The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c7.94

c7.94

Musta‘ṣim’s death. His execution raised a problem of peculiar difficulty for the sultans of Dehlī. Musta‘ṣim had left no heir; the greater part of the lands of the Eastern Caliphate was in the hands of the Mongols who were threatening what was left. Both Egypt and India were in danger. The lands of the Moorish caliphs of the West were not affected, but they were too far away and the orthodox in the east regarded the inhabitants of the Western Caliphate as living in schism. Dār-u’l-Islām, as known to Indian jurists, was left prostrate and without a head. The sultans of Dehlī met this difficulty by the simple device of continuing Musta‘ṣim’s name on their coins long after his death. Probably this pious fiction was also perpetrated in the khuṭbah. The view that they were ignorant of the great cataclysm is untenable, for it is well known that Dehlī gave shelter to a large number of refugees from adjoining countries including some members of the House of ‘Abbās.⁴ It is also impossible to believe that Sa‘dī’s great elegy did not reach the enlightened court of Ghiyāth-u’d-dīn Balban or that of his son, Muḥammad Khān, who was a great admirer of Sa‘dī and corresponded with him.⁵ More conclusive evidence is provided by the fact that the *Ṭabaqāt-i-Nāṣirī*, written in the reign of Nāṣir-u’d-dīn Maḥmūd, not only records the catastrophe, but also gives a full description of it.¹ Musta‘ṣim’s name remained on the Dehlī coinage till the end of the reign of Jalāl-u’d-dīn Fīrūz Khaljī in 695 A. H. (1296 A. C.).² Thus Musta‘ṣim’s name continued on the coins of Dehlī for about forty years after his death. The high officials must have felt that the fiction could not be maintained any longer. They had probably pressed their point of view earlier but the pious and aged monarch, Jalāl-u’d-dīn Fīrūz, in his own sentimental way, had refused to remove the martyr’s name; it was, however, removed at the death of the old sultan, and the boy king Rukn-u’d-dīn Ibrāhīm was merely styled *nāṣir-i-amīr-u’l-mu’minīn*.³