Muhammad bin Tughluq

Muhammad bin Tughluq was married to the daughter of the raja of Dipalpur.

The major part of his reign was spent engaged in warfare. In 1351 he was on his way to Thatta, Sindh in order to intervene a war between members of the Gujjar tribe, when he died enroute.

Muhammad bin Tughluq was born in 1300 in Kotla Tolay Khan in Multan as the eldest son of Turk Ghiyas-ud-din, the founder of the Tughluq dynasty. Not much is known about his childhood or early life.

Being a prince it is believed that he received a good education and was also trained in military administration and martial arts. It is known that he possessed an in-depth knowledge of the Quran, Muslim jurisprudence, astronomy, logic, philosophy, and medicine.

He grew up to be a courageous young man. His father sent him to quell the revolts by Hindu rajas in the city of Warangal in the Deccan in 1321-22. The prince bravely marched on and was successful in subduing the rebellion.

His father Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq returned from a successful military campaign in 1325 and was watching the parade of the elephants he got as war booty. All of a sudden, the stage he was seated on collapsed and he died in the freak accident. Some sources state that the sultan’s killing was planned by Prince Muhammad bin Tughluq though modern historians do not support this claim.

After the death of his father Muhammad bin Tughluq ascended to the throne as the second sultan of the Tughluq dynasty. Throughout his reign, he had to constantly contend with revolts and rebellions. He had to face and quell 22 rebellions, the most serious of which took place in the Deccan (1326, 1347), Maʿbar (tip of the Indian peninsula, 1334), Bengal (1338), Gujarat (1345), and Sindh (1350).

As sultan, he tried to enlist the support and services of the ulemas, the Muslim divines, and the sufis, the ascetic mystics. He planned to use the mystics’ prestigious position to help him in asserting his authority as a ruler. However the sufis and the ulemas declined to have any association with the government. On failing to get their support he started humiliating them and eventually drove them away from the towns of northern India.

A major step he took after claiming the crown was to transfer the capital from Delhi to Devagiri (now Daulatabad) in 1327. He believed that the move would aid him in consolidating the conquests in southern India and also protect the capital from Mogol invasions.

He ordered a large-scale migration of people from Delhi to Devagiri in 1328–29. The subjects were forced to travel a distance of 1,500 km to reach Devagiri. Contemporary historians like Barani, Ibn Battuta and Islamic gave a detailed and disturbing account of the events surrounding the shifting of the capital from Delhi to Devagiri.

One of the major steps he took as the sultan was his attempt to shift the capital from Delhi to Devagiri. For this he ordered mass migration of the citizens of Delhi to Devagiri which resulted in major losses for the city of Delhi which lost its previous glory. Even though this plan failed miserably, Daulatabad—as Devagiri became known later—became a major center of Islamic learning.