Delhi Sultanate: Dynasties, Rulers and Administration

The Delhi Sultanate is the name given to the Turkish and Afghan rule that governed north India from Delhi between 1206 and 1526. Five dynasties held the throne in that span: the Slave or Mamluk, the Khalji, the Tughlaq, the Sayyid and the Lodi. The period is one of the most heavily examined blocks of medieval Indian history, because it supplies founders, capitals, titles, coins, taxes, buildings and battles in neat pairs that a paper setter can turn into a question. The facts below are arranged so that each can be revised on its own.

The five dynasties at a glance

The Khalji dynasty, at about thirty years, ruled for the shortest time of the five; the Tughlaqs, at about ninety-four years, for the longest.

The Slave or Mamluk dynasty

Qutbuddin Aibak, a slave and general of Muhammad Ghori, founded the dynasty in 1206 with Lahore as his seat. He began the Qutb Minar in memory of the Sufi saint Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, and raised the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque at Delhi and the Adhai-din-ka-Jhonpra at Ajmer. He died in 1210 after a fall from his horse while playing chaugan, an early form of polo.

Iltutmish, his son-in-law, ruled from 1211 to 1236 and is treated as the real consolidator of the Sultanate. He shifted the capital from Lahore to Delhi, completed the Qutb Minar, issued the silver tanka and the copper jital, organised the iqta system of land assignments in place of cash salaries, and created the Turkan-i-Chihalgani, a corps of forty Turkish nobles. In 1229 the Abbasid Caliph sent him a letter of investiture, which gave his rule legal standing in the wider Islamic world. His daughter Razia became the first and only woman to sit on the throne of Delhi, ruling from 1236 to 1240.

Balban, who ruled from 1266 to 1287, broke the power of the Forty, and made the court bow to the Sultan through the ceremonies of sijda, prostration, and paibos, kissing the feet. He called the Sultan the deputy of God, Niyabat-i-Khudai, and set up a separate military department, the diwan-i-arz.

The Khalji dynasty

Jalaluddin Khalji founded the dynasty in 1290. His nephew and murderer Alauddin Khalji, who ruled from 1296 to 1316, was the most powerful Sultan of the period. He fixed the prices of grain, cloth, cattle and slaves and appointed a shahna-i-mandi to enforce them, opened the Sarai Adl as a controlled cloth market, and was the first Sultan to pay his soldiers wholly in cash. To stop fraud in the army he introduced dagh, the branding of horses, and chehra, a descriptive roll of every soldier. He raised the land revenue demand to half the produce and had land measured for assessment. Ranthambore fell to him in 1301 and Chittor in 1303, and his general Malik Kafur carried Sultanate arms into the far south. Alauddin built the Alai Darwaza, the Siri fort and the Hauz-i-Alai, and the poet Amir Khusrau, called Tuti-i-Hind or the Parrot of India, adorned his court.

The Tughlaq dynasty

Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq founded the dynasty in 1320. Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who ruled from 1325 to 1351, is remembered for two experiments that failed: moving the capital from Delhi to Devagiri, which he renamed Daulatabad, and issuing token currency of bronze and copper that forgers copied freely. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta reached his court and was made qazi of Delhi. Firoz Shah Tughlaq, who ruled from 1351 to 1388, turned instead to public works. He dug canals from the Yamuna and the Sutlej, founded Firozabad, Hisar, Fatehabad and Jaunpur, set up the Diwan-i-Khairat for charity and an employment bureau for the jobless, and moved two Ashokan pillars, from Topra and from Meerut, to Delhi. He also extended the jizya to Brahmins and left an account of his own reign, the Futuhat-i-Firozshahi. Timur invaded and sacked Delhi in 1398, and the dynasty never recovered.

The Sayyid and Lodi dynasties

Khizr Khan founded the Sayyid dynasty in 1414 and ruled as a deputy rather than as an independent Sultan. Bahlul Khan Lodi founded the Lodi dynasty in 1451; it was the first Afghan dynasty of Delhi. Sikandar Lodi founded the city of Agra in 1504 and shifted his capital there. His son Ibrahim Lodi was defeated and briefly imprisoned by Rana Sanga of Mewar at the Battle of Khatoli in 1517, and on 21 April 1526 he was killed by Babur at the First Battle of Panipat, which ended the Sultanate and began Mughal rule.

Administration and revenue

The Sultan was head of state, army and judiciary, assisted by departments that examiners ask about by name.

• Diwan-i-Wizarat: finance and revenue, headed by the wazir.
• Diwan-i-Arz: the army, headed by the ariz-i-mumalik.
• Diwan-i-Insha: royal correspondence and drafting.
• Diwan-i-Risalat: religious matters, grants and appeals.
• Diwan-i-Qaza: justice, under the qazi-ul-quzat.

Four taxes carried the state. Kharaj was the land tax and the main source of income; zakat was the religious tax paid by Muslims; jizya was the poll tax paid by non-Muslims in return for protection; and khams was the state share of war booty. The empire was divided into iqtas held by muqtis or walis, who collected the revenue of the assignment, maintained troops out of it and sent the surplus to the centre. Firoz Shah Tughlaq made the iqta hereditary, which weakened central control.

Architecture and culture

Sultanate builders brought the true arch and the true dome, the arcuate style, in place of the beam-and-bracket trabeate construction of temple architecture, and used lime mortar as a cementing agent. The Qutb Minar, at about 72.5 metres, is the tallest brick minaret in the world. Persian became the language of administration, and the chronicles of the age are the main sources for it: Minhaj-us-Siraj wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri and Ziauddin Barani the Tarikh-i-Firozshahi. Amir Khusrau served several Sultans and wrote in both Persian and the early Hindavi speech of Delhi.