The Role of Elites in Zia-Ul-Barani’s Concept of Justice

Justice is usually imagined as blind-weighing every case equally regardless of who stands before the court. But in the political writings of Ziauddin Barani, the medieval thinker of the Delhi Sultanate, justice wore a very different face. Far from being neutral, his system of justice was deliberately tilted toward the noble-born and openly contemptuous of those he considered low-born. To understand why a court historian would build such a lopsided theory, we need to look at who Barani was, whose interests he served, and how he turned the noble idea of justice into a tool for protecting a ruling class.

Who was Ziauddin Barani? 🔗

Ziauddin Barani (1285-1357) was a political thinker and historian who served as a nadim (close companion) of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq. He is remembered chiefly for two works: the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, a history of the Delhi Sultans, and the Fatawa-i-Jahandari, a treatise of political advice for Muslim rulers written around 1357. Barani was not an outside observer of the court-he was born into a family of scholars and petty officials and rose to become a confidant of the Sultan, only to spend his final years in poverty after falling out of favour.

This background matters enormously. Barani wrote as a member of the aristocratic class, and his writings reflect both the official ideology of the ruling elite and their anxieties when that position was threatened. His political thought is often compared to Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Machiavelli’s The Prince, because like them he focused on the practical machinery of holding power rather than abstract morality alone.

The high-born and the low-born 🔗

The foundation of Barani’s worldview was a rigid division of society into two camps. On one side stood the ashraf-the high-born-comprising nobles, scholars, and those who could trace descent from respectable families. On the other stood the ajlaf or kam-asl-the low-born-which, according to accounts of his thought, included artisans, weavers, peasants, and labourers, regardless of their wealth or talent.

For Barani, this distinction was not a matter of social convenience. He treated it as divinely ordained and essential for maintaining order. Membership in the elite was decided by birth alone. A person of humble origin might become wealthy or accomplished, yet in Barani’s eyes they would remain unfit for high status. This belief in inherited worth is the thread that runs through everything he wrote about governance, education, and justice.

Contempt for the underprivileged 🔗

Barani’s attitude toward the low-born went well beyond polite preference. His writings describe the acts of the ajlaf in deeply derogatory terms, associating meanness and ignominy with low birth itself. He developed an elaborate scheme for promoting and demoting state officers based largely on lineage. In his ideal arrangement, the low-born were to be kept firmly in their place, denied both office and influence.

Education as a privilege of the elite 🔗

One of the clearest expressions of Barani’s elitism appears in his views on learning. He argued that advanced education-particularly in religious and philosophical subjects-should be reserved for the high-born. According to summaries of the Fatawa-i-Jahandari, he opposed allowing children of low-born families to study in madrasas, fearing that knowledge in common hands would disrupt the social order.

The logic here is revealing. Education was understood as a form of power. By restricting access to it, the aristocracy could ensure that intellectual and spiritual authority stayed within its own ranks. Barani worried that educated commoners might begin to question established authority or challenge the hierarchy that placed nobles above everyone else. Keeping knowledge exclusive was, in effect, a way of keeping power exclusive.

Justice tilted toward the powerful 🔗

Barani placed justice at the very centre of his theory of kingship. He insisted that the real justification for a king’s supremacy lay in the need to enforce justice, and that one of the Sultan’s first duties was to appoint judges and protect the lives, property, and families of his subjects. On paper, this sounds admirably even-handed.

In practice, however, his conception of justice was strongly tilted in favour of the rich and powerful, with a clear bias against the underprivileged. The protections he emphasised mattered most to those who actually owned property and held office-the very elite he belonged to. Justice, in Barani’s hands, became less a guarantee for ordinary people and more a mechanism for preserving the security and standing of the ruling class.

Justice as a facade for stability 🔗

This is where Barani’s thought becomes most pointed. Scholars who have examined the Fatawa-i-Jahandari note that it served to consolidate the elite within the Sultanate, using justice as a facade to maintain the monarchy. The language of fairness lent the regime moral legitimacy, while the substance of policy protected the interests of nobles and the throne.

The historian Irfan Habib captured this exclusionary vision sharply. In his reading, Barani believed the state should govern through pomp and ceremony and should preserve the exclusiveness of the ruling class by barring admission to any low-born persons, whether Muslim or Hindu. Justice was thus woven into a larger project of guarding the boundaries of the elite.

Justice and the question of political obligation 🔗

Why did Barani care so much about justice if his real aim was elite control? The answer lies in the problem of political obligation-the question of why subjects should obey their ruler. In the early Delhi Sultanate, Islamic rule rested on a narrow social base, and the Sultan needed a way to bind a diverse population to the monarchy.

Delivering justice was one such binding force. The supremacy of the Sultan and the safety of the Sultanate could not be secured without offering subjects at least the appearance of justice. By presenting the ruler as the source and guarantor of justice, Barani gave people a reason to accept the monarchy’s authority. Religion served a similar purpose: in the absence of a developed civil society, shared faith helped widen the base of political obligation toward the monarchy. Justice and religion, woven together, became instruments for legitimising and stabilising elite rule.

Zawabit and the practical state 🔗

Barani did make a genuine contribution to political theory through his concept of Zawabit-state laws framed by the monarch, in consultation with the nobility, to meet practical needs that religious law alone could not address. According to analyses of the Fatawa, Barani held that state laws would override the Shari’at in cases of conflict, giving his theory a surprisingly pragmatic, even secular, edge in matters of revenue, trade, and administration. Yet even this innovation was shaped by elite interest: the Zawabit were created with the nobility, for the smooth functioning of a state the nobility dominated.

When reality refused to follow theory 🔗

One striking irony is that Barani’s own Sultanate did not actually follow his elitist prescriptions. He bitterly criticised the Tughlaq rulers for appointing low-born people to high office. His patron Firoz Shah Tughluq even appointed a former slave, converted to Islam, as his grand vizier-exactly the kind of social mobility Barani despised.

This gap between Barani’s ideal and the practical politics of his day is telling. The Sultanate needed talent and loyalty wherever it could find them, and capable individuals of humble birth often rose to power. Barani’s writings, with their insistence on noble blood, read partly as the frustrated protest of an aristocrat watching his class lose its monopoly. His conservatism ultimately left him out of step with the realities of governance, contributing to his fall from favour.

Why Barani still matters 🔗

Reading Barani today is uncomfortable but instructive. His thought shows how the vocabulary of justice can be captured by a privileged group and turned into a defence of inequality. The same words-justice, order, merit-can mean very different things depending on who is using them and whose interests they protect. Barani also reminds us that ideas about social hierarchy are not natural facts but arguments made by particular people in particular circumstances, often to defend their own advantages.

For students of political thought, his work offers a valuable case study in how legitimacy is manufactured. The Sultan needed obedience; Barani supplied a theory that made obedience appear just. The elite needed protection; Barani supplied a justice that protected them. Understanding this helps us read more critically whenever any system claims to serve everyone while quietly serving a few.

What do you think? If justice in Barani’s hands became a tool to protect the powerful, how do we recognise the same pattern when it appears in modern legal and political systems? And can a concept of justice built around inherited privilege ever be reformed into something genuinely fair, or must it be replaced entirely?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Sultanate
2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/097194589900200102
3. https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/01/25/society-under-the-delhi-sultanat/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_among_South_Asian_Muslims
5. https://poliprephub.in/ugc-net/indian-political-thought-barani/
6. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/university-of-delhi/indian-political-thought-i/barani-complete-answer/26465000
7. https://thebooknotes.in/zia-barani-good-sultan-and-ideal-polity/
8. https://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/arthashastra-of-kautilya-and-fatawa-i-jahandari-of-ziauddin-barani-analysis-old-and-rare-book-nao737/