The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c14.134

c14.134

A more direct plan was to make the areas concerned collectively responsible for the maintenance of peace and order. Sher Shāh was acting on an old custom when he made the muqaddam pay the amount robbed from a wayfarer within or near his jurisdiction; similarly the muqaddam remained under arrest for any murder committed within his area until his people found the culprit.⁴ This may appear unjust and harsh, but it was based on a true understanding of the reality of the situation.⁵ Sher Shāh's method was so successful that all authorities bear striking testimony to the security in his dominions.⁶ The view that Sher Shāh was not the first to adopt a system of collective security finds strong corroboration in two stone inscriptions found at Tirukkolakkūdi and Kandadevi in South India which date back to 761 and 771 A.H. (1360 and 1369 A.C.). The villages belonged to the sultanate of Madurā, and the inscriptions record the villagers' undertaking to keep the peace in their neighbourhood and to protect the weak.⁷ Khusraw says about ‘Alā-u’d-dīn’s reign that "the very thieves who, before this, set villages on fire, now lit the lamps and guarded the highways; if a traveller lost a piece of thread, the people of the vicinity either found it or paid its price."⁸ The result of such measures was that, in the poet's own words, "from the mouth of the Indus to the seashore, no one even heard the name of a thief, a thug or a robber."⁹ This tranquillity continued, without any effort on his part, under Qutb-u’d-dīn Mubārak Shāh.¹⁰ Ibn Baṭṭūṭah found the Doāb in a state of rebellion because the good work begun by Quṭb-u'd-dīn Aibak and carried on by other sultans crumbled under Muḥammad bin Tughluq ; Fīrūz once again restored peace ; then anarchy stalked abroad.¹ Sikandar Lodī and Sher Shāh are the outstanding later sultans who gave peace to the land to such an extent that, in the words of the panegyrist, ‘if an old woman carried a trayful of gold and slept in forests, she did not require a watchman.’²