The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c20.63

c20.63

It appears necessary, in connection with the position of the non-Muslims, to dispel the impression that a superficial reading of some of the early chronicles is apt to create. Reference has been made to the writers’ habit of straining after effect. Hasan Nizami is merely poetic; so is also Amir Khusrau. But Barani deliberately inflicts his own fanaticism on the reigns he describes. He wrote his account, it should be remembered, from the reactionary point of view of the 14th century, when under Firoz, militant, narrow Islamism, for the first time found state support. It is mostly his personal opinion representing a very small but articulate section of Muslims that he puts forth as the views of Balban and Iltutmish. While he tries to persuade his readers that Balban was intensely orthodox and a great legalist, he cannot help admitting that in matters of state the Sultan never cared for the dictates of the Shariah. In his *Fatawa-i-Jahandari*, Barani formulates his own views on government and these are remarkably similar to those which Balban and Iltutmish are stated to have held; in almost identical language he pleads for the extermination of the idolatrous Hindus and Muslim heretics which, from his *Tarikh*, would appear as accomplished facts¹. How intolerant was his outlook will be seen from the manner in which he urges the complete annihilation of the Muslim philosophers and free-thinkers with the same fervour and zeal as expended in the case of the ‘infidels’ and *mushriks*: “How can piety and righteousness be established when philosophers, and hereties (*bad-mazhaban*), who prefer Greek rationalism to tradition and the Shariah, and who disbelieve the physical existence of heaven and hell, are allowed to openly spread their doctrines? How can the religion of God triumph when these people, the enemies of God and His prophet, live in the capital with dignity and ostentation and are not afraid to express their views”². It is a singular misfortune from which the history of Islam has suffered in all ages and in many countries, that the historians almost always belonged to the small reactionary group of men who, being the only lettered class, were in a position to inflict their own prejudices on posterity³.