The Delhi Sultanate

Qutbuddin Aibak, slave-general of Ghori, founded the line and began the Qutub Minar; his son-in-law Iltutmish (1211–1236) consolidated the sultanate, introduced the silver tanka and copper jital, organised the corps of forty slave-nobles (the Chalisa or Chihalgani) and sheltered India from the Mongol storm devastating Asia. Razia Sultan (1236–40), the only woman to rule Delhi, preferred capability to lineage and dressed as a sultan — and was destroyed by the Turkish nobility she had defied. Balban (1266–87) answered with the theory of kingship as divine radiance (zill-i-ilahi), broke the Chalisa, and made the court a theatre of awe.

Alauddin Khilji (1296–1316) turned the sultanate into an empire. He repelled repeated Mongol invasions, conquered Gujarat, Ranthambore, Chittor and Malwa, and sent Malik Kafur's columns deep into the Deccan — to Madurai itself — collecting tribute from the Yadavas, Kakatiyas, Hoysalas and Pandyas.

To pay a permanent standing army he fixed soldiers' pay by price: Alauddin's market-control system — state-registered granaries, fixed prices, and savage penalties for hoarding — kept Delhi fed and his army cheap, the most audacious economic experiment of medieval India. He was also the first sultan to build on the imperial scale, adding the Alai Darwaza to the Qutub complex.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325–51) was the most learned and most disastrous of sultans: his transfer of the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad and his bronze-and-copper token currency both failed in confusion, though the ideas — a central capital and paper-cheap money — were centuries ahead of their time. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who served as his qazi, left a vivid portrait of splendour and terror. Under Firoz Shah Tughlaq came canals, new towns, hospitals and the first translations of Sanskrit works, alongside renewed orthodoxy.

Timur's sack of Delhi (1398) shattered the edifice. The feeble Sayyids and then the Afghan Lodis (1451–1526) presided over shrinking realms; Sikandar Lodi founded Agra. In 1526 Ibrahim Lodi met Babur's artillery at Panipat and died with fifteen thousand of his men — the first emperor killed on the field in a battle that founded the Mughal empire. Yet the Sultanate's legacy was indelible: the iqta system of territorial assignments, Indo-Islamic architecture (arch, dome, minar married to indigenous craft), new urban centres, and Hindavi — the speech from which modern Hindi and Urdu both descend.