Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/200

 164 MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK AND FIROZ SHAH for writing, which were as follows: " My desire is that I should, to the best of my power, recount and pay my thanks for the many blessings which God has bestowed upon me, so that I may be numbered among His grateful servants." The royal author then proceeds to show in a dozen different ways the clemency and justice of his rule. One of his first reforms was to abolish the barbarous methods of punishment which had prevailed under his predecessors. His sense of justice was next shown by a re-arrangement of taxes upon grounds of greater equity, and his Moslem orthodoxy was manifested by his strengthening the hold of his subjects upon the Religion of the Prophet and repressing idolatry, while his common sense was indicated by his introducing at court a simpler manner of living and by exemplifying it himself. But most striking of all, perhaps, was his enthusiasm for building and for restoring structures that had fallen into decay. His own words justify his title to be called Firoz the Builder, and, judging from what follows, we might add, Firoz the Wise. ' Among the gifts which God bestowed upon me, His humble servant, was a desire to erect public build- ings. So I built many mosques and colleges and mon- asteries, that the learned and the elders, the devout and the holy, might worship God in these edifices and aid the kind builder with their prayers. The digging of canals, the planting of trees, and the endowing with lands are in accordance with the directions of the Law of Islam. The learned doctors of the Law of Islam