The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c14.44

c14.44

The staff for supervising the collection of revenue and auditing the accounts with its local nāẓirs and waqūfs, in so far as the central government is concerned, has already been discussed.⁸ In every province there was a ṣāḥib-i-dīwān, conveniently called khwājah who was appointed by the sultan on the recommendation of the wazīr.⁹ He was generally an expert accountant; his duty was to keep the account books and submit detailed statements to headquarters.¹ It was on the basis of these sheets that the wazīr's department settled the account with the muqṭiʿ. Officially the Khwājah was subordinate to the governor, but in actual practice, owing to his direct appointment by the monarch and his contact with the wazīr, he was a power to reckon with, and his presence provided a check on the governor's authority. When Masʿūd of Ghaznah appointed Aḥmad Niyāltigin to the governorship of Lāhor, the royal wazīr, Aḥmad Ḥasan, impressed upon the new governor that Qāḍi-i-Shīrāz, the ṣāḥib-i-dīwān, was his subordinate; yet it was on the reports of this subordinate that measures were taken to depose the governor.² Ibn Baṭṭūṭah mentions a wāli-u'l-kharāj together with an amīr in a province; there can be little doubt that the former is the khwājah and the latter the governor.³ The fact that the traveller uses the word wāli for the revenue officer shows that he possessed high authority. Sometimes the governor had a deputy who was appointed by the sulṭān.⁴