Twilight of the Sultanate c13.s5.10

c13.s5.10

By his tact and ability Bahlūl Lodī won the love and loyalty of the thousands of Afghans under him. As he could not hope for support from the Turks or Indian Muslims, he had invited leaders of Afghan tribes from Roh to defend the honour of the Afghans in India and share the benefits of the new empire. The appeal had met with tremendous response and crowds of Afghans had flocked to his standard entertaining all kinds of hopes. Bahlūl kept his word; he not only rewarded his partisans with wealth and position but gave them an equal status with himself. Even in the Darbar he would not occupy a throne but sat only on a carpet with the others. Whenever he wrote a *farmān* to his nobles, he always addressed them as "Masnad-i-ʿĀlī" (Exalted Lordship). If at any time some of them got displeased, he would go to their houses, ungird his sword, remove his turban and lay these before them to pacify them, saying: "If you do not think me worthy of the station, you may choose some one else".¹⁴⁰ This the Sultan did as a matter of policy also. The loyalty of the Afghan nobles used to register kaleidoscopic shiftings. They could always offer the crown to any one of Bahlūl's rivals, and the movements of the Sharqī kings mostly depended on the barometer of the baronial temper. To keep them in good humour and under invisible control, Sultan Bahlūl "kept up a bond of fraternity with the entire body of noblemen".¹⁴¹ But in doing so, he reduced the sovereign to the position of *primus inter pares* (Chief among Equals) *vis-a-vis* the nobles. The weaknesses of the system are quite obvious. It raised the power of the nobles at the expense of the Sultan. It denied the non-Afghans a place in the government. It envisaged the Sultan as a leader only of the Afghans; he ceased to be the king of all the people. It made the Afghan tribesmen a privileged class, and the selfish and power-drunk nobility could hardly fail to take advantage of this situation as time passed. In spite of all this, Bahlūl had achieved his aim. His policy of *primus inter pares* had earned him the loyalty of the Afghan tribal leaders who helped him fight his wars and worked with him ungrudgingly through thick and thin.