|
India – Sultanate of Delhi
Muhammad bin Tughluq – Sultan: 1 February 1325 – 20 March 1351
1325-1351
AD (725-752 AH) Billon 6 Gani 15mm (3.54 grams)
Reference: D# 377
Transliteration: Al-raji rahmat allah al-karim, Inscription.
Transliteration: Muhammad bin tughluq, sanah seb’ wa’ishrin wa seb’mi’at, Inscription.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
Muhammad bin Tughluq (also known as Prince Fakhr Malik Jauna Khan, Ulugh Khan); c. 1290 – 20 March 1351) was the Sultan of Delhi from 1325 to 1351. He was the eldest son of Ghiyas-ud-Din-Tughlaq, the founder of the Tughluq dynasty. Ghiyas-ud-din sent the young Muhammad to the Deccan to campaign against king Prataparudra of the Kakatiya dynasty whose capital was at Warangal in 1321 and 1323. Muhammad has been described as an “inhuman eccentric” with bizarre character by the accounts of visitors during his rule, he is said to have ordered the massacre of all the inhabitants of the Hindu city of Kannauj. He is also known for wild policy swings. Muhammad ascended to the Delhi throne upon his father’s death in 1325. He was interested in medicine and was skilled in several languages — Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Sanskrit. Ibn Battuta, the famous traveler and jurist from Morocco, was a guest at his court and wrote about his suzerainty in his book.
In 1327, Tughluq ordered to move his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad (also known as Devagiri) (in present-day Maharashtra) in the Deccan region of India. Muhammad bin Tughlaq himself had spent a number of years as a prince on campaign in the southern states during the reign of his father. Daulatabad was also situated at a central place so the administration of both the north and the south could be possible.
All facilities were provided for those who were required to migrate to Daulatabad. It is believed that the general public of Delhi was not in favor of shifting the base to Daulatabad. ]
A broad road was constructed for convenience. Shady trees were planted on both sides of the road; he set up halting stations at an interval of two miles. Provisions for food and water were also made available at the stations. Tughluq established a khanqah at each of the stations where at least one sufi saint was stationed. A regular postal service was established between Delhi and Daulatabad. In 1329, his mother also went to Daulatabad, accompanied by the nobles. By around the same year, Tughluq summoned all the slaves, nobles, servants, ulema, sufis to the new capital. The new capital was divided into wards called mohalla with separate quarters for different people like soldiers, poets, judges, nobles. Grants were also given by Tughluq to the immigrants. Even though the citizens migrated, they showed dissent. In the process, many died on the road due to hunger and exhaustion. Moreover, coins minted in Daulatabad around 1333, showed that Daulatabad was “the second capital”.
In 1334 there was a rebellion in Mabar. While on his way to suppress the rebellion, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague at Bidar due to which Tughluq himself became ill, and many of his soldiers died. While he retreated back to Daulatabad, Mabar and Dwarsamudra broke away from Tughluq’s control. This was followed by a revolt in Bengal. Fearing that the sultanate’s northern borders were exposed to attacks, in 1335, he decided to shift the capital back to Delhi, allowing the citizens to return to their previous city.
While most of the Medieval historians, including Barani and Ibn Battuta, tend to have implied that Delhi was entirely emptied (as is famously mentioned by Barani that not a dog or cat was left), it is generally believed that this is just an exaggeration. Such exaggerated accounts simply imply that Delhi suffered a downfall in its stature and trade. Besides, it is believed that only the powerful and nobility suffered hardships if any. Two Sanskrit inscriptions dated 1327 and 1328 A.D. confirm this view and establish the prosperity of the Hindus of Delhi and its vicinity at that time.
Although this decision was unpopular among the Muslim elite, one impact of this decision was that Islamic rule in Deccan lasted centuries longer than the Delhi’s own unstable authority over the south. If not for Tughlaq’s creation of a Muslim elite at Daulatabad, there would have been no stable Muslim power like the Bahmani empire to check the rising power of the Hindu Vijayanagaris.
 The Delhi Sultanate was an Islamic empire based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for 320 years (1206–1526). Five dynasties ruled over the Delhi Sultanate sequentially: the Mamluk dynasty (1206–1290), the Khalji dynasty (1290–1320), the Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1414), the Sayyid dynasty (1414–1451), and the Lodi dynasty (1451–1526). It covered large swathes of territory in modern-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as well as some parts of southern Nepal.
As a successor to the Ghurid dynasty, the Delhi Sultanate was originally one among a number of principalities ruled by the Turkic slave-generals of Muhammad Ghori (who had conquered large parts of northern India), including Yildiz, Aibek and Qubacha, that had inherited and divided the Ghurid territories amongst themselves. After a long period of infighting, the Mamluks were overthrown in the Khalji revolution which marked the transfer of power from the Turks to a heterogeneous Indo-Muslim nobility. Both of the resulting Khalji and Tughlaq dynasties respectively saw a new wave of rapid Muslim conquests deep into South India. The sultanate finally reached the peak of its geographical reach during the Tughlaq dynasty, occupying most of the Indian subcontinent. This was followed by decline due to Hindu reconquests, Hindu kingdoms such as the Vijayanagara Empire and Mewar asserting independence, and new Muslim sultanates such as the Bengal Sultanate breaking off. In 1526, the Sultanate was conquered and succeeded by the Mughal Empire.
The sultanate is noted for its integration of the Indian subcontinent into a global cosmopolitan culture (as seen concretely in the development of the Hindustani language and Indo-Islamic architecture being one of the few powers to repel attacks by the Mongols (from the Chagatai Khanate) and for enthroning one of the few female rulers in Islamic history, Razia Sultana, who reigned from 1236 to 1240. Bakhtiyar Khalji’s annexations were responsible for the large-scale desecration of Hindu and Buddhist temples (leading to the decline of Buddhism in East India and Bengal and the destruction of universities and libraries. Mongolian raids on West and Central Asia set the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, intelligentsia, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from those regions into the subcontinent, thereby establishing Islamic culture in India and the rest of the region.
|
