The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c10.70

c10.70

and religious establishments was under the *qāḍī-i-mumālik* in most of the Muslim states of the period. It is not certain what name it was given by the Ghaznavids; indeed a historian of Sulṭān Maḥmūd's life and exploits does not even mention it in his list of the main government departments.¹ A Muslim government had twofold functions: it exercised control in mundane matters and it also ministered to spiritual needs. The former was the kingly function and was called *salṭanah*; the latter was a continuation of the prophetic mission, the *risālat*. When the sultans of Dehlī organized a partially self-contained department of religious affairs and pious foundations as distinguished from the department of justice, they could not have fixed on a happier name than *dīwān-i-risālat*. What had hitherto been called by this name was now called *dīwān-i-inshā*. Every order emanating from the sovereign was first drafted in this department and then taken to him for sanction, after which it was copied in a register and dispatched.² The *dabīr-i-khāṣ* was always at hand so that he could be summoned to draft an urgent letter or even take down notes of any conversation worth recording.³ It was he who wrote the grandiloquent descriptions of conquests which were termed 'letters of victory' and sent to neighbouring courts and important cities of the realm, where they were read out to the public to impress the people with their sovereign's prowess in war.⁴ These *fatḥ-nāmahs* were collected in volumes like any other literary works; they served as models to aspiring *dabīrs* and others who, unfortunately, introduced the rhetoric and bombast of these proclamations into sober prose.⁵ Such was the familiarity acquired by the *dabīr-i-khāṣ* with the affairs of state that his post sometimes proved a stepping stone to the wizārat.¹ Indeed some sovereigns confided more in their secretaries than in their wazīrs and often the dabīr was required to collect secret information regarding the doings of the prime minister.²