Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/190

GOLD COIN OF FIROZ, STRUCK AT AHSANABAD, 807 A.H. (1404-1405 A. D.). CHAPTER VIII SOME MEASUEES OF MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK AND OF FIEOZ SHAH MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK SHAH (1325 - 1351 A. D.) was a man of ideas, but his innovations and reforms were a failure, and the schemes which he sought to carry out resulted only in making him un- popular. His reign was one of the most unsuccessful in the entire history of India, and reasons for this fact may be gathered from a half-dozen of his measures which are described by the historian Barani, who lived under Taghlak's rule and under that of Firoz Shah, his successor. The illustrations are significant enough to show the view of a contemporary, and that, too, of one who was close to the throne during the emperor's entire reign. He writes as follows regarding some of the monarch's ill-considered plans. ' Sultan Mohammad Taghlak planned in his own heart three or four projects by which the whole of the habitable world was to be brought under the rule of his servants, but he never talked over these projects with any of his counsellors and friends. Whatever he 154