The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c13.15

c13.15

The Ghaznavid dynasty did not forget the great traditions of Maḥmūd; it maintained a brilliant and enlightened court at Lahor, which became famous as a centre of Islamic culture. The Lubāb-ul-albāb gives a long list of famous scholars and poets who adorned the Ghaznavid court in the Panjāb; of these there are some whose fame remains undimmed by the passage of time.¹ Abū'l-Faraj-a'r-Rūnī, Mas'ūd-i-Sa'd-i-Salmān and Sanā'ī will live as long as Persian is read and understood. The Ghurids were the successors of the Ghaznavids and inherited the tradition of learning.² The sultanate of Dehlī was not founded by savages; men who could conceive and build the screen in the Masjid-i-Qubbat-u'l-Islām were no barbarians.³ Indeed, Quṭb-u'd-dīn Aibak was as particular about the style of the announcement of a victory as he was enthusiastic about the actual conquest.⁴ He spent the scanty leisure snatched from the conduct of arduous campaigns in the company of men of learning and distinction.⁵ Attracted by his generosity which earned him the titles of lak-bakhsh and pil-bakhsh, poets, litterateurs and jurists flocked to his court.⁶ His successor, Iltutmish, built a college in Dehli, which was later repaired by Fīrūz Shāh.¹ The court became an asylum for the learned who were driven from their homes by the Mongols and gathered lustre from the new-comers,² The famous Rūḥānī took refuge at Dehli and wrote famous odes in the sultan's honour.³ Another poet was Malik Tāj-u'd-dīn Rezah, the dabīr-i-khāṣ.⁴ It was in this sultan's reign that 'Awfī wrote his famous Jawāmi'-u'l-ḥikāyāt and dedicated it to the prime minister, Nizām-u'l-mulk Muḥammad ibn abī Sa'd Junaidi.⁵ Under the sultan's successors thrived Shihāb-i-Muḥmarah, to whose merit the great Khusraw bears testimony.⁶