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BACKGROUND: Ẕiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī, Baranī also spelled Barni, the first known Muslim to write a history of India. He resided for 17 years at Delhi as nadim (boon companion) of Sultan Muḥammad ibn Tughluq.
Using mainly hearsay evidence and his personal experiences at court, Baranī in 1357 wrote the Tārīkh-e Fīrūz Shāhī (“History of Fīrūz Shāh”), a didactic work setting down the duties of the Indian sultan toward Islam. In his Fatawā-ye jahāndārī (“Rulings on Temporal Government”), influenced by Sufī mysticism, he expounded a religious philosophy of history that viewed the events in the lives of great men as manifestations of divine providence. According to Baranī, the Delhi sultans who had followed his guidelines for the good Islamic ruler had prospered, while those who had deviated from those precepts had failed.
The Muslim king will not be able to establish the honour of theism (tauhid) and the supremacy of the Islam unless he strives with all his courage to overthrow infidelity and to slaughter its leaders (imams), who in India are the Brahmans. He should make a firm resolve to overpower, capture, enslave and degrade the infidels. All the strength and power of the king and of the holy warriors of Islam should be concentrated in holy campaigns and holy wars; and they should risk themselves in the enterprise so that the true Faith may uproot the false creeds, and then it will look as if these false creeds had never existed because they have been deprived of all their glamour. On the other hand, if the Muslim king, in spite of the power and position which God has given him, is merely content to take the poll-tax (jizya) and tribute (kharaj) from the Hindus and preserves both infidels and infidelity and refuses to risk his power in attempting to overthrow them, what differences will there be in this respect between the kings of Islam and the [Kings] of the infidels? For the [Kings] of the infidels also exact the poll-tax (jizya) and the tribute (kharaj) from the Hindus, who belong to their own false creed, and fill their treasuries with money so obtained; in fact, they collect a hundred times more taxes.
Sons of Mahmud and kings of Islam! You should with all your royal determination apply yourself to uprooting and disgracing infidels, polytheists, and men of bad dogmas and bad religions, if you wish that you may not have to be ashamed before God and his Prophets and that in your record of life—concerning what you have said and done, the clothes you have worn, and the food you have eaten— they may write good instead of evil. You should consider the enemies of God and His Faith to be your enemies and you should risk your power and authority in overthrowing them, so that you may win the approval of God and the Prophet Mohammad and of all prophets and saints. You should not content yourself merely with levying the poll-tax and the tribute from the infidels and you should not allow infidelity to be preserved in spite of your royal power and authority. You should strive day and night for the degradation of infidelity so that (on the Day of Judgment) you may be raised (from your graves) among the prophets and be blessed with the sight of God for all eternity and "may find a seat among the truthful near the Powerful King of (God)."
The majority of religious scholars and wise men of early (Islamic) as well as later time have been sure that if Muslim kings strive with all their might and power and the power of all their supporters on this path, the following objects will be true Faith will gain a proper ascendancy over the false creeds; the True Word will be honored; the traditions of infidelity and polytheism will be weakened; [Muslims] will be favored and honored, infidels and men of bad faith will be faced with destitution and disgrace; the orders of the unlawful state and the opposed creeds will be erased; the laws of the Shari'a will be enforced on the seventy-two communities; and the enemies of God and the Prophet will be condemned, banished, repudiated, and terrorized.
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