Delhi Sultanate

11 Key excerpts on "Delhi Sultanate"

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  Islamic Civilization in South Asia

  A History of Muslim Power and Presence in the Indian Subcontinent

  • Burjor Avari(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 The Delhi Sultanate at its Zenith (1206–1351)

  The Ghurid conquests between 1186 and 1206 eventually led to the establishment of what is called the Delhi Sultanate. This was essentially a regional North Indian power, although during its zenith its territorial boundaries extended southwards too. The fact that it was regional should not mislead us into thinking that other Indian states in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had the capacity to challenge its might. The sultanate lasted from 1206 until the advent of the Mughals in 1526, but from 1351 onwards its power markedly declined.

  Before 1206, apart from Sind, Muslim authority in India was confined to Punjab and the frontier lands between present day Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Ghaznavids and Ghurids were dynasties essentially shaped and influenced by the political conditions of the eastern Iranian, Transoxanian and Afghan regions. While the Turkish and Persian influences that they had brought into India continued after 1206, from then on the sultanate matured and developed essentially within the Indian heartland; and Indian cultural influences succeeded in making it an Indian polity, distinct from the Iranian or Central Asian. It was simultaneously a Muslim authority and, in that respect, it was alien to the vast majority of Hindu Indians. Over time, how ever, the sultans of Delhi charted out a balanced strategy of survival and domination in an alien religio-political landscape, which helps explain the relative longevity of the system they established.

  Sultans and Nobles

  The sultanate was an authoritarian monarchy: there was no question of democratic politics. On the other hand, the possession of the throne did not entitle a sultan to rule with unchecked powers. Although wielding great authority and sizeable patrimony, each sultan had to be conscious of the sensibility of military and religious grandees around him. Whenever a sultan trampled on that sensibility, his fate was sealed, which happened more often than not.

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  India

  The Definitive History

  • D. R. SarDesai(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The period of the so-called Sultanate of Delhi extended from 1208 when Muslim rule was, for the first time, established in Delhi to the beginning of the Mughal rule in 1526. Except for some thirty years when the writ of the Sultanate of Delhi extended over almost all of the subcontinent, including South India, the territories under the sultanate were limited. In the period 1208–1526, there were at least a half-dozen sultanates in the country having their own territorial jurisdiction, most often independent of Delhi.

  The two short periods during which the Sultanate of Delhi exercised authority over most of the subcontinent were the regimes of Ala-uddin Khalji (1296– 1316) and the early Tughluqs (1320– 1351). Besides the Sultanate of Delhi, there were seven other sultanates: the Gujarat (1407–1526), Khandesh (1370– 1510), Malwa (two dynasties) (1401– 1531), Jaunpur (1394–1479), Bengal (four dynasties) (1282–1533), Multan (1444–1525), and the Bahmani Sultanate of the Deccan (1347–1482). Moreover, there were several Hindu kingdoms. Vijayanagar (1336–1565), Mewar (1314–1528), Marwar, Mithila, Orissa, and Assam were not subjugated throughout the period of the so-called sultanate, nor were the Hindu kingdoms of the deep south brought under Muslim rule except briefly during the Khalji rule.

  The Sultanate of Delhi was held by five separate dynasties: the Slave Dynasty (1208–1290), the Khaljis (1290– 1320), the Tughluqs (1320–1414), the Sayyids (1414–1451), and the Lodis (1451–1526). Thirty-four sultans sat on the Delhi throne during a little more than three centuries. In all the cases of transition from one dynasty to another, there was violence, bloodshed, and instability. The same was true for a majority of the ordinary successions from one ruler to the other within the same family or dynasty. The primary reason for the lack of peaceful transfers of power was the lack of laws governing succession in a Muslim state, making it susceptible to palace intrigue and individual ambition on the part of sons or close relatives within the ruling family. Consequently, the period of the Sultanate of Delhi was riddled with shifting loyalties, political groupings whose sole binding factor was individual self-interest and little, if any, concern for the ordinary subjects.

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  Muslim Rule in Medieval India

  Power and Religion in the Delhi Sultanate

  • Fouzia Farooq Ahmed(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  INTRODUCTION The Delhi Sultanate was established as a corollary of military expeditions by the Ghaznawids (352–582/962–1186) and Ghūrīds (558–602/1163–1206) that extended the eastern Islamic frontiers into Gangetic plains. The successful rulers of both these dynasties carved out principalities in northern India and established garrison towns and colonies, many of which later became the political and military strongholds of their legatees; the Delhi sultans. This work offers insight into regime formation, regime perpetuation and regime disintegration of Muslim states within Indian settings. It also provides additional understanding of the policies of sultans and their ruling class that formed a religious, racial and linguistic minority whose religious and cultural symbols and rituals captured an attempt at moral validation of their power. In the process, this book describes the political dynamics of medieval Muslim states in non-Muslim societies. The Delhi Sultanate is generally perceived as an exceptionally centralised political structure; nevertheless there was a visible asymmetrical distribution of power on the geographical level, making it a segmentary state, 1 comprised of a cluster of military strongholds and taxed agrarian hinterlands. The Delhi sultans ruled territories of northern India from a core region of control in Delhi and its adjacent territories, which gradually expanded – yet the borders of the sultanate fluctuated frequently. Under stronger rulers the sultanate expanded. These annexations, following this expansion policy, occasionally brought some areas of south India under direct control and reduced others to the status of tributaries. The affiliation of the eastern provinces, including Bengal, also hinged upon the strength of the rulers. The weaker rulers were unable to command and control, leaving these territories to either rebellious governors or unruly local elements

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  The Adventures of Ibn Battuta

  A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century, With a New Preface

  • Ross E. Dunn(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  During the ensuing century the sultans of the Slave Dynasty, as it was called after the mamluk origins of its rulers, defeated one after another the Hindu kingdoms into which North India was fragmented and founded an empire ex-tending from the Indus to the Bay of Bengal. The first phase of the Muslim conquest of North India was a splendid ghazi adventure of looting, shooting, and smashing up 183 184 Delhi Map 9: Ibn Battuta's Itinerary in India, Ceylon, and the Maldive Islands, 1333-45 Delhi 185 the gods of Hindu idolaters. The new kings of Dehli, however, imposed civil order on the conquered areas and created a structure of despotism designed to tax rather than slaughter the native peasantry. In the rich plains around the capital, the Muslim military elite secured its authority as a kind of ruling caste atop the stratified social system of the Hindus. A pyramid of administration was erected linking the sultan, from whom all power derived by right of conquest, with several levels of officialdom down to the petty Hindu functionaries who supervised tax collections in thousands of farming villages. Like the Turkish rulers of the Middle East and Anatolia, the sultans learned proper Muslim statecraft from the Abbasid tradition, though adding here and there colorful bits of Hindu ceremonial. Within several decades of the founding of the sultanate, these erstwhile tribal chieftains were transforming themselves into Indo-Persian monarchs, secluded from the populace at the center of a maze of intimidating ritual and an ever-growing army of officials, courtiers, and bodyguards. Delhi grew rapidly in the thirteenth century, not because it was an important center of industry or a key intersection of trade, but because it was the imperial residence.

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  Women, Gender and History in India

  • Nita Kumar(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In this case, as different from the influence of Persian culture and politics, the relationship was reciprocal, alive, and fluid. Hence there is one more reason to call this the Sultanate and Mughal period, the eleventh to eighteenth centuries, “India before Europe,” or the “Post-Gupta Empires,” rather than any version of an Islamic or Muslim period. The Delhi Sultanate, named after its capital, Delhi, consisted of the Mamluk dynasty (1206–1290), the Khalji dynasty (1290–1320), the Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1414), the Sayyid dynasty (1414–1451), and the Lodi dynasty (1451– 1526). We will have space to look at only the first of these, with a mention of a Khilji ruler. The Mamluk dynasty was founded by the slave Qutb al-Din (1206– 1210), a general of Mu’izz al-Din Ghuri (1173–1206), and his slave Shams al-Din Iltutmish (1210–1236). Mu’izz al-Din Ghuri, better known to us as Mohammad Ghuri, was a cultured Persian speaker from Afghanistan whose armies were led by a Turkish slave. This slave, manumitted, transitioned from general to governor of the conquered territories and set up the first Islamic dynasty in India, the Mamluk popularly known as the Slave dynasty. This new kingdom was made legitimate by setting up the first congregational mosque, the famous Qutb Minar, and the campus with mosque, shrine, tomb, and minaret, called Qubbat al-Islam. The term translates as “Sanctuary of Islam” and has become controversial when interpreted as “the Might of Islam,” or a deliberate attempt to aggrandise Islam in the face of Hinduism, including by building mosques out of the destroyed pieces of temples

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  A History of Asia

  • Rhoads Murphey, Kristin Stapleton(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The main impact of the sultanate on India was probably to implant a deep mistrust of politics, government in general, and Islam in particular, where it was used as the basis of state policy. Few monuments remain from this generally oppressive period in north Indian history. In broader cultural terms, these centuries did, however, see a fusion of originally Hindu elements with the Iranian influences brought in with the Turkish conquerors. Like the Mughals who followed them, they were the agents of a largely Persian culture, whose richness and variety in time found ready acceptance among many Indians. What we now think of as “traditional” Indian poetry, music, architecture, painting, the languages of northern India and their literatures, all in fact derived their present forms from this fusion. Islam and Hindu-Muslim differences proved to be neither a bar to such cultural hybridization nor a source of conflict, except where it was made an issue in political and military matters. Religion was far less important than other aspects of culture, and proved no barrier to cultural mixing.

  But as a government or administration, or as a patron of culture, the Delhi Sultanate wins no prizes, despite a few of its later abler and larger-minded rulers (see A Closer Look that follows). Islam was progressively Indianized and over the centuries after 1206 it won some converts on its own merits and through the agency of a long line of Islamic mystics (Sufis ) whose vision was broad enough to appeal to the long-standing Indian involvement with religious truth, which, as Hindu and Muslim mystics and philosophers agreed, is universal.

  A Closer Look

  Notable Sultans: Ala-ud-din Khalji

  The power of the Delhi sultans was severely tested by the Mongol invasion of the early fourteenth century. By this time the Turco-Afghan invaders had been partly Indianized, like so many conquerors before them, and depended more on the support of the indigenous people. The Mongol invasion came at a time when a ruthless but effective ruler was on the throne of Delhi. Ala-ud-din Khalji (r. 1296–1316) augmented his forces, including mamluk troops, to meet this gruesome challenge, and drove the Mongol horsemen back into Afghanistan—one of the very few cases of a Mongol defeat. Ala-ud-din had usurped the throne by having his predecessor, who was also his uncle, murdered, buying the loyalty of those around his uncle with the loot he had gained in raids into the Deccan. Ala-ud-din paid his army officers in cash and kept tight personal control over his forces. He could neither read nor write and had no tolerance for intellectuals, sophisticated courtiers, or other elites. He abolished all regular stipends and grants to the Muslim nobles, eliminating their political influence and leaving them wholly dependent on him. He outlawed wine parties, which were in any case against Muslim doctrine, since they might provide occasions for plots to be formulated against him.

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  The Last Hindu Emperor

  Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000

  • Cynthia Talbot(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  84 The depiction of Muslim rulers in these Delhi inscriptions is not unusual for Sultanate-era Sanskrit inscriptions. Muslim rule was typically portrayed as a calamity only after indigenous kings had overthrown a Muslim ruler, according to Chattopadhyaya (Representing the Other, 92 Delhi in the making of the last Hindu emperor In the minds of at least some Delhi-area residents a century or so after Prithviraj’s defeat, Prithviraj’s lineage (although not explicitly Prithviraj him- self) was remembered as having ruled their city. We must treat these claims with considerable caution despite their relatively early date since the inscrip- tion just quoted also asserts that the sultan Shihab al-Din captured Delhi, in contradiction to Persian chronicles, which attribute this feat to Qutb al-Din Aibak; furthermore, the list of Delhi sultans recorded in one of the inscriptions is quite inaccurate. 85 The allegation that Delhi was ruled in succession by the Tomars, then the Chauhans, and finally the Turks also figures in the Rāso’s “Tale of Delhi’s Pillar” as a prediction of what was to occur in the future. Like the story of Anangpal and the Iron Pillar, the dynastic sequence of Tomar- Chauhan-Turk is a construction of the past that was evidently emanating from Delhi itself. 86 This local Delhi memory, which surfaces in inscriptions less than a century after Turkic rule began, lends some weight to the thesis that the Chahamanas/Chauhans were once the paramount rulers of Rajasthan, Haryana, and the Delhi territory. It may also reflect the continuing importance through- out the thirteenth century of Prithviraj’s lineage, now based in the northern Rajasthan fort of Ranthambhor rather than Ajmer. Even if the Chauhans were the overlords of Delhi’s ruler, however, there is no reason to situate Prithviraj in the city – a point I argue at greater length below.

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  India in the Persianate Age

  1000–1765

  • Richard M. Eaton(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  It also broke from Delhi’s architectural tradition by asserting its indigenous character. The motifs of its many prayer niches reveal a successful adaptation, and appreciation, of the aesthetic traditions of the delta’s former Pala and Sena rulers. 22 On the other hand, it went over the heads of Delhi stylistically, conveying an imperial aura that recalls the grand style of pre-Islamic Persia. The shadowing effect produced by the alternating recesses and projections on the exterior of the multi-storeyed western wall resembles the external façade of the Taq-i Kisra palace of Iran’s Sasanian dynasty (AD 225–641), located in Ctesiphon near modern Baghdad. The mosque’s central nave, moreover, was covered with a huge barrel vault, an unusual feature having no antecedent in India, but which had also been used in the Taq-i Kisra. Finally, whereas Bengal’s earlier rulers had been content with being merely first among ‘kings of the East’, Sultan Sikandar Shah – whose very name, ‘Alexander’, associated him with imperialism – portrayed himself in the mosque’s inscription as the most perfect among the kings of Arabia and Iran, without even mentioning the kings of South Asia, where he was actually ruling. 23 SULTANATES OF THE DECCAN: THE BAHMANIS AND VIJAYANAGARA The Deccan in the fourteenth century witnessed a pattern similar to that of Bengal: the political expansion of the Delhi Sultanate, the diffusion of Persianate culture, and rebellion followed by the establishment of not one but two independent regional sultanates. In 1342, as his caravan lumbered southwards from Delhi to the Tughluqs’ co-capital of Daulatabad, Ibn Battuta described the road he was using as ‘bordered with willow trees and others in such a manner that a man going along it imagines he is walking through a garden; and at every mile there are three postal stations. .

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  The Muslim World in Modern South Asia

  Power, Authority, Knowledge

  • Francis Robinson(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • SUNY Press

    (Publisher)

  From the period of the Delhi Sultanate to the eighteenth century, West Asia, broadly construed as those parts of Asia to the west of South Asia, was the prime threat to the security of regimes established in north India. It is true that these regimes could be challenged by Sultanates elsewhere in India, as they in turn could challenge regional Sultanates, but the prime threat always came from the northwest. It was from the northwest that the Turkish Ghaznawids had invaded South Asia in the eleventh century. It was from the northwest that the Turkish Ghorids invaded India in the twelfth century and eventually established the Delhi Sultanate.

  By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries much of the energy of the Delhi Sultanate was consumed in fighting the Mongols. It was thus that Muhammad, Balban’s son, was killed in 1285, inspiring a great qasida from Amir Khusraw, but also precipitating the death of the 80-year-old Sultan.1 Ala al-Din Khilji was so successful against the Mongols in the early fourteenth century that according to the historian, Barani, they ‘conceived such a fear and dread of the army of Islam that all fancy for coming to Hindustan was washed clear out of their breasts’.2 Ghazi al-Din Tughluq, who ruled from 1321, came to the throne with twenty-nine victories over the Mongols behind him.

  When there was a strong regime in north India, it was possible to prevent armies from West Asia from penetrating the region. But when power in north India was weak, or divided, it was hard to resist invading forces, and the collapse of Tughluqid power after Firuz Shah’s death left the way open for Timur to invade India and sack Delhi. In the same way, divisions amongst the Afghan rulers of India in the early sixteenth century left the way open for a series of invasions from the Mughal, Babur, culminating in his great victory over Ibrahim Lodi in 1526. So also the weakness of Muhammad Shah’s Mughal regime in the 1730s, which was underlined by Maratha raids into the outskirts of Delhi, prompted Nadir Shah of Iran’s invasion of 1739, when the city’s fabulous treasure was looted and the Peacock Throne taken to Iran. In the mid-eighteenth century, the continuing weakness of central power led to regular invasions from the Afghan, Ahmad ‘Abdali, and the massive defeat of Mughal and Maratha forces at Panipat in 1761.

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  The Making of Medieval Panjab

  Politics, Society and Culture c. 1000–c. 1500

  • Surinder Singh(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The remnants of the Ghaznavid rule and Rajput polities were wiped out, while the stubborn resistance of the Khokhars and Jats was overcome. Since Sultan Muizzuddin did not formalize any administrative arrangement that would function after his death, a triangular conflict irrupted among three of his governors – Qutbuddin Aibak, Nasiruddin Qubacha, and Tajuddin Yaldoz – to control the Indian possessions of their master. Shamsuddin Iltutmish, who took the place of Aibak, succeeded in defeating the other two contestants. He established his sway over entire Panjab, except the northwestern extremity that had passed into the hands of the Qarlughs. Iltutmish symbolised his success by posting his son Nasiruddin Mahmud at Lahore. In a royal mandate, the princely governor was advised to patronize the Syeds and clerics, cherish the subordinate officials and protect the peasantry. It was doubtful if these ideals were realized, because the new ruling class was entangled in recurring internal convulsions. During a period of nearly three decades (1236–66), as many as five Sultans were raised to the throne, while prominent military commanders (muqtis) rose in revolt. The insurrections affected the revenue assignments (iqtas) of Lahore, Multan, Bathinda, Hansi and Sunam. The problem assumed an alarming proportion with the involvement of high ranking grandees at Delhi. Very often, the Sultans found themselves virtually helpless in dealing with powerful nobles who possessed large retinues, extensive territories and unbridled ambitions. Arid southwestern Panjab, particularly Multan, has played a prominent role in the period under study. Besides being a major entrepot of long distance trade on the Delhi-Qandhar route, it nurtured the growth of the Suhrawardi order. Ever since the early days of the Delhi Sultanate, it was in the hands of nobles who stood out for their ability

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  Persian Historiography

  A History of Persian Literature

  • Charles Melville(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  As has been seen, Hojviri’s combined malfuzât text and biographical dic-tionary, the Kashf-al-mahjub , was written in Lahore, the first ex -tant example of what was to become a common Sufi genre in the Persianate world, and particularly in connection with the Cheshti selsele , which gained a large following among the Indo-Muslim population in the 14 th and 15 th centuries. 26 4. The Afghan Interregnum: 1451–1526 and 1540–55 The Delhi Sultanate is generally regarded as ending when Timur, that is Timur-e lang or Tamerlane, invaded India and sacked Delhi in 1398. Following this catastrophe, Indo-Persian historical works continued to be written, although none of them are particularly original or notable—as chronicles or verse. Yahyâ b. Ahmad Ser-hindi wrote a history of a Sultanate ruler in his Târikh-e mobârak-shâhi (ca. 1428). 27 Written to gain patronage of the Delhi monarch 25 Ibid., p. 110. 26 See e.g. the 14 th -century Cheshti work, the Siyâr-al-owliyâ by Sayyid Mo-hammad b. Mobârak Alavi al-Kermâni (Delhi, 1885); Carl W. Ernst, Eter-nal Garden. Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany, 1992), pp. 71, 342. 27 Yahyâ b. Ahmad Serhendi, Târikh-e mobârakshâhi , ed. M. Hidayat Hosain (Calcutta, 1931). 577 INDO-PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY of his day, it was based on Barani’s history of the same name, as well as upon Amir Khosrow’s Qerân-al-sa’deyn . To complete its derivative character, it also resembled Esâmi’s work in tone and content, in the sense that it is primarily a literary or rhetorical work designed to flatter and entertain, rather than to investigate the past critically. Afghans first came to power in north India in the power vacuum caused by Timur’s destructive invasion. The first of these dynas -ties, the Lodhis, controlled northwestern India and the western Gangetic valley for three-quarters of a century (1451–1526) until the Timurid, Zahir-al-Din Mohammad Bâbor, defeated them at the Battle of Panipat in 1526.

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