History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c10.2.2

c10.2.2

These governors often acted as independent rulers, and in an age when the means of communication were far from adequate, and the highways mostly unsafe, the treasures of the state accumulated in the provinces, and furnished sinews of war to those who wished to shake off the yoke of the sovereign power. The two rebellions that occurred in the early part of the reign were ruthlessly put down, but the sentences which the Sultan inflicted upon the malefactors were seared upon the minds of other governors who trembled for their safety, and felt certain of their doom unless they stirred betimes to guard themselves against royal wrath. The disintegrating forces that lie beneath the surface in a feudal state began to operate, and derived fresh strength from every mistake of the Sultan. The ‘infidel’ majority that had acquiesced in Muslim domination simply because Kaithali, the father of Malik Ibrahim, a feoffee of the Sultan, who was generally known as Hasan Kangu, and who eventually obtained the sovereignty of the Deccan with the title of ‘Ala-al-Din Bahman Shah fomented a revolt in Ma‘bar on the grounds of severity of the Sultan's governors, and the innovations introduced in the laws and the number of executions, and gained over to his own party nearly all the great men of Dihli who had been appointed to that district.’⁵ Firishta who probably copies Badaoni assigns 742 A.H.