Vol 4 No 4 | Jan-Mar 2025

Chasing Utopia: The Road to Daulatabad

Story by Mohd Salman | Art by Mad Paule

 

(Not) on the Money
Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1290 – 20 March 1351) was the eighteenth Sultan of Delhi, who reigned from February 1325 until his death in 1351. He not a subtle man. His off-the-rails schemes gained him epithets such as the Eccentric Prince and the Mad Sultan. When he failed, as we saw in this story, he failed spectacularly. Another one of his iconic experiments was the introduction of brass and copper coins to replace gold and silver.

The Sultan was ambitious, and all his grand plans were expensive. Arranging enough gold and silver to keep his coffers full and pay his artisans, administrators and soldiers was a daunting task. He decided to mint coins using less precious metals and assure his citizens that this token currency would carry the same value as the original coins made of precious metals. This was a less sophisticated time, however, and forgeries were rampant. Unlike gold and silver, the ordinary citizen had a harder time detecting which of the new coins were fake.

Here’s the story of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, as the traveller Ibn Battuta saw it:

 

A family trait
A failed attempt at building a new capital is something Muhammad bin Tughlaq inherited from his father. In the south-eastern corner of the national capital lie the imposing stone ramparts of Tughlaqabad, built during the reign of Sultan Ghiyasuddin, the founder of the Tughlaq dynasty.

The legend goes that the rocky, hilly site was chosen by the elder Tughlaq so that it would be easier to defend. The citadel took four years to build, but it was never fully populated, and was abandoned 15 years later.

A shortage of water is one of the more likely reasons for the desertion of Tughlaqabad, but a more interesting story talks about a tussle between the sultan and the great Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. At the time of Tughlaqabad’s construction, Hazrat Nizamuddin had commissioned a baoli (stepwell) in Delhi. The sultan and the saint clashed over the availability of workers, causing the latter to curse the new capital. Thousands throng the saint’s dargah and the adjoining baoli to this day, while the ruins of Tughlaqabad are an uncharacteristically quiet, desolate corner of a very noisy, vibrant city.

 

Who is a Utopia for?
It is easy to believe that wide roads, large markets, lots of places for study and recreation, monuments and public amenities are what make cities. The great cities of the world, however, owe their existence to the people who migrated there with dreams in their eyes and determination in their hearts. The story of every remarkable city begins with a small settlement near a source of water, food or trade, which attracted others from near and far, who built it together into a marvel of civilisation. And yet, countries round the world continue to try and force cities to sprout from uninhabited land. Aamby Valley and Lavasa in Maharashtra are replica European cities built for the rich which have beoame cautionary tales of what happens when cities are founded with little vision or purpose.

On the other hand, we have Amaravati in south India, the new capital for Andhra Pradesh, after it lost Hyderabad to the newly-created state of Telangana. As a city born in the 21st century, will it provide all its residents, regardless of who they are, a life of dignity and comfort? We can hope!

On Amaravati:

 

Then there is The Line in Saudi Arabia, envisioned as a linear smart city 170 kilometres long and 200 metres wide, housed in a single building. It is claimed that The Line will run completely on renewable energy and provide all residents with essential facilities no further than five minutes’ walk away.

The problem with such a vision is that cities are places for human ingenuity to run free, for our individuality to be expressed fully. Cities grow out of the land, not in defiance of it. There are reports already of the initial phase of The Line being much smaller than originally planned, with only 5km of the city to be completed by 2030.

The problems with Neom/The Line: