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.