Appendix B.
PROVINCIAL GOVERNORS IN THE THIRTEENTH AND
FOURTEENTH CENTURIES1
THE words “Province” and “Governor” are used in Chapter II
to represent two groups of terms, which I take to be either
precisely synonymous, or else distinguished only by minor
differences, of no practical importance for our present purpose.
The first group is wilayat, wali. The word wildyat is used in the
chronicles in various senses, which can almost always be recog-
nised with certainty from the context : it may mean (I) a
definite portion of the kingdom, that is, a province; (2) an in-
definite portion of the kingdom, that is, a tract or region; (3) the
kingdom as a whole; (4) a foreign country; (5) the home-country
of a foreigner (in which last sense a derived form has recently
become naturalised in English as ““ Blighty”). Wali occasionally
means the ruler of a foreign country, but the ordinary sense is
Governor of a province of the kingdom, that is to say, a localised
officer serving directly under the orders of the King or his
Ministers.
So far as I know, it has never been suggested that the Wali
held anything but a bureaucratic position at this period, and the
word Governor represents it precisely, as is the case throughout
the history of Western Asia. The position is different in regard
to the second group of terms, igid, muqti (more precisely,
1qta‘’, mugti’). Various translators in the nineteenth century
rendered these terms by phrases appropriated from the feudal
system of Europe; their practice has been followed by some
recent writers, in whose pages we meet “fiefs,” “feudal chiefs,”
and such entities; and the ordinary reader is forced to conclude
that the organisation of the kingdom of Delhi was heterogeneous,
with some provinces ruled by bureaucratic Governors (Wali),
but most of the country held in portions (iqtd) by persons
(Miiqti), whose position resembled that of the barons of con-
temporary Europe. It is necessary, therefore to examine the
question whether these expressions represent the facts, or, in
1 The substance of this Appendix was printed in the Journal of Indian
History. April, 1028.
