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Part Two
THE DELHI SULTANATE, 1316–1526
(C. E. Bosworth)
The Tughluqids (1320–1412)
With the murder of Qutb al-D¯ın Mubarak Sh ¯ ah in 1320, the line of the Khalji sultans of ¯ Delhi came to an end, and his assassin, his Hindu convert slave Khusraw Khan Barwari, ascended the throne as Sultan Nasir al-D ¯ ¯ın. But his reign was cut short by the rebellion of Ghazi Malik Tughluq, governor of Dipalpur in Panjab, who had risen to prominence ¯ under the Khaljis, utilizing resentment against the ascendancy of the Hindus in the state under Khusraw Khan: in 1320 Nasir al-D ¯ ¯ın was defeated and killed by Ghazi Malik, who ¯ ascended the throne as Ghiyath al-D ¯ ¯ın (1320–5). The line of sultans which he inaugurated is conveniently referred to as the Tughluqids, although Tughluq was almost certainly a personal name of Ghaz¯ ¯ı Malik rather than a Turkish ethnic or tribal name.1
Ghiyath al-D ¯ ¯ın thus came to power posing as the saviour of the faith from Hindu threats to subvert Islam, although Nasir al-D ¯ ¯ın’s failure had stemmed from his personal incapacity to rule rather than from outraged Islamic sentiment. Hence Diya’ al-D ¯ ¯ın Baran¯ı presents Ghiyath al-D ¯ ¯ın as the paragon of Islamic rulers,2although the Sufi hagiographic tradition is less enthusiastic because of the new ruler’s differences with the Chisht¯ı mystic Nizam¯ al-D¯ın Awliya’. ¯3 Ghiyath al-D ¯ ¯ın’s main tasks were to restore internal order and to pull together the empire after the financial chaos and the centrifugal administrative forces at work during the previous reign. These he achieved by recovering land grants (iqta¯cs, or jag¯ ¯ırs) which had been lavishly distributed by his predecessor, by campaigning against the Hindu rulers of Orissa and Macbar (Madura) (this last province conquered in 1323) and by securing the vassalage of the Muslim sultanate of Bengal in 1324. Thus on his death in 1325, the sultanate had been once more consolidated and its frontiers extended considerably beyond those of Khalji times.4
Ghiyath al-D ¯ ¯ın’s son, Muhammad b. Tughluq (1325–51), consummated this work of consolidation and expansion during his long reign, and under him the Delhi Sultanate reached its greatest extent; his reign marks a watershed in the history of the sultanate. He is certainly one of the great figures of medieval Indo-Muslim history, yet Professor K. A. Nizami has written of him:
His reign of twenty-six years is a fascinating but tragic story of schemes and projects correctly conceived, badly executed and disastrously abandoned. His ingenious mind was as quick in formulating new plans as it was slow in understanding the psychology of the people. He could never establish that rapport and mutual understanding with his subjects, which was so necessary for the implementation of his schemes.5
Historians such as cIsam¯ ¯ı and Baran¯ı adopted hostile attitudes to him and stigmatized him as an impractical visionary. Yet Muhammad was in fact a vigorous commander and man of action.6In 1327 he embarked on one of his most controversial and innovatory actions, the founding of a second capital of the sultanate in Deogir, renamed Dawlatabad, in the north ern Deccan (near modern Awrangabad in Maharashtra province), in which many members of the Muslim administrative and religious élites of Delhi were willy-nilly resettled. In this way Muhammad parted company with the Khalji policy of exercising suzerainty over the Deccan from outside, and, from this new military base, he apparently planned a more activist policy within the Deccan. Whether this was his express intention or not, the policy speedily proved a failure and the division of central authority within the sultanate has been criticized by later historians as having had, in the longer term, an adverse effect on the sultanate’s unity and effectiveness.7
Soon after Muhammad’s accession, the Tughluqid army raided Peshawar and the moun tains beyond, but had to retire because of the lack of food and fodder there. It seems to have been this raid which in c. 1329–30 provoked the last major invasion of India by the Chaghatayids, whose territories in the North-West Frontier region and eastern Afghanistan had just been threatened. Under their Tarmash¯ır¯ın Khan, the Mongol forces entered Panjab and reached the Jumna. Peace was made, but Muhammad seems to have entertained the grand design of attacking the Chaghatayids in ‘Khurasan’, a vague term in Indo-Muslim usage of the times. Barani speaks of a campaign against the ‘Qarach ¯ ¯ıl mountains’, which has often been taken to refer to the Himalayan regions of Garwhal and Kumaon but which might well refer to Kashmir, at that time considered to be within the Chaghayatid sphere of influence; the venture was, at all events, unsuccessful. One side-effect of Muhammad’s pol icy vis-à-vis the Chaghatayids was that his realm became a haven for many Turco-Mongol chiefs and soldiers fleeing from Tarmash¯ır¯ın’s strongly anti-Muslim measures within the Khanate, and contingents of Turco-Mongols appeared in the Tughluqid army later in his reign.8
After a certain number of successes, however, a reaction set in and in the latter part of his reign, Muhammad had to deal with no fewer than twenty-two rebellions in different parts of the empire. These involved the permanent loss to the sultanate of several provinces. Bengal and Macbar (Madura) regained their independence; Multan, Sind and Gujarat were disaffected; above all, the new policy towards the Deccan clearly failed when cAla’ al- ¯ D¯ın Hasan Bahman Shah constituted the Bahmanid sultanate there after 1347. Hence at ¯ Muhammad’s death, the sultan of Delhi possessed no authority in central and southern India beyond the Vindhya range.9
The causes of this decline are various. Muhammad had clearly aroused discontent in the state by his policy of opening the doors of the army and the administration to new sectors of talent. In pursuit of this broadening of his power base, he did, as mentioned above, encourage dissident Mongol amirs to come to his court. He further admitted converts from Hinduism – as of course had his predecessors – and this was resented by the old Muslim Turkish families and by the culama¯’, both classes ever jealous of their own positions and interests. The sultan’s policy of attracting strangers to India and of honouring them for their capabilities was approved by Ibn Battuta (mentioned above), who reached India in 1333 ¯ and the Delhi court in the following year (as an outsider himself, he benefited greatly from it).10 Muhammad was keen to establish links with the cAbbasid fainéant caliphs now living in Cairo under the tutelage of the Mamluks, receiving their emissaries and placing their names on his coins, presumably in the hope of strengthening the aura of Islamic legitimacy for his rule; but the caliphate was by this time such a pale and ineffectual shadow of its former self that cAbbasid approval does not seem to have brought Muhammad any tangible benefits in the eyes of his contemporaries.11
Of more immediate damage to Muhammad’s image as a divinely mandated ruler were, first, his strained relations with the religious classes of India (although the accounts by contemporary chroniclers of a decline in religious life at Delhi as a consequence of the move to Dawlatabad are clearly much exaggerated) and, second, his general reputation as a stern, even bloodthirsty ruler, whose anger and violence did not spare recalcitrant religious scholars and Sufis – as Ibn Battuta notes in a fair-sized list of those executed by ¯ the sultan.12 But Muhammad’s attempts to encourage agriculture, especially in the wake of a disastrous famine in the Delhi– Do’ab region in 1335–6, to reform the coinage by introducing a low-denomination copper and brass coinage (perhaps in response to heavy drains of precious metal resulting from military campaigning and/or to some economic crisis not made explicit in the sources)13 and to establish a secure base for the Islamization of the Deccan at Dawlatabad show him as a man of some vision who was trying to follow a coherent policy but was held back by inadequate resources, refractory human material and personal failings.14
Muhammad’s nephew F¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah (1351–88) had a more pacific and conciliatory tem- ¯ perament and his thirty-seven-year reign gave India a period of general relaxation and peace after the storm and stress of Muhammad b. Tughluq’s reign. This newfound tran quillity was signalled by the prohibition, on F¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah’s accession, of what Baran ¯ ¯ı calls siyasat ¯ , i.e. the infliction of harsh punishments and torture which the severe and blood thirsty Muhammad had used with such abandon as instruments of state policy.15
The new sultan was nevertheless by no means averse to military glory and success, and aimed at restoring the control lost by Delhi over the provinces. Unfortunately, he lacked military skill and the ruthlessness required of a great commander. His two invasions of Bengal (in 1353–4 and 1359–61) gained virtually nothing. He attacked Hindu rulers in Orissa and at Nagarkot-Kangra and led a long and costly campaign against the Samma¯ chiefs of Thatta on the Indus and lower Sind and against Gujarat (in 1365–7), asserting the suzerainty of Delhi there; but the whole enterprise was later regretted by the sultan for the losses in manpower and treasure involved. An invitation from discontented elements in the Bahmanid sultanate to intervene in the Deccan was, on the advice of the sultan’s veteran vizier, the Khan-i Jah ¯ an Maqb ¯ ul, wisely refused and F ¯ ¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah henceforth abstained from ¯ military adventures.16
In general, Firuz Sh ¯ ah showed himself more concerned with the arts of peace, and this ¯ inevitably led to a decline in the organization and fighting qualities of the army during the last twenty years or so of his reign. Much of the army’s preparedness and military effectiveness had rested on the periodic reviews (card) of the cavalry, their weapons and their mounts by the official entitled the rawat-i ¯card. The standards attained were recorded in the registers of the d¯ıwan-i ¯card (military department) of the administration; it was on the basis of performance on these occasions that salaries and allowances were issued.17 The system had been rigorously upheld by such sultans as cAla’ al-D ¯ ¯ın Khalj¯ı, Qutb al D¯ın Mubarak Sh ¯ ah and Muhammad b. Tughluq, when military efficiency had been the ¯ criterion for financial rewards. Firuz Sh ¯ ah, however, granted extensive hereditary ¯ iqta¯cs to the army commanders rather than paying them in cash, a reversal of previous practice; and since the troops now collected their salaries directly from the cultivators, the door was open to extortion, oppression and corruption throughout the countryside, as the state could no longer threaten to withhold salaries in the case of military unpreparedness or inadequate training.18 The sultan, meanwhile, buttressed his personal authority by the acquisition of a large body of personal slaves, the bandagan-i F ¯ ¯ıruz-Sh ¯ ah¯ ¯ı: their numbers stationed in the capital and in the provinces were implausibly put by cAf¯ıf¯ı at 180,000.19 It is true that the more deleterious effects of the new trends in military organization and payment were delayed by the abilities of F¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah’s ministers, who included men of high calibre such ¯ as the two Khan-i Jah ¯ ans, father and son, and ¯cAyn-i Mahr ¯ u. ¯
The adverse effects of the new system took time fully to emerge. It was only after F¯ıruz¯ Shah’s death in 1388 that it became apparent that the decay of a highly trained, centrally ¯ paid, salaried army meant that assignees of lands often had inadequate military force with which to collect the revenues from their iqta¯cs in the face of rebellious provincial gover nors, recalcitrant Hindu chiefs, and others. For the same reason, the central administration in Delhi could not collect its own share of the iqta¯cs, that proportion which was kept back from the assignees for the expenses of running the state. Hence when the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) appeared in India from Central Asia a decade after F¯ıruz¯ Shah’s death, the Delhi Sultanate’s military and financial resources were totally inadequate ¯ for opposing him.
F¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah’s relaxation of central control in several spheres of state activity, and his ¯ amelioration of the harsh and oppressive policies of the preceding reign, were meritorious measures, although one consequence of them seems to have been a spread of corruption in the administration once fears of draconian punishment had disappeared. In religion, the sultan held strictly orthodox Sunni views. He deferred to the culama¯’; he was the last Delhi sultan to receive formal investiture from the puppet cAbbasid caliph in Cairo; he destroyed newly erected Hindu temples; he persecuted the extremist Shicites and the Ismacilis; he exacted the jizya, albeit at a low rate, from Brahmans, hitherto exempt; and he abolished mukus¯ (pl. of maks; non- Qur’anic taxes), although it is reasonable to assume that, as had always happened on previous occasions when these were abolished, the state soon found itself unable to do without the revenue and the old taxes and abuses crept back in.20
The sultan’s pacific policies may have brought some beneficial results for the masses of the population, if only because of the decreased need to finance military campaigns. Whether the price of provisions remained stable and affordable during his reign has been disputed by modern historians; prices were certainly much higher than they had been in, for example, cAla’ al-D ¯ ¯ın Khalj¯ı’s time half a century or so before (see Part One above). It was as a builder of public buildings and endower of charitable institutions that the sultan achieved particular fame. Around Delhi, he laid out many gardens and orchards, and within the city he completed a Friday mosque and the Madrasa-yi F¯ıruz-Sh ¯ ah¯ ¯ı in 1352, as well as a Sufi khanaq ¯ ah¯ -cum-madrasa (convent-cum-college) for the noted Sayyid Najm al-D¯ın Samarqand¯ı. In 1359 F¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah founded the city of Jawnpur, possibly named after his ¯ kinsman Muhammad b. Tughluq’s pre-accession title of Jawna Khan, and he further built ¯ a new city in the Delhi district, named Firuzabad after himself; it did not, however, survive the Timurid onslaught soon afterwards.21
After F¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah’s death in 1388, the remaining twenty-five years of Tughluqid rule ¯ were filled with a series of ephemeral sultans; none save one of the last, Nasir al-D ¯ ¯ın Mahmud Sh ¯ ah II (1394–5; 1399–1412) ruled for more than two or three years. Thesul- ¯ tanate was, in fact, in a state of disintegration, racked by disputes over the succession and the allocation of power; thus in 1395 Mahmud Sh ¯ ah II was ruling in Delhi while ¯ his rival, Nasir al-D ¯ ¯ın Nusrat Shah (like Mahm ¯ ud Sh ¯ ah a grandson of F ¯ ¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah), held ¯ power at Firuzabad. By this time, many of the muqtacs had achieved virtual independence. The Bahmanid sultanate had flourished under its able second ruler, Muhammad Shah I ¯ (1358–75), and his successors. The Hindu ruler of Vijayanagar in the south-eastern tip of the Deccan had already succeeded in extinguishing the petty Muslim principality of Macbar (Madura) soon after 1378. The governor of Malwa in central India, Hasan Dilawar ¯ Khan, ceased to forward any tribute to Delhi after 1392. He sheltered the fugitive Tugh luqid sultan Mahmud Sh ¯ ah II when Timur invaded India in 1398, but in 1401 proclaimed ¯ his independence, thus inaugurating the powerful sultanate of Malwa, based on its capital Mandu, which was to endure for over a century until conquered by the sultans of Gujarat. In Jawnpur, the eunuch commander of the sultanate, Malik Sarwar, who already held the title of sultan al-skarq ¯ (Ruler of the East), was in 1394 sent to Jawnpur to quell disaf fected Hindus there; he extended his power over most of the Ganges valley east of Delhi, including Bihar, as an independent ruler. The progeny of his adopted son and successor, Malik Mubarak, founded the principality of the Sharq ¯ ¯ı sultans which was to last for some eighty years until Sultan Bahlul L ¯ od¯ ¯ı reincorporated Jawnpur within the Delhi Sultanate. In Gujarat, the sultanate commander Zafar Khan had been sent to restore order there, but first his son Tatar Khan assumed power in 1403 and then Zafar Khan himself in 1407 – ¯ at a time when the Tughluqid dynasty was largely impotent, the sultans not having minted coins for six years – assumed independent authority as Sultan Muzaffar I. He reigned in Gujarat until his death in 1411, after which his descendants enjoyed power for almost two centuries until the Mughal conquest of Akbar the Great in 1583.22
The catalyst for all these losses and secessions from the empire, which reduced Tugh luqid control virtually to the Delhi region alone, so that it became a capital city without an empire, was Timur’s invasion of 1398–9, which culminated in the sack of Delhi and the flight of the sultan.23 When the Turco-Mongol armies at last withdrew, real power in Delhi lay not so much in the hands of the restored Tughluqid Mahmud Sh ¯ ah II as in those of ¯ his Afghan minister, Mallu Iqb ¯ al Khan. The former north-western provinces of the empire, ¯ including Panjab and Multan, gave their allegiance to Timur and then to his successor Shah Rukh. The governor of the western frontier region, Sayyid Khidr Khan, was in 1414 ¯ to seize power at Delhi and inaugurate the shortlived Sayyid line of rulers there.
The Sayyids (1414–51)
Mahmud Sh ¯ ah II died in 1412, and there was a two-year interlude during which power in ¯ Delhi was held by a former Tughluqid commander, Dawlat Khan. Delhi was then captured by Sayyid Khidr Khan, who had since the early 1390s governed the province of Multan and had maintained himself there against Mallu Iqb ¯ al Khan when the latter was governor ¯ of Lahore and Panjab; now, in 1405, Khidr Khan defeated and killed Mallu at Ajodhan. ¯ As long as a legitimate Tughluqid, Mahmud Sh ¯ ah II, reigned in Delhi, Khidr Khan could ¯ make no headway, but the sultan’s death provided him with an opportunity.
Whether Khidr Khan really was a sayyid (descendant of the Prophet) is doubtful. The reference to this status in the near-contemporary Tar¯ ¯ıkh-i Mubarak Sh ¯ ah¯ ¯ı of Yahya S¯ ¯ırhind¯ı is at best vague; in its favour, however, may be Timur’s earlier appointment of Khidr Khan as his governor in Delhi, suggesting that he was regarded as a sayyid, given Timur’s special regard for the descendants of the Prophet. The growth of the claim may have been encour aged by Khidr Khan’s undoubtedly benevolent rule (1414–21) and his skill as a military commander.24
It is not easy to characterize the Sayyid dynasty, with its four members only, but early fifteenth-century Muslim India clearly shows the transition from a strong centralized rule by the early Delhi Sultanate dynasties to a more diffused system of government, with strong tendencies to particularism and regionalism and a much reduced role of Delhi in Indo-Muslim political and military affairs. The period of the Sayyids was full of mili tary campaigns, often against petty rebels and chieftains who had witheld taxation, but the Sayyid rulers showed little vision in extending their power beyond the vicinity of Delhi, the upper and middle Do’ab, with a more tenuous authority over Panjab and Multan. Thus the amount of revenue available to the state depended largely on the success or failure of these punitive expeditions and holding operations, and also on the rulers’ ability to control a powerful and ambitious Turkish military nobility which had benefited from the power vacuum at the centre under the last Tughluqids to increase its own influence. The Sayyids were themselves conscious, it seems, of enjoying a lesser status and prestige than their predecessors. Khidr Khan ruled as a Timurid vassal and Shah Rukh was recognized in the ¯ khutba (Friday worship oration) and on the coinage of Delhi. Only after 1417, and with the Timurid monarch’s permission, did Khidr Khan add his own name to the coinage, previ ously having been content to restamp the coins of F¯ıruz Sh ¯ ah Tughluq and his successors. ¯25 Nor did he ever claim the exalted title of sultan but only that of rayat-i a ¯cla¯ (Most Exalted Standard-[bearer]).
Khidr Khan’s seven-year reign was full of campaigns localized, however, in the northern Indian plain and on its fringes: against Hindu Rajahs in Katahr (in the later Rohilkhand), Gwalior, Itawa (in the Kanawj region) and Mewat (in Rajasthan); in repelling an attack on Nagawr by the sultan of Gujarat, Ahmad I (1411–42), son of Zafar Khan Muzaffar I; and against rebellious Turkish troops of the sultanate, the Turk-bachchas.26
Khidr Khan’s son and heir, Mubarak Sh ¯ ah (1421–34), was the ablest ruler of his line. ¯ It is clear that he felt himself in a stronger position than his father from the fact that he adopted the title of sultan, placed his own name in the khutba and issued coins. Even so, he faced much the same problems, with additional challenges from the Khokars of Panjab (in 1421–2 and 1428), and with further campaigns required against Katahr, Mewat and Gwalior – on more than one occasion, against all of these places. The provincial Muslim kings of India were now strong and ambitious enough to challenge Delhi, and Mubarak ¯ Shah clashed with Alp Khan H ¯ ushang of Malwa (1405–35), who was menacing Gwalior, ¯ in 1423; and with the Sharq¯ı ruler of Jawnpur, Shams al-D¯ın Ibrah¯ ¯ım (1402–40), who was threatening Bada’un and Itawa, in 1428. He was successful in repelling incursions of Turco-Mongols from Kabul, instigated by Shah Rukh’s governor there, Mas ¯cud M ¯ ¯ırza, in ¯ concert with their Khokar allies (in 1431 and 1433), and in relieving pressure on Lahore. Like certain other previous rulers in Delhi, Mubarak Sh ¯ ah had the idea of founding a new ¯ city on the banks of the Jumna, Mubarakabad, in 1433, but his plans were cut short when he was assassinated in 1434 by partisans of his discontented vizier, the Hindu convert Sarwar al-Mulk.27
The dead sultan’s adopted son was raised to the throne in Delhi as Muhammad Shah¯ (1434–45), but was not given full allegiance by the great men of the state until Sarwar al-Mulk, regarded as the instigator of Mubarak Sh ¯ ah’s murder, had himself been killed. ¯ Muhammad Shah ruled over a reduced, disordered realm with powerful rival princes on ¯ its fringes. In 1440 the ruler of Malwa, Mahmud Sh ¯ ah I Khalj ¯ ¯ı (1436-69), marched almost to the gates of Delhi and was only defeated and repulsed with the aid of the governor of Sirhind in Panjab, the Afghan Bahlul L ¯ od¯ ¯ı. Bahlul’s power was increased by the grant ¯ to him of Lahore and Dipalpur, and in the last two years of Muhammad Shah’s reign he ¯ rebelled and at one point even besieged Delhi.
When Muhammad Shah died, his son ¯cAla’ al-D ¯ ¯ın cAlam Sh ¯ ah (1443–51) was recog- ¯ nized in Delhi, but with even less power than his father; his inability to control any ter ritories beyond those within a 30-km radius of Delhi led to the witticism, (az Dihl¯ı ta¯ Palam/p ¯ adsh ¯ ah¯ ¯ı Shah¯cAlam ¯ ) [cAlam Sh ¯ ah’s rule extends only from Delhi to Palam] (Palam ¯ being the site of the modern international airport of Delhi). In 1448 he decided to withdraw to Bada’un, where he had previously been governor, abandoning Delhi. The military lead ers then took over power and in 1451 offered the throne to the most vigorous figure in the now truncated sultanate, Bahlul L ¯ od¯ ¯ı. Since cAlam Sh ¯ ah was content with the ¯ par gana of Bada’un, Bahlul left him there in peace until the former Sayyid ruler died in 1476, ¯ when Bada’un was briefly annexed to Jawnpur by the Sharq¯ı Husayn Shah (1459–79). The ¯ Sayyid dynasty thus came to an end after a somewhat unremarkable thirty-seven years, notable only as a further stage in the disintegration of the Delhi Sultanate.28
The Lodıs (1451–1526)
The Lod¯ ¯ıs sultans represent the first Afghan dynasty ruling in Delhi – the heart of Indo Muslim authority in northern India – since the time of the Ghurid sultans (originally from Ghur in central Afghanistan) some three centuries previously. Even before the rise to fame in the eastern Iranian lands of these Shansaban¯ ¯ı Maliks of Ghur (see above, Chap ter 8), Afghans had taken part in the Muslim raids and forays down to the Indian plains, attracted by prospects of rich plunder, and the ‘Afaghina’ are mentioned among the troops ¯ of Mahmud of Ghazna (see above, Chapter ¯ 5). The constituting of the Ghurid empire, tran sient though it was, brought in its wake large numbers of Afghan soldiers of fortune to India, with especial areas of concentration in the middle Indus valley, Panjab and parts of the Do’ab. They played a role in political and military affairs under the Khaljis and Tughluqids second only to the predominant Turks in the forces of these ethnically Turkish sultans. During the Timurid invasions of India, Afghans fought on both sides. Sultan Sh ¯ ah¯ Lod¯ ¯ı aided the founder of the Sayyid line of Delhi sultans, Khidr Khan, against Mallu Iqb ¯ al¯ Khan and was rewarded with the governorship of Sirhind and its dependencies in Panjab, plus the title of Islam Khan.
During the reign of Sayyid Mubarak Sh ¯ ah, the L ¯ od¯ ¯ı power base was extended, and after Sultan Sh ¯ ah L ¯ od¯ ¯ı was killed, his younger son Bahlul inherited this. Bahl ¯ ul managed to fight ¯ off an attack by Sayyid Muhammad Shah’s army and was diplomatic enough to conciliate ¯ the ruler in Delhi and thereby to retain Sirhind and its adjuncts; and when in 1440 Sultan Mahmud Sh ¯ ah I Khalj ¯ ¯ı of Malwa attacked Delhi (see above), Bahlul provided a force of ¯ 8,000 Afghans and Turco-Mongols to ward him off, receiving in return the title Khan-i ¯ Khan¯ an. Nevertheless, Bahl ¯ ul shortly afterwards revealed his own designs on Delhi and ¯ the heart of the sultanate, fruitlessly besieging the city and assuming for himself the title of sultan. The death of Sayyid Muhammad Shah and the accession of the even weaker ¯cAla’¯ al-D¯ın cAlam Sh ¯ ah facilitated the fulfilment of his ambitions, as recorded above, so that ¯ in 1451 Bahlul was able to ascend the throne in Delhi as Abu ’l Muzaffar Bahl ¯ ul Sh ¯ ah¯ (1451–89), the first in a line of three Lod¯ ¯ı sultans, the first and second of whom enjoyed what were by contemporary standards long reigns.29
Initially, Bahlul’s position as sultan was by no means firm. The tribal and social tradi- ¯ tions of his Afghan supporters favoured a more diffused allocation of powers in the state rather than a centralized monarchy on the Khalji or early Tughluqid pattern, and Bahlul¯ had to take this into account; there are, in any case, no indications that Bahlul wished to ¯ be an autocrat, withdrawn from his own folk, and he handled with care the body ofperma nently ambitious nobles and military commanders around the Delhi court. Moreover, there was still a representative of the Sayyid family at Bada’un as a possible focus of discon tent, especially as the Sharqis in Jawnpur, whose territories marched with those of Delhi, viewed themselves, because of matrimonial links with the Sayyids, as in large measure heirs of the Sayyids in northern India. It thus behove Bahlul to proceed with caution. He ¯ gained an access of prestige from defeating a Sharq¯ı invasion at Narela outside Delhi in 1452 and hostilities with Mahmud Sh ¯ ah (1440–57) and Husayn Sh ¯ ah (1458–79) were to ¯ fill the greater part of his reign. His success attracted considerable numbers of Afghan troops from Roh (i.e. the North-West Frontier region and the adjacent mountain regions of eastern Afghanistan), and with these, Bahlul inflicted a series of defeats on Husayn ¯ Shah in 1479, culminating in the expulsion of the Sharq ¯ ¯ı ruler from Jawnpur to Bihar and Bengal. Jawnpur was now reunited with the Delhi Sultanate after an independent existence of nearly ninety years. This success allowed Bahlul to mount an invasion of Malwa and to humble various Hindu princes at Gwalior and in the middle and lower Do’ab, such as the ruler of Itawa.
When Bahlul died in 1489 he had reigned for thirty-eight years and had, by his crafty ¯ diplomacy and military skill, placed Lod¯ ¯ı authority on a firm footing. Occupied as he was with frequent wars, he seems to have been content to let the adminstrative and revenue collecting system run on the same lines as those of later Tughluqid and Sayyid times; but he did introduce, at a time when gold and silver for minting had already become scarce under the Sayyids, a billon tanka, the bahlul¯ ¯ı, which remained current until the time of Akbar.30
Before his death, Bahlul had allocated various parts of his realm as appanages for his ¯ sons and other Afghan relatives and connections. Thus his son Barbak received Jawnpur; ¯ Aczam Humay¯ un received Lucknow and Kalpi; Kh ¯ an-i Jah ¯ an received Bada’un; Niz ¯ am¯ Khan was given Panjab, Delhi and the upper and middle Do’ab, and so on. It was Nizam¯ Khan who finally emerged on his father’s death as head of the Lod¯ ¯ı family, taking the regnal name of Sikandar and ruling for nearly thirty years (1489–1517). His most formidable task was to make his rule acceptable to his numerous relatives, many of whom had their own ambitions for the throne, and to the Afghan military classes at large. This he achieved by campaigns which reduced his relatives to submission, by defeating the dispossessed Sharq¯ı of Jawnpur, Husayn, near Benares in 1494 and by humbling the latter’s ally, Husayn Shah¯ (1494–1519), sultan of Bengal, these successes enabling him to take over the province of Bihar. In the direction of central India, he twice successfully attacked Rajah Man Singh of ¯ Gwalior (in 1501 and 1506). When Malwa was racked by succession disputes on the death there in 1511 of Sultan Nasir al-D ¯ ¯ın Shah, Sikandar was tempted in 1513 to intervene on ¯ behalf of a rival to Nasir al-D ¯ ¯ın’s successor Mahmud Sh ¯ ah II (1511–31) and his Rajput ¯ adviser Medin ¯ ¯ı Ra ’ ¯ ¯ı; but he achieved little beyond the capture of Chanderi (on the borders of Malwa and Bundelkhand).
When Sikandar died in 1517, he left behind a prosperous kingdom with a considerable degree of internal security. Being himself a poet in Persian, with the takhallus (nom de plume) of Gulrukhi, he was also a patron of scholars and literary men. Among the most tangible legacies of his reign was his re-foundation in 1504 or 1505 of the ancient town of Agra and his decision to turn it into his capital city and military headquarters.31
Sikandar’s eldest son Ibrah¯ ¯ım (1517–26) succeeded him, but he could only make firm his power after a succession struggle with his brother Jalal Khan of Kalpi. The latter ¯ had originally been assigned the governorship of the former kingdom of Jawnpur in a power-sharing agreement which Ibrah¯ ¯ım speedily abrogated, driving Jalal Khan into ¯ Gwalior and Malwa, eventually to be captured and killed. Ibrah¯ ¯ım’s overbearing behaviour soon aroused the fears and resentment of the military nobility, apprehensions strengthened by such arbitrary acts as the sultan’s arrest and imprisonment of the respected religious leader Miyan Bhu’ ¯ a. Ibr ¯ ah¯ ¯ım had already lost much prestige and military matériel in a dis astrous conflict with the Rajput potentate of Mewar, Ran¯ a S¯ anga. Various rebellions of the ¯ Afghan commanders now erupted. That of Islam Khan, son of A ¯czam Humay¯ un Sarw ¯ an¯ ¯ı, was subdued, but a focus of opposition arose around Bahadur Khan Nuh ¯ an¯ ¯ı in Bihar, where Bahadur Khan himself assumed the title of Sult ¯ an Muhammad and minted his own coins. ¯ Further, the commanders of Panjab wrote to the Mughal Babur at Kabul in 1525, inviting ¯ him to invade India. Babur occupied Lahore and came to face Ibr ¯ ah¯ ¯ım on the battlefield at Panipat (the first of three important battles in Indian history there) in April 1526. Despite an inferiority in numbers, Babur’s effective use of his cavalry and of a protective laager ¯ of linked carts carried the day and Ibrah¯ ¯ım was killed on the field, the only Delhi sul tan thus to die. The Delhi Sultanate accordingly expired, with the ending of the Afghan line of the Lod¯ ¯ıs (although Afghan domination in northern India was to be briefly revived by the Sur¯ıs). It was eventually to be replaced by the Mughal empire created, after some vicissitudes, by Babur’s son Hum ¯ ay¯ un and his successors. ¯32
The Lod¯ ¯ı sultanate had provided prosperity and stability until Ibrah¯ ¯ım’s failure to work with the Afghan nobility, who provided the military basis for the regime, brought about military defeat and the dissolution of the whole sultanate. There had been a considerable renaissance of learning during Sikandar’s reign, including the translation into Persian of Sanskrit works. He had encouraged the Persianization of the administration, which entailed a wider learning of Persian by its Hindu officials, some of whom attained a high degree of proficiency in that language. Sikandar had a particular interest in music. On the other hand, he had a reputation for fierce Sunni orthodoxy and intolerance towards the Hindus, despite the fact that his own mother was a Hindu. He had temples torn down, and erected in their place mosques and other buildings or else he turned them into caravanserais. At Nagarkot, he is said to have had idols broken up and the pieces used as butchers’ weights. The chance of securing more general support for the sultanate in northern India, outside the Muslim ruling class, was thereby lost. It was to be the Mughal Akbar who, half a century or so later, was to endeavour to establish a greater community of interest between rulers and ruled.33
Foot Notes
1 Habib and Nizami, 1970, p. 460.
2 Hardy, 1960, pp. 35–6.
3 Habib and Nizami, 1970, p. 482.
4Ibid., pp. 460–83.
5Ibid., p. 484.
6 Hardy, 1960, pp. 36–9.
7 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 506–15.
8 A. Ahmad, 1964, pp. 17–19; Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 498–500; Jackson, 1975.
6 Hardy, 1960, pp. 36–9.
7 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 506–15.
8 A. Ahmad, 1964, pp. 17–19; Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 498–500; Jackson, 1975.
14 See on his reign in general, Husain, 1938.
15 Hardy, 1960, pp. 37–8; Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 576–7.
16 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 562–600.
17 Qureshi, 1958, pp. 136 et seq.
18 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 579–81.
19 Ibid., pp. 600–1, 619.
20 Qureshi, 1958, pp. 36–7, 129–30, 244–7; A. Ahmad, 1964, pp. 9–10; Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 578–9, 609–12.
21 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 585–9, 601–16.
22 Husain, 1963; Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 620–9; EI2, Djawnpur; Gud ¯ jarat; Ma ¯cbar; Malw¯ a; Sh ¯ ark¯ıs. 23 Roemer, 1986, pp. 69–70.
24 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 635–6; EI2, Sayyids.
25 Wright, 1936.
26 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 630–40.
27 Ibid., pp. 641–58.
28 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 659–63.
29 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 664–72.
30 Wright, 1936; Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 673–88.
31 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 689–701.
32 Habib and Nizami, 1970, pp. 702–9.
33 cAbdu ’l-Halim, 1961; EI2, Lod¯ ¯ıs.
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