Delhi Sultanate

When Muhammad Ghori was murdered in 1206 he left no son to inherit his Indian lands, but he had trained loyal slave-generals. One of them, Qutbuddin Aibak, sat on the throne at Lahore and then in Delhi. That is how the Delhi Sultanate began, and its first dynasty is called the Slave (Mamluk) dynasty, because its kings were former slaves (or sons-in-law of slaves) of the Turkish military order. 'Mamluk' simply means 'owned', a slave raised to be a soldier.

Iltutmish (a Turkish slave of Aibak who rose to be his son-in-law and governor of Badaun) is the true founder of the Sultanate's strength. He shifted the capital from Lahore to Delhi, defeated rival slave-generals Yildiz and Qubacha, and made the Sultanate safe from the Mongols by keeping out of the way of Genghis Khan (1221, when Jalaluddin Mangbarni fled to the Indus and was refused shelter). In 1229 the Abbasid Caliph sent him a letter and robes of honour, which made him a legal sovereign in Muslim eyes. He also divided the land into iqtas among a loyal band of forty Turkish nobles, the Chahalgani (Group of Forty), and introduced the silver tanka and the copper jital.

Razia (1236-1240) was the only woman to rule the Sultanate. Iltutmish saw that his sons were unfit and named his daughter his heir, but the Turkish nobles refused to be led by a woman. Razia rode, held court and led armies, and even appointed an Abyssinian, Yaqut, as master of the horse, which angered the nobles more. She was dethroned and killed in 1240 near Kaithal. Balban (1266-1287) later restored the Sultan's power: he insisted on the Persian customs of Sijda (prostrating before the Sultan) and Paibos (kissing his feet), started Nauroz, and claimed that the king is Zill-i-Ilahi (shadow of God). He built a strong spy network and set up the military department Diwan-i-Arz.

In 1290 a quiet palace revolution ended Turkish monopoly. Jalaluddin Firuz Khalji, an Afghan-Turkish noble, took the throne, and the Turks, who looked down on the Khaljis as outsiders, learned that rank in the Sultanate would now go by ability. Historians call this the Khalji Revolution. The dynasty gave Delhi its most energetic ruler: Alauddin Khalji.

Alauddin Khalji (1296-1316) killed his uncle-father-in-law to take the throne and then ruled with a single concern: a big, loyal, paid army to stop the Mongols and to conquer. The Mongols (Qutlugh Khwaja in 1299, Targhi in 1303) came right up to Delhi, and Alauddin built the new fort-city of Siri to protect the capital. He also made sure that no noble could plot against him: he banned liquor, restricted social gatherings and marriages between nobles without permission, and set up a spy network.

Alauddin's southern campaigns aimed at tribute and loot, not at annexing the south. The kings were defeated, paid heavily, and were left on their thrones as tributaries. That is why Vijayanagara is the one southern power he never fought: it did not yet exist (founded 1336).

Alauddin's economic reforms. To pay a huge standing army without going bankrupt, he froze prices. The Diwan-i-Riyasat (market department, under Yaqub) fixed prices of grain, cloth, horses, slaves and cattle; the Shahna-i-Mandi (market superintendent) controlled each market; merchants had to be registered; and grain was stored in state granaries. The revenue system was also tightened: land was measured (masahat), and the state's share was fixed at about half the produce (kharaj). He also took away the special privileges of village headmen (khuts, muqaddams) and levied house tax (ghari) and grazing tax (chari).

The Tughlaq dynasty (1320-1414) is a story of two very different kings and one big question: why did a Sultan with brilliant ideas lose his empire? Muhammad bin Tughlaq was learned, a lover of logic and medicine, but his schemes ran ahead of what his officials and people could manage. Firuz Shah Tughlaq, his cousin, was cautious and a builder, who tried to win the goodwill of nobles and ulema and ended up weakening the state in a different way.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq's five experiments. (1) Doab tax (c. 1326-27): the land-revenue was raised in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab just as a famine struck, causing hardship. (2) Capital transfer (1327): he moved the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad (the old Devagiri), in the Deccan, to rule the south better and be safer from the Mongols; the sufferings of the people on the 700-mile march and the distance from the north made him bring it back. (3) Token currency (c. 1329-30): he issued brass and copper tokens to be accepted at silver tanka value, but forgers minted them at home, trade stopped and he recalled them against silver. (4) Khurasan expedition: a plan to attack Persia, for which a big army was raised and then disbanded. (5) Qarachil expedition into the Kumaon-Himalayas, which ended in heavy loss. He also set up a department of agriculture, Diwan-i-Amir-i-Kohi, and gave taccavi (loans) to farmers. His reign saw the birth of the Vijayanagara (1336) and Bahmani (1347) kingdoms and of independent Bengal.

Barani, a historian of the time, called Muhammad bin Tughlaq a mix of opposites. A modern way to remember him: an idealist who failed at execution. Daulatabad fits the Deccan's centre but was too far from the Ganga plain; the token coin was a modern idea, but the state had no way to stop forgery. So the ideas were good, the timing and method were poor.

By 1398 the Tughlaq empire was a shell. Governors had gone their own way, the nobles fought each other, and Delhi was ruled by a boy-king. At that moment a conqueror from Central Asia arrived. His name was Timur (Tamerlane), and the raid he made in 1398 broke what was left of the Tughlaqs. The two dynasties that followed, the Sayyids and the Lodis, ruled a much smaller Delhi, until Babur arrived in 1526.

Timur's invasion (1398). Timur, ruler of Samarkand, crossed the Indus in 1398 and defeated Nasiruddin Mahmud Tughlaq and his minister Mallu Iqbal near Delhi in December. He entered Delhi, which was then sacked and many people were killed. After about two weeks he went back, taking vast loot and skilled artisans to Samarkand. He appointed Khizr Khan as his governor in Multan and Lahore, and that man was to found the next dynasty. The raid did not create a new empire, but it ended Delhi's real power over the provinces.

The Sayyids were claimed to be descended from the Prophet's family, which gave them respect but little real power: Delhi's rule in those 37 years was limited to the area around Delhi and the Doab. The Lodis were Afghans, the first Afghan dynasty in Delhi. They believed in 'tribal kingship', in which the Sultan was only one among equals, and this made the nobles hard to control.

The Lodis. Bahlul Lodi (1451-89), governor of Sirhind, won Delhi and later swallowed up the Sharqi kingdom of Jaunpur. Sikandar Lodi (1489-1517) was the ablest: he founded the city of Agra (1504) as a base to watch the east and later made it his capital, introduced the measuring yard Gaz-i-Sikandari and encouraged scholarship. Ibrahim Lodi (1517-26) tried to rule like an autocrat, humbled the Afghan nobles and so made many enemies. Daulat Khan Lodi, governor of Punjab, and Alam Khan (a Lodi prince) invited Babur, ruler of Kabul, who had been trying to enter India for years.

At Panipat (1526) Babur had fewer men but better tactics: field guns and matchlock-men (led by Ustad Ali Quli and Mustafa Rumi), protected by carts tied together (the Ottoman araba method) and cavalry flanking charges (tulughma). Ibrahim Lodi's large army had elephants and old-style cavalry, which could not stand against cannon fire. Ibrahim is the only Delhi Sultan to die on the battlefield.

How did a few thousand Turkish soldiers rule a land of millions? The Sultanate's answer was a military-fiscal machine: land was divided into assignments (iqtas), each holder (muqti) collected the revenue, paid himself and his horsemen from it, and sent the rest to Delhi. Around that centre sat a set of departments (diwans), each with a clear job. Learn the pattern once and every reform of the five dynasties will slot into it.

Provinces. The empire was divided into iqtas (provinces) under a muqti or wali. Below them were the shiq (under a shiqdar), the pargana (under an amil) and the village, with its headman (muqaddam) and accountant (patwari). The iqta was the key institution: Iltutmish gave it its form, Balban checked the muqtis, Alauddin reduced iqtas and paid soldiers in cash, Firuz made them hereditary.

The iqta was not hereditary land and not a salary in cash. It was the right to collect revenue in return for service. The muqti's main duty was to maintain law and order, lead troops when the Sultan called, and collect and remit revenue. When Firuz made iqtas hereditary, the system began to turn into feudal property and the link between service and land weakened.

Army, trade and society. The Sultan's standing troops (hasham-i-qalb) were backed by the iqta-holders' contingents. Slaves (Bandagan) were bought in large numbers as soldiers, officials and craftsmen. Under Iltutmish the tanka (silver) and jital (copper) became standard coins. New technology came with the Turks: the Persian wheel (araghatta), the spinning wheel (charkha), the carding bow and paper, which helped agriculture, textiles and record-keeping. The main religious movements of the age were the Sufi orders: the Chishtis (Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer, Baba Farid, Nizamuddin Auliya at Delhi) and Suhrawardis (Bahauddin Zakariya at Multan).

The Turks brought building methods that Indians had seldom used on a large scale: the true arch, the dome, the minaret and strong lime mortar. Indian craftsmen, who were masters of stone carving, worked for the new rulers, and out of the meeting came Indo-Islamic architecture. Early buildings reuse temple materials; later ones are bolder and more finished.

A true arch has wedge-shaped stones (voussoirs) locked by a keystone; Indian builders had earlier used the corbelled (false) arch, in which layers jut out. A true dome is built on the same principle. Early Sultanate buildings (Quwwat-ul-Islam) used corbelling and temple pillars. The Alai Darwaza is the first to show real arches and a real dome by Islamic method, so it is called the 'first truly Islamic building' in India.

The 'cities of Delhi' follow the rulers: Lal Kot/Qila Rai Pithora (Tomara-Chauhan), Siri (Alauddin Khalji), Tughlaqabad (Ghiyasuddin), Jahanpanah (Muhammad bin Tughlaq), Firozabad (Firuz Shah) and later Dinpanah (Humayun). Each new ruler wanted a fresh, safer capital, which is why Delhi has so many.