Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c10.160

c10.160

arbitrary temper, and the best informed men in his Court were careful to keep down their knowledge to the level of his acquirements.¹ When the illuminating rays of learning penetrated his dark mind, we find him a little changed from what he had been before. He relented a bit towards literary men. On one occasion his hardened mind was softened by literary fervour, expressing itself in a reward of 1000 *tankas* and a gold-embroidered vest to Qāẓī Mughīṣuddīn contrary to his expectations.² But if he showed any favours to literary men, they were a select few, who were temporarily in the good graces of the whimsical Sulṭān; and we can take the above description of Ferishta, viz. that "he showed favours to all the *eminent* men of that age" in the sense that most of the men favoured had made themselves eminent by military prowess or administrative ability, and not by learning simply. As Barnī has said: "He ('Alāuddīn) was a man of no learning and never associated with men of learning."³ Though this statement may be a little too strong, yet in the light of what another writer tells us on this point, it is perhaps not difficult to get at the truth. He says: