The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c15.5

c15.5

What was the spirit which inspired the ruling class and regulated its actions? The political treatises and general literature of the period reveal a high estimation of kingly duties. There can be little doubt that the sage and the peasant alike expected the ruler to be a father to his people. If their sayings are any index to their beliefs, the sultans of Dehlī aspired to play the part of good rulers. There certainly stand out men like Kaiqubād whose only motive was the pursuit of pleasure; isolated acts of barbaric cruelty disfigure the chronicles; but to expect the absence of selfish and wilful monarchs in the course of more than three centuries of the Middle Ages is to ask for perfection in human affairs. On the whole the guiding principle of the sultans was benevolence; they aspired to serve and protect ‘the servants of God’ entrusted to their care. The truth of this statement is apparent from the charitable deeds of the sultans and their nobility, the numerous hospitals, hospices, inns and caravanserais, the free kitchens for the poor, the measures to fight famines and droughts, the instructions to officers regarding their dealings with the people and the accessibility of the monarch to the poorest and the most humble of his people. His secret services kept him informed of any mal-treatment of his subjects by his agents and servants : his courts of justice functioned in the remotest parts to protect the weak from the strong. The ambition of the sovereign was to compel the wolf and the lamb to drink from the same stream of his justice ; if he sometimes failed in his mission, it was because of the incapacity or disobedience of his agents.