Delhi Sultanate: Five Dynasties, Rulers, Timeline and Map, 1206 to 1526

Delhi Sultanate at a Glance: Founder, Dynasties and Time Period

What Was the Delhi Sultanate and Who Founded It

The Delhi Sultanate was founded in 1206 by Qutb-ud-din Aibak. Its roots lay in the campaigns of the Ghurid ruler Muhammad Ghori, who defeated Prithviraj Chauhan near Tarain in 1192. When Ghori was assassinated in 1206, his Turkish slave-general Aibak took power in his Indian territories and became the first Sultan. Before this, Delhi had been the capital of the Tomara Rajputs and then of the Chauhans of Ajmer.

The Five Dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate and Their Founders

Five dynasties ruled the Delhi Sultanate in turn. The Tughlaqs ruled longest, about 94 years, and the Khaljis for the shortest time, 30 years. The founder and the chief rulers of each were:

Rulers of the Delhi Sultanate, Dynasty by Dynasty

The Mamluk or Slave Dynasty: Aibak, Iltutmish, Razia and Balban

The Mamluk dynasty takes its name from the slave origin of its rulers. Aibak ruled for four years, from 1206 to 1210, with his capital at Lahore; he began the Qutb Minar and died in a fall while playing chaugan, a form of polo.

His son-in-law Iltutmish removed Aibak's successor Aram Shah and made Delhi the capital. He defeated rivals such as Yildiz and Qabacha, took Multan, Bengal and Ranthambore, and completed the Qutb Minar. In his reign, in 1221, the Mongols defeated the Khwarazm Shah at the battle of the Indus, and the Sultanate faced the Mongols on its north-west from then on. In 1228 the Abbasid caliph sent robes of honour recognising Iltutmish's authority in India.

His daughter Razia became Sultan in 1236. The chronicler Minhaj-i Siraj accepted that she was more able than her brothers but was uneasy at a woman ruling, and the nobles removed her in 1240. Balban (1266 to 1287) destroyed the power of the Corps of Forty, the Turkish nobles who had acted as kingmakers, and repelled the Mongol raids. In 1290 Jalaluddin Khalji had the young sultan Kaiqubad killed, murdered the infant Kayumars and founded the Khalji dynasty. The full story is in the Slave dynasty of Aibak and Iltutmish and the later Slave sultans, Razia and Balban.

The Khalji Dynasty: Alauddin Khalji's Conquests and Market Control

The Khaljis, of Turko-Afghan origin, came to power in 1290 under Jalaluddin Khalji, who was about seventy at his accession. His nephew and son-in-law Alauddin Khalji had him murdered in 1296 and became the most powerful ruler of the dynasty. As governor of Kara he had already raided Malwa and Devagiri; as Sultan he took Gujarat and Rajputana and sent his general Malik Kafur deep into southern India.

Mongol attacks on Delhi in 1299 to 1300 and 1302 to 1303 shaped his government. He raised a large standing army, built the garrison town of Siri, fixed the tax on the Ganga-Yamuna lands at half the peasant's yield, paid his soldiers in cash and controlled prices in the Delhi markets so that the pay would stretch. The chroniclers praised his reign for cheap prices and steady supplies. The last Khalji, Qutbuddin Mubarak Shah, was killed by Khusrau Khan, whom Ghazi Malik overthrew in 1320. More in Alauddin Khalji: the conquests and the market control and the Mongol invasions and the conquest of the Deccan.

The Tughlaq Dynasty: Muhammad bin Tughlaq, Firoz Shah and Timur's Invasion

Ghazi Malik ruled as Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq from 1320 and built Tughlaqabad near Delhi. Under his son Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1324 to 1351) the Sultanate reached its farthest extent; NCERT dates his accession to 1324, while other accounts give 1325. His schemes are the best remembered of any sultan's:

• A second capital: Devagiri, renamed Daulatabad, to which the people of the old city of Delhi were sent.
• Token currency: Coins of base metal, issued from 1329 to 1332, that people forged easily and used to pay their taxes; they had to be withdrawn.
• Transoxiana: A large army raised to attack the Mongols in Central Asia, then disbanded.
• Revolts: From 1327 onwards; Madurai broke away in 1335, Vijayanagara was founded in 1336 and the Bahmani Sultanate in 1347.

Firoz Shah Tughlaq (1351 to 1388) ruled for 37 years, a reign marked by prosperity, and had an irrigation canal dug from the Yamuna. After him the dynasty collapsed into rival claimants, and in 1398 Timur, the Turko-Mongol ruler from Samarkand, sacked Delhi. Nasiruddin Mahmud, who fled to Gujarat during the invasion, returned as the last, nominal Tughlaq ruler. See the Tughlaq dynasty: Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firoz Shah.

The Sayyid Dynasty: Khizr Khan and a Shrinking Sultanate

The Sayyid dynasty had four rulers in 37 years. Its founder, Khizr Khan, had been governor of Multan under Firoz Shah. After the sack of Delhi, Timur made him his deputy at Multan, with charge of Lahore and Dipalpur, and he captured Delhi on 28 May 1414. He did not take the title of sultan: he ruled as Rayat-i-Ala, a vassal, first of Timur and then of his son Shah Rukh, whose name was recited in the khutba.

His son Mubarak Shah (from 1421) dropped the allegiance to the Timurids, took the royal title and forced Hoshang Shah of Malwa to pay tribute, but could not recover the lost lands in Punjab. His reign is described in the Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi of Yahya Sirhindi. The Sayyids claimed descent from the Prophet, a claim modern historians doubt.

Under them the Sultanate shrank to a minor power. By the time of the last Sayyid, Alam Shah, a north Indian saying ran that the kingdom of the 'king of the world' stretched from Delhi to Palam, a distance of about 13 kilometres. In 1451 Alam Shah gave up the throne to Bahlul Lodi, and the Sultanate revived.

The Lodi Dynasty: Bahlul, Sikandar and Ibrahim Lodi

The Lodis were Afghans. Bahlul Lodi (1451 to 1489), governor of Sirhind in Punjab, held together a loose confederacy of Afghan and Turkish chiefs. He spent most of his reign fighting the Sharqi sultans of Jaunpur and finally annexed their kingdom, bringing the region from Delhi to Varanasi back under Delhi.

His son Sikandar Lodi (1489 to 1517) is the best known of the line. He annexed Bihar, re-founded Agra in 1504 and moved his capital there, made his Afghan nobles submit their accounts to a state audit, wrote Persian poetry under the pen name Gulrukhi and had Sanskrit works on medicine translated into Persian.

The last Lodi, Ibrahim (1517 to 1526), was a capable soldier but rash in politics, and he lacked the support of the Afghan and Persian nobles and the regional chiefs. After he killed his brother Jalal Khan, Daulat Khan Lodi, the governor of Lahore, invited the Timurid ruler Babur to attack. Babur defeated and killed Ibrahim at the first battle of Panipat in 1526, which ended the Delhi Sultanate. Read the Sayyids, the Lodis and the fall of the Sultanate for the detail.

Expansion, Administration and Culture of the Delhi Sultanate

Expansion of the Delhi Sultanate: Garrison Towns to an Empire

In the early thirteenth century the Sultans controlled little beyond fortified garrison towns. They seldom held the hinterland of these towns and depended on trade, tribute or plunder for supplies. Expansion came mainly under Balban, Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, in two directions:

• The internal frontier: Campaigns to secure the lands around the garrison towns; forests in the Ganga-Yamuna doab were cleared, the land given to peasants, and new forts and towns built along trade routes.
• The external frontier: Expeditions into southern India, begun under Alauddin Khalji and carried furthest by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, which brought back elephants, horses, slaves and precious metals.

Control was never complete. Bengal was hard to hold from Delhi, the south became independent soon after it was annexed, and even in the Gangetic plain there were forests the Sultan's armies could not enter. The traveller Ibn Battuta described chieftains who fortified themselves in bamboo groves so dense that only a powerful army cutting its way in could subdue them.

Administration of the Delhi Sultanate: Bandagan, Iqta and Land Revenue

The early Sultans, especially Iltutmish, preferred to govern through bandagan, special slaves bought and trained for military service, because they depended wholly on their master. The Khaljis and Tughlaqs also raised men of humble birth, their clients, to high office. This bred instability: slaves and clients were loyal to their patron but not to his heirs, so each new Sultan brought conflict between the old and the new nobility.

Territories were given to military commanders as iqtas. The holder, the iqtadar or muqti, led campaigns and kept order, and in return collected the revenue of his iqta as salary for himself and his troops. Alauddin Khalji brought the assessment and collection of land revenue under the state's own control and cancelled the chieftains' right to tax. Three taxes were levied:

1. Kharaj: On cultivation, about half of the peasant’s produce.
2. Cattle tax: On livestock.
3. House tax: On dwellings.

Government and money are covered in full in the government of the Delhi Sultanate and its economy, agriculture, trade and coinage.

Culture and Architecture: Persian, Qutb Minar and the Cities of Delhi

Persian was the language of administration, and the Sultanate drew India into the wider Islamic world, a contact seen in the growth of the Hindustani language and of Indo-Islamic architecture. Its best-known monument is the Qutb Minar, 72.5 m high: Aibak laid its foundation and raised the first storey, Iltutmish added three more, and it was later repaired by Firoz Shah Tughlaq and Sikandar Lodi.

• Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque: The earliest surviving mosque of the Delhi Sultans, begun by Aibak and enlarged by Iltutmish and Alauddin Khalji.
• Alai Darwaza: Alauddin’s gateway of 1311, the first building to use Islamic principles of construction and ornament.
• New cities: Dehli-i Kuhna, the old city; Siri, Alauddin’s garrison town; Tughlaqabad; and Jahanpanah, Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s capital with its Begumpuri mosque.
• Lodi buildings: The Moth ki Masjid, built by Sikandar Lodi’s minister.

Literature and music flourished at court. Amir Khusrau (1253 to 1325), court poet and disciple of the Sufi Nizamuddin Auliya, wrote mainly in Persian but also in Hindavi, and is regarded as the father of qawwali.

The Qutb Minar and its monuments are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Religion, the Sufis and the Bhakti saints are covered in society, religion and culture under the Sultanate, and the buildings in Indo-Islamic architecture of the Delhi Sultanate.

Sources for the History of the Delhi Sultanate

Persian Tawarikh, Travellers' Accounts and the Circle of Justice

Inscriptions, coins and buildings tell us a great deal, but the most valuable sources are the histories, tawarikh (singular tarikh), written in Persian. Their authors were secretaries, administrators, poets and courtiers who recorded events and also advised rulers on just government. They lived in cities, mainly Delhi, and often wrote for the Sultans in hope of rewards. They urged an 'ideal' social order based on birthright and gender distinctions.

That outlook colours what they wrote. Minhaj-i Siraj admired Razia's ability but thought a queen went against the social order. Ziauddin Barani, writing in the mid-fourteenth century, treated Muhammad bin Tughlaq's appointment of a wine distiller, a barber, a cook and two gardeners to high posts as a sign of lost judgement. Fakhr-i Mudabbir set out the 'circle of justice': a king needs soldiers, soldiers need salaries, salaries come from revenue, and peasants can pay only when they are prosperous under just rule. Travellers add an outside view, above all Ibn Battuta of Morocco, whom Muhammad bin Tughlaq appointed a qadi, a judge, at Delhi.

Decline and Fall of the Delhi Sultanate

Causes of the Decline: Revolts, Timur's Invasion and the Battle of Panipat

The decline began at the height of the Sultanate's power, under Muhammad bin Tughlaq, and ran for almost two centuries. Its main causes were:

1. Overreach and revolt: The shift to Daulatabad, extra taxes during a famine in the doab and the token currency provoked widespread rebellion; the south broke away as Madurai, Vijayanagara and the Bahmani Sultanate.
2. Unstable nobility: Slaves and clients were loyal to their master, not to his heirs, so every succession invited conflict; Firoz Shah’s own slaves later made and unmade sultans.
3. Timur’s invasion: The sack of Delhi in 1398 left the Sultanate in anarchy.
4. Regional states: By the fifteenth century Jaunpur, Bengal, Malwa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and the whole of the south had rulers of their own.
5. The last Lodi: Ibrahim Lodi alienated his nobles, one of whom invited Babur, who won at Panipat in 1526.

The Sultanate's methods outlived it. Sher Shah Sur, who defeated the Mughal Humayun, built an administration that borrowed from Alauddin Khalji and made it more efficient, and that administration became the model Akbar followed when he consolidated the Mughal Empire.

Delhi Sultanate in UPSC Previous Year Questions

What UPSC Has Asked About the Delhi Sultanate

UPSC returns to the Delhi Sultanate every few years. The objective papers test the order of rulers, the last ruler of a dynasty, the iqta and single reforms; the written papers ask how the period's sources and technology shaped Indian society. The questions below cover the Sultanate as a whole.

Sources

• NCERT: Our Pasts II (Class VII), The Delhi Sultans
• Archaeological Survey of India: Qutb Minar and its Monuments
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Qutb Minar and its Monuments, Delhi
• Incredible India (Ministry of Tourism): Qutub Minar
• Wikipedia: Delhi Sultanate
• Wikipedia: Mamluk dynasty (Delhi)
• Wikipedia: Khalji dynasty
• Wikipedia: Tughlaq dynasty
• Wikipedia: Sayyid dynasty
• Wikipedia: Lodi dynasty
• Wikipedia: Qutb ud-Din Aibak
• Wikipedia: Iltutmish
• Wikipedia: Alauddin Khalji
• Wikipedia: Muhammad bin Tughluq
• Wikipedia: First Battle of Panipat
• Wikipedia: Sack of Delhi (1398)
• Wikipedia: Ziauddin Barani
• Wikipedia: Amir Khusrau
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers