20 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
it regularly in practice; Muhammad Tughlaq combined 
extraordinary subservience to the Khalifa with systematic 
and gross breaches of Islamic law; and it is only in Firdiz 
that we meet a ruler who regularly sought guidance from 
jurists, and framed his policy in accordance with their 
rulings. As will be explained in the next chapter, we have 
no record of the actual circumstances attending the assump- 
tion of fiscal authority by the Moslem conquerors, but the 
facts which have been stated lend probability to the view 
that, at any rate, it was not dominated by meticulous 
ecclesiastics. 
The reader will perhaps ask if the concurrence of the 
Hindu and Moslem systems is a fortuitous coincidence, or 
can be explained on historical grounds. I cannot give a 
definite answer, but the latter alternative seems to me to be 
more probable. Tithe-land is definitely an Arabian insti- 
tution, but the rules regarding tribute-land appear to have 
been worked out to meet the situation arising from the 
Moslem conquests towards the East; and it would not be 
matter for surprise if the indigenous institutions of those 
regions resembled those of India. The question must, 
however, be left to students of the pre-Islamic history of 
Persia and Iraq, a subject of which I have no knowledge.