Firuz Shah, Son of Rajab
The sudden death of Muhammad bin Tughluq near Tattah threw his leaderless army, already embarrassed by the presence of women and children in the camp, into great confusion and disorder. For two days it was harassed and plundered by the rebels of Sind and the Mongol mercenaries, who had been hired to help the Sultan’s army against the rebel Taghi. In this extremity, the nobles urged Firuz to ascend the throne and save the dispirited army from destruction. Firuz after some hesitation to accept the crown, in which he was probably sincere, submitted to the choice of the nobles and was proclaimed king, at the age of forty-six, on the 23rd March, 1351. He succeeded in restoring order in the army and set out for Delhi with it. But hardly had he come out of Sind before Khwaja-i-Jahan, the Deputy of the late Sultan, had proclaimed at Delhi a boy as the son and heir of Muhammad bin Tughluq and raised him to the throne. The situation was indeed a critical one for Firuz, who, on reaching Multan, held consultations with the nobles and the Muslim jurists. The former refused to admit the existence of any son of Muhammad bin Tughluq and the latter considered Khwaja-i-Jahan’s candidate disqualified on the ground of minority. The question was not considered from the legal point of view. It was irrelevant to do so, for in Muslim law sovereignty was not considered to be a matter of ” inherited right”
. As the cause of the boy king was hopeless, Khwaja-i-Jahan soon submitted to Firuz, who pardoned him in consideration of his past services and ordered him to go to the fief of Samana to spend his last days there in retirement. But on the way he was beheaded by a follower of Sher Khan, the commandant of Sunam and Samana, at the instigation of his master and other nobles and chiefs of the army. Firuz showed weakness in allowing the old officer, of whose innocence he was convinced, to fall a victim to the vengeance of the nobles. The question as to whether Firuz’s accession was regular or not is a disputed one. Firuz was Muhammad’s first cousin, the son of Ghiyas-ud-din’s younger brother Rajab by his Bhatti wife, who was the daughter of Rana Mall, the chief of Abuhar. He was trained in the art of government by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq and Muhammad bin Tughluq, and the latter, according to the contemporary chronicler, Barni, had left a testament nominating him as his heir-apparent. But the authenticity of this testament has been questioned by Sir Wolseley Haig, who is of opinion that the child whom Khwaja-i-Jahan raised to the throne was not “a supposititious son” of Muhammad bin Tughluq but was an issue of his blood. This view is not shared by some scholars. Whatever it might have been, there is no doubt that the nobles and the jurists selected Firuz partly on the ground of necessity. His succession, according to some, “asserted once more with great force the right of election that had been gradually receding in the background without, however, denying the right of the son to rule. The case also emphasised fitness against merely close relationship to the sovereign”.
The task before Firuz was indeed a difficult one,-that of raising the Delhi Sultanate from the state of decrepitude and demoralization into which it had fallen since the closing years of his predecessor’s reign. But the new Sultan was ill-fitted for it. He was weak, vacillating and incapable of sustained efforts, and lacked the essential qualities of good generalship. He made no serious attempts to recover the lost provinces of the Empire, and his military enterprises were mostly unsuccessful. In critical moments during his campaigns, he withdrew from them when almost on the point of victory, to avoid shedding the blood of his co-religionists. “His generalship in his two campaigns to Bengal and his eventual reduction of the Thatta, seems,” remarks Thomas, “to have been of the lowest order; and the way that he allowed himself to be deluded into the deserts of Cutch, or the defiles of Jajnagar, seems to savour of positive fatuity.”
In the east Haji Iliyas, the independent ruler of Bengal, who had styled himself Shams-ud-din lliyas Shah, was engaged in extending the frontiers of his kingdom in various directions and “ravaged” those of the Delhi kingdom. Firuz thereupon marched from Delhi, at the head of 70,000 horse, in November A.D. 1353 to repel him. On hearing of his advance, lliyas retreated into the fort of Ikdala, situated probably at a distance of ten or twelve miles from Pandua. But he was attacked there by the Delhi troops and defeated. Firuz, however, did not reap the full advantage of his hard-earned victory, because without annexing Bengal, which was urged by his commander, Tartar Khan, he came back to Delhi on Ist September, 1354. There are two different versions regarding the cause of his undignified retreat. According to Shams-i-Siraj ‘Afif, the official historian of Firuz’s reign, the Sultan retreated, being moved by the shrieks and wailings of the women in the besieged fort. But some later writers have attributed it to his apprehension of disasters at the commencement of the rainy season. Whatever might have been the cause of his retreat, one has to agree with Thomas’ statement that “the invasion only resulted in the confession of weakness”.
Firuz made another attempt to reduce Bengal to submission in the course of a few years. He found a pretext for it when Zafar Khan, son-in-law of Fakhr-ud-din Mubarak Shah of Eastern Bengal, fled from Sonargaon to his court via the sea-route and complained to him of the highhandedness of the Bengal ruler. The death of the brave and able ruler, Shams-ud-din Iliyas, encouraged Firuz to organise an expedition against Bengal. Brushing aside all previous treaties and assurances of friendship, he marched, at the head of a large army, against Sikandar Shah, the son and successor of Shams-ud-din lliyas, in A.D. 1359. On his way he halted for six months at Zafarabad on the Gumti and founded in its neighbourhood the city of Jaunpur, in memory of his cousin, Fakhr-ud-din Jauna (Muhammad bin Tughluq). At the end of the rainy season, he resumed his march towards Bengal. As he sent no response to the friendly negotiations of Sikandar Shah, the latter, following his father’s example, retreated into the mud fortress of Ikdala. The Delhi troops besieged this fortress, but its reduction did not prove to be child’s play. The Bengal troops bravely defended their stronghold, “until the rains drew near and the floods came to help their cause” against the besiegers. A peace was soon concluded on favourable terms for Sikandar. Thus, the second Bengal expedition of the Delhi Sultan was as abortive as the first one. It merely exhibited once more his weak and vacillating nature.
