History of the Khaljis, A.D. 1290–1320 c17.27

c17.27

It is possible that ‘Afīf exaggerated when giving the prices of the time of Fīrōz, because Shaikh Naṣīruddīn Chirāgh says in *Khairulmajālis*, which he wrote in Fīrōz’s reign, that ‘Alāuddīn's days were cheaper. Yet we find that prices were still cheaper in the time of the Lōdīs. The author of *Tarīkh-i-Dāūdī* mentions that in the reign of sultan Ibrāhīm Lōdī the prices of commodities were cheaper than those obtained in the reign of any other sultan except in ‘Alāuddīn's last days. He further adds that whereas in ‘Alāuddīn’s time the cheapness of price was maintained by resorting to coercion and force, in Ibrāhīm's reign prices remained low without anything like that.¹² Thus what is really of importance in ‘Alāuddīn’s reign is not so much the cheapness of the prices, as "the establishment of a fixed price in the market, which was considered one of the wonders of the age."