The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526)

The Delhi Sultanate consisted of five successive regimes that controlled large sections of North India and occasionally the South between the end of the 12th and the middle of the 16th centuries (ca. 1190–1556). With some brief exceptions, all the rulers of these regimes made Delhi their capital—hence their collective name, the Delhi Sultans, for the period of their rule. A chronological list of the successive dynasties includes the Mamluk (1206–96), Khalji (1296–1320), Tughluq (1320–1414), Sayyid (1414–51), and Lodi (1451–1526).

The Mamluk regime differed from the others in that its three lineages were each founded by a ruler of servile origin (Qutb al-Din Aybak, r. 1206–10; Shams al-Din Iltutmish, r. 1210–36; and Ghiyas al-Din Balban, r. 1266–87). The other regimes were established by freeborn men who had been commanders on the northwest marches of the Indus plain bordering modern-day Afghanistan. With the exception of the Lodis, who were chiefs of an Afghan tribe, all were of Turkish or Turkicized origin, and all were regarded as outsiders at the beginning of their reign.

All the regimes shared the feature of recruiting military slaves and groups of low social status, such as mahouts (elephant drivers), as well as Afghans, Mongols, and new converts to Islam, all of them sometimes described in the Persian chronicles as the “lowest and basest.” Promoting social menials to high office allowed the rulers to centralize authority at the expense of existing elites while at the same time creating roots in local society by establishing influential households.

At its inception (ca. 1190s), the Delhi Sultanate was a collection of garrison towns commanded by the senior military commanders and former slaves (bandagān) of Mu‘izz al-Din Ghuri (r. 1173–1206). It was not until 1228–29 and the reign of Iltutmish that Delhi’s military supremacy was established. In the early 13th century, the Delhi Sultans had firm control of lands only around their cantonments, and in economic terms their regime was sustained largely by revenues from trade and plunder/tribute. In the years after Iltutmish’s death, his military commanders marginalized the late monarch’s successors and battled among themselves. They consolidated their respective governorships (iqṭā‘), often with accommodative relationships with neighboring local chieftains, and resisted the intrusive efforts of Delhi to reassert its authority. For brief periods, especially during the reigns of Ghiyas al-Din Balban, ‘Ala’ al-Din Khalaji (r. 1296–1316), and Muhammad Tughluq (r. 1324–51), the Delhi Sultans energetically altered the balance of power in their own favor, but even then their ambit of influence rarely extended beyond northern India into the Deccan. Provinces like Bengal, large parts of Gujarat, western Punjab, Sindh, and Rajasthan passed in and out of their control, and by Firuz Tughluq’s reign (r. 1351–88), these provinces were well on their way to possessing independent sultanates. Accordingly, historians have tended to interpret the period from 1350 to 1550 as a period of decline. Although the territorial control (and thus revenues) of the sultanate diminished considerably, the period is notable for the increasing prominence of new political groups. Already from the 13th century onward, considerable migration and settlement had taken place—Persian scholars, jurists, Sufi teachers, and military adventurers from varied backgrounds were now a prominent part of the subcontinental landscape. These were years of great opportunity and a huge expansion of what Dirk Kolff called the “military labor market,” where the courts of kings and princelings competed with each other to attract clients. A rough approximation of their geographical location in the subcontinent would include the Ganges plain, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Deccan, and Bengal.

Although military slaves, social menials, and frontiersmen (particularly Afghans) were important in the political and military organization of sultanates through its entire history, after 1351 a new idea of “service” (nawkarī) gained currency. This new idea of service carried the implication of free choice in the search for patrons, a politics of mutually supportive accommodative alliances with local chieftains, and recruitment of peasant warriors. War, service, and valorous conduct offered opportunities through which groups seized political initiative and reinvented their identities. It was during the 14th and 15th centuries, for example, that “Rajput” as a caste identity gained ground. Originally a title borne by a prince in an earlier period, the term “Rajput” now came to refer to a warrior caste, a status claimed by a variety of soldiers and commanders in Indian history.

All the sultanates, both before and after 1350, had complicated relationships with the Persian literati: scribes and chroniclers, jurists and Sufi masters. Some of them, notably the scribes and the chroniclers, had little compunction about receiving patronage from the state. For others, notably the jurists and the mystics, it was more problematic. By virtue of their learning and pietistic inclinations, they were deeply involved in the social and political affairs of the Muslim community. Some mystics were fairly direct about their close relationship with the regnant sultan and his courtiers, while others kept aloof from politics.

Two other developments were distinctive to the period. The first was the use of vernaculars (especially Hindawi) for the production of Sufi literature; the second was the emergence of Sufi gravesites as pilgrimage centers. The Malwa Sultanate in the 15th century developed the famous shrine of Mu‘in al-Din Chishti in Ajmer and the Gujarat Sultanate built that of Shaikh Ahmad Khattu in Ahmadabad. By 1556, when the last of the Delhi Sultans was defeated by the adolescent Mughal emperor Jalal al-Din Akbar (r. 1556–1605), the sultanates of Jaunpur, Malwa, and Gujarat provided some of the templates that would be used to construct the Mughal Empire.