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ESTABLISHING HOMESTEADS, ALLIANCES AND NATALITY: TRANSITING FROM BANDAGI
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Author(s):
SUSHIL MALIK
Vol - 4, Issue- 1 ,
Page(s) : 556 - 559
(2013 )
DOI : https://doi.org/10.32804/IRJMSH
Abstract
In Sultanate historiography there has been little interest in the study of the social rooting of Sultanate elites and its possible impact on the regime’s territorial dimensions. Instead, it is the impermanent nature of territorial command that has been the subject of scholastic comment. Sultanate historiography has placed a huge emphasis on the iqta‘ as a means of introducing centralised governance – taxation, policing, curbing refractory chieftains – through the temporary ‘posting’ of Sultanate military commanders in various territories. The evidence does not bear out this understanding of early thirteenth century governance: senior Sultanate military commanders—the bandagan-i khass—were seldom shifted from their commands, especially from the more important provinces.
- Interestingly this is in contrast to the historiography of subcontinental ‘regions’ where there is considerable interest in the establishment of Muslim societies especially around networks established by sufis and other pietistic figures. See Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300-1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, idem, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997 reprint; Carl Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992; Jyoti Gulati Balachandran (2012) and Nile Green, Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- See W.H. Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India, Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1968 reprint, pp. 216-223, Irfan Habib, ‘An Economic History of the Delhi Sultanate–An Essay in Interpretation’, Indian Historical Review, 4, 1978: 287-303, idem, ‘iqta‘’ in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1, c. 1200-1750, Cambridge: University Press, 1982 reprint, pp. 68-75.
- Sunil Kumar, ‘When Slaves were Nobles: the Shamsi Bandagan in the Early Delhi Sultanate’, Studies in History, 10, 1994: 23-52 and Kumar (2007), pp. 167-75. Note also the extensive comment on Sultanate historiography in these publications.
- For a detailed discussion see Kumar (2007), pp. 266-86, 295-98.
- Juzjani, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol 2, p. 61.
- Ibid., p. 487 and for their machinations in the capital, ibid, p. 492 and vol. 2, p. 74.
- See Juzjani, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 2, p. 71, and the description of the mawas faced by Ulugh Khan/Balban on his campaign against Qutlugh Khan: ‘…chūn tafarruq bar īshān rāh yāft wa jangalhā-yī Hindustān gashn wa mazā’īq-i lūrhā wa iltifāq-i ashjār-i bisyār…’ [when as their paths were separated [because] of the dense forests of Hindustan and the torrential gorges and the extremely dense woods]. Hodivala explained this term to mean ‘a tract or district which was a sort of sanctuary or place of refuge on account of the physical features which made it a natural fastness...[where]... indigenes had retreated...’. See Hodivala (1939), vol. 1, pp. 226-9. More recently historians have ignored this meaning and describe the mawas as ‘rebellious areas’. Irfan Habib, ‘Slavery’ in Raychaudhuri and Habib (1982), vol. 1, p. 90.
- Ibn Battuta, Rehla, p. 124.
- In the last years of his life, Simon Digby went back to study the history of the Afghans. Amongst his unpublished writings on the subject was a detailed history of the Baghela dynasty of modern day Rewa and their relations with the Sharqis, Lodis, Surs and the Mughals. He had provisionally titled the paper that I am referring to here as ‘The Kingdom of Bhatta and Muslim India’ (unpublished manuscript A) and some of the ideas therein are touched upon in his essay included in this volume, and in Digby (2001) and (2003).
- Juzjani, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 2, p. 72.
- Ibid. On Raja Ribal/Ranbal’s status amongst the local rulers, see ibid., vol. 2, p. 73.
- Barani, Ta’rīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, edited by Khan, p. 84, edited by Rashid, p. 98.
- Juzjani, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 1, p. 491.
- This was also Firishta’s sentiment regarding Farhat al-Mulk, the late-fourteenth century Tughluq governor of Gujarat: he ‘became desirous of establishing his independence…and [promoted] rather…than suppressed the worship of idols’. See Sheikh (2010), p. 219, fn 1.
- Barani harangued the Delhi Sultans about compromising with infidels, his authorial voice speaking through different protagonists. Note for example Jalal al-Din Khalaji’s ruminations in Zia al-Din Barani, Sahīfa-i na‘t-i Muḥammadī, cited by Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam c. 1200-1800, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004, p. 83.
- On Tughril’s rebellion see Barani, Ta’rīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, edited by Khan, pp. 81-91, edited by Rashid, pp. 99-108, and Yahya Sirhindi, Ta’rīkh-i Mubārak Shāhī, p. 42.
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