Muhammad bin Tughlaq

A few decades later, Muhammad bin Tughlaq ruled Delhi and expanded the Sultanate further.

For the first time since the Mauryan Empire, most of the subcontinent was under one ruler. But the book adds at once that this was short-lived.

Its judgement of him is exact: he "had ambitious schemes, but they were often poorly executed".

That is not the same as calling him foolish. The ideas were often good; the carrying out was not.

Take the capital. He moved it from Delhi to Daulatabad (then called Devagiri, near present-day Sambhaji Nagar in Maharashtra), perhaps thinking its more central position would give him better control of the empire.

The reasoning made sense. The carrying out did not: people were forced to travel over 1,000 km, and a few years later, when the plan failed, he moved the capital back to Delhi. Some sources say both moves caused great loss of life.

The second scheme was 'token currency'. Cheap copper coins were declared to be worth the same as silver or gold coins.

Here the book is fair: this was a progressive idea, since most of our money today is token money (a banknote is only paper). But then it caused confusion in trade, and because copper coins were easy to make, people forged them. The economy declined.