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They were known by the generic term Turks and they insisted on monopolizing all key posts and important positions, and maintaining their racial and e… - Ziauddin Barani
" "They were known by the generic term Turks and they insisted on monopolizing all key posts and important positions, and maintaining their racial and exotic identity. This attitude was also shared by their children and children’s children, who though born in India, psychologically felt that they were Turks of foreign stock. On the other hand the foreign Muslims treated the Indian Muslim converts with contempt. They were so class conscious that Ziyauddin Barani, who was born in India but belonged to a family of nobles, credits the Turks, both in his Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi as well as Fatawa-i-Jahandari, with all possible virtues and the Indian Muslims with all kinds of vices. ... Conversion to Islam did not change their status, and foreign Muslims looked down upon them. The foreigners especially were not prepared to treat them on equal terms at all. To add insult to injury, the chronicler Ziya Barani, a confirmed believer in the racial superiority of the so-called Turks and baseness of the Indian Muslims, recommends: “Teachers of every kind are to be sternly ordered not to thrust precious stones down the throats of dogs… that is, to the mean, the ignoble, the worthless. To shopkeepers and the low born they are to teach nothing more than the rules about prayer... without which their religion cannot be correct and valid prayers are not possible. They are to be instructed in nothing more. They are not to be taught reading and writing for plenty of disorders arise owing to the skill of the low-born in knowledge…” … Indeed all neo-Muslims were called by the generic but contemptuous term julaha. Surely all the converts could not have come from the weaver caste, but the word julaha became synonymous with the despised low-born Indian Muslim convert. On the other hand the foreign Muslims (or Turks) “alone are capable of virtue, … . They are, consequently, said to be noble, free born, virtuous, religious, of high pedigree and pure birth. These groups, alone are worthy of offices and posts in the government… Owing to their actions the government of the king is strengthened and adorned.” On the other hand the “low-born” (Indian) Muslims are capable only of vices - immodesty, falsehood, miserliness, misappropriation, wrongfulness, lies, evil-speaking ingratitude,…shamelessness, impundence… So they are called low-born, bazaar people, base, mean, worthless, plebian, shameless and of dirty birth”. Now neither the one could be so good nor the other that bad, but Ziyauddin Barani rightly depicts the prevailing attitudes and consequent tensions. What worried him most was that the Indian Muslims were appointed to “high offices and are successful in their work… they will make people of their own kind their helpers, supporters, colleagues. They will not allow (Turkish) nobles and free-born men and men of merits to come anywhere near the affairs of the government.”....In short, there was a constant and bitter struggle of wit and influence for power going on between the “foreign” Turks and Indian Muslims - Indian Muslims both high and low. Although the claim of nobility of birth by purchased slaves makes little sense, the Turks felt that they belonged to blue blood and as founders of Muslim rule in India, they deserved special consideration. It was their right to keep to themselves all high offices, for they possessed merit and were superior to the julahas.... In this strife, the foreign Muslims had an edge. They were closer to the sultan and wielded influence with him. They were ever doing research on the ancestry of Indian Muslim officers, and informing the king about their origins and genealogy with a view to denigrating them and attempting at the removal of those who had ‘infiltrated’ into it. Ziyauddin Barani derives a cynical pleasure in writing about the exclusion and expulsion of low-born Muslims from state employment.
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About Ziauddin Barani
Ziyauddi Barani (1285 – 1357) was a Muslim political thinker of the Delhi Sultanate located in present-day Northern India during Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah's reign. He was best known for composing the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi (also called Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi), a work on medieval India, which covers the period from the reign of Ghiyas ud din Balban to the first six years of reign of Firoz Shah Tughluq and the Fatwa-i-Jahandari which promoted a hierarchy among Muslim communities in the Indian subcontinent
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Alternative Names:
Ziya' al-Din Barani
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After the Sultan had thus routed out the Miwdttis, and cleared away the jungle in the neighbourhood of the city, he gave the towns and country within the Doab to some distinguished chiefs, with directions to lay waste and destroy the villages of the marauders, to slay the men, to make prisoners of the women and children, to clear away the jungle, and to suppress all lawless proceedings. The noblemen set about the work with strong forces, and they soon put down the daring of the rebels. They scoured the jungles and drove out the rebels, and the rt/ois were brought into submission and obedience. .... In the year of his accession, the Sultan felt the repression of the Miwdttis to be the first of his duties, and for a whole year he was occupied in overthrowing them and in scouring the jungles, which he effectually accomplished. Great numbers of Miwdttis were put to the sword. ... In this campaign one hundred thousand of the royal army^ were slain by the Miwdttis... In two nights and three days he crossed the Ganges at Kateher, and sending forward a force of five thousand archers, he gave them orders to burn down Kateher and destroy it, to slay every man, and to spare none but women and children, not even boys who had reached the age of eight or nine years. He re- mained for some days at Kateher and directed the slaughter. The blood of the rioters ran in streams, heaps of slain were to be seen near every village and jungle, and the stench of the dead reached as far as the Ganges. This severity spread dismay among the rebels and many submitted. The whole district was ravaged, and so much plunder was made that the royal army was enriched, and the people of Badaiin even were satisfied.
The Indian Muslim nobles, who were local converts, also rose to be officers in the upper cadres, but foreigners were always preferred. The fourteenth century Persian chronicler Ziyauddin Barani, who was born in India but traced his ancestry to a Turki Noble, credits the foreigner Turks with all possible virtues and the Indian Muslims with all kinds of imperfections. The invectives he hurls on the converted Sultan Nasiruddin Khusrau Shah (C.E. 1320), are too well known to need repetition.
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If the kings of Islam, with all their majesty and power, take for granted infidelity and infidels, polytheism and polytheists throughout their domin- ions in return for the land revenue (kharaj) and jizya, how will the tradition, “If I fight people until they say, ‘There is no god but God,’ and if they say, ‘There is no god but God,’ they are immune from me and their persons and property exist only by virtue of Islam,” be observed? And how will infidelity and infidels, polytheism and polytheists be overthrown—the purpose of the mission of 124,000 prophets and the domination of sultans of Islam since Islam appeared? If the kings of Islam do not strive with all their might for this overthrow, if they do not devote all their courage and energies to this end for the satisfaction of God and of the prophet, for the assistance of the Faith and the exalting of the True Word; if they become content with extracting the jizya and the land tax from the Hindus who worship idols and cow-dung, taking for granted the Hindu way of life with all its stipulations of infidelity, how shall infidelity be brought to an end, now that Muhammad’s Prophethood has come to an end—and it was by the prayers of the prophets that infidelity was being ended? How will “Truth be established at the Center” and how will the Word of God obtain the opportunity for supremacy? How will the True Faith prevail over other religions, if the kings of Islam, with the power and prestige of Islam that has appeared in the world, with three hundred years of hereditary faith in Islam, permit the banners of infidelity to be openly displayed in their capital and in the cities of the Muslims, idols to be openly worshiped and the conditions of infidelity to be observed as far as possible, the mandates of their false creed to operate without fear? How will the True Faith prevail if rulers allow the infidels to keep their temples, adorn their idols, and to make merry during their festivals with beating of drums and dhols [a kind of drum], singing and dancing?
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