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الكشف عن الموروثات المنسية: الأتراك والمغول وطبقة السكرتارية الفارسية في تاريخ النخبة في سلطنة دلهي المبكرة/ الجزء الثاني
On the other hand, the response of the Persian chroniclers to the titles used by the Delhi Sultans and their important military commanders indicates a more complex response to steppe traditions. The Khalajis and early Tughluq Sultans used fairly conventional titles couched in Arabic and Persian. But they also defined membership in the imperial kin-group by the Turko-Mongol honorific khan, designating brother, son, or honoured kinsman of the monarch. This was in contrast to the usage of malik and amir, a title used by military commanders. While khan designated kinship within the imperial lineage, it was also deployed by the Khalajis and Tughluqs as a title of privilege through which some fictive kinsmen were honoured while others clearly excluded. The nuances in status become evident from the following example narrated by Barani at the time of Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq’s accession when he honoured his kinsmen and collaborators. Barani reported:
Bahram Ai-aba was honoured like a brother [baradari mashruf gardanidah bud], was addressed as Kishlu Khan and granted the areas of Multan and Sindh. (Ghiyas al-Din’s) son-in-law, Malik Shadi was entrusted with the diwan-i wazirat (register of finance), and his (Ghiyas al-Din’s) adopted son Tatar Khan was addressed as Tatar Malik and given the ´ıqta‘ of Zafarabad.56
In other words, the son-in-law, and the adopted son were not honoured by the title of Khan, but the non-kinsman and honoured associate, Bahram Ai-aba, was treated like a brother and hence given that title. Furthermore, seniority between the sons of Ghiyas al-Din, all Khans, was further clarified by the grant of the title Ulugh Khan to Malik Fakhr al-Din Juna, the future Sultan Muhammad Shah (1324– 51), and his public acknowledgement as wali ahd (heir-apparent). Ulugh which literally means ‘great’ in Turkish distinguished the future Sultan from his peers.
Turkish titles were also used by the Khalajis. The father of Sultan Jalal al-Din Khalaji (1290–96) was Yughrush and Mahmud Kashgari explained that the title Yughrush meant wazir;57 his nephew ‘Ali Garshasb was the future Sultan ‘Ala al-Din (Garshasb was an ancestor of Afrasiyab). On seizing power in 1296, ‘Ala al-Din’s lineage became the imperial one and the monarch could appropriately dispense the honorific Khan upon his kinsmen. This appellation was absent in their earlier titles and he now proceeded to distinguish his brother Almas Beg with the title Ulugh Khan (Great Khan); another brother was entitled Qutlugh Tegin (Qutlugh = auspicious, and Tegin = prince, hence an auspicious prince); his brother-in-law Malik Sanjar received the title Alp Khan (Alp = powerful).
Turkish titles were not a novelty for the Tughluqs or the Khalajis; they were systematically given by Iltutmish to his bandagan-i khass, Turks and non-Turks, alike. Iltutmish’s actions were, however, quite innovative; the title of Khan was never used by his predecessors. Perso-Arabic titles were in currency under the Ghaznavids, the Ghurid Sultans and in the usage of his own master, Qutb al-Din Ai-beg. The use of the royal honorific khan—far be it for slaves—was unprecedented and the Persian secretaries were aware of its novelty. This is apparent from Juzjani’s long anecdote of an embassy sent by Ulugh Khan (the future Sultan Balban) to the court of the Il-Khanid monarch Hulegu. The letter to the Mongol monarch was in Persian and when it was translated into Mongolian the emissary replaced Khan in Balban’s title with Malik. Juzjani clarified: ‘the custom of Turkistan [qa’ida i Turkistan] is this that there is but one Khan, no more, and all the others have the title of Malik.’ In Juzjani’s narration, Hulegu Khan knew of Balban’s usage of the Khan title and honoured him sufficiently to protest its omission when his letter was read out with the honorific missing. He asked for the title of Khan to be restored. Juzjani concluded his report: ‘all of the Khans from the lands of Hind and Sindh who went to the presence of the Khans, their titles were altered [tabdil kard] in all of the documents proffered to the Mughal and they were referred to as Malik. But they confirmed the title of the great Ulugh Khan without change [as in] the original’.58
The assumption of titles of steppe provenance served as effective communicators of status for a local as well as a distant audience. It is therefore interesting to note the emergence of specific protocols relating to the kind of titles that monarchs and their subordinates could carry. Some of the early Sultans—Qutb al-Din Ai-Beg, Shams al-Din Iltutmish and Ghiyas al-Din Balban—carried ‘compound’ titles, with both Turkish and Perso-Arabic elements. 59 Barring these three examples no Sultan after 1286 ever took on a Turkish title, not even Khan. As princes they had either taken Turkish titles or ‘compound’ ones, but these were given up for formal Perso-Arabic ones when they ascended the throne. From the individuals already cited note the examples of ‘Ali Garshasb who became ‘Ala al-Din Khalaji and Ulugh Khan who later took the title of Sultan Muhammad Shah Tughluq.
It would appear from the evidence cited thus far that administrative practices of steppe provenance that promoted efficient governance were not a subject of concern to the Persian literati. They were as candid in reporting the usage of Mongol and Turkish titles and com prehended their manipulation at the time of dispersal of new honours. As Juzjani’s report suggests, the Persian secretaries understood the cultural value attached to these titles and were sometimes involved in adjusting them according to the demands of the situation.
At least as far as the Persian literati were concerned the ethnic backgrounds of the ruling elites were not a problem as long as they abided by the larger templates of a Persianate Muslim order. The
Turkish slaves of Iltutmish, all of whom were given Turkish titles by their master, were applauded for their abilities to forsake their homes and families for their new world. This fiction allowed for the acceptance of the military slave as a loyal servant of his master and the realm. In the long duration the logic of this discourse was useful enough in persuading frontier commanders to abandon their old titles that carried significant Turkish elements and aspire to high status in their new world as ‘Ala al-Din (Glory of Religion) Khalaji or Ghiyas al-Din (Saviour of Religion) Tughluq.
Transitions from one world to another, however, were never quite as definitive, especially when moving from a frontier environment to the core territories embraced a large entourage and not just the individual military commander. The Persian secretaries were familiar with many details of the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppes but there were other specifics about the lives and traditions of the steppe peoples that were completely unfamiliar to them. On their part, frontier commanders like Jalal al-Din Khalaji and Ghiyas al Din Tughluq must have retained Persian secretaries to help them keep accounts and manage their diplomatic life. Our ignorance of their service notwithstanding, it would not be presuming too much to assume that these secretaries were important members of the governor’s household. Their influence—and through them, the influence of urbane Persianate traditions—were always tempered in the frontier camps by the large-scale recruitment of mobile warriors that constituted the retinue of the commanders. Bonds of ethnicity, common natal origins, and the contingencies of marginalization on the frontier created forces of social and cultural cohesion that Persian secretaries could not always penetrate.
At Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq’s accession, the Ghuzz, the Turks and Mongols of Rum and Rus were the new political elites of the Sultanate and the monarch was as reliant on their continuing support as he was on the Persian Secretarial class. The new monarch had to remain sensitive to the contrasting bodies of people and lexicon of associations that he had knitted together in the making of his war band. Acculturation into the Persianate world of the secretarial classes, even if such transitions could be accomplished quickly by commanders who were only recently awara mardi, would have meant distancing himself from the very fraternity that had made his rise into political prominence possible. Since this was not a feasible alternative, when Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq marched into the capital, he actually brought the frontier with him to Delhi.
The hegemonic narratives of mid-fourteenth-century Persian chroniclers are quite impoverished on subjects concerning cultural plurality within the Muslim community. On the other hand, the amateur ethnography of the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, a travelling jurist, is far more direct in recording the unfamiliar rituals and traditions of his Muslim coreligionists. He arrived in north India during the reign of Muhammad Shah Tughluq and described the ritual procession of the king in ways that was very different from the Persian chronicles.
This was the ritual procession of the king where his ornately decorated saddle cover, ghashiya, was carried before him. Ibn Battuta provided descriptions of the ritual from the reign of Muhammad Shah Tughluq, which was apparently celebrated on the occasion of major festivals and whenever the Sultan returned to the city. Concerning feast days (‘id) the traveller noted:
On the morning of the feast all the elephants are adorned with silk, gold and precious stones. There are sixteen of these elephants which no one rides, but they are reserved to be ridden by the Sultan himself, and over them are carried sixteen parasols of silk embroidered with jewels, each one with a shaft of pure gold ... .The Sultan himself rides on one of these elephants and in front of him there is carried aloft the ghashiya, that is his saddle-cover, which is adorned with the most precious jewels. In front of him walk his slaves and his mamluks.60
Ibn Battuta added further details regarding the ritual at the time of the Sultan’s entry into the capital:
... On some of the (sixteen) elephants there were mounted small military catapults and when the Sultan came near the city, parcels of gold and silver coins mixed together were thrown from these machines. The men on foot in front of the Sultan and the other persons present scrambled for the money, and they kept on scattering it until the procession reached the palace ... .61
While ghashiya has an Arabic etymology, meaning to cover, veil,62 the origin of the ceremony lies in the accession and ceremonial rituals of the early Turks where the ‘Lord of the Horse’ would be identified with the newly enthroned leader, and the procession would celebrate the conquest of the four quarters by the Universal Emperor.63 Although the paths of its transmission into the central Islamic lands are unclear the tradition was followed in some of the major steppe-descended polities: by the Seljuqs, the Zangids and the Bahri Mamluks of Egypt (with a military elite of Qipchaq origin).64 At least in Syria and Egypt it was accepted as a ritual associated with royalty and performed by the Kurdish Ayyubids, who learnt of it from their Turkish patrons the Zangids. With the Ayyubids it was integrated as a part of their accession ceremony together with the ritual pledge of allegiance, bay’a, and the investiture from the Caliph.65
Detailed descriptions of the ghashiya ritual exist from the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt where Ibn Taghribirdi clarified that it was a part of the accession ceremonies of the monarch and repeated on major festivals. Its performance in Egypt mirrors Ibn Battuta’s description of the ceremony from Muhammad Shah Tughluq’s court and al Qalqashandi gives us the following description:
(The ghashiya) is a saddle cover of leather, decorated with gold so that the observer would take it to be made entirely of gold. It is borne before him (the Mamluk Sultan) when riding in state processions for parades, festivals, etc.. The Rikabdariyya (grooms, i.e., ghulams) carry it, the one who holds it up in his hands turning it right and left. It is one of the particular insignia of this kingdom.66
An important common feature between the Mamluk state in Egypt and the Delhi Sultanate were the common reliance upon Turko Mongol personnel from the dasht-i Qipchaq for their respective armies. The Sultanate’s link with the Eurasian steppe already present in Iltutmish’s reign continued into the reign of Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq who was of Neguderid background, and his retinue of ‘Turks and ¨ Mongols of Rum and Rus’.
Just as most of the Persian chronicles ignored the composition of Ghiyas al-Din’s retinue they paid no attention to his royal procession ceremony. Since Ibn Battuta’s observations remained largely ‘unsubstantiated’ in the accounts of the Persian literati they did not draw the attention of modern scholars. Yet, Barani’s description of ‘Ala al-Din’s triumphant march to Delhi after Jalal al Din’s murder (1296) does possess some of the elements present in Battuta’s description although completely different motives to the discharge of gold coins (panj-man akhtar, five mans of gold stars) amongst the crowds observing the Sultan’s march are ascribed by the author.67 Equally selective was Yahya Sirhindi’s early-fifteenth century account of Muhammad Shah Tughluq’s celebratory procession after his accession. The narrative is close enough to Ibn Battuta’s description of the ghashiya ritual for us to follow its main features but the elisions are important as well. Sirhindi noted:
...the lanes were decorated with coloured and embroidered cloth. From the time that the Sultan set his foot in the city till he entered the imperial palace, gold and silver coins were rained from the back of the elephants among the populace, and gold was scattered in every street, lane, and house.68
In Sirhindi’s account, as in Barani’s, the Sultan’s triumphal processions receive due recognition but there is no reference to the ghashiya. Was the omission deliberate or was it an aspect of Turko Mongol practice quite unfamiliar to Persian secretaries? Were they, in other words, just inadequate historians reifying the practice of their subjects either through ignorance or because of their own class and cultural prejudices?
This is a difficult question to answer and it might help if we disaggregated the two reports of Barani and Sirhindi; different factors influenced the production of the two texts. Barani was a contemporary of Ibn Battuta and both authors were in Delhi during Muhammad Shah Tughluq’s reign. If the Moroccan visitor could notice and learn about the ghashiya during the brief period of his visit, so, theoretically speaking, could Barani. He noticed the ulagh and the manipulation of the Khan title to enunciate hierarchy within Ghiyas al-Din’s new political dispensation without any problem. But these details did not disturb the larger point that the author wanted to make about the monarch in his history. In Barani’s narrative Ghiyas al-Din was a ‘Saviour of Islam’, a morally righteous Muslim, renowned for his combat with the infidel Mongols. Now he was waging a war against a different heathen menace located in Delhi, a neo-convert slave, an apostate, who had killed his master and his heirs. The conflict between Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq and Khusrau Khan Barwari was over the future well being of the Muslim community. Incorporating details about the Turko-Mongol composition of Ghiyas al-Din and his retinue, or the practice of steppe rituals by the frontier commander would have complicated the binaries on which Barani had framed the qualities of his protagonist—the Muslim versus the non-Muslim— and his narration of the triumph of rectitude over evil. The author preferred not to tread these waters.
Writing a century later Yahya Sirhindi, a litterateur himself, was familiar with the writings of his predecessors. His history of the Sultanate, from the late-twelfth into the early-fifteenth century, is an interesting piece of synthesis. For the better part the narrative is reliant upon the histories of Juzjani and Barani but there are significant additions and omissions.69 Sirhindi followed ‘Isami in suggesting personal proximity between Yaqut and Sultan Raziyya and, while otherwise staying close to Barani’s text, omitted any mention of ‘Ala’ al-Din Khalaji’s price regulations. While Barani’s rhetorical statements were deleted, the author inserted contemplative passages in verse and prose regarding destiny’s stranglehold on humans. And yet none of these insertions and deletions shifted the larger narrative framework of Sirhindi, which remained entirely dependent on Juzjani and Barani. Sirhindi ignored alternative narratives, such as ‘Isami’s, or details from Amir Khusrau that disturbed Barani’s conclusions. This independent line of investigation would have complicated the author’s work considerably and, in forcing him to question and depart from Barani’s reportage, required the author to write the history of the Delhi Sultans afresh. Instead Sirhindi was satisfied with paraphrasing, pruning and collating material, shifting details about individuals without actually rewriting the history of the Delhi Sultans. As he excavated Juzjani and Barani for their information, he also treated them as artefacts that needed to be dusted off and preserved. The elisions and silences regarding frontier commanders, Turko-Mongol traditions and customs present in the earlier master narratives were then transported into the history of the other.
Conclusion: Frontier Commanders in a Persianate Milieu
In the beginning of this paper, I had clarified my intent to study the ‘ignored elites’ in the early Delhi Sultanate. This was an unusual project given that modern historiography on the Sultanate has ignored many subjects, but alas, not elites. Elites, of course, are never ignored; they get to be reinvented by their narrators in various ideological hues. Frontier commanders who seized power in the Sultanate in 1290 and later, were grandiloquently panegyrized by the Persian literati. The extent to which these patrons challenged the skills of their eulogists, however, should not be minimized. As the case of Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq clarifies, for a variety of reasons relating to his background, the geopolitics of his age, and the social and ideological precommitments of his eulogists, it was necessary for the Qara’una military commander to receive a brand new profile. There was a lot else about these frontiersmen which it was safer to simply ignore. Once ignored, the salient characteristics of these military commanders and the politics that made them important participants in the events of the Delhi Sultanate simply passed out of the realm of history. It is hardly surprising then, that many historians mark 1290 as the termination of Turkish dominance in the history of the Sultanate and the arrival of new ‘plebeian’ forces.70 As Barani explained, these plebeians were the new Indian converts to Islam that Sultans like ‘Ala al-Din Khalaji and Muhammad Shah Tughluq started patronizing. In modern historiography this started the process of ‘rooting’ the Sultanate in the subcontinent, processes through which Islam came to have the unique features so admired today in the practice of its sufis and bhakta sants.
Much of my paper was occupied in recovering the pasts of frontier commanders and discussing the ways in which their presence was elided in the records of the Persian literati. Reintegrating them in the histories of the Sultanate implies charting new genealogies for the state, its ruling elites and the processes that shaped the pasts of the Muslim community in the subcontinent. This would imply that rather than focusing only upon processes of indigenization and vernacularization of Islam in the regions of the subcontinent, historians need to be sensitive to the processes through which Muslim society in Delhi and its adjoining regions were constantly reconstituted through the infusion of immigrants from the Afghanistan-Punjab frontier. Barani, for example, gestured to the presence of these migrants in his chronicle. He referred to them quite derisively as nau Musulman, or new Muslims. Although these Mongols were apparently Muslims, Barani used the epithet of nau-Musulman to communicate their alien, novel character since their politics and social and cultural practices were so abhorrently different from people of his upbringing. Some of these Mongol migrants gained patronage in the short duration but, if we follow Barani most of these people remained segregated in Sultanate society and were executed. And yet, despite Amir Khusrau’s information on the composition of Ghiyas al-Din’s retinue and the resistance that they faced from the elites of Delhi, the military commander and his contingent were never ascribed the epithet nau Musulman. One of the reasons why this did not happen, of course, is because Ghiyas al-Din and his retinue were rulers and patrons and it would not be politic to refer to them as new-Muslims.
Another reason for the hesitation to refer to these frontiersmen turned-Sultans as nau-Musulman arose from the fact that the new rulers were themselves sucked into the structures of power and social hierarchies present in Delhi. All the information that we have on Ghiyas al-Din suggests that he moved very quickly to install conventional modes of governance once he became Sultan. This included collaborating with the Persian literati in the preservation of the social and moral order familiar to them. Ibn Battuta communicated the extent to which Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq’s son, Muhammad Shah Tughluq (1324–51) was invested in this project. Muhammad Shah Tughluq issued orders that ‘all were required to show a knowledge of the obligations of ablution, prayers and the
binding articles of Islam. They used to be questioned on these matters; if anyone failed to give correct answers he was punished and they made a practice of studying them with one another in the audience hall and the bazaars and setting them down in writing’.71
Records of this nature suggest ways in which an Islam that abided by a rigorous interpretation of its rituals was reproduced in the core territories of the Sultanate. It consolidates the dominant historiographical image where creative ferment in Islam came through sectarian and doctrinal controversies amongst Muslims in the core territories of the Sultanate in contrast to the more heterogeneous populations on the frontier where there was interaction between Muslim and non-Muslims.72 And yet the ‘creative encounter’ that occurred in Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq’s capital was not just between Muslims and non-Muslims, it was between old and new Muslims, between the urbane elites of the capital and the frontier commanders, the Sultan and his entourage. In this interaction, however, hierarchies were reversed. It was the new, rustic Muslim, recently arrived from the frontier who was the Sultan. The ‘saviour of Islam’ may have patronized the Persian literati and the learned jurists, but he also continued to practice his steppe rituals in Delhi.
It is in this context that we need to remember the ghashiya ritual performed by Muhammad Shah Tughluq, a ritual that Sultanate chroniclers ignored, but a public ceremony that was performed during ‘id. In the retinue that followed the procession to the festival ground were the great qazis of the city. Should it happen to be bakr-i ‘id, Ibn Battuta noted, the Sultan himself did the honours of sacrificing the camel. Commingled in the rituals of the ghashiya and ‘id were strands from multiple backgrounds but the elements that reminded observers of the frontier origins of their masters were not the ones that were transmitted to posterity.
It is hard to determine how long royal rituals like the ghashiya were practiced in Delhi because no Persian chronicler wished to record its performance in the first place. We know of it only by accident through Ibn Battuta’s travelogue. But we can gauge the slow loss of comprehension of some steppe traditions if we recall the example of the ulagh/ulaq. By the end of the sixteenth century the term was equated with an alternative system and its specificity was erased. Alternatively, while Mongol titles like Khan were seamlessly incorporated within a Persianate tradition and persisted over the long duration, there were other Turkish titles like Iltutmish whose meaning, as Simon Digby’s research has brought out, was already confused by the end of the sixteenth century. Digby also points out that the manuscripts copied in the 1700s altered the name of the Sultan according to a false identification with a word (altamish) current at that time.73 Copyists thereafter were less sure how to spell the more exotic Turkish titles and errors crept in. As Peter Jackson’s efforts have shown, restoring Turkish titulature to their correct form is now an incredibly laborious task.74
It may appear commonsensical to note that what is understood today as a part of ‘Muslim’ tradition is quite removed from the ways in which it was understood in 1700 or 1324. But having said that, researching the contours of Muslim society in 1324 means that we have to step out of teleological modes of analysis and remain sensitive to the ways in which the culture and politics of that moment constructed or elided their complex aspects. The study of Jalal al-Din Khalaji, Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq, or the much later Bahlul Lodi—all frontier commanders who became Sultans—stands as a salutary reminder that the great traditions of Islam were not just the product of interaction amongst social groups in the Gangetic plains or the Deccan; a variety of frontier traditions brought by periodic migrations of military commanders also impacted on this world. What kind of responses did these intrusions raise? Is it possible to locate the contexts in which they were produced? It is through a study of this dialectic—sometimes only fleetingly visible in our historical narratives—that we can understand the construction of the social and cultural lineages of Muslim society and structures of authority in the history of the Sultanate. Otherwise the complexities introduced by the presence of frontier traditions and their importance in the formation of Muslim societies and politics will remain where the Persian literati of the age sought to consign them: on the periphery of our narratives, on the frontier. That would be an ironic location to place many of the Sultans of Delhi.
Foot notes
1 For a useful account of Mongol invasions into north India during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries see Peter Jackson, ‘The Mongols in India’, Cambridge University, Department of History, Ph.D. dissertation, 1976.
2 See Sunil Kumar, ‘When slaves were nobles: the Shamsi bandagan in the Early Delhi Sultanate’ in Studies in History, vol. 10 (1994), pp. 23–52 and idem, ‘Service, status, and military slavery in the Delhi Sultanate: Thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’ in Richard Eaton and Indrani Chatterjee (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 83–114.
3 Note the examples of the Shamsi slaves Qutlugh Khan and Kushlu Khan, competitors at different times with Ulugh Khan for influence over the Delhi Sultan, both of whom sought sanctuary with the Mongols. Slightly earlier, Ulugh Khan had supported the Shamsi prince Jalal al-Din Mas’ud who had fled to the Mongols for sanctuary in 1248. Ulugh Khan’s cousin, Shir Khan, had also sought sanctuary for a brief time with the Mongols. See Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 73, 88–9, 111– 14.
4 Peter Jackson, ‘The dissolution of the Mongol Empire’ in Central Asiatic Journal, Vol. 22 (1978), pp. 186–244, idem, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 80–2, 115–6.
5 For a valuable comparison from China see, Owen Lattimore, ‘Frontier feudalism’, in Studies in Frontier History, Collected Papers, 1928–1958 (London: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1962), pp. 514–41.
6 For a discussion of these kinds of narratives see Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, Status and Military Slavery’, pp. 97–102.
7 Yahya Sirhindi, Ta’rikh- Mubarak Shahi, ed. M. Hidayat Husain (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1931), p. 61. The text has Bughrush, which must be a mistake for Yughrush the form found in Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, ed. Abd al-Hayy Habibi (Kabul: Anjuman-i Ta’rikh-i Afghanistan, 1963–4, 2 vols.), Vol. 2, p. 88.
8 Cited in Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, p. 80.
9 Amir Khusrau, Miftah al-Futuh, ed. Shaikh Abdur Rashid (Aligarh: Publication of the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, 1954), p. 8. Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, p. 118, suggests a later date for these campaigns. The evidence is ambiguous on this point.
10 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, p. 88.
11 ‘Abd al-Malik ‘Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, ed. A.S. Usha (Madras: University of Madras, 1940), p. 195.
12 For an account of these years see Ziya’ al-Din Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, ed. Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1860–2), pp. 170–84 and Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 81–5.
13 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Mahdi Husain, (Baroda: Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, no, 122, Oriental Institute, 1976 reprint), p. 47. See also the alternative translation of H.A.R. Gibb, (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society,2nd series, no. 141, Cambridge University Press, 1971), Vol. 3, p. 649.
14 Jean Aubin, ‘L’ethnogen`ese des Qaraunas’ in Turcica, Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 65–94. See also Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Fall of Tamerlane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 reprint), pp. 159–61, Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 119–22, 217–27, 328.
15 Zahir al-Din Babur, The Babur Nama, Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (New York: The Modern Library Classics, 2002 reprint), p. 156.
16 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Mahdi Husain, p. 47; trans. Gibb, Vol. 3, p. 649. 17 Amir Khusrau, Tughluq Nama, ed. Sayyid Hashmi Faridabadi (Aurangabad: Urdu Publishing House, 1933), p. 136.
18 For a useful account of Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq’s early career on the frontier see, Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Mahdi Husain, pp. 47–9; trans. Gibb, Vol. 3, pp. 648–52. 19 For a useful collation of Ghiyas al-Din’s allies and opponents see Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 178–9. I am in agreement with Jackson’s conclusion: ‘[Ghiyas al-Din] Tughluq’s affinity ... was markedly regional; his lieutenants were commanders who had fought alongside him on the Mongol frontier, sometimes themselves Mongol renegades, or Hindu warlords who were his close neighbours in the western Punjab’. For further details see below.
20 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, p. 80.
21 For further details on the differences and similarities in the deployment of Turkish slaves and Afghans see Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, status, and military slavery’. 22 Amir Khusrau, Tuhfat al-Sighar, IOL Persian Ms 412, fol. 50 seq., cited by Wahid Mirza, The Life and Works of Amir Khusrau, pp. 51–2.
23 Amir Khusrau, Tughluq Nama, p. 84.
24 ‘Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, pp. 382–3. Although Amir Khusrau ignored the Khokars in this list he gives them a prominent role in the battle with Khusrau Khan. SeeTughluq Nama, p. 128.
25 Amir Khusrau, Wast al-Hayat, cited in ‘Abd al-Qadir Bada’uni, Muntakhab al Tawarikh, ed. Maulavi Ahmad Shah (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1868), Vol. 1, p. 153.
26 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 1, pp. 357–8, 396.
27 For further details and references see below.
28 Babur, Babur Nama, trans. Thackston, pp. 150,155, 231.
29 See Sunil Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), pp. 196–202.
30 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, pp. 175–6.
31 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 220–1.
32 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 175–6.
33 Amir Khusrau, Nuh Sipihr, ed. M. Wahid Mirza (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 173.
34 Ibid., p.176.
35 Amir Khusrau, Dibacha-yi Diwan Ghurrat al-Kamal, ed. Sayyid Ali Haidar (Patna: Institute of Postgraduate studies and research in Arabic and Persian learning, 1988), p. 40. These sentiments were very similar to Fakhr-i Mudabbir’s in the first decade of the thirteenth century. For details see Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, pp. 196–7.
36 On the background and dispersal of the Turkish tribes, see: Anonymous, Hudud al-’Alam, trans. V. Minorsky (Karachi: Indus Publications, 1980 reprint), pp. 99–101, 304–12, 315–17. See also The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, s.v. ‘Kankli’; ‘Kipchak’; ‘Kimak’; ‘Ghuzz’; P.B. Golden, ‘The Migration of the Oghuz’ in Archivum Ottamanicum, Vol. 4, (1972), pp. 45–84; idem, ‘The peoples of the South Russian Steppe’, in Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 277–84; idem, ‘Cumanica IV: the tribes of the Cuman-Qipcaqs’ in Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevii, Vol. 9 (1995–97), pp. 99–122; idem, ‘Cumanica II: The Olberli ( ¨ Olperli): The fortunes and misfortunes of an inner ¨ Asian nomadic Clan’ in Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevii, Vol. 8 (1986), pp. 5–29; idem, ‘Nomads in the sedentary world: The case of pre-Chinggisid Rus and Georgia’, in Anatoly M. Khazanov and Andr´e Wink (eds.), Nomads in the Sedentary World (Cornwall: Curzon Press, 2001), pp. 24–75; Charles J. Halperin, ‘The Kipchak connection: The Ilkhans, the Mamluks and Ayn Jalut’ in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 63, (2000), pp. 229–45; and O. Pritsak, ‘The decline of the empire of the Oghuz Yabghu’ in The Annals of the Ukrainian-American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., Vol. 2 (1952), pp. 279–292.
37 Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, pp. 409–13, 422–3.
38 Amir Khusrau, Tughluq Nama, pp. 55–70 for details on military commanders in opposition to Ghiyas al-Din.
39 Ibid., pp. 128–30.
40 For a full discussion see Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, chapters 2 and 4.
41 Fakhr-i Mudabbir, Ta’rikh-i Fakhr al-Din Mubarak Shah, ed. E. Denison Ross, (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1927), p. 36.
42 For Iltutmish see Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 1, p. 441, and for Balban, Vol. 2, pp. 47–8.
43 For a fuller discussion see Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, Status and Military Slavery’. 44 Juzjani’s history was exceptional in its internal organization where he adroitly used the tabaqat genre to detail events in eastern Iran, Afghanistan and India. yet his chronicle remained devoid of more general introspection into the discipline of history, the chronicling tradition or kingship, the fundamental subject of his narrative. In this Juzjani was quite different from the Ghaznavid chronicler Baihaqi (on whom see Marilyn R. Waldman, Towards a Theory of Historical Narrative (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980) and Barani on whom see Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, pp. 370–3.
45 See ‘Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, ed. A.S. Usha (Madras: University of Madras, 1940), and Ziya’ al-Din Barani, Fatawa-yi Jahandari, ed. A. Salim Khan (Lahore: Idarah-i Tahqiqat-i Pakistan, no. 25, 1972). The normative text, Fatawa-yi Jahandari and the didactic history of Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi share the same rhetorical frame. This is well brought out by Peter Hardy, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-Muslim Historical Writing (London: Luzac and Company Ltd., 1966 reprint), pp. 20–39.
46 See respectively, Amir Khusrau, Khazain al-Futuh, Miftah al-Futuh, Tughluq Nama and Qiran al-Sa’dain.
47 This was most clearly developed in his Nuh Sipihr. For a useful recent assessment of the poet see Sunil Sharma, Amir Khusrau: the Poet of Sultans and Sufis (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005).
48 For a valuable interpretation of some of the intellectual roots of this urbane Sultanate society see Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200– 1800, (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), pp. 26–46, 81–91.
49 Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, pp. 114–5.
50 Ziya’ al-Din Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, p. 447, and for a reference from the reign of ‘Ala al-Din Khalaji see also p. 245.
51 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans., Mahdi Husain, pp. 3–4; trans., H.A.R. Gibb, vol. 3, p. 594–5.
52 Nizam al-Din, Tabaqat-i Akbari, ed. B. De, (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1927), Vol. 1, p. 195.
53 On the ulagh/ulaq see, ‘Ata’ al-Mulk Juwaini, Ta’rikh-i Jahan Gusha, trans. J.A. Boyle, The History of the World Conqueror (Manchester: University Press, 1958), Vol. 1, p. 30, Vol. 2, pp. 524, 599; John M. Smith Jr., ‘Mongol and nomadic taxation’ in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 30 (1970), pp. 48–85; I.P. Petrushevsky, ‘The socio-economic condition of Iran under the Il-Khans’, in J.A. Boyle (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), Vol. 5, pp. 483–537, and Gerhard Doerfer, Turkische und Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1965), Vol. 2, pp. 102–107, s.v. ‘ulag’.
54 Ziya’ al-Din Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, pp. 446–7.
55 Nizam al-Mulk, Siyasat Nama, trans. Hubert Darke (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). See also Ann K.S. Lambton, ‘The internal structure of the Saljuq Empire’ in Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 5, pp. 203–282.
56 Ziya’ al-Din Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, p.428.
57 Robert Dankoff, ‘Kasgari on the tribal and kinship organization of the Turks’ in Archivum Ottomanicum, Vol. 4 (1972), pp. 23–43.
58 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, p. 87.
59 For example, Qutb al-Din Ai-Beg/‘The Axis of Religion—Moon Prince’; Shams al-Din Iltutmish/‘The Light of Religion—Grasper of the Realm’; Ghiyas al-Din Balban/‘Rescuer of Religion—the Powerful’.
60 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans., H.A.R. Gibb, Vol. 3, pp. 663–664, trans., Mahdi Husain, p. 60. The translation is Gibb’s.
61 Ibid., trans., H.A.R. Gibb, p. 668, trans., Mahdi Husain, p. 64. The translation is Gibb’s.
62 See also the Qur’an, chapter 88, al-Ghashiya.
63 For a review of Turko-Mongol ideals of universal dominion see Osman Turan, ‘The ideal of world domination among the Medieval Turks’ in Studia Islamica, Vol. 4 (1955), pp. 77–90, and for a discussion of iconographic representations from the Seljuq period of the monarch, ‘the equerry and the honorific spare horse with saddle cover’ see, Emel Esin, ‘Ay-Bitigi , the Court Attendants in Turkish Iconography’ in Central Asiatic Journal, Vol. 14, (1970), pp. 108–9.
64 H.A.R. Gibb, et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2nd edition, 1956-), Vol. 2, s.v. ‘ghashiyya’, and P.M. Holt, ‘The position and power of the Mamluk Sultan’ in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 38, (1975), p. 245.
65 See references above and P.M. Holt, ‘The structure of government in the Mamluk Sultanate’ in P.M. Holt (ed.), The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades (Warminster: Aris and Phillips Ltd., 1977), p. 47.
66 al-Qalqashandi, Subhal-a’sha (Cairo), Vol. 4, p. 7, cited in P.M. Holt, ‘The position and power of the Mamluk Sultan’, p. 243.
67 Ziya’ al-Din Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, p. 243. Edward Thomas, The Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1967), pp. 157, 169– 70, explains that the panj-man akhtar referred to the gold coinage, fanam/panam, i.e. fractions of the hun, seized as plunder by ‘Ala al-Din in his Deccan campaigns.
68 Yahya b. Ahmad b. ‘Abd Allah Sirhindi, Ta’rikh-i Mubarak Shahi, ed. M. Hidayat Hosain (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, no. 254, 1931), p. 97, trans., K.K. Basu (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1932), p. 99. I have followed Basu’s translation.
69 Sirhindi apparently used Barani’s first recension of the Ta’rikh- Firuz Shahi where the Mongol invasion of Tarmashirin was mentioned in Muhammad Shah Tughluq’s reign. Other than ‘Isami, whose text seems to have been ignored by Sirhindi (note the contrasting accounts of Sultan Nasir al-Din Mahmud’s death), only Barani’s first recension mentioned this event.
70 For the most influential exposition of this argument see Irfan Habib, ‘Barani’s theory of the history of the Delhi Sultanate’ in Indian Historical Review, Vol. 7 (1980– 81), pp. 104–10 and for an alternative assessment, Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, status and military slaver’, pp. 97–102.
71 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Gibb, Vol. 3, p. 693.
72 Note the argument in Richard Eaton, ‘Introduction’, in Richard M. Eaton (ed.), India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 25.
73 Simon Digby, ‘Iletmish or Iltutmish? A reconsideration of the name of the Delhi Sultan’ in Iran, Vol. 8, (1970), pp. 57–64.
74 Ironically, the diligent restoration of Turkish titles by Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, passim, did not lead the author to ask why these titles came to be corrupted to such a large extent.
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