When Sultan Ala al-Din visited the abode of Nizam al-Din Awliya, the latter said, “The house of this fragile old man has two doors. If the Sultan enters through one door, I exit through the other.”
Constitutionally the highest offices of power in Pakistan are of president and prime minister. The power exercised by them is considered legitimate if they are elected and good adherents of the Islamic faith. The criterion of elections is relatively new in the subcontinent being introduced by the British at the end of the nineteenth century whereas the requirement that a ruler should be a model Muslim is almost eight centuries old when the Muslim sultans set up a sultanate with Delhi as its capital.
If vote is the symbol of power today; it was sword in the past yet not just enough to establish legitimacy. The challenge for ruler was not only the physical submission of the conquered but to win their acceptance through legitimacy that depended on the religious sanction from the highest authority i.e. the caliph, who combined in his person the sources of temporal and spiritual authority just because religion holds the central position in the lives of the people irrespective of the fact whether they actually follow to it or not in letter and spirit in their daily lives. Legitimacy was not an issue in itself for the caliphs even when parallel caliphates existed for centuries in Arabia and Spain because they could claim descent to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) but it was not so for the Delhi sultans of medieval India, who were Turkish and not Arab in ethnicity, and ‘slave’ in their origin and could not establish association with Prophet (PBUH) through blood lineage. This crisis of legitimacy for sultanic power was innovatively addressed by Sultan Iltutmish, who started the tradition of procuring the deed of caliphal investiture and caliphal robe from the caliph of the day in Baghdad, which were then displayed with great fanfare to the public in the specially staged ceremonies. Sometimes the investiture from the caliph brought along grand titles for the sultan such as the ‘Chief of Sultans’, the ‘Sword of Caliphate’, ‘Partner of the Commander of the Faithful’, etc that legitimized as well as boosted the image of sultan in the public eye. Moreover, the investiture became all the more important for ‘self-legitimacy’ because Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq felt that a sultan was a usurper and his government illegitimate if it did not have the approval of the caliph unlike Qutb al-Din Mubarak Shah, who was the only sultan that dared to declare himself the caliph.
It seems as if the use of religion to legitimize political authority is a centuries –old phenomenon in this part of the world. Religious inscriptions on coins were used as an effective method for legitimacy by the sultans, particularly Muhammad bin Tughluq, who struck coins such as the ones that bore his own name surrounded by the names of the first four caliphs or contained religious references like “Obey God, obey the Messenger, and those with authority among you” or “He who obeys the sultan obeys God,” all these were unspoken yet clear instructions to the people that their obedience to sultan was a holy act.
Through a conscious effort, the sultans encouraged the historians of their times to craft a narrative that projected them as the rulers following the footsteps of Prophet (PBUH). Minhaj Siraj Juzjani, the author of ‘Tabakat-i-Nasiri’ portrayed Sultan Nasir al-Din Mahmud Shah as the king who wielded the ‘qualities of the friends of God’ (awsaf-i-awliya) as well as the ‘virtues of Prophets’ (akhlaq-i-anbiya) and ‘Sultan-i-Islam’ whereas Sultan Iltutmish for his bravery was bestowed upon the title of ‘Second Ali’ (RA). One of the titles of Prophet (PBUH) was the ‘Seal of the Prophets.’ Another historian, Shams Siraj Afif, the author of ‘Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi’ manufactured corresponding titles for Sultan Firoz Shah such as the ‘Seal of Sultans’ (Khatm-i-Salatin)’, ‘Seal of the Crown bearers’ (Khatm-i-Tajdaran), etc. Some other grand titles accorded to the sultans included the ‘Supreme Sultan’ (Sultan al-azam), ‘Beacon of the shariah’, ‘Saviour of Islam’, etc.
Not only the historians went out of the way to enhance the prestige of the sultans but also made strenuous efforts to emphasize the importance of Delhi, the capital of the sultanate as a refuge for the Muslim world after the destruction of caliphate in Baghdad at the hands of the Mongols. While the sultanic coinage referred to Delhi as the ‘Abode of Islam’; Juzjani went further by sanctifying this city as “The centre of the circle of Islam, the cradle of the commandments and prohibitions of shariah, the territory of ‘Din-i-Muhammadi’… and the dome of Islam of the eastern part of the world.” Thus, if today, one hears expressions such as Pakistan being the ‘Fort of Islam;’ one should not be surprised because the people of this region have had a long history of sanctifying both the place and the person.
The crisis of legitimacy was addressed to a great extent by the portrayal of the sultan of Delhi as someone who was a role model Muslim adhering to the tenets of Islam and enjoying the blessings of the caliph of the time. This was the external religious connection that was internalized over a period of time; however, side by side the formation of sultanate, another powerful institution had evolved inside India that was equally challenging to the sultanic authority. It was the institution of sufi orders. Blain H Auer in his groundbreaking study entitled “Symbols of authority in medieval Islam” opines that if the sultan of Delhi represented the ultimate political and military power then the friends of God (awliya) traversing the mystical path were the epitome of religious power. The common man loved and respected the sufis from the core of his heart and in this way the latter exercised an invisible command and control over the populace. If the sultan could somehow or the other manage to secure the blessings of the sufis for his person and power, he could automatically win the acceptance and obedience from his subjects. With this objective in mind, the sultans of Delhi deliberately encouraged the crafting of yet another narrative through various commissioned works of history whereby it was impressed that the sultans had actually acquired power through the blessings of the saints. For example, Afif has written in his classical work that Firoz Shah became a sultan as a result of the blessings of four dervishes namely Nizam al-Din Awliya, Bu Ali Qalandar, Nasir al-Din Mahmud Chiragh-i-Delhi and Ala al-Din (grandson of Baba Farid). Ziya al-Din Barani in his monumental treatise ‘Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi’ credits Nizam al-Din Awliya for all the peace and prosperity during the reign of Sultan Al al-Din. Iltutmish, too, is on the record to have admitted that he achieved power due to the blessings of a dervish, while he was on an errand as a slave in the city of Bukhara.
The practice of patronization or visits to the tombs of the saints such as Data Ganj Baksh in Lahore, Moeen-ud-Din Chishti in Ajmer, etc by the rulers of Pakistan to seek blessings is also ingrained in our history. The sultans of Delhi often performed pilgrimages to the shrines of the respected sufis particularly in times of crises or before launching military expeditions. The sultanic overtures to seek affinity with dervishes were not always reciprocated, especially by the ‘other-worldlies’ of the Chishti order. When Sultan Ala al-Din visited the abode of Nizam al-Din Awliya, the latter said, “The house of this fragile old man has two doors. If the Sultan enters through one door, I exit through the other.” Baba Farid’s advice to another mystic is equally instructive: “Do not mix with kings and emirs. Imagine their coming and going to your house as a deadly place to inhabit. Every dervish who has mixed with kings and emirs has had a disastrous end.”
Of and on, the sufis asserted their superior moral authority and ethical command over the sultans. Afif records at least two such instances in which Shaykh Qutb al-Din Munawar not only admonished Sultan Firoz Shah for excessive drinking and hunting but also rejected the gift of an ostentatious robe because it was prohibited by the shariah. In spite of the non-congruent nature of sultanate and dervishi, Auer avers that “there is a discernable historiographical trend in which the figure of the sultan was increasingly crafted with religious imagery, such that he came to resemble the Sufi shaykh.” While Juzjani’s history writing pioneered the effort to consciously conceive the image of sultan as possessing saintly attributes by stating that in the person of Sultan Nasir al-din Mahmud Shah, God had planted the “attributes of the friends of God” (awsaf-i-awliya) whereas Afif completed this task by constructing the “image of a perfect king based on the ethical and moral attributes of Sufi shaykhs.” Thus, the sultan who was initially a seeker of saints’ blessings to legitimize his rule was now himself personified into a source of spiritual blessings for the public at large. This is how the sultans of Delhi used the discipline of history as a handmaiden to manipulate the realms of religion and mysticism to legitimize their political power in the eyes of the people.
