RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND MILITARY FEUDALISMThe establishment of military fiefs (iqta) was another aspect of this
problem. Initially the Islamic conquerors found the granting of such fiefs to
be an easy method of satisfying the greed of their high officers who had
helped them to conquer the country. At the same time this system helped to
establish a rudimentary control over the rural areas. But to the extent that
such fiefs became hereditary, there was always the danger of too powerful
subjects rebelling against the sultan. Ala-ud-din therefore cancelled these
fiefs and paid his officers fixed salaries from his treasury. Muhammad
Tughluq wanted to continue this system, but found that to do so he would
have to raise the revenue demand and convert it into cash—which made
him embark on his fateful currency policy. After all these ruinous
experiments Firoz Shah returned to the old system of granting military
fiefs. Thus a military feudalism of a prebendal type was firmly established.
The feudal lords belonged to an alien elite distinct from the rural society
which they controlled—a phenomenon which similarly characterised other
countries and other periods of history when feudalism did not grow from
below but was imposed from above by conquerors. This alien elite of the
sultanate did not co-opt local notables—not even Indian converts to
Islam—and it looked down upon Indians as an inferior kind of people.
This may have enhanced the solidarity of this ruling elite; it certainly
impeded the administrative penetration of the country.
Some historians have maintained that the main reason for the failure of
the policies of the Delhi sultans was their rabid persecution of the Hindus. It
is true that several sultans indulged in cruel excesses. More than these
excesses and the emphasis on conversion, the permanent aloofness of the
ruling elite prevented an integration of Indians—even Indian converts—into
the political system of the sultanate. The Mughal system as it developed in
the reign of Akbar was quite different in this respect: it offered many
opportunities of advancement to the Indians and thus also achieved a much
higher degree of administrative penetration. But we must also emphasise that
the Delhi sultanate made a definite impact on Indian history by transgressing
regional boundaries and projecting an Indian empire which in a way became
the precursor of the present highly centralised national state. These
transgressions were intermittent only, but they certainly surpassed anything
achieved by the early medieval Hindu kingdoms.
THE STATES OF CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN INDIA
IN THE PERIOD OF THE SULTANATE OF DELHI
The history of India from 1192, when Muhammad of Ghur conquered
North India, to 1526, when the Great Mughal Baber did the same, has often
been equated with the history of the sultanate of Delhi. But this sultanate
was only a North Indian state for most of the time. Some Hindu states
continued to exist throughout this period and new Hindu and Muslim states