165

The Sultans and Rulers of Mālwa

804–969/1402–1562

Central India

1. The line of the Ghuns

2. The line of the Khaljīs

3. Various governors and independent rulers

Mediaeval Indian Mālwa was the plateau region of western Central India, which formed a triangle with the Vindhya range as its base, hence it corresponded to what is now largely within the westernmost part of Madhya Pradesh State. Muslim rule was only established there after long and bloody struggles with the local Rājput rulers of Chitōr and Ujjain. In 705/1305, the Delhi Sultan ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Khaljī despatched an army which subjugated Mālwa, and thereafter governors were sent out to the region from Delhi. The Afghan governor Dilāwar Khān Ghūrī sheltered the refugee Tughluqid Maḥmūd Shāh II during Tīmūr’s invasion of northern India in 801 /1398–9, but the shock to the fabric of the Delhi Sultanate at this time permitted Dilāwar Khān shortly afterwards to declare his independence and assume the insignia of royalty. The circumstances of Mālwa’s achievement of independence thus parallel those of the rise of the Sharqīs in Jawnpur (see above, no. 164). The Mālwa Sultans made their capital the inaccessible and heavily-defended fortress of Mānd́ū, and adorned the city which grew up there with many splendid buildings.

At one point, the Ghūrī sultans undertook a raid as far as Hindu Orissa, but most of their military activity was against nearby Rājput chiefs and neighbouring Muslim rulers, including the Sharqis, the Gujarāt Sultans, the Sayyid Sultans of Delhi and the Bahmanids of the Deccan; in this warfare against Muslim rivals, they did not hesitate to ally with Hindu princes. In 839/1436, the chief minister Maḥmūd Khān took over the throne in Mālwa (the last Ghūrī sultan fleeing to Gujarāt) and began the line of the Khaljīs there. Maḥmūd I Khaljī was the greatest of the Mālwa Sultans, and despite several setbacks in his campaigns against the Rājputs of Chitōr and the Bahmanids he expanded his territories considerably. His fame spread beyond the subcontinent; he received a formal investiture of power from the fainéant ‘Abbāsid caliph in Cairo al-Mustanjid (see above, no. 3, 3), and embassies were exchanged with the Tīmūrid sultan in Herat, Abū Sa‘id (see above, no. 144, 1). But during the reign of his great-grandson Maḥmūd II, there arose an ascendancy of Rājput ministers and courtiers in the state, such as that of the sultan’s vizier Mēdinī Rā‘ī, and tensions between Muslim and Hindu elements grew. At one point, Maḥmūd was captured by the Rājā of Chitōr, and, though he was restored in Mālwa, his kingdom fell in 93 7/1531 to Bahādur Shāh of Gujarāt (see above, no. 163).

During the next three decades, there were several governors acting for the Gujarat Sultans and then the Delhi Sultans, some of whom managed to make themselves at times independent, until the last such ruler, Bāz Bahādur, was defeated by Akbar’s forces and Mālwa was incorporated into the Mughal empire as one of its provinces.

Justi, 477; Lane-Poole, 310–11; Zambaur, 292.

EI² ‘Hind. IV. History’ (J. Burton-Page), ‘Mālwa’ (T. W. Haig and Riazul Islam).

L. White King, ‘History and coinage of Malwa’, NC, 4th series, 3 (1903), 356–98, with a genealogical table and a chronological list of rulers at pp. 359–60; also 4 (1904), 62–100.

U. N. Day, Medieval Malwa: A Political and Cultural History 1401–1557, Delhi 1965.

R. C. Majumdar et al. (eds), The History and Culture of the Indian People. VI. The Delhi Sultanate, ch. 10 C.

M. Habib and K. A. Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India. V. The Delhi Sultanat (A.D. 1206–1526), ch. 12.