Political Expediency and Realism in Zia-Ul-Barani’s Thought

The Delhi Sultanate was not a settled empire with stable institutions. It was a state constantly under pressure-from peasant revolts, ambitious nobles, and a ruling class that was still figuring out how to hold power over a vast and diverse population. It was in this environment that Ziauddin Barani (1285-1357), a court historian and political theorist, developed a theory of governance that prized survival and stability over rigid principle. Barani is often labelled a conservative, even a bigot, yet his political writing reveals a thinker deeply concerned with what actually works in the messy business of ruling. His emphasis on political expediency and realism makes him one of medieval India’s most fascinating-and most contradictory-political minds.

Who was Ziauddin Barani? 🔗

Barani came from a family closely tied to the Sultans of Delhi. His father and grandfather held administrative posts, and Barani himself spent seventeen years at court as the nadim (companion) of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq. He lived through the reigns of several rulers, from Ghiyasuddin Balban to Firuz Shah Tughluq, witnessing first-hand how kings rose, struggled, and fell. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was the first known Muslim to write a history of India.

His two major works define his legacy. The Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi is a history of the Sultanate, while the Fatawa-i-Jahandari is a treatise on statecraft written as a series of twenty-four pieces of advice (nasihat) for Muslim kings. The Fatawa-i-Jahandari is frequently compared to Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Machiavelli’s The Prince because all three texts focus on the hard realities of acquiring and keeping power rather than on idealised visions of the perfect society.

What do political expediency and realism mean? 🔗

Political expediency refers to making decisions because they are useful or advantageous, often prioritising practical benefit over strict moral or ideological consistency. Political realism is the approach of dealing with situations as they actually are-based on material conditions and power relations-rather than how they ought to be in theory.

For Barani, these were not abstract philosophical positions. They were tools for keeping a fragile state intact. He understood that a ruler who insisted on perfect adherence to religious or moral ideals, while his kingdom collapsed around him, was a failure. A good ruler, in Barani’s view, was one who could adapt, compromise, and act decisively to preserve order.

The turbulent context that shaped his thought 🔗

To understand why Barani thought the way he did, you have to understand the instability of the world he lived in. The Sultanate faced three persistent problems that pushed his thinking towards realism.

Peasant revolts 🔗

Rural uprisings were a recurring threat to the Sultanate’s authority. The most significant was the peasant revolt of the Doab region around 1330, which deeply influenced Barani’s focus on the security of the state. When the agrarian base of the economy was in revolt, revenue collapsed and the entire structure of the state was endangered. Barani concluded that the priority of any ruler had to be the preservation of stability, even where that required harsh or unconventional measures.

A transitioning ruling class 🔗

The composition of the nobility was changing. Barani strongly believed in the hereditary status of the traditional Turkish aristocracy, whom he considered intrinsically superior, and he was deeply uneasy about the rise of “low-born” men into positions of influence. His disdain for low-born elites reflected his anxiety that a state without a stable, well-defined ruling class would descend into chaos. This conservative instinct sat alongside his realism: both flowed from the same fear of disorder.

Weak foundations of kingship 🔗

The Sultans of Delhi possessed military power but lacked a strong, accepted theoretical basis for their authority. They had no deep moral, religious, or political legitimacy to justify their rule over the masses. Barani’s writing was, in part, an attempt to supply that missing foundation-to give kingship a rationale that subjects would accept and that rulers could use to govern effectively.

Zawabit and Shariat: the heart of Barani’s realism 🔗

The clearest expression of Barani’s political expediency lies in his distinction between two kinds of law. This is arguably his most important and original contribution.

Shariat was the divine law derived from the Quran and the practice of the Prophet and the pious Caliphs-the ideal religious framework every Muslim ruler was supposed to uphold. But Barani recognised that the Shariat, formulated in a different time and place, could not address every problem a king faced in a complex, diverse empire like the Delhi Sultanate.

So he introduced the concept of Zawabit-state laws made by the monarch, in consultation with the nobility, to meet new circumstances that the Shariat could not cover. As historical accounts of his thought explain, the Zawabit were practical regulations designed to serve the welfare of the state and its people. This dual legal structure allowed a ruler to remain religiously legitimate while still possessing the flexibility to govern realistically.

The four conditions for Zawabit 🔗

Barani did not give rulers unlimited freedom. He laid down four guidelines for framing Zawabit, showing that even his pragmatism had moral boundaries. The Zawabit should not negate the Shariat; they should increase loyalty and hope among the nobles and common people towards the Sultan; their source and inspiration should be the Shariat and the pious Caliphs; and if exigencies forced a ruler to act against the Shariat, this should be balanced by charity and compensation.

This last point is striking. If, for example, economic pressure forced the state to levy taxes beyond what religious law permitted, the ruler was expected to set up charitable institutions or provide extra support to the poor to offset the burden. Expediency, for Barani, was not the same as pure opportunism-it was practical action guided by moral responsibility.

When state law overrides religious law 🔗

Perhaps the boldest aspect of Barani’s realism is his position that in cases of genuine conflict, the state law could override the Shariat. The scholar Mohammad Habib, who translated and analysed the Fatawa-i-Jahandari, concluded that the foundation of the state Barani described was essentially non-theocratic. The basis of governance was not the Shariat but the Zawabit framed by the king for the welfare of the state. This is a remarkably pragmatic stance for a thinker so often dismissed as a rigid fundamentalist.

The separation of personal and political life 🔗

Barani made another distinction that reveals his realism: he separated the personal life of the Sultan from his political role. A ruler might fall short in his private religious observance, but what mattered for the state was his conduct as a king. Barani accepted that monarchy itself was, philosophically, contrary to the ideals of Islam-yet he endorsed it anyway because it was a political necessity in the conditions of his time.

This willingness to accept an “un-Islamic” institution because reality demanded it is the essence of political realism. Barani was not describing the perfect Islamic polity; he was describing the polity that could actually survive.

Flexibility and moderation within a conservative frame 🔗

Barani’s reputation as a conservative is well earned. He held harsh views on Hindus, advocated suppressing rebellious elites, and opposed education for the underprivileged-all as strategies to consolidate the power of the Muslim ruling class. Yet labelling him purely as a hardliner misses the genuine flexibility in his thought.

He tolerated laxity in religious observance so long as it did not threaten the stability of the state. He recognised that the Sultans of India had in practice behaved moderately towards their non-Muslim subjects, and he accepted the existence of customary justice. According to scholarly readings of his work, his ideal ruler was expected to display pragmatism, moderation, toleration, and patience alongside justice and beneficence.

In other words, Barani’s conservatism and his realism were two sides of the same coin. Both were oriented towards a single goal: the preservation of a stable, orderly state. When religious orthodoxy served that goal, he embraced it. When it obstructed effective governance, he was prepared to set it aside through the instrument of Zawabit.

Why Barani still matters 🔗

Barani’s central question-how does a ruler balance ideal principles with the practical demands of governing-has never gone away. Every government that must reconcile its founding values with the messy compromises of real politics is wrestling with a version of Barani’s dilemma. His framework of a higher law of principle existing alongside a flexible body of practical legislation echoes, in a rough way, the tension between constitutional ideals and the everyday bargaining of democratic politics.

Reading Barani is also a useful corrective to the habit of sorting thinkers into neat boxes. He was a conservative who undermined the supremacy of religious law in favour of secular state law. He was a realist who still insisted that expediency be tempered by moral responsibility. These contradictions are not flaws in his thought-they are the marks of a mind genuinely grappling with the impossible task of governing an unstable medieval empire.

What do you think? Was Barani’s willingness to let state law override religious law a betrayal of his principles, or a sign of intellectual honesty about how power really works? And in a modern democracy, where should the line be drawn between practical expediency and the fundamental values a government claims to stand for?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ziya-al-Din-Barani
2. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/84183/3/Unit-12.pdf
3. https://www.scribd.com/document/516186531/abul-fazl-and-barani
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziauddin_Barani
5. https://www.academia.edu/38019737/Fatawa_ye_jahandari_Hybrid_Political_Theory_in_the_Delhi_Sultanate_Perso_Islamic_and_Endogenous_Traditions_of_Statecraft_in_India_
6. https://www.academia.edu/37809718/Ziauddin_Baranis_Ideal_Sultan_and_Ideal_Polity