The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c14.55

c14.55

It is obvious that there were several *shiqqdārs* in the province, and, if they were administrative officials at all, there must have been several *shiqqs*. The Doāb, like the province of Dehlī, was directly under the ministry; hence the *shiqqdārs* were probably the highest executive officers who could be ordered to deal with the insurrection. Baranī, in the history of the same reign, has used the word *shiqq* for an administrative unit. Besides, the larger *wilāyats* had been divided into smaller units called *ṭarfs* since the days of Quṭb-u’d-dīn Aibak.¹ The old and new divisions of provinces emerge as *shiqqs* during the fourteenth century. The *shiqq* seems to have disappeared during the anarchy following that sultan’s death. The word *shiqq* appears on a few coins struck at Bakkar under Sher Shāh and his son; it is rather curious that the term should precede the name of a mint town. If it is not an engraver’s mistake, probably the *shiqq* survived the anarchy in distant Sind.² When Buhlūl Lodī conquered the *parganahs* of Kampil, Patiālī, Shamsābād, Sakīt, Koil, Marahrā and Jalālī from Sulṭān Ḥusain Sharqī, he appointed a *shiqqdār* to each of these.³ Did the *shiqq* come to be identified with the *parganah*, or, as is more likely, did the *shiqqdār* sink to the level of the *parganah* officer? It seems that the institution of the *shiqq* was never universal and only the unwieldy provinces were divided into these units. In the course of time, the smaller provinces and the *shiqqs* of larger *wilāyats* and provinces emerged as *sarkārs*; the *shiqqdār* being the administrator of a part of a province came to be the head of a *parganah* under the new order. The *wālī* and the *muqṭi‘* disappeared naturally, for the rulers of the new kingdoms which rose on the ruins of the sultanate of Dehlī had, in fact, themselves been governors of provinces. Jaunpūr, Mālwah, Deccan and Gujrāt had all started as provinces. Khiḍr Khān, the first Sayyid ruler of Dehlī, did not assume the royal title and was legally a governor¹ Important provinces reappeared as the result of a new growth of power at the centre. When Buhlūl Lodī conquered the Sharqī Kingdom, he put his son Bārbek on the throne of Jaunpūr as his viceroy.² The Panjāb was in the hands of strong governors under the Lodīs as well as the Sūrs.³ Mālwah, so long as it owned Sūr supremacy, remained a province.⁴ Thus the larger governorships again appeared, and, finally, under Akbar's reorganization, emerged as ṣūbahs.⁵