History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c10.71

c10.71

When the Sultan returned from the Deccan, he found a dreadful famine raging in the Doab. The cultivating classes gave up all hope, and thousands perished helplessly for want of food. The scarcity of fodder was still more serious, and the cattle died in large numbers. Barani writes that the price of grain rose abnormally high from 16 to 17 *jitals* per sir, and death and starvation threatened the people on all sides. To encourage cultivation the Sultan made advances from the public treasury, but all these efforts proved of no avail. Death took a dreadful toll of human life, and tried by famine beyond the point of endurance, the population patiently resigned itself to adverse fate. Barani writes: "The Sultan tried to promote cultivation and caused wells to be dug, but of Saragdwāri which literally means the ‘gate of heaven.’ Probably this high-sounding name was given to the new city, because the people prized it no less than heaven at this critical period, when food and fodder were so scarce elsewhere. As the thatched cottages often caught fire, the people dug holes in the ground, as the gipsy tribes still do in India, in which they deposited all their goods and covered them with sand. To the west of the Ganges the whole country was rendered desolate by famine, but towards the east there was plenty of cultivated land. From the territories of Oudh and Zafrabad, the most fertile provinces in the Doab, the local governor, ‘Ain-al-Mulk supplied grain worth 70 to 80 lakhs of tankahs to relieve distress. The price of grain became comparatively cheaper, and every day ‘Ain-al-Mulk sent to the royal camp 50 thousand mans of wheat, rice and grain for the cattle.