134 MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK AND FIROZ SHAH able. Ibn Batuta knew him well in the latter part of his reign, and was well able to judge his character. This is his portrait of the Sultan: " This king is of all men the one who most loves to dispense gifts and to shed blood. His gateway is never free from a beggar whom he has relieved and a corpse which he has slain. Tales are spread abroad among the people of his generosity and courage, as of his blood- shed and vindictiveness towards offenders. With all this he is the humblest of men and the most eager to show justice and truth. The rites of religion find full ob- servance with him, and he is strict in the matter of prayer and in punishing its neglect. But what is pre- eminent in him is generosity." The boundless prodigality of the Sultan was indeed one of the causes of his troubles. Even the wealth of India, reinforced by the spoils brought back from the Hindu cities of the Deccan, now again under control, could not meet the extravagance of his generosity and the magnificence of his court. To foreigners he was specially hospitable, preferring them to natives, says the Moorish traveller, Ibn Batuta, who himself enjoyed the. Sultan's favour and was presented with fiefs and large sums of money, appointed to a judgeship, and finally sent as Mohammad's ambassador to China. When dis- tinguished strangers came to Delhi, the Sultan would settle upon them the revenues of so many villages or districts, which maintained them in luxury during their visit and enabled them to go home in affluence. The almost incredible largess he scattered among these vis-
