History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c14.7

c14.7

Barani was in close contact with Sultan Muhammad Tughluq who showed him great favour on account of his literary attainments. He writes in the course of his narrative that for seventeen years and three months he had received many favours and gifts from the Sultan. Whatever he writes about this remarkable king, he writes from personal observation. He was frequently consulted by him on matters of state, though the historian, according to his own confession, seldom gave honest advice. Barani finished his history in 758 A.H. and included in it an account of the first six years of the reign of Sultan Firuz Shah, son of Sipahsalar Rajab whom Major Lees in his illuminating article on the ‘Materials for the History of India’ has confounded with Sālār Mas‘ud Ghazi who is entombed at Bahraich.¹ The historian's old age was spent in great poverty and misery. He retired to a village near Dihli and all accounts agree that he was penniless at the time. Indeed, so poor and destitute had he become that he had not even a piece of cloth to serve as his shroud. He bewails his fate in pathetic language, expresses contrition for his sins in the present life and dreads the punishments in the world to come.² Barani's history contains only an account of the first six years of that monarch's rule. The work which he left unfinished was carried on by Shams-i-Sirāj ‘Afif, the official historian of Firuz, who brought down his history to the end of his reign.