The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c8.37

c8.37

This would hardly justify the view that Sulṭān ‘Alā-u’d-dīn ignored the law; indeed even in his great need he did not exceed the legal limit of one-half of the produce in fixing the state demand, and his economic measures were but an efficient administration of the Muslim institution of *ḥisbah*. His grandiose scheme of founding a new religion was stillborn and was known only to his select companions. He protested, later, his adherence to Islam, though he might have transgressed minor injunctions in ignorance.¹ Indeed we are assured of his complete reformation by later chroniclers.² Baranī also tells us of his great faith in the saint Niẓām-u’d-dīn.³ Maulānā Shams-u’d-dīn Turk, a learned jurist and a foreigner, who wrote an outspoken letter to the monarch and took care to leave the sultanate before it could be delivered, found only two faults with the sultan: that he was not regular in his devotions and that he had appointed an incompetent and worthless man as his chief qāḍi.⁴