The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c8.16

c8.16

Law is powerless unless it is enforced by some agency. The ideal statesman for this purpose was the divinely-guided Prophet; but later generations have to be content with a man of lesser wisdom.¹ Such a man, some believe, is chosen by God in every age to look after the well-being of the people.² This concept is the nearest approach to the idea of divine right in Muslim philosophy, and was in favour with courtiers and ministers; but the jurists, whose outlook is more Islamic, are of opinion that it is the duty of the Faithful to elect and appoint their ruler.³ It is this injunction of the *shar'* which makes the state a canonical necessity. The ruler appointed and accepted by the Muslims was the caliph, who alone was the chief executive officer and supreme judge in the world of Islam. His legal representative in India was the sultan, to whom were delegated, in the area under his control, all the powers wielded by the caliph.⁴ Legally the caliph had the right to overrule the sultan in decisions which had yet not taken effect, but in actual practice the sultan in India was so powerful and at such a distance that it could never have been practical politics for the caliph to meddle with his affairs. Besides, the establishment of the sultanate in India coincided with the decay of the power of the Abbasids, who, for some time past, had preserved the shadow of legal supremacy by never failing to recognize the *fait accompli* and by ceasing to meddle with the internal affairs of their vassals. Thus the supreme human agency in the empire of Dehlī for enforcing and interpreting the Law was the sultan.