THE 13tH AND 1418 CENTURIES 49 
other words, cultivation must have been curtailed, and the 
revenue correspondingly reduced.! 
Some years later, perhaps about 1332 the King returned 
for a time to Delhi (p. 479), leaving the capital still in the 
Deccan, and found that, as the result of the excessive 
exactions, the River Country was in disorder; stores of 
grain had been burnt, and the cattle had been removed 
from the villages. Such conduct, in the circumstances of 
the time, constituted rebellion, seeing that the primary duty 
of the peasants was to till the soil and pay the revenue; 
the country of the rebels was therefore ravaged under the 
King’s orders, many of the leading men were killed or 
blinded, and when Muhammad returned to the Deccan, 
we may safely infer that he left the River Country more 
unproductive than before.? 
Then, somewhere about the year 1337, came the restora- 
tion of Delhi as the capital (p. 481); and when the troops 
and the city-population returned, they found that supplies 
for them were not available, for, in the chronicler’s rhetoric, 
“not one-thousandth part” of the cultivation remained. 
The King endeavoured to reorganise production, and gave 
advances for the purpose, but at this juncture the rains 
failed, and nothing could be done. Eventually (p. 485), 
the King, together with his troops and most of the city 
population, moved to a camp on the Ganges, not far from 
Kanauj, where supplies could be obtained from the provinces 
of Karra and Awadh. After staying there for some years, 
Muhammad returned to Delhi,® and spent three years in 
administrative business, including (p. 498) an attempt to 
restore the River Country to prosperity. 
With this object a special Ministry was constituted, the 
region was divided into circles, and officials were posted to 
1 Barni does not say how the enhanced assessment was made in the 
River Country at the time, though he mentions that cesses were imposed 
in the process. A later chronicle, T. Mubarakshahi, says it was by Measure- 
ment, and this is not improbable (Or. 5318, f. 34r.). 
2 Ibn Batiita arrived at Delhi in 1334 (iii. 91, 144). Ihe King was then 
at Kanauj, where he went after the River Country had been ravaged. so 
that probably this took place in 1333. 
3 On the data given by Ibn Batiita (iii. 338, 356), the date of the King's 
return would be about 1341. He was at Delhi when the Khalifa’s envoy 
arrived in 1343 (Barni, 492). Ibn Batata left Delhi in 1342, and his narra- 
tive then ceases to be of use for chronological purposes.