History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c14.39

c14.39

These charges explain Barani's attitude towards the Sultan. They have been fully discussed in the body of this work, but it is necessary to advert briefly to them here. He traces every disaster of the reign to the Sultan's ignorance of 'religious knowledge.' He does not appreciate his measures to reform the administration and among the five reasons which have led him to withhold his admiration from the Sultan one is the promulgation of new measures in rapid succession. It seemed to him that the state was not doing its duty in extending toleration towards the Hindūs. Muhammad's government fell far short of the ideal of a Muslim state. Indeed, the one lament that runs throughout Barani's gloomy narrative which we do not find in Ibn Batūtah is that Sunni Musalmans were wantonly slain and that no distinction was made between the ordinary man and the Shaikhs and the 'Ulama. The principles of the Hanifi school were understood to be three—to look upon the shedding of Muslim blood as a sin, to follow the Quran and the Hadis in administering justice, to restrict taxation to the prescribed four taxes and to adhere to the prescribed share of the spoils (1/5th for the state and 4/5ths for the army) prescribed in the Quran. Muhammad's administration violated all these principles. The clericalists were deprived of their monopoly of justice and were no longer treated as a sacrosanct order. Ibn Batūtah's narrative makes clear to us how the animosities of the 'Ulama were aroused against the Sultan. It was to strengthen his position against the opposition of these men that he applied to the Khalifah for a patent of investiture.