Delhi Sultanate

The Delhi Sultanate was an Islamic empire based in northern India that ruled large parts of the subcontinent for more than three centuries through a succession of five dynasties.

It was founded in 1206 when Qutb al-Din Aibak, a Turkic Mamluk (slave-general) of the Ghurid rulers of Afghanistan, established an independent kingdom at Delhi following the death of his master, inaugurating the Mamluk or 'Slave' dynasty. The sultanate was subsequently ruled by the Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid, and Lodi dynasties in turn. It functioned as a Persianate Islamic state governing a predominantly non-Muslim population, blending Turko-Afghan, Persian, and Indian administrative and cultural traditions. The early sultans, notably Iltutmish, consolidated the state and organised its administration, and the sultanate famously absorbed and repelled repeated Mongol invasions that devastated much of the rest of the Islamic world. Under Ala-ud-din Khalji and later the Tughlaqs, the sultanate reached its greatest territorial extent, with armies campaigning deep into the Deccan and the far south of the peninsula; under Muhammad bin Tughlaq it briefly claimed authority over nearly the entire subcontinent. The period was culturally formative, producing the distinctive Indo-Islamic architecture exemplified by the Qutb Minar, a flourishing Persianate court literature, and the early development of Urdu. Decline set in through the fourteenth century as a result of imperial overextension, the disruptive and unpopular policies of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, including a failed transfer of the capital, and the breakaway of wealthy provinces such as Bengal and the Deccan. The devastating sack of Delhi by Timur in 1398 shattered the sultanate's power, and although the Lodi dynasty achieved a partial revival, the state was finally destroyed when Babur defeated the last Lodi sultan, Ibrahim, at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, founding the Mughal Empire.

Key figures