The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate

437 Pages·2007·59.665 MB·English

by  Kumar, Sunil

For Anjali
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The Emergence of the
Delhi Sultanate
1192-1286
SUNI L KUMAR
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Contents
Preface IX
1 Writing a History of the Delhi Sultanate 1
7
Historiography of the Delhi Sultanate
20
Reading the Persian Evidence
2 The Sultanates of North India: The Mu'izzi Maliks
in Hindustan 46
54
The Shansabanid Sultanate and North India
Mu'izzi Free Amirs and Jurists in North India 65
Mu'izzi Slaves and the Bandagiin-i Kha$$ 78
The Dispersal of the Mu 'izzi Bandagiin-i Kha$$ in
87
North India
The Mu'izzi Bandagiin-i Kha$$ and their Appaaages 97
Consolidation and Expansion 105
125
Conclusion
3 The Shamsi Dispensation and the Political
Paramountcy of Delhi 129
Dynastic Change in the Lahore-Delhi Appanage,
130
607/1210
Competitors and Military Paramountcy in North India,
607-33/1210-36 138
143
The Shamsi Dispensation
(a) Free Military Commanders Subordinate
146
to Iltutmish
(b) Slave Subordinates of Shams al-Din lltutmish 151
(c) The Deployment of the Shamsi Princes 181
188
Conclusion
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Contents
VI
4 The 'Ulamii' and the Emergence of Delhi as the
Sanctuary and Axis of Islam in North India 192
Ethnic Differences within the Muslim Community in
North India 193
Different Ways of being a Pious Muslim 202
Towards Homogeneity: The Role of the 'Ulama' 212
Conclusion 235
s
Social and Political Changes and a Disintegrating
Shamsi Dispensation 238
633-64/1~
Political Mutations and the Emergence of the
Elites 633-64/1235-66 239
Q.biya~i
(a) 633-9/1236-42: The Period of
'Inter-Dispensational' Conflict 240
(b) 639-53/1242-55: The Period of
'Intra-DispensationaJ' Conflict 266
(c) 652-64/1254-66: The Dispensation 272
Q.biya~i
Territorial Changes and the Political Geography of
the Sultanate 278
Relations with the Piety-Minded and Ideological
Reformulations 286
Conclusion 295
6 The End of the Seventh/Thirteenth Century:
Balban and the (Re-)Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate 299
Loyalty, Service, Political Culture: The
Qhiya~i
Dispensation and the Tum of the Century 305
Politics, Society, and Territorial Expansion 324
Regional Solidarities, the Piety-minded, and
the Metropole 340
Conclusion 352
Appendix: Persian Literary Traditions and
Narrativizing the Delhi Sultanate 362
Bibliography 378
401
Index
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Contents
Vll
CHARTS
l The Shansabanid Lineage 58-60
2 The Shamsi Lineage 182-3
3 Selected Sources 364-5
TABLES
1 Shamsi Bandagiin in lltutmish's Reign 154-7
2 Seniority of Service amidst Shamsi Bandagiin,
633/1236 242
3 Jiizjani: Shamsi Bandagiin in the Post-Shamsi
Period 244-53
CAMPAIGNS MAPS
l Mu 'izzI Campaigns into Hindustan 52
2 The Mu'izzi Bandagiin in Hindustan 88
3 The Deployment of Shamsi Bandagtln 169
4 'Ala' al-Din Kbalaji's Dominions 338
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Preface
The Sultans ofD elhi have attracted the attention ofs cholars
and lay persons for generations. Their history is filled with
romance, conquerors, and tragic heroes. It was a time of
mystery when the Qutb Minar was constructed, a Queen
ruled from Delhi, and capricious monarchs moved capitals
back and forth. Their courts were awe-inspiring and cer
emonial. They reduced prices or introduced a 'token' currency. In the
hands of master raconteurs, the lives of these monarchs and their
courts made for some fabulous, captivating stories that occupied stu
dents like me for days on end.
I discovered during my long graduate career, however, that there
was more to the Delhi Sultanate than grand stories, but little which
could be satisfied by the existing literature on the subject. The hist
ories of scholars like Muhammad Aziz Ahmad and Khaliq Ahmad
Nizami were paraphrased summaries of Sultanate chronicles,
complete with an appendix on the character of the monarch. 1 Another
historian of this period, A.B.M. Habibullah, provided more questions
than answers: How could the Delhi Sultanate be 'founded' by Turks
if the invasions were led by the Shansabanids who were from Ghur
in Afghanistan? What were the traditions that influenced the making
of the Delhi Sultanate: Ghurid, Turkish, slave, or Muslim? How, ifa t
all, were they interrelated? If the Sultanate was constantly besieged
by 'Hindus' waiting to recapture their homelands, how did it manage
to survive? How could Balban be obsessed with Turkish racial purity
1 Muhammad Aziz Ahmad, Political History and Institutions of the Early
Turkish Empire ofD elhi (Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan. University of
the Punjab, 1987, reprint); Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, 'Foundation of the Delhi
Sultana!'. 'The Early Turkish SultanS of Delhi'. in A Comprehensive History
ofI ndia: The Delhi Sultanat (Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1982 reprint).
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Preface
x
if he deployed Afghans all around Delhi?2 These were admittedly
small positivist questions, but they serve to explain the chill that ran
through a well-meaning student testing the waters oft he Early Middle
Ages in Indian history.
As I delved deeper into the history of the early Delhi Sultanate,
various such questions concerning the period became even more
fundamental: Why do economic historians of the Delhi Sultanate
pass hurriedly over the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth?3
How can slaves be nobles?4 If the Sultanate had a bureaucracy, chief
ministers, and so on, how is it that a civil service did not administer
the state?s When I decided to look at some of these questions in
greater detail, I came across the only major disagreement amongst
scholars writing on the Delhi Sultanate. Peter Hardy warned students
that the medieval chronicles would not contain answers to the
questions with which they approached their sources, but Khaliq
Nizami and Irfan Habib assured readers that this was not the case:
Ziya' al-Din Barani, for example, was a scientific, reliable historian.6
As a young graduate student in the 1980s my sense of being out of
my depth was profound. It was fortunate, therefore, that I was firmly
2 A.B.M. Habibullah, The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India (Allahabad:
Central Book Depot, 1945, 1976 revised editi-On).
3 W.H. Moreland, The Agrarian System ofM oslem India: A Historical Essay
with Appendices (Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1929, 1968
reprint); Irfan Habib, 'Agrarian Economy', 'Non-Agricultural Production and
Uroan Economy', in The Cambridge Economic History ofI ndia, vol. I, c. 1200-
1750 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1984 reprint).
4 S.B.P. Nigam, Nobility under the Sultans of Delhi (Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1968); Kanwar Muhammad Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the
People ofH indusran (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1935, 1988 reprint).
5 lshtiaq Husain Qureshi, The Administrarion of rhe Sultanate of Delhi
(Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1942, 1971 edition); R.P. Tripathi,
Some Aspecrs ofM uslim Administration (Allahabad: Central Book Depot. 1978
reprint).
6 Peter Hardy, Hisrorians ofM edieval India: Studies in lndo-Muslim Hisrori
cal Writing (London: Luzac and Company, 1966 reprint); Khaliq Ahmad
Nizami, 'Ziya-ud-din Barani', in M. Hasan, ed., Hisrorians of Medieval India
(Delhi: Jamia Milla Islamia, 1968). pp. 37- 52; and Irfan Habib, 'Barani's
Theory of the History of the Delhi Sultanate', Indian Historical Review, vol. 7
(1981), pp 99-115.
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Preface
XI
led away from the Delhi Sultanate and spent some years studying
Islam, the early evolution of the Muslim community, and the history
of Iran, Europe, and modem India. The historiography in these fields
had its own set of problems with anachronism, teleology, and reifica
tion, but the mere fact that scholars recognized them as legitimate
historiographical concerns was a major learning step for a student
raised on a diet of consensual opinions on what happened in India's
Middle Ages.
The 1980s and 1990s proved to be exciting years to rethink medie
val Indian history. The work of scholars such as Si.mon Digby, John
Richards, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Muzaffar Alam, B.D. Chattopa
dhyaya, Dirk Kolff, Richard Eaton, Ebba Koch, Iqtidar Alam Khan,
Chris Bayly, Ronald Inden, Bruce Lawrence, earl Ernst, Stewart
Gordon, Frank Perlin, Ashin Das Gupta, Andre Wink, Peter Jackson,
Richard Barnett, Michael Fisher, Chetan Singh, and Stephen Blake
textured and complicated the range of questions that historians were
bringing to their materials. Although the Delhi Sultanate was still
very much out of the purview of contemporary research, there was
much to learn from historians who had started reflecting on the
texture and narratives oft heir 'sources' rather than merely interrogat
ing and pillaging them for 'facts' . I still remember the sense of excite
ment and relief with which I first read Simon Digby's article on
the Qalandars, reassured that historians could profitably ask new
questions ofS ultanate literary materials read and re-read by countless
historians in the past7
Persian chroniclers crafted the history oft he early Delhi Sultanate
in the thirteenth century itself, a subject that was revisited by a variety
of authors with differing agendas in subsequent years. At one level,
this book is part of a long tradition of histories investigating the
emergence of the Delhi Sultanate. At another level, it intersects with
the ways in which Persian chronicles and a later historiography
remembered the past. The two are not discrete exercises. As I argue
through the book, the processes involved in the creation of the Sulta
nate were not as transparently narrated in the Persian chronicles as
7 Simon Digby, 'Qalandars and Related Groups: Elements of Social Devi
ance in the Religious Life of the Delhi Sultanate of the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries', in Yohanan Friedmann, ed., Islam in Asia, volume /,
South Asia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 60-108.
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