Delhi Sultanate: The whole chapter

Land under the Sultan's direct revenue administration was called khalisa. Alauddin Khalji enlarged the khalisa in the Doab and around Delhi so that grain and revenue flowed straight to the state, which supported his market regulations. Iqta land was assigned to muqtis; inam and milk were revenue-free or private holdings granted to individuals, often scholars and religious men, which Alauddin resumed.

Ibn Battuta describes Tarababad at Daulatabad as one of the greatest and most beautiful bazaars, a market place for male and female singers, with shops leading into the owners' houses, a carpeted cupola where the chief of the musicians sat on Thursdays, and mosques for prayer. NCERT XII uses the passage to show that bazaars were centres of social and cultural life, not only of trade.

Irfan Habib has argued that the Sultanate period saw the spread of several devices from the Islamic world. The spinning wheel, which greatly increased the output of yarn, is first clearly mentioned in India by Isami in the mid-fourteenth century. Paper making also spread with the Turks, and by the fourteenth century paper was common enough in Delhi for confectioners to wrap sweets in it, which helped record-keeping and book production.

NCERT XII (Theme 5) quotes Ibn Battuta on the postal system. The horse-post, uluq, used royal horses stationed every four miles. The foot-post, dawa, had three stations to each mile, and a runner with a bell-topped rod carried letters to the next station. Ibn Battuta notes that news reached the Sultan from Sind in five days, though the journey took fifty days.

Barani describes a chain of control from field to market. The karwanis or banjaras, who carried grain to Delhi, were organised under the shahna-i-mandi and stood surety for one another. Revenue in the khalisa villages of the Doab was taken in kind and stored in royal granaries, to be released when supplies fell. Peasants were made to sell their surplus to the merchants at the official rate instead of holding it back, and in a drought grain was rationed according to household needs, so that prices in Delhi did not rise.

NCERT VII explains that the Sultans assigned territories called iqtas to military commanders, the muqtis or iqtadars, who led campaigns, kept order and collected the revenue of their assignments as salary, paying their troops out of it. Control was tightest when the office was not inheritable and assignments were short: under Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughluq muqtis were shifted often and accountants checked their collections. Care was taken that the muqti collected only the taxes prescribed by the state and kept the required number of soldiers.

In his introduction to the 1952 Aligarh edition of Elliot and Dowson's Volume II, Mohammad Habib argued that the new rulers, indifferent to caste restraints on artisans, opened the towns to workers of all castes (an urban revolution) and that Alauddin's removal of rural intermediaries amounted to a rural revolution. His son Irfan Habib later questioned the scale of these claims, pointing to slave labour in the towns and to peasant revolts. Kosambi saw the period as a stage of feudalism, and R.S. Sharma is known for the thesis of Indian feudalism in the early medieval period.

The Multanis, many of them Hindu traders originally from Multan, and the sahs were the great merchants and moneylenders of Delhi. Barani notes that nobles borrowed heavily from them and that their wealth grew from trade and lending. Their presence shows the growth of commerce and credit in Sultanate towns. The Mongol converts settled near Delhi were known as the 'new Muslims', a different group.

Only statement 1 is correct (a). Statement 1 is right because, in the Delhi Sultanate, the amil was the official who collected revenue at the local level. Statement 2 is wrong because the iqta system was not indigenous. It came from West Asian Islamic practice, and Iltutmish set it up in India by giving iqtas to his officers, the muqtis, in place of salaries. Statement 3 is wrong because the Mir Bakhshi, head of the military pay and record office, was a Mughal post. The Sultanate's military office was the Diwan-i-Arz, set up by Balban.

Notice the Sultanate's key reforms: Alauddin Khalji's market control and land measurement, and Muhammad bin Tughlaq's token currency and Diwan-i-Kohi for farming.

Answer as per the official UPSC answer key.

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