The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c7.50.1

c7.50.1

Too much importance cannot be attached to the treatises on politics, statecraft and law. The hold of the shar‘, the Islamic law, on the Muslim mind was profound, and the rulers took care to follow its tenets in public affairs. Even the slightest disregard led to unpopularity. Suggestions that some rulers ignored the *sharʿ* should be treated with great caution; Baranī was exceedingly strict in his notions of legal propriety and the slightest lapse on the part of the monarch condemned the ruler in the historian's eyes. The structure of the government and the functions of the officials were essentially based on legal sanctions; besides, the *sharʿ* had come to embrace a great deal of Abbasid tradition which was deeply ingrained in the administrative notions of the sultanate. Aspiring politicians and administrators studied, as an essential part of their training, the treatises on politics and the art of government. Besides, the large number of foreigners who continued to be engaged for government service kept up the Muslim tradition of administration in the sultanate. The political and legal writings of the period, therefore, form a necessary background to the history of the administration. In this respect one can transgress the limits of time and space on account of the universality of Muslim legal and political theory, though much discretion is necessary in distinguishing between the universal and abiding on the one hand and the particular and incidental on the other.