Feroz Shah Tughlaq

Two 1,600-year-old stone pillars were dragged across North India on a 42-wheeled carriage.

This article covers Feroz Shah Tughlaq, a Sultan remembered for canals and monuments more than conquest.

1. Accession and a New Direction

1.1 What kind of reign did Feroz Shah inherit?

Feroz Shah Tughlaq ruled from 1351 to 1388 CE, succeeding his cousin Muhammad bin Tughlaq. That reign had been chaotic: a forced capital shift to Daulatabad, a failed token-currency experiment, and a disastrous Himalayan campaign. The Tughlaq dynasty itself had been founded decades earlier by Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, Muhammad’s father.

1.2 How did Feroz Shah change course?

Feroz Shah took a more conservative, welfare-focused path instead. He replaced risky experiments with steady public works: canals, welfare departments, and new towns. Where his cousin had gambled on bold, empire-wide schemes, Feroz Shah built things that lasted, quite literally, for centuries.

2. Canals and Irrigation Works

2.1 What made his canal network so significant?

Feroz Shah is remembered as one of medieval India’s great canal-builders, sometimes called the “Father of Irrigation.” He built five major canals, watering large tracts of dry land in what is now Haryana and Punjab.

• Two large canals ran from Karnal: one from the Yamuna, called Rajabwah after his father Rajab, and one from the Sutlej, called Ulughkhani; both fed his new city of Hisar.
• A further stretch linked the two river systems: the roughly 120 km Sultanpur canal connected the Yamuna and the Sutlej.
• The longest single canal ran to Hansi: close to 200 km from the Sutlej, among the longest waterways built by a single medieval Indian ruler.

2.2 Did any of this survive him?

Parts of this network survived for centuries. Mughal emperor Akbar had the Yamuna canal repaired, and in 1817 the British restored it again as the Western Yamuna Canal, still in use today. Few medieval infrastructure projects anywhere left that long a footprint.

3. Religious Policy and the Jizya

3.1 How did his religious policy differ from earlier Sultans?

Feroz Shah took a stricter, more orthodox line on religious policy than several earlier Delhi Sultans. He was the first Sultan to impose Jizya on Brahmins. Earlier rulers had generally exempted Brahmins from this tax on non-Muslims, treating them as a scholarly class. He also made Jizya a separately assessed tax, rather than a charge folded into other levies, a more systematic approach than earlier practice.

3.2 What do contemporary sources say about this policy?

Contemporary chronicles, including those of court historian Ziauddin Barani, record his enforcement of this policy. They also record the destruction of some Hindu temples and idols during his reign. Historians treat this as a real hardening of religious policy compared to several of his predecessors, not simply a continuation of existing practice.

4. Welfare, Towns and Public Works

4.1 What welfare institutions did he create?

He created Diwan-i-Khairat, a charity department that funded marriages for poor Muslim girls, and Diwan-i-Bandagan, a department managing his large establishment of slaves. He also destroyed official records of farmer debts, effectively cancelling them, part of his broader public-welfare focus.

4.2 What did he build, and where did the Ashokan pillars come from?

He founded four new towns: Jaunpur, Hisar, Fatehabad, and Firozabad. His palace complex at Firozabad, Feroz Shah Kotla, still stands in Delhi today.

In 1356 CE, he transported two ancient pillars originally erected by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka to Delhi. Workers padded one pillar with silk cotton as it was lowered, wrapped it in reeds and raw hides for protection, then hauled it on a special 42-wheeled carriage. One pillar stands today at Feroz Shah Kotla.

5. Legacy and Contradictions

5.1 How should we weigh his achievements?

Feroz Shah’s reign followed Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s turbulent experiments almost deliberately. Canals, welfare departments, and monuments replaced token currency, forced migrations, and failed campaigns. Moving 1,600-year-old stone pillars across hundreds of kilometres, without modern machinery, was itself a major engineering feat. It shows real state capacity, even when directed at symbolism rather than conquest.

5.2 What contradiction sits at the centre of this reign?

His welfare measures and his religious intolerance sat side by side in the same reign. A ruler funding poor girls’ marriages was also the first to tax Brahmins and destroy temples, a real contradiction worth holding onto rather than resolving. And his public-works legacy did not protect his dynasty: succession disputes after his 1388 death weakened the Tughlaqs badly, leaving them vulnerable within decades to Timur’s invasion and the dynasty’s eventual collapse.

6. What the PYQs Keep Testing

6.1 What did CDS (II) 2021 ask about the pillar’s journey?

CDS (II) 2021 asked which chronicle contains a painted illustration of the moving of the Ashoka Pillar at Topra. The answer is Sirat-i-Firuz Shahi, not Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, the Akbar Nama, or the Ain-i-Akbari, each a genuine but unrelated or later chronicle. Source: CDS (II) 2021, General Knowledge (see Q57).