaders in the cities, and criminal law rested on regulations framed by the rulers.

The diwan-i-insha handled state correspondence, formal or confidential, with other rulers and with the Sultan's own officials. The rulers also posted intelligence agents, the barids, across the empire, and only a noble who had the ruler's fullest confidence was made chief barid. The royal household was another important department, running the karkhanas that stored and made goods for the Sultan; its officer, the wakil-i-dar, also kept the decorum of the court.

Iqta System of Delhi Sultanate

What Is the Iqta System? Meaning, Origin and the Muqti

The iqta gave its holder the right to collect the revenue of a territory, and the post was not meant to be hereditary, so the system created a network of local administrators loyal to the centre. Its holder, the muqti, also called the wali or iqtadar, had three duties in his iqta.

• Lead the army: He led military campaigns from his iqta and kept the number of soldiers the state required.
• Keep order: He maintained law and order in his tract.
• Collect revenue: He collected the land revenue due to the government, as his salary and to pay his soldiers.

The iqta was not an Indian invention. It grew up in the Islamic world, where the Buyids in Persia organised land into iqtas, and under the Seljuks the Persian minister Nizam al‑Mulk systematised it. The Turks brought it to India. When they conquered north India, they divided it into tracts called iqtas and parcelled them out among the leading Turkish nobles.

How the Iqta System Worked: Revenue, Soldiers and Fawazil

At first the muqtis were almost independent. They kept order, collected the land revenue, paid their soldiers' salaries out of it and kept the rest. As the central government grew stronger and more experienced, it began to control them closely, and the iqta came to work in a set order.

1. Assess: The state tried to find out the actual income of each iqta.
2. Fix pay: It fixed the salaries of the soldiers and of the muqti himself in cash.
3. Collect: The muqti collected only the taxes the state prescribed.
4. Remit: He sent the balance after expenses to the centre; this surplus was called the fawazil.
5. Audit: Accountants appointed by the state checked his accounts every few years.

The audits were often harsh, with muqtis tortured or imprisoned for shortfalls, until Firuz Tughlaq relaxed them. Control worked best when the office was not inheritable and muqtis held an iqta for a short time before being transferred. These hard conditions were imposed most strictly under Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq.

Iqta System over Time: From Alauddin Khalji to Firuz Tughlaq

The iqta changed with the strength of the Sultan. Muqtis on the frontier commanded large forces, and one could take the throne itself. In 1320 Ghazi Malik, the governor of Dipalpur in the Punjab, marched on Delhi and became Sultan as Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq. Strong Sultans tightened control. Alauddin made the doab pay its revenue directly to the state, so no iqta was given there, and he ended the soldiers' village assignments by paying them in cash.

Firuz Tughlaq reversed the trend. He made offices and iqtas hereditary, which pleased the nobles but in the long run was harmful, and he eased the audits. He also kept his nobles close. At his new fort-city of Hisar, founded in 1354, the nobles and amirs were directed to build their residences. The iqtas themselves later became the provinces, or subas, of the Sultanate.

Provincial and Local Administration of the Delhi Sultanate

Provinces, Shiqs, Parganas and Villages under the Sultanate

Below the provinces came the shiqs, and below them the parganas. Little is known about how these units were run. Villages were grouped into larger units, such as the chaurasi of 84 villages, and these groups must have been the basis of the parganas. The pargana was headed by the amil, who collected the revenue.

In the village the most important people were the khuts, the landowners, and the muqaddam, the headman, with the patwari, the village accountant. The village was perhaps left alone as long as it paid its land revenue. At first the Turks changed little at the local level. Revenue was collected in much the same way, by much the same people, which helped them establish their rule in the countryside quickly.

Change came from Alauddin Khalji onwards, at the start of the fourteenth century. His measurement of land and his curbs on the khuts and muqaddams, part of his land revenue system, led to conflicts, including peasant rebellions.

Legacy of Sultanate Administration for the Mughals and Others

The Sultanate broke up early in the fifteenth century into independent states, but its administrative system shaped many of them and influenced the Mughal system of the sixteenth century. The Vijayanagara Empire's amara-nayaka system was probably derived in many features from the iqta. Its commanders governed territories, kept part of the revenue and maintained troops.

The Mughals kept the idea of paying nobles with revenue assignments, called jagirs, but separated the right to revenue from the right to govern. The wazir's office revived under them, and military matters went to Akbar's Mir Bakhshi.

Sources

• NCERT: Exploring Society, India and Beyond (Class VIII), Reshaping India's Political Map
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History Part II (Class XII), An Imperial Capital: Vijayanagara
• Wikipedia: Ghiyath al‑Din Tughluq
• Delhi Tourism (Govt of NCT of Delhi): Eight Cities of Delhi, Siri and Tughlakabad
• District Hisar (Govt of Haryana): History
• Reserve Bank of India: Medieval India coinage
• Wikipedia: Iqta
• Wikipedia: Delhi Sultanate
• Wikipedia: Jagir
• Wikipedia: Chauth
• Wikipedia: Bakhshi (Mughal Empire)
• Wikipedia: Revenue reforms of Alauddin Khalji
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers