Person · Delhi Sultan and builder
Firuz Shah Tughlaq
Also known as Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq, Firoz Shah Tughlaq, Feroz Shah Tughlaq, Nasir al-Din Firuz Shah, Firuz III, Firuz Shah
The third Tughlaq Sultan of Delhi, who succeeded his cousin Muhammad bin Tughlaq in 1351 and ruled until 1388. He set out to avoid his cousin's mistakes, lowering land taxes and making offices hereditary, and is remembered as a builder of cities, among them Firozabad, Hisar and Jaunpur, and of five canals and the Hauz Khas madrasa. He hauled two Ashokan pillars to Delhi and repaired the Qutb Minar, yet enforced Sharia harshly, persecuting Hindus and sects his theologians called heretical.
- Date
- 1309–1388
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Tughlaq
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Nobody at his court could read the Brahmi inscription on the Topra pillar he re-erected at Firozabad in 1356; James Prinsep deciphered it in 1837. Timur, who took Delhi ten years after Firuz's death, admired Firuz's Jami Masjid there enough to build a mosque in Samarkand on its model.
Wikipedia's Firuz Shah Tughlaq article says he died aged 78 or 79, while its Hauz Khas Complex article says ninety; the same biography notes that contemporary sources call him only Firuz Shah, 'Tughlaq' being a modern addition.
Connections (5)
- BuiltFiroz Shah Kotla & the Topra pillar
Firuz founded Firozabad as the new capital of the Delhi Sultanate in about 1354, with the Kotla as its citadel. In 1356 he set up, on a three-tiered arcaded pavilion beside the congregational mosque, an Ashokan pillar brought from Topra in Yamunanagar district; it was wrapped in cotton and silk, laid on reeds, drawn on a forty-two-wheeled carriage and carried on by boat, and a second pillar came from Meerut the same way. There had been a plan to break it up for a minaret; Firuz chose to stand it upright.
- Buried atHauz Khas
Firuz re-excavated Alauddin Khalji's silted royal tank at Hauz Khas, cleared its inlet channels, and between 1352 and 1354 built an L-shaped madrasa, a small mosque and his own tomb along its banks, the tomb at the angle where the two wings meet. The Firuz Shahi madrasa was counted among the largest and best-equipped Islamic seminaries anywhere. He was buried there in 1388, and Timur, camping by the tank ten years later, described the reservoir as the work of Sultan Feruz Shah.
- Succession in timeMuhammad bin Tughlaq
Firuz and his cousin Muhammad bin Tughlaq were both raised and trained in statecraft by Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, and under Muhammad Firuz served as deputy lord chamberlain commanding twelve thousand horse. When Muhammad died at Thatta in 1351, Firuz was proclaimed on 23 March on the bank of the Indus, beat off a Mongol raid, and marched on Delhi, where a minister had enthroned a boy said to be Muhammad's son. As sultan he set out to avoid his cousin's mistakes, lowering the land taxes Muhammad had raised.
- PatronageQutb Minar
When lightning struck the Qutb Minar in 1368 and knocked off its top storey, Firuz replaced it with the two floors that stand today, faced with red sandstone and white marble. The repair fits a wider habit: Wikipedia's account of Hauz Khas credits him with a keen sense of historical precedent and of the power of monumental building, and with restoring older monuments including the Qutb Minar, Sultan Ghari and Suraj Kund alongside his new mosques, palaces and irrigation works. His storeys remain the top of the tower.
- FoundedJaunpur Sharqi ensemble
On his second Bengal expedition in 1358, marching against the Ilyas Shahi rulers of Bengal to restore the exiled Zafar Khan of Sonargaon, Firuz founded the city of Jaunpur and named it after his cousin and predecessor Muhammad bin Tughluq. The sources list Jaunpur among several towns he founded, with Firozpur, Hisar, Hansi, Firozabad and Fatehabad, part of a building programme of new cities, more than three hundred villages, five canals, rest houses and gardens that defines his reign.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Firuz Shah Tughlaq", "Feroz Shah Kotla", "Hauz Khas Complex". H. M. Elliot (trans.), Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi of Shams-i Siraj Afif; Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (1999).
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