Z̤iyāʼ al-Dīn Baranī (1285-1357, esp. 1334-1357)

by Alejandra Pizarro (See Chinese translation)

Ziauddin Barani (alternative names) was a political thinker of the Delhi Sultanate, located in present-day North India. Born to a Muslim family in 1285, his family were natives of Meerut and Bulandsahar. His family members held high government posts under the Sultan of Delhi. Barani never held an office himself, but was a courtier and companion of the Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq for seventeen years until the Sultan’s death. Afterwards, he fell out of favour with the new Sultan Firuz Tughluq, who banished him from the court and even imprisoned him briefly and confiscated his property. During this exile he wrote Tarikh-i-Firoz shahi, a work on medieval India, and Fatawa-i-Jahandari, a book on political philosophy; which he hoped would endear him to the new sultan, Firuz Shah Tughluq. He was not rewarded for his works and died in penury, living off charity, in 1357.

The Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi (Firuz Shah's History) (1357) was an interpretation of the history of the Delhi Sultanate from the reign of Ghiyas ud din Balban to the first six years of the reign of Firuz Shah Tughluq. It studies the reigns of at least eight sultans and is the only existing historiographical text covering the period between 1266-1355. Barani not only wrote about monarchs and their political philosophies but also about the leading personalities, religious leaders, men of letters and various matters of the time. He widened the scope of history writing through the inclusion of socio-economic changes along with political events that took place in each reign. It contains accounts of kings and maliks, but also laws, government regulations, administrative affairs, precepts and advice. Because of this, he comments on the Mongols as a threat to the Sultans of Delhi.

Barani is an important source of information, describing the characteristics of various rulers and different reigns, but he was biased due to his political philosophy of Turkish supremacy, which he tried to propagate. Additionally, he did not pay careful attention to dates. This resulted in imprecise descriptions of Ala-ud-Din Khalji’s wars in Chittor, Ranthambhor and Malwa and the Deccan campaigns of Malik Kafur.

The Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi focuses on cities and towns within the Delhi Sultanate, but also gives geographical account of some places in the Bengal Sultanate such as Jajnagar, Sonargaon, Lakhnauti and Ekdala.