Ziauddin Barani


Ziauddin Barani was a Muslim political thinker of the Delhi Sultanate located in present-day North India during Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah's reign. He was best known for composing the Tarikh-i-Firoz 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, even if historian M. Athar Ali says that it's not on a racialist basis or even like the Hindu caste system, but taking as a model Sassanid Iran, which promoted an idea of aristocracy though birth and which was "fully in accordance with the main thrust of Islamic thought as it had developed by that time", including in the works of his near-contemporary Ibn Khaldun.

Life

Barani was born to a Muslim family in 1285 in which his father, uncle, and grandfather all worked in high government posts under the Sultan of Delhi. His family were natives of Meerut and Bulandsahar. His maternal grandfather Husam-ud-Din, was an important officer of Ghiyas ud din Balban and his father Muwayyid-ul-Mulk held the post of naib of Arkali Khan, the son of Jalaluddin Firuz Khalji. His uncle Qazi Ala-ul-Mulk was the Kotwal of Delhi during the reign of Ala-ud-Din Khalji. Barani never held a post, but was a nadim of Muhammad bin Tughlaq for seventeen years. During this period he was very close to Amir Khusro. After Tughlaq was deposed, he fell out of favor. In "Exile" he wrote two pieces dealing with government, religion, and history, which he hoped would endear him to the new sultan, Firuz Shah Tughluq. He was not rewarded for his works and died poor in 1357.
His gravestone lies in the courtyard of Nizamuddin Auliya's dargah in Delhi, at the entrance of the dalan of Mirdha Ikram, and near the tomb of Amir Khusrau.

Works

Fatwa-i-Jahandari

The Fatwa-i-Jahandari is a work containing the political ideals to be pursued by a Muslim ruler in order to earn religious merit and the gratitude of his subjects. It is written as nasihat for the Muslim kings, is a classical work on statecraft which can be compared with Kautilya's Arthashastra and Machiavelli's Prince.
His fatwa would condone segregation of the Muslim ashraf upper classes and ajlaf low classes, in addition to the azral underclasses or the converted Muslims who are regarded as "ritually polluted" by the ashraf. Muzaffar Alam argues that, contrarily to what many think, through this aristocratic view of power he doesn't follow secular models, "rather, the interests of the Muslim community define the contours of his ideas on the heredity question", as he saw that during times of political troubles "frequent changes within ruling classes lead to the ruination of illustrious Muslim families", and thus preserving these upper class families, themselves at such place for diverse administrative or military qualities, would lead to the advent of more capable rulers and in the longer run help Muslim interests, Alam to conclude that this hierarchization "was a conscious choice exercized by Barani to serve the narrowly sectarian interests of the early Islamic regime in India
The work delves into aspects of religion and government and the meeting of those two, as well as political philosophy. He notes:
Barani's Fatwa-i-Jahandari provides an example of his extreme views on religion. He states that there is no difference between a Muslim king and a Hindu ruler, if the Muslim king is content in collecting jizya and khiraj from the Hindus. Instead, he recommends that a Muslim king should concentrate all his power on holy wars and completely uproot the "false creeds". According to him, a Muslim king could establish the supremacy of Islam in India only by slaughtering the Brahmins. He recommends that a Muslim king "should make a firm resolve to overpower, capture, enslave and degrade the infidels."
At the same time, the book makes it clear that the kings of the Delhi Sultanate did not hold similar views. Barani rues that they honoured and favoured the Hindus, and had granted them the status of dhimmis. The Muslim kings appointed Hindus to high posts, including governorships. Barani further laments that the Muslim kings were pleased with the prosperity of Hindus in their capital Delhi, even when poor Muslims worked for them and begged at their doors.

Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi

The Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi was an interpretation of the history of the Delhi Sultanate up to the then-present Firuz Shah Tughlaq. Then interpretation noted that the sultans who followed the rules of Barani had succeeded in their endeavors while those that did not, or those who had sinned, met the Nemesis. Barani is an unfair narrator and generally considered a very unreliable source.
But, though Barani refers many times to the sources of information, he did not consult his contemporary works. This resulted in the sketchy description of Ala-ud-Din Khalji’s wars in Chittor, Ranthambhor and Malwa and the Deccan campaigns of Malik Kafur. The later medieval historians, Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad, Badaoni, Ferishta and Haji-ud-Dabir depended upon the Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi for their account of history of the period covered in this work. Abdul Haq Dehlvi in his Akhbar-ul-Akhyar depended upon the work for the biographical sketches of Nizam-ud-Din Auliya and the other Sufi saints.
Zawabit
Barani categorized the law into two kinds, the Shariat and the Zawabit. The Zawabit were the state laws formulated by the monarch in consultation with the nobility in the changed circumstances to cater to the new requirements which the Shariat was unable to fulfill.
The Zawabit, he said must be in the spirit of the Shariat and enumerated four conditions for its formulation as guidelines. They are-
Fatawa-i-Dindari

Work online