History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c13.23

c13.23

threshold of his palace.¹⁵ He is described as a man of imagination, who asked his subjects to carry his fantastic schemes into effect, and when they failed to do so, he punished them without ruth. Failure to carry out the royal behests was interpreted into disobedience, hostility and wickedness and thousands of men were involved in trouble on this account.¹⁶ In the course of his narrative, while lauding the Sultan's generosity and character and intellect in hyperbolical terms, Barani mentions his expedition to Baran, his own native district, where, he says, men were hunted like wild beasts.¹⁷ He speaks of similar punishments near Kanauj on a subsequent occasion when the whole country from Kanauj to Dalamau was laid waste, and every person who was captured was killed.¹⁸ The tone of his narrative leads to the inference that the Sultan was a habitual slayer of men, utterly devoid of compassion, and a seeker after the impossible. Among Barani's immediate successors there are two who make mention of the cruelties of Sultan Muhammad. Firuz in his Fatuhāt takes credit for giving full compensation to those who had been executed in the reign of his late master and patron Sultan Muhammad and those who had been deprived of a limb, nose, eye, hand, or foot. He went so far as to obtain certificates of satisfaction, duly attested by witnesses, which were put into a chest and placed at the head of the tomb of the Sultan in the hope that God would show clemency to him.¹⁹ The author of the Sirat who wrote during Firuz's reign speaks of unjust confiscations of land in the last regime and endorses Firuz's statement regarding the mutilation of victims and the acquisition of certificates of conciliation obtained from their heirs and survivors.²⁰ The same authority writes that the executioners complained to the Sultan that their occupation was gone and adds that in former times men were strangled and burnt and thousands of Muslims were slain simply for