A History of India, Third Edition

RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND MILITARY FEUDALISM

only a few miles from Daulatabad. After shifting to Daulatabad
Muhammad Tughluq lost his control over North India without being able
to consolidate his hold on the South. When he finally returned to Delhi this
was taken as a sign of weakness and independent states arose in the South.
In 1334 the governor at Madurai declared his independence, calling
himself ‘Sultan of Ma’bar’; four years later Bengal followed suit and in
1346 the Vijayanagar empire was founded. In Central India the Bahmani
sultanate was established in 1347. The old regional centres of Indian
history thus once more emerged very clearly, just as they were to do about
four centuries later following the death of Aurangzeb.
Taking Ala-ud-din’s example Muhammad Tughluq had also introduced
economic and administrative reforms in order to support his policy of
expansion. He tried to extend the system of direct administration, which
Ala-ud-din had implemented only in the core region of the sultanate, to all
provinces of his vast empire. But whereas Ala-ud-din had collected a great
deal of revenue in kind from the core region in order to secure a reliable
food supply for Delhi, Muhammad insisted on cash in order to transfer
anticipated provincial revenues to his capital. This was before the time
when silver flowed into India from the West and therefore Muhammad hit
upon an idea which was totally incompatible with Indian tradition. The
nominal value of Indian coins never deviated very much from their
intrinsic value. But now Muhammad issued copper coins, a token currency
which was despised by the people. As the intrinsic value of these coins was
low, counterfeiters could make a huge profit and contemporary reports
indicate that ‘every house was turned into a mint’. Muhammad had to
withdraw his currency only three years after he had launched this ill-
advised experiment. In order to divert attention from these blunders he
announced two great campaigns against Persia and Central Asia which, in
the end, literally got nowhere.
After all his ambitious plans had failed, Muhammad Tughluq’s rule
degenerated to a reign of terror of which Ibn Battuta has given a detailed
account. Oppression and exploitation had to be borne by the rural Hindu
population. The main victims of Muhammad’s reign of terror, however,
were mostly Muslims and sometimes even learned divines whom he did not
hesitate to eliminate if their views displeased him.

The twilight of the sultanate of Delhi

The last important sultan of Delhi was Muhammad Tughluq’s cousin,
Firoz Shah, who succeeded him in 1351 and enjoyed an unusually long
reign of thirty-seven years. Firoz consolidated once more the position of
the sultanate as a North Indian realm and made no attempt to reconquer
Central and South India. He did, however, try to reassert his control over
Bengal, but his campaigns of 1353–4 and 1359 were, with the exception of