Delhi Sultanate
Sultanate of Delhi | |||||||||||||||
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| 1206–1526 | |||||||||||||||
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| Status | Sultanate | ||||||||||||||
| Capital |
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| Official languages | |||||||||||||||
| Religion | Sunni Islam (state religion) Hinduism (majority) Jainism Buddhism Christianity Sikhism Zoroastrianism | ||||||||||||||
| Government | Absolute monarchy | ||||||||||||||
| Sultan | |||||||||||||||
• 1206–1210 | Qutb ud-Din Aibak (first) | ||||||||||||||
• 1517–1526 | Ibrahim Khan Lodi (last) | ||||||||||||||
| Legislature | Corps of Forty (1211–1266) | ||||||||||||||
| Historical era | Medieval India | ||||||||||||||
| 25 June 1206 | |||||||||||||||
| 1 February – 13 June 1290 | |||||||||||||||
| 6 September 1320 | |||||||||||||||
| 17–20 December 1398 | |||||||||||||||
| 21 April 1526 | |||||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||||
| 1250 | 1,300,000[12] km2 (500,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| 1300 | 1,500,000[12] km2 (580,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| 1312 | 3,200,000[13] km2 (1,200,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| 1350 | 2,800,000[12] km2 (1,100,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||||
• 1500 estimate | 101,000,000[14] | ||||||||||||||
| Currency | Taka | ||||||||||||||
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| Today part of | |||||||||||||||
The Delhi Sultanate or the Sultanate of Delhi was a late medieval empire primarily based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for more than three centuries.[15][16][17] The sultanate was established in 1206 in the former Ghurid territories in India. Its history is generally divided into five periods: Mamluk (1206–1290), Khalji (1290–1320), Tughlaq (1320–1414), Sayyid (1414–1451), and Lodi (1451–1526). It covered large swaths of territory in modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, as well as some parts of southern Nepal.[18]
The foundation of the sultanate was laid by the Ghurid conqueror Muhammad Ghori, who routed the Rajput Confederacy, led by Ajmer ruler Prithviraj Chauhan, in 1192 near Tarain, in a reversal of an earlier battle.[19] As a successor to the Ghurid dynasty, the Delhi Sultanate was originally one of several principalities ruled by the Turkic slave-generals of Muhammad Ghori, including Taj al-Din Yildiz, Qutb ud-Din Aibak, Bahauddin Tughril and Nasir ad-Din Qabacha, who had inherited and divided the Ghurid territories amongst themselves.[20] Khalji and Tughlaq rule ushered a new wave of rapid and continual Muslim conquests deep into South India.[21][22][23] The sultanate reached its geographical zenith under the Tughlaq dynasty, occupying most of the Indian subcontinent during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughluq. A major political transformation occurred across northern India, triggered by the Central Asian king Timur's devastating raid on Delhi in 1398, coinciding with the re-emergence of rival Hindu powers such as Vijayanagara Empire and Kingdom of Mewar, and new Muslim sultanates such as the Bengal and Bahmani Sultanates asserting independence.[24][25] In 1526, Timurid ruler Babur invaded northern India and conquered the sultanate, leading to its succession by the Mughal Empire.
The establishment of the Sultanate drew the Indian subcontinent more closely into international and multicultural Islamic social and economic networks,[26] as seen concretely in the development of the Hindustani language[27] and Indo-Islamic architecture.[28][29] It was also one of the few powers to repel attacks by the Mongols (from the Chagatai Khanate)[30] and saw the enthronement of one of the few female rulers in Islamic history, Razia Sultana (r. 1236 – 1240).[31] The sultans generally accepted Hindu officials and vassals as well as native Muslims converted from Hinduism in the administration, and presented themselves as a paramount power instead of sovereigns, according to the Hindu political traditions.[32] However, there were cases like Bakhtiyar Khalji's annexations, which involved a large-scale desecration of Hindu and Buddhist temples and the destruction of universities and libraries.[33][32][34][35][36] Mongolian raids on West and Central Asia set the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, intelligentsia, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from those regions into the subcontinent, thereby establishing Islamic culture there.[37][38]
Name
[edit]Although conventionally named after its principal capital city, Delhi, the terminology applied to the Delhi Sultanate was often not fixed. It was called the "Empire of Delhi" (Persian: Mamalik-i-Delhi) by Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani and Ziauddin Barani, while Ibn Battuta referred to the empire under Muhammad bin Tughlaq as "Hind and Sind". The Delhi Sultanate was also known as the "Empire of Hindustan" (Persian: Mamalik-i-Hindustan), a name that gained currency during this period.[39]
History
[edit]Background
[edit]Like other agrarian societies in history, those in the Indian subcontinent have been attacked by nomadic tribes throughout its long history. The northwestern subcontinent was a frequent target of tribes raiding from Central Asia in the pre-Islamic era, and the Muslim intrusions and later Muslim invasions were not dissimilar to those of the earlier invasions during the 1st millennium.[40]
The rise of the Delhi Sultanate in India was part of a wider trend affecting much of the Asian continent, including the whole of southern and western Asia: the influx of nomadic Turkic peoples from the Central Asian steppes that traces back to the 9th century when the Islamic Caliphate began fragmenting in the Middle East. Muslim rulers in rival states began enslaving non-Muslim nomadic Turks from the Central Asian steppes and raising many of them to become loyal army slaves called Mamluks. Soon, Turks were migrating to Muslim lands and becoming Islamicized. Many of the Turkic Mamluk slaves eventually rose to become rulers and conquered large parts of the Muslim world, establishing Mamluk Sultanates from Egypt to present-day Afghanistan, before turning their attention to the Indian subcontinent.[41]
