Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

But is the story of the facile victory of Turks over Indians entirely true? Virtually the only sources of information of the Turkish conquest of India are Arabic and Persian chronicles. But these present only one side of the story. We do not have the Indian version of what happened and why. There is hardly any mention in the early medieval Indian texts about the momentous events that were then taking place. Apparently Indian chroniclers considered those events as not worth recording. And that in itself is significant, as a reflection of the general Indian disconnect with mundane reality.

With the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate the political history of India once again acquired a dominant theme, seven centuries after the collapse of the Gupta Empire. Though there were a few large and important kingdoms in India in the intervening period, none of them had the all-India prominence that the Gupta Empire had, or the Delhi Sultanate came to have. And the Sultanate would endure far longer than most Indian kingdoms, for well over three centuries, till the Mughal invasion in the early sixteenth century.

The history of the Delhi Sultanate is divided into five dynastic periods — Slave, Khalji, Tughluq, Sayyid, and Lodi. The first of these dynasties is known as the Slave Dynasty because its sultans were all manumitted slaves or their descendants. They were not however ordinary slaves, but royal slaves, like the Mamluks of medieval Egypt, and they, far from being an underclass, constituted a privileged politico-military aristocracy, who could aspire for the highest offices in the government, and even rise to be sultans, as indeed three of them did. It was not a disgrace but a distinction to be such a slave.

The Slave Dynasty ruled Delhi for 84 years, from 1206 to 1290, and there were in all ten sultans in the dynasty, belonging to three different but related families, those of Aibak, Iltutmish and Balban. The founders of these ruling families were men of great ability and achievement, but many of their successors were profligate, worthless men of little or no ability to govern, or even any serious interest in governance. Some were barely sane. And a few of the sultans were overthrown and killed in family strife or court intrigue, and the reigns of some of them were very short, lasting just a few months.

The Sultanate during its early period was bedevilled by internecine rivalries and conflicts. The stature of the sultan in his relationship with his top nobles at this time was that of a first among equals than that of a sovereign over his servitors; he was more like a leader than a ruler. And there was a good amount of push and pull between the sultan and the nobles for sharing power. This was particularly so during times of royal succession, when the nobles invariably tried to test the mettle of the new sultan, to see whether they could be the masters of their master. Another perennial problem of the Sultanate was that its provincial governors were ever on the verge of rebellion, and were often in actual rebellion, aspiring to be independent rulers. The Rajput rajas — subdued by Turks but left as subordinate rulers — were also a source of constant menace to the Sultanate, as they were always waiting in the wings for an opportunity to regain their lost sovereign power. The sultans also had to deal with the depredations of hill tribes; they were present in large numbers all over India, and they boldly rampaged through the countryside whenever the iron hand of the government slackened.

ALL THESE PROBLEMS manifested in an acute form on the sudden death of Aibak. Predictably, the nobles differed in their choice of a successor to Aibak. While the nobles in Lahore, where Aibak died, hastily raised to the throne Aram Shah, a son (or adopted son) of Aibak, perhaps to avoid any hiatus in government, the nobles in Delhi rejected the choice, as they considered Aram to be a callow youth unsuited to rule in those turbulent times. Instead, they chose Iltutmish, a son-in-law of Aibak and an officer of proven ability, to be the sultan. This inevitably led to a military clash between the two factions, and in it Iltutmish easily routed Aram — about whom nothing is heard thereafter — and ascended the throne in Delhi.

This was in 1211. Iltutmish was a manumitted slave of Aibak. He was originally from Turkistan, and belonged to the Ilbari tribe there, but was, as a boy, sold into slavery by his envious brothers. ‘The future monarch,’ writes Siraj, ‘was from his childhood remarkable for beauty, intelligence, and grace, such as excited jealousy in the hearts of his brothers.’ So one day they enticed him away from home, on the pretext of taking him to a horse-show, and sold him to a slave trader. Eventually, after having been resold a few times, the boy was taken to Ghazni by a slave trader, and there he was offered for sale to Muhammad Ghuri. The sultan however rejected the offer as he considered the price asked for the boy — well over ‘a thousand dinars in refined gold’—too high. Aibak however took a fancy for him, and bought him (along with another slave) for ‘one lakh chital coins’ when the trader brought them to Delhi. Aibak, according to Siraj, ‘called him his son and kept him near his person. His rank and honour increased day by day … [and he was in time] elevated to the rank of Amir-shikar,’ Chief Huntsman, a high office, and was also put in charge of some important fiefs. These high offices that Iltutmish held facilitated his choice as sultan by the nobles.

The immediate concern of Iltutmish on his accession was to secure his vulnerable western frontier, across which there was an ever present danger of fresh invasions. There was at this time a political storm brewing in Afghanistan, which was threatening to surge over the mountains into India, and this was a matter of particular anxiety for Iltutmish. In part this development was a continuation of the problems faced by Aibak on his accession. Yildiz, who had tussled with Aibak, was in possession of Ghazni at the time of Iltutmish’s accession. But in 1215 he was driven out of Afghanistan into Punjab by the sultan of Khvarazm. Yildiz then set himself up as the ruler of Lahore by seizing the city from Qabacha who was then in possession of it. The presence of Yildiz in Lahore was a menace to Iltutmish, so he marched out against him, defeated and captured him in a battle fought at Tarain. He was then taken to Delhi, paraded through the city streets, and later executed, as a warning to the other potential rivals of the sultan.

But that was not the end of the troubles for Iltutmish in his western provinces, for Qabacha reoccupied Lahore soon after the Sultan left Punjab and returned to Delhi. Iltutmish however ignored him for the time being, as he was not a major threat to him. But a couple of years later he again led his army into Punjab and drove Qabacha out of Lahore. Qabacha then fled southward and took refuge in the city of Uch. But Iltutmish did not directly pursue him there, for he was at this time faced with a great menace that loomed over the north-western mountains of India. This was the Mongol tornado which, having swept through Central Asia, was now threatening India.

In 1221 Mongols under Chingiz Khan occupied Khvarazm. The sultan of Khvarazm then fled to India for refuge, and, in pursuit of him, Mongols themselves stormed into India and headed towards Indus. But there, on the banks of the river, for some mysterious reason, perhaps deterred by the sweltering climate of India, or by some ill omen, Chingiz Khan turned back and returned to Afghanistan. This was a lucky break for Iltutmish — if Chingiz Khan had advanced further east he would have caused dreadful havoc in the Delhi Sultanate. Freed from that anxiety, Iltutmish then returned to Punjab to deal with Qabacha. Qabacha then fled from Uch on the sultan’s approach and took refuge in an island fortress on Indus, but was pursued there too by the royal forces. He then tried to escape from there in boat, but drowned in the river while fleeing.