56 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Bartema, who travelled in the early part of the sixteenth century. The former in particular describes Cambay as a remarkably well-built city, situated in a beautiful country, filled with merchants of all nations, and with artisans and manufacturers like those of Flanders. Caesar Frederic gives a similar account of Guzerat, and Ibne-Batuta, who travelled during the anarchy and oppression of Mohammed Tagluk’s reign, in the middle of the fifteenth century, when insurrections were reigning in most parts of the country, enumerates many large and populous towns and cities, and gives a high impression of the state in which the country must have been before it fell into disorder.”
Baber, the founder of the Moghul dynasty in India found the country in a prosperous condition and was surprised at the immense population and the innumerable artisans everywhere. He was a benevolent ruler and public works marked his statesmanship. Sher Shah who temporarily wrested the throne from the Moghul was excepting Akabar, the greatest of Mohomedan rulers and like Baber executed many public works.
Akabar’s benevolent administration is too well known to need any mention.
The rule of Shah Jehan who “reigned not so much as a king over his subjects, but rather as a father over his family” was marked by the greatest prosperity; his reign was the most tranquil.
Speaking of the condition of the people in the dominions of the Marathas who were contemporaries of the later Moghuls a traveller says, “from Surat, I passed the Ghats, and when I entered the country of the Maharattas, I thought myself in the midst of the simplicity and happiness of the golden age where nature was yet unchanged, and war and misery were unknown. The people were cheerful, vigourous, and in high health, and unbounded hospitality was a universal virtue ; every door was open, and friends, neighbours and strangers, were alike welcome to whatever they found.”
With regard to the economic condition of the people in Southern India which was under the rule of Tipoo, a historian