Tughlaq Dynasty: Founder, Rulers, Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah Tughlaq

Tughlaq Dynasty: Founder, Rulers and Time Period (1320 to 1414)

Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq: The Founder

The Khalji dynasty ended in confusion. After Alauddin Khalji died in 1316, palace murders followed, and in 1320 Khusro Khan killed Mubarak Khalji and took the throne. Ghazi Malik, the governor in the Punjab, marched on Delhi, killed Khusro Khan and became Sultan as Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, starting the dynasty.

• Frontier general: As governor of Multan and then Dipalpur under Alauddin Khalji, he guarded the north-west against the Mongols and led the vanguard against the invasion of 1306.
• Tughlaqabad: In 1321 he built a fortified city east of Delhi, the third historic city of Delhi, as a stronghold against the Mongols.
• Warangal: His son Jauna Khan, the future Muhammad bin Tughlaq, besieged the Kakatiya capital Warangal in 1323; the victory ended the Kakatiya dynasty.
• Bengal: He campaigned in Bengal, at Lakhnauti, from 1324 to 1325.
• Death: In 1325 a wooden pavilion built in his honour collapsed on him. Ibn Battuta claimed it was a conspiracy by his son; other chroniclers blamed lightning or running elephants.

The Tughlaq Rulers and Their Reigns

The Tughlaq dynasty ruled from 1320 to 1414, the third of the five dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate, after the early Turkish rulers and the Khaljis and before the Sayyids and the Lodis. Three strong reigns filled the first 68 years; weak successors and civil war filled the last 26.

Dates differ slightly between books. Some give Ghiyasuddin's reign as 1320 to 1324 and Muhammad's from 1324, because Ghiyasuddin died early in 1325. The last Tughlaq Sultan was Nasiruddin Mahmud, who ruled from 1394 until his death in 1412 and in whose reign Timur invaded. The two years between his death and 6 June 1414, when Khizr Khan took Delhi and founded the Sayyid dynasty, are counted with the Tughlaq period, which is why the dynasty is dated to 1414.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq: The Sultan and His Experiments

Muhammad bin Tughlaq: Real Name, Learning and New Nobility

Muhammad bin Tughlaq ruled from 1325 to 1351. He was a learned ruler, skilled in Persian, Hindavi, Arabic, Sanskrit and Turkic, with an interest in medicine; his full name was Fakhruddin Muhammad Shah, and as a prince he was called Jauna Khan. Under him the Delhi Sultanate reached its widest extent, with campaigns between 1330 and 1335 that carried its armies across most of the subcontinent; Kampili in south Karnataka, the last Hindu principality in the south, had been annexed in 1328.

His mind was open as well as learned. He talked with Muslim mystics, Hindu yogis and Jain saints such as Jinaprabha Suri, and orthodox theologians accused him of being a rationalist, a man who would not accept religious ideas on faith alone. He was also hasty and impatient, which is why so many of his experiments failed.

He also changed who ruled for him. The Khaljis and Tughlaqs raised people of humble birth, often their clients, to high office, and Muhammad appointed a wine distiller, a barber, a cook and two gardeners to high administrative posts. The chronicler Ziauddin Barani saw this as a sign of the Sultan's loss of judgement, a view that tells us as much about the old nobility as about the Sultan.

Governors ran territories called iqtas, and their holders, the muqtis, collected the revenue as salary and paid their soldiers from it. Under Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad Tughlaq these posts were not hereditary, holders were moved often, and accountants checked the revenue.

Daulatabad: The Move of the Capital in 1327

In 1327 Muhammad bin Tughlaq ordered the capital moved from Delhi to Devagiri, which he renamed Daulatabad, in present-day Maharashtra. He had campaigned in the south as a prince, and Daulatabad lay at a central place from which both the north and the south could be administered. The residents of the oldest of Delhi's four cities were sent to the new capital, and the soldiers of his large standing army were garrisoned in the emptied city.

• The road: A broad road was built with shady trees on both sides and halting stations every two miles, with food and water, and a regular postal service linked Delhi and Daulatabad.
• The cost: Many died on the road of hunger and exhaustion, and the move was resented.
• The return: Revolts in the south and in Bengal, and fear for the northern frontier, led him to move the capital back to Delhi in 1335, costing more lives.
• The result: The Muslim elite settled at Daulatabad stayed on and carried the Urdu language to the Deccan; one of them, Hasan Gangu, later founded the Bahmani kingdom.

Token Currency of Muhammad bin Tughlaq: Brass and Copper Coins

Muhammad bin Tughlaq needed large sums of cash to pay his soldiers, and the costly campaigns had emptied the treasury. Around 1330 he issued a token currency, coins of brass and copper that were to pass at the value of gold and silver, somewhat like present-day paper money.

The idea had precedents. Silver was short across the world in the fourteenth century, and Kublai Khan in China and the Mongol ruler of Iran, Ghazan Khan, had already tried a token currency.

The experiment failed for four connected reasons.

• The coins carried inscriptions in Persian and Arabic rather than a royal seal, so people could not tell the official coin from a forgery.
• People saved their gold and silver coins and paid all their taxes in the new token coins.
• The cheap coins were easily counterfeited; Barani wrote that the houses of the Hindus became mints.
• The value of the coins collapsed, and trade and commerce were disrupted.

The token currency had to be recalled. The Sultan bought back both the real and the counterfeit coins at great expense, until heaps of coins lay within the walls of Tughlaqabad; use of the token coins had stopped by 1333.

Khurasan Plan, Qarachil Expedition and the Famine in the Doab

Muhammad bin Tughlaq was the first Sultan of Delhi to plan a campaign to capture Mongol territory. Confident after defeating a Mongol attack early in his reign, he raised a large standing army for an attack on Transoxiana and Khurasan. The soldiers were paid a year in advance and then kept idle; the treasury could not keep paying them, and the army was disbanded.

In 1333 he sent the Qarachil expedition into the Kumaon hills. Later chroniclers say he meant to cross the Himalayas towards China; the army could not fight in the hills, and nearly all of it perished. He then gave up his plans to invade Transoxiana.

To feed and pay the army he levied additional taxes in the Ganga-Yamuna doab. The higher taxes came just as a famine began that lasted about six years; peasants fled their fields, and widespread rebellion followed. So many people died in Delhi that the air became pestilential, and the Sultan left the city to live for about two and a half years in a camp called Swargadwari, on the Ganga near Kanauj.

Back in Delhi, he tried to repair the damage through a separate department of agriculture, the Diwan-i-Amir-i-Kohi. The doab was divided into blocks, each under an official who gave loans to cultivators and urged them to grow better crops, wheat in place of barley and sugarcane in place of wheat. The scheme failed because the officials were inexperienced and dishonest, and Firuz Shah later wrote off the loans.

Why Muhammad bin Tughlaq Is Called the Wisest Fool

Muhammad bin Tughlaq is called the wisest fool, or the mad king, because a brilliant and learned ruler made plans that failed badly in practice and caused great suffering. The move to Daulatabad, the token currency and the Khurasan army are the three best known.

A fair judgement weighs both sides. His measures were hasty and badly prepared, and he rarely took advice; Ibn Battuta criticised his excessive gifts and harsh punishments. Yet each plan had a reason, and unlike Alauddin's defensive measures, his were conceived as an offensive against the Mongols. Today a sudden, ill-considered order is still called a "Tughlaqi firman".

Revolts and the Breakup of the Tughlaq Empire (1327 to 1351)

Madurai, Vijayanagara and the Bahmani Kingdom Break Away

Revolts began in 1327 and grew after 1335, and the empire shrank from its edges. It was difficult to hold distant provinces like Bengal from Delhi, and soon after southern India was annexed, the whole region became independent. By the time Muhammad bin Tughlaq died, the Sultanate's control had shrunk to the north of the Narmada.

• Madurai Sultanate, 1334: Jalaluddin Ahsan Khan rebelled in Mabar and founded an independent sultanate at Madurai; on his way to crush it, the Sultan fell ill in an outbreak of plague at Bidar.
• Warangal, 1336: Kapaya Nayaka defeated the Tughlaq army and took Warangal back.
• Vijayanagara, 1336: Harihara and Bukka founded the Vijayanagara kingdom, which later ended the Madurai Sultanate.
• Bengal: The eastern provinces under their own governors broke away during his reign, and Bengal stayed outside the Sultanate even after Firuz Shah's campaign of 1359.
• Bahmani kingdom, 1347: The amirs of the Deccan rebelled; Zafar Khan, also known as Hasan Gangu, founded the Bahmani kingdom, with its capital at Gulbarga.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq spent his last years chasing rebellions. He died in March 1351 at Thatta in Sindh, while campaigning against rebels there. The Deccan kingdoms that rose against him, Vijayanagara and the Bahmanis, went on to contest the south between them.

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1351 to 1388): Administration, Canals and Towns

Firuz Shah Tughlaq's Administration and Religious Policy

Firuz Shah Tughlaq, a cousin of Muhammad bin Tughlaq and the son of Ghiyasuddin's brother Rajab, took the throne in Sindh in March 1351 and ruled for 37 years. He took to heart the mistakes of his cousin's rule and recognised the Deccan's independence.

• Hereditary posts: A noble's son could succeed to his father's post and assignment, and an old soldier could send his son or even his slave in his place.
• Milder rule: He raised the salaries of nobles, lowered the land taxes Muhammad had raised and, by his own account, ended punishments such as cutting off hands.
• Welfare: Hospitals for free treatment of the poor, and a department, the Diwan-i-Khairat, that gave money for the marriage of daughters of poor families.
• Religious policy: He followed the Sharia and the theologians closely, persecuted sects they considered heretical, and ended the old exemption of Brahmins from jizya.
• Learning: He kept a large library, had Sanskrit works translated into Persian and Arabic, and opened madrasas.
• Slaves: He set up a separate department of slaves and is said to have owned about 1,80,000; some were trained as artisans for the royal workshops, the karkhanas, and others formed a corps loyal to the Sultan alone.

His reign has been described as the greatest age of corruption in medieval India. His own memoir claims he banned the tortures used by earlier Sultans, yet his court historian, Afif, recorded harsh punishments, among them a Brahmin burnt alive for converting Muslim women.

Firuz Shah Tughlaq's Canals, Towns, Tomb and Public Works

Firuz Shah Tughlaq is best remembered as a builder. He dug five major canals for irrigation, among them the renovated Western Yamuna Canal, and brought more land under grain and fruit. The longest ran about 200 kilometres, from the Sutlej to Hansi. His irrigation canals joined the Yamuna to the Ghaggar and the Sutlej, and they remained in use into the nineteenth century.

• Towns: Hisar, Fatehabad, Firozpur, Jaunpur and Firozabad, his new city of Delhi, founded in 1354.
• Ashokan pillars: He brought two Ashokan pillars to Delhi, from Topra and Meerut, carefully wrapped and carried by cart trains; the Topra pillar was re-erected at Firozabad in 1356.
• Repairs: When lightning struck the Qutb Minar in 1368, he replaced its top storey with the two floors that stand today.
• Public works: He built sarais, gardens, bridges, mosques and madrasas, among them the madrasa at Hauz Khas (1352‑54), where his own tomb stands.

Tughlaq Dynasty Architecture, Sources and Decline

Tughlaq Dynasty Architecture: Tughlaqabad to Firozabad

Tughlaq buildings, a distinct phase of Indo-Islamic architecture, are known above all for the sloping, rubble-filled wall. At Tughlaqabad the city walls rise 10 to 15 metres, topped by battlements and strengthened by round bastions, and Ghiyasuddin's own tomb, a single-domed square of red sandstone, has the same sloping walls.

Jahanpanah, the Refuge of the World, joined the earlier cities of Qila Rai Pithora and Siri to guard against the Mongols; its main mosque was the Begumpuri mosque. Firozabad's citadel, Feroz Shah Kotla, still holds a Jami Masjid, a stepwell and the Topra pillar.

Persian Sources of the Tughlaq Age: Barani, Afif and Ibn Battuta

Much of what we know of the Tughlaqs comes from histories, tawarikh, written in Persian, the language of administration. Their authors were learned men, secretaries, administrators, poets and courtiers, who recounted events and advised rulers on just rule. Because they wrote for the court, they reflect the attitudes of the elite of their age.

• Ziauddin Barani (1285 to 1357): His Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi covers Ghiyasuddin to the first six years of Firuz Shah; his Fatawa-i-Jahandari sets out the ideals a Muslim ruler should follow.
• Shams-i Siraj Afif: Firuz Shah's court historian.
• Firuz Shah's memoir: The Sultan's own account of his reforms and his religious policy.
• Amir Khusrau: His Tughluq Nama describes Ghiyasuddin's rise from humble beginnings.
• Ibn Battuta: A Moroccan traveller who reached Sindh in 1333, served Muhammad bin Tughlaq as qazi of Delhi, and was sent as envoy to China in 1342; his Rihla, in Arabic, describes the court and the horse-post and foot-post.

These sources show the spirit of the age in two ways. They describe events, and they carry the values of the men who wrote them, the court elite: Barani's anger at low-born officials and his exaggeration of Delhi's emptying tell us how the old nobility saw the Sultan's changes, so the works are evidence to be weighed, not a neutral record.

Tughlaq Dynasty Last Ruler: Civil Wars, Timur and the Sayyids

After Firuz Shah died in 1388, no able ruler followed. A first civil war had broken out in 1384 among his heirs and nobles, and a second in 1394, when two rival Sultans held court a few kilometres apart in Delhi and Firozabad. Provinces stopped paying tax, and most of India became a patchwork of smaller kingdoms.

In 1398 the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur invaded. He took Multan in October, defeated the Sultanate's armies and entered Delhi, and the city was plundered and its people massacred; Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud fled. Before leaving, Timur is believed to have made Khizr Khan his viceroy; Khizr Khan entered Delhi on 6 June 1414 and founded the Sayyid dynasty.

Sources

• NCERT: Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class VIII) Part I, Reshaping India's Political Map
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History II (Class XII), Through the Eyes of Travellers
• Delhi Tourism (Govt of NCT of Delhi): Eight Cities of Delhi, Tughlakabad
• Delhi Tourism (Govt of NCT of Delhi): Eight Cities of Delhi, Firozabad
• Maharashtra Tourism (Govt of Maharashtra): Devgiri / Daulatabad
• Haryana Tourism (Govt of Haryana): Lat of Feroz Shah
• Wikipedia: Tughlaq dynasty
• Wikipedia: Ghiyath al‑Din Tughluq
• Wikipedia: Muhammad bin Tughluq
• Wikipedia: Firuz Shah Tughlaq
• Wikipedia: Tughlaqabad Fort
• Wikipedia: Jahanpanah
• Wikipedia: Firoz Shah Kotla
• Wikipedia: Hauz Khas Complex
• Wikipedia: Western Yamuna Canal
• Wikipedia: Ziauddin Barani
• Wikipedia: Bahmani Sultanate
• Wikipedia: Vijayanagara Empire
• Wikipedia: Sack of Delhi (1398)
• Wikipedia: Coinage of India
• NCERT: Medieval India (Satish Chandra, old NCERT), The Delhi Sultanat II
• Wikipedia: Slavery in India
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers