The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.216

v3.c20.216

In the course of this campaign a grave abuse inseparable from the lax feudal system of India and constantly recurring in the history of Islamic kingdoms in that country was first brought to Balban’s notice. Iltutmish had provided for the king’s personal troops by grants of land in fee, on condition of service. Most of the actual grantees were now dead and the survivors were unfit for service, but the immunity which they had enjoyed under the feeble Mahmūd encouraged them to advance the impudent claim that their fiefs had been granted unconditionally and in perpetuity. It appeared likely that an inquiry would arouse discontent and disaffection and even Balban was obliged to leave the question at rest for the time, but in 1270, in the course of an expedition during which he restored the city of Lahore and re-established a provincial government in the upper Punjab the quality of the contingent supplied by the grantees necessitated the investigation of the matter, and he discovered, on his return to Delhi, that there was a general tendency on the part of the actual holders of the lands to evade their personal liability for service and that many of the able-bodied, as well as those who were too young or too old to take the field, sent as substitutes useless and unwarlike slaves. The grants were resumed and the grantees were compensated beyond their deserts by the allotment of subsistence allowances, not only to themselves but to their descendants, but this did not satisfy them and they carried their grievance to the aged Fakhr-ud-dīn, *Kotwāl* of Delhi, who worked on Balban’s feelings by the irrelevant argument that old age was no crime and that if it were *he*, the *Kotwāl*, was one of the chief offenders. The emotional king failed to detect the fallacy and, after weeping bitterly, rescinded the reasonable orders which he had issued and wasted the resources of the state by confirming the grants unconditionally.