The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c13.91

c13.91

The sultans did not patronize learning simply to satisfy their vanity. It was realized that no polity could endure without philosophy and wisdom.⁵ The influence of the learned kept the people virtuous and law-abiding, and made them useful members of society.⁶ But men of learning were not to be subservient to kings and rulers, they were left free to make their contribution to human welfare.⁷ The success of the Dehlī sultans in education can be easily gauged from the writings of contemporary authors and travellers. Amīr Khusraw’s introduction to his Tuhfat-u’ṣ-ṣighar paints a picture of cultured assemblies of refined taste and literary acumen. In the introduction to his other book, Wasṭ-u’l-ḥayāt, he very picturesquely says that ‘every stone in Dehlī concealed a gem of literary brilliance’.⁸ The same story is repeated in different words in other works.¹ In Persian, Turkish and Arabic the masters of India could easily hold their own against the native savants of those countries ; foreign Muslims were surprised how well and eloquently their languages were spoken in India.² The sultanate of Dehlī rivalled the best contemporary centres of knowledge in all sciences.³ Nor can we be surprised at this eminence when we read as sober history that the capital alone possessed a thousand colleges.⁴ Besides, the mosques and khānqāhs in Dehlī and its vicinity are said to have numbered two thousand. Almost every mosque and khānqāh had a school attached to it ; hence the number of educational institutions in the city and province of Dehlī must have been large.⁵ Thousands of schoolmasters were employed by the state.⁶ Medieval figures must be treated with great caution ; yet the statements reveal a high standard of educational facilities in the sultanate. Probably the remote regions did not possess so many institutions ; yet they could not have been neglected.