His mother Naila, a Hindu woman, was the daughter of Raja Mal from a concubine of Dipalpur which is now in the Punjab region of Pakistan.

Nonetheless, he worked to improve the infrastructure of the empire building canals, rest-houses and hospitals, creating and refurbishing reservoirs and digging wells.

The Gujari Mahal situated in Hisar, Haryana (built in 1354) still hums the immortal love story of Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq and his lover a native lady of the Gurjar tribe.

[17][18][19] According to the story, when one day Emperor Firoz Shah Tughlaq went out for hunting he felt thirsty in the dense forest, but there was a great shortage of water there as the land there was sandy and uneven.

He captured Cuttack, desecrated the Jagannath Temple, Puri, and forced Raja Gajpati of Jajnagar in Orissa to pay tribute.

Firoz Shah led punitive expeditions against regions such as Kangra and Jajnagar (modern Odisha), where his forces massacred thousands of Hindus, desecrated temples, and enslaved entire populations.

Firuz Shah Tughlaq married off his daughter with Raja Kailash Pal, embraced him to Islam[citation needed] and sent the couple to rule Greater Khorasan, where eleven sons known by the caste of 'badpagey' were born to the queen.

Tughlaq's reign has been described as the greatest age of corruption in medieval India: He once gave a golden tanka to a distraught soldier so that he could bribe the clerk to pass his sub-standard horse.

[33] Firoz Shah Tughlaq's reign was marked by both administrative reforms and aggressive religious policies aimed at consolidating Islamic rule in India.

A devout Muslim, he is known for his efforts to enforce Sharia law, which included widespread persecution of Hindus and destruction of their religious institutions.

He actively targeted Hindu practices he deemed un-Islamic, such as sati (widow self-immolation), not as a reformer but to exert control.

He boasted of enslaving thousands of Hindus during his campaigns, using them for labor on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals, forts, and palaces.

Despite his achievements in administration and infrastructure development, such as irrigation systems and urban planning, Firoz Shah Tughlaq's legacy remains tainted by his policies of religious intolerance and systematic persecution of Hindus.

But Firuz Shah Tughlaq renovated Surya kund in the Dakshinaarka sun temple of Gaya and acknowledged its greatness.

For day-to-day administration, Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq heavily depended on Malik Maqbul, previously commander of Warangal fort, who was captured and converted to Islam.

[37] When Tughlaq was away on a campaign to Sind and Gujarat for six months and no news was available about his whereabouts Maqbul ably protected Delhi.

He brought 2 Ashokan Pillars from Meerut, and Topra near Radaur in Yamunanagar district of Haryana, carefully cut and wrapped in silk, to Delhi in bullock cart trains.

When the Qutb Minar was struck by lightning in 1368 AD, knocking off its top storey, he replaced them with the existing two floors, faced with red sandstone and white marble.

[15] Tughlaq's death led to a war of succession coupled with nobles rebelling to set up independent states.