Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/192

 166 MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK AND FIROZ SHAH and territories and districts which had been securely settled were lost. When the Sultan found that his projects did not work so well as he desired, he became still more embit- tered against his people. He .punished them and cut them down like weeds. So many hired wretches were ready to slaughter true and orthodox Mussulmans as had never before been created from the day of Adam. If the twenty prophets of Islam had been given into the hands of these minions, I verily believe that they would not have allowed them to live one night. The first project which the Sultan formed, and which operated to the ruin of the country and the distress of the people, was based on the idea that he ought to get five or ten per cent, more tribute from the lands in the Doab than heretofore. To accomplish this he invented some oppressive taxes, and made stop- pages from the land-revenues until the backs of the peasants were broken. The taxes were collected so rigorously that the peasants were impoverished and reduced to beggary. Those who were rich and had property became rebels, the lands were ruined, and cultivation was entirely arrested. When the peasants in distant countries heard of the distress and ruin of the farmers in the Doab, through fear of the same evil befalling them, they threw off their allegiance and betook themselves to the jun- gles. The decline of cultivation and the distress of the peasants in the Doab, combined with the failure of convoys of corn from Hindustan, produced a fatal