The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c10.115

c10.115

The foregoing, together with the wakīl-i-dar, were the principal ministers who were in charge of well-organized dīwāns or secretarial offices. There were other officers, whose posts did not involve so much clerical work, in charge of certain subordinate departments of the administration. They too had direct access to the sultan but they cannot be styled ministers in the proper sense of the word. To this class belonged the amīr-i-dād who looked after the executive side of judicial business and the kotwāl who was responsible for maintaining peace. These officials enjoyed great prestige and occupied eminent positions in the order of precedence at court. Their voice carried considerable weight in the sultan's councils. The ministers were servants of the crown and responsible only to the sultan. Muslim political writers postulate that the more important ministers should be acquainted with the shar' so that they might not be accomplices in illegal exactions or injustice, but there was no method by which their protest could be made immediately effective.⁴ There are instances where ministers threatened to resign with good effect.¹ Mostly, however, the ministers would rather acquiesce. A minister's actual power depended on his own capability and the influence he wielded over the sovereign; the wiser monarchs knew the worth of an efficient minister and were willing to yield to him if he expressed his views emphatically. There was no question of the ministers acting as a team to resist the sultan's will. They had little force at their command to coerce a monarch, nor did they form a class with special privileges like the nobles. In the council, too, they were outnumbered by powerful and strong nobles. There was no council of ministers: the sultan's full council was attended by far too many people to be a proper instrument either of deliberation or of conducting business.² Real business was transacted in the informal consultations which the monarch had with his chosen counsellors. To these meetings the sultan invited only the officials concerned and his most trustworthy advisers who were not necessarily ministers. Some of them were high military officials or dignitaries of the royal household.