160

The Delhi Sultans

602–962/1206–1555

Northern India and, at times, the northern Deccan

1. The Mu‘izzī or Shamsī Slave Kings

2. The Khaljīs

3. The Tughluqids

4. The Sayyids

5. The Lōdls

6. The Sūrīs

Islam was first implanted in the lower Indus valley by the Arab governors of the East for the Umayyad caliphs; in 92/711, Sind was conquered by the commander Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim al-Thaqafī. This foothold was retained during the next three centuries, a period in which some of the Muslim communities there were affected by the propaganda of Ismā‘īli Shī‘ī missionaries, who were working intensively on behalf of the Fāṭimids (see above, no. 27) in many parts of the Islamic world, from North Africa to Yemen and the fringes of India. There were also trade contacts between Arabia and the Persian Gulf region and the coastlands of peninsular India, namely Gujarāt, Bombay and the Deccan coasts, just as there had been in classical times; but these sporadic and superficial contacts hardly affected the interior, the overwhelming land mass of the subcontinent.

It was the Turkish Ghaznawids who first brought the full weight of Muslim military power into northern India, overthrowing powerful native dynasties like the Hindūshāhīs of Wayhind, reducing many of the Rājput rulers to tributary status and raiding as far as Somnath and Benares (Baāaras, Varanasi), although most of those rulers who submitted threw off their obligations as soon as the Ghaznawid armies went back. Maḥmūd of Ghazna became an Islamic hero for his attacks on infidel Hindustan, but it is clear that the sultan was not a fanatical zealot, bent on the conversion or extermination of the Hindus - a palpably impossible task – since he used Indian troops in his own armies, and it does not seem that conversion to Islam was a condition of recruitment. The Ghaznawids interest in India was primarily financial, the subcontinent being regarded as an almost inexhaustible reservoir of slaves and treasure; but they did take over the Punjab and make it a permanent base for the extension of Muslim power through northern India, and towards the end of the dynasty’s life Lahore became the sultans’ capital (see above, no. 158).

Hence there existed there a springboard for the Indian conquests of Mu‘izz al-Dln Muḥammad Ghūrī and his Turkish slave generals in the last years of the twelfth century and at the beginning of the thirteenth. After eliminating the last Ghaznawids, he expanded into the Gangetic plain, attacking local Rājput princes, such as the Chāhamāna or Chawhān king of Ajmer and Delhi (Dihlī) and then the Gāhadavāla king of Benares and Kanawj. Among Mu‘izz al-Dīn’s commanders, Qutb al-Dīn Aybak was placed in charge of the Indian conquests during his master’s lifetime, when the sultan was involved in Khurasan and elsewhere. Aybak held on to the Ghūrid conquests in the Punjab and the Ganges-Jumna Do‘āb, and raided as far as Gujarat. Another general, Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Muḥammad Khaljī, penetrated into Bihār and Bengal (Bangāla), making Gawr or Lakhnawatī his base there, and he even attacked Assam (see below, no. 161, 1). It is thus in the period of the Ghūrids and their commanders that the permanent establishment of Islam in northern India begins: long-established Hindu dynasties were humbled and the foundations of various Muslim sultanates laid. On the other hand, throughout the period of the Delhi Sultanate and after, many local Hindu chiefs retained their power, especially away from the main centres of Turco-Afghan military concentration, and Hindus always played important roles in the administrations and armies of Muslim potentates.

When Mu‘izz al-Dīn died in 602/1206, Aybak assumed power in Lahore as Malik or ruler on behalf of the Ghūrid sultan in Fīrūzkūh. Henceforth, Ghazna and the Afghan provinces of the Ghūrid empire were severed from India, falling briefly to the Khwārazm Shāhs and then to the Mongols, but Ghūrid traditions of both civil authority and military organisation lived on in northern India under the succeeding Muslim rulers there. Aybak and his successors up to 689/1290 are often called the Slave Kings, although only three of them, Aybak, Iltutmish and Balban, were of servile origin and all had in any case been manumitted by their masters before achieving power. Nor did these rulers belong to a single line, but to three distinct ones. Under Iltutmish, the real architect of an independent sultanate in Delhi, Sind, formerly in the hands of the Mu‘izzī general Nāṣir al-Dīn Qabācha, was added to the Delhi Sultanate. He also managed to keep the Khwārazmians out of his dominions, but the Mongols overran the Punjab in 639/1241, sacking Lahore and advancing as far as Uch (Uchchh). A succession of weaker sultans brought internal discord, and the unity of the Sultanate was only assured first by the regency and then by the independent rule of the capable Balban, who had been originally one of the famous band of Turkish miltary slaves, the Chihilgān (in the surmise of Dr Peter Jackson, so called because they each themselves commanded forty military slaves) of Iltutmish. Balban continued the work of his master, placing the Sultanate on a firm military and governmental basis by his reforms, and exalting the authority of the sovereign on traditional Perso-Islamic lines. Spiritual links with the rest of the Islamic world were strengthened. Already, Iltutmish had sought investiture from the ‘Abbāsid caliph al-Mustansir;after the demise of the last caliph in Baghdad, al-Musta‘sim, the Mu‘izzī sultans long continued to keep his name on their coins. In this way, one can discern the motif of identification with the wider world of Sunnī Islam and acknowledgement of the moral leadership of the caliphate; such threads run through much of the history of Indian Islam and reflect its struggle to maintain its identity against the pressures of the enveloping Hindu environment. Important, too, as a fertilising influence in the culture of this period were the waves of refugees – scholars and religious figures – from Transoxania and Persia, who fled before the Mongols and found their way to India during such reigns as those of Iltutmish and Balban; and in later times also, such as the reign of Muḥammad II b. Tughluq, infusions of fresh blood continued to revitalise Indo-Muslim religious life and culture.

In 689/1290, the Mu‘izzī sultans were succeeded by the line of Jalāl al-Dln Fīrūz Shāh II Khaljī. The Khalaj were originally a Turkish people (or perhaps a Turkicised people of a different ethnic origin) inhabiting eastern Afghanistan; it seems likely that the later Ghilzay Afghans were descended from them. During the reign of Mu‘izz al-Dīn Muḥammad Ghūrī, the Khalaj had played a prominent part in the invasions of India, with Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Muḥammad KhaljI especially notable for bringing Islam to eastern India and Bengal (see above). The pressing task for Fīrūz Shāh II was to keep out the Mongols; it was, nevertheless, during his reign that large numbers of Mongols converted to Islam were allowed to settle in the Delhi area. The outstanding figure of the dynasty is undeniably ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Muḥammad Shāh I, who considered himself a second Alexander the Great and had grandiose dreams of assembling a vast empire. In actuality, he had to cope with the threat from the Chaghatayid Mongols, who several times raided as far as Delhi, but his ambitions found their main outlet in South India, the rich area south of the Vindhya Mountains as yet untouched by Muslim arms. An attack in 695/1296 on Deogir or Devagiri in the north-western Deccan, capital of the Yādavas, brought him the wealth which he afterwards used to win the sultanate for himself, and when he was firmly established on the throne he sent further armies to the southernmost tip of the Deccan. ‘Alā’ al-Din Muḥammad continued to use the traditional designation of Nāṣir Amīr al-Mu‘minīn ‘Helper of the Commander of the Faithful’; the first and last Indo-Muslim ruler to appropriate for himself the caliphal title of Amīr al-Mu‘minīn was his son Qutb al-Dīn Mubarak Shāh I.

The Khaljī line collapsed when Khusraw Khān, a Gujarātī convert from Hinduism and favourite of the last Khaljī sultan, possibly apostasised from Islam and certainly briefly usurped the throne in Delhi. Muslim control was reestablished by the Turco-Indian Tughluq Shāh I and his son Muḥammad Shāh II, who in 720/1320 inaugurated the reign of the Tughluqid sultans. The first did much to restore the stability of the Sultanate and to reimpose Muslim control over the Deccan. Muḥammad Shāh II is an enigmatic figure: a skilful general whose behaviour was nevertheless often erratic and his judgement poor. Increases of taxation necessary to run the sultanate and to finance warfare made him unpopular, but his decision of 727/1327 to transfer the capital from Delhi southwards to Deoglr, now renamed Dawlatābād, proved disastrous. On the other hand, he did successfully repel a Chaghatayid invasion from Transoxania, but his project for taking advantage of Chaghatayid weakness, perhaps in concert with the II Khānids, and for invading Central Asia via the Pamirs (if such really was his intention, the sources being vague over this), was a chimera. Muḥammad Shāh II had diplomatic relations with the Islamic world outside India, including with the Mamlūks of Egypt (see above, no. 31), and sought investiture from the ‘Abbāsid puppet caliph in Cairo (see above, no. 3, 3). The diversion of energies to unrealistic military projects on the northern frontiers of the subcontinent led to a weakening of the Tughluqid hold over the Deccan. An independent Muslim sultanate arose in Ma‘bar or Madura in the extreme south (see below, no. 166), and in 748/1347 the Bahmanid kingdom of the central Deccan was founded by Alā’ al-Dīn Ḥasan Bahman Shāh (see below, no. 167, 1). Later, Fīrūz Shāh III restored sultanal authority in Sind and Bengal, but made no attempt to touch the Deccan. The last Tughluqids were weaklings, so that Tīmūr was able to invade India in 801/1398–9 and wreak great devastation; as a result, the political unity of the Sultanate was dissolved, and various Muslim leaders seized independent power in the provinces.

For rather less than forty years, power was in the hands of the line of Khiḍr Khān, former governor of Multan (Multān), first for the last Tughluqids and then for Tīmūr. Khidr Khan ruled in the names of Tīmūr and his son Shāh Rukh, contenting himself with the title Rāyat-i A‘la ‘Exalted Banner’; because of their claim to a fictitious descent from the Prophet, his line acquired the name of Sayyids. The effective authority of the Sayyids was reduced to a small area round Delhi, and with their initial dependence on the Timūrids they were unpopular with the Turkish and Afghan military classes in the capital. In 855/1451, their line was replaced by that of Bahlūl Khān, a chief of the Afghan tribe of the Lōdīs and formerly governor of Sirhind and Lahore. Bahlūl was the equal in vigour of the great Tughluqī sultans, and did much to restore Muslim prestige in India; the authority of Delhi was imposed over much of Central India, and the Sharqī rulers of Jawnpur (see below, no. 164) overthrown in 881/1477. His son Sikandar II conducted operations against the Rājput princes with some success, and moved his capital to Agra as being a better base for these attacks. However, the last Lōdī, Ibrahīm II, alienated many of his nobles and commanders, and certain of these invited the Chaghatayid Mughal Bābur, then in Kabul, to intervene.

Bābur’s victory at the first battle of Pānīpat, to the north of Delhi, in 932/1526 resulted in Ibrahīm’s death, the end of the Lōdī line and the first appearance of the dynasty of the Mughals in India. But this did not mean the permanent establishment yet of Bābur’s line, for his son Humāyūn’ reign was interrupted by the fifteen-year restoration of Afghan rule in India by Shir Shāh Sur. Operating from Bihar, Shir Shāh defeated Humāyūn at Kanawj, thus negating all Bābur’s work. As well as being a fine general, Shir Shāh introduced important fiscal and land reforms. But for his premature death, a strong Afghan sultanate might have been implanted in India; discouraging Humāyūn from trying his fortunes once more; as it was, the weakness of Shīr Shāh’s ephemeral successors facilitated a successful Mughal revanche.

Justi, 464–5; Lane-Poole, 295–303; Sachau, 32 no. 87 (Khaljīs), 33 no. 93 (Sūrīs); Zambaur, 285–8.

EI² ‘Dihlī Sultanate’ (P. Hardy), ‘Hind. IV. History’ (J. Burton-Page); ‘Khaldjīs’ (S. Moinul Haq), ‘Lōdīs’ (S. M. Imamuddin), ‘Sayyids’ (K. A. Nizami), ‘Sūrīs’ (I. H. Siddiqi).

H. Nelson Wright, The Coinage and Metrology of the Sulṭāns ofDehlī Incorporating a Catalogue of the Coins in the Author’s Cabinet now in the Dehlī Museum, Delhi 1936.

K. S. Lal, History of the Khaljis A.D. 1290–1320, revised edn, New Delhi 1980.

(Agha) Mahdi Husain, Tughluq Dynasty, Calcutta 1963.

Abd ul-Halim, History of the Lodi Sultans of Delhi and Agra, Dacca 1961.

I. H. Siddiqi, History of Sher Shah Sur, Aligarh 1971.

R. C. Majumdar, A. D. Pusalker and A. K. Majumdar (eds), The History and Culture of the Indian People. V. The Struggle for Empire, Bombay 1957, chs 4–5.

eidem (eds), VI. The Delhi Sultanate, Bombay 1960, chs 2-9, 14.

Majumdar (ed.), VII. The Mughul Empire, Bombay 1974, ch. 4.

Mohammad Habib and Khaliq Aḥammad Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India. V. The Delhi Sultanat (A.D. 1206–1526), Delhi 1970, chs 2-7.