Baybars was as careful to develop economic ties as he was to cultivate diplomatic contacts. Mediterranean trade in the thirteenth century was dominated by Europeans. The fleets of Italian city–states by that time had obtained a near monopoly of naval power. By virtue of Baybars’ campaigns against the Crusader ports of Syria and Palestine (he captured all the remaining Crusader forts except Acre), the once-flourishing Italian trade with Syria was destroyed. Baybars realized that he could redirect that trade to Egypt, and he negotiated treaties with several Italian maritime powers in an effort to secure a share in the profits of the Mediterranean trade. Egypt’s maritime commerce grew steadily in volume over the next century, and Alexandria experienced an economic boom as a result. The Mamlukes regained the dominant position in the trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean that Egypt had lost during the era of the Crusades. They maintained good relations with Venice and Genoa, whose ships transported most of the slaves from the Black Sea and whose merchants purchased the spices that came to Egypt from India and the East Indies.
Realizing the need for a vibrant economy to support their military machine and their high standard of living, the Mamlukes supported the crafts and manufacturing as well as trade. During the early fourteenth century, they invested in huge paper-making factories and sugar refineries. They encouraged the export of sugar to Italy, southern France, Catalonia, Flanders, England, and the Baltic Sea. The most important Egyptian industry continued to be the manufacture of cotton and linen textiles, both of which were in great demand during this period in both the Muslim world and in Europe.
With their wealth, the Mamlukes patronized learning and the arts. During the Mongol devastation of Iran and Iraq in the first half of the thirteenth century, both Damascus and Cairo had welcomed scholars and merchants fleeing the destruction of their homelands. Due to the influx of Iranian and Iraqi scholars, and the destruction of Baghdad in 1258, the two cities became the greatest centers of Islamic learning during the late Ayyubid period. As the capital city of the Mamluke empire, Cairo surpassed Damascus in importance and imperial stature, and it remained the cultural capital of the Muslim world at least until the late fifteenth century. Through patronage of culture, Mamluke sultans attempted to legitimize their rule by winning favor with the ulama and the masses alike. One time-honored way for rulers to impress upon the public the grandeur of their reign is through the construction of impressive buildings, and the Mamlukes were no exception in this regard. They vied with their predecessors in endowing magnificent madrasas, mosques, Sufi lodges, and hospitals, in addition to constructing enormous tombs for themselves. Some of the most impressive buildings to be found in Syria and Egypt to this day are the result of Mamluke patronage of monumental architecture.
Baybars installed a member of the Abbasid family as caliph in Cairo after he consolidated his power. It is impossible to assess the actual impact of this symbolic act. The caliph was not recognized outside the empire, and he wielded no influence in the government. On the other hand, his presence was politically useful for the government and psychologically important for many Egyptians and Syrians. More tangible were changes that the regime made in the patronage of the religious institutions. Previous Muslim regimes had favored one or another school of law, but the Mamlukes were the first to endow all four schools and to appoint qadis for each one.
The period 1260–1341 was the high point of Mamluke history, and the third reign of al-Nasir Muhammad (1310–1341) was its apogee. During al-Nasir’s reign, there were neither famines nor plagues in the empire, a stark contrast with the late Fatimid and early Ayyubid periods. The population grew, and prosperity soared. The death of al-Nasir Muhammad in 1341 marked the end of the golden age for the Mamlukes, even though they would continue to rule for almost two hundred more years, until 1517. Beginning in the last decade of the thirteenth century, ethnic rivalry between the Qipchaqs and the Circassians escalated, and fierce clashes broke out when al-Nasir Muhammad died. Struggles between the two groups caused chronic violence for the next forty years. Members of al-Nasir’s family held the office of the sultanate during that time, but they were puppets of the factions who placed them on the throne. Thus, political instability in the Mamluke Empire occurred simultaneously with the collapse of the Mongol khanates.
To complicate matters, the plague, or Black Death, struck the Mamluke realm with at least the level of ferocity in 1348 that it did Europe, killing one-fourth to one-third of the population. For the next century and a half, the epidemics recurred at a rate of more than once per decade, causing the population to continue to decline. As agriculture and commerce plummeted, a Circassian group of Mamlukes seized power in 1382, and the Qipchaq era was over. The Circassians dominated the empire until their defeat at the hands of the Ottomans in 1517.
The Delhi Sultanate
The Arab invasions of 711–713 established an Islamic presence in the middle and lower Indus valley, but in terms of both geography and influence, the settlements there remained on the periphery of the Islamic world for several centuries. The Abbasids lost control of the area in the ninth century, and several of the towns in the valley soon came under the control of Isma‘ilis who looked to Fatimid Cairo for guidance. In the eleventh century, however, Mahmud of Ghazna expanded his aggressive and predatory Muslim state into the Indus basin. The Ghaznavids inaugurated an era of seven centuries that would witness a series of powerful, autonomous Muslim states in South Asia (the area south of the Hindu Kush and Himalaya mountain ranges). Usually ruled by Turks or Afghans, each dynasty attempted to maintain an identifiably Muslim court in an overwhelmingly Hindu society. The model they found most congenial was the Islamic–Persian style that developed in northeastern Iran with the Samanid court of the tenth century. Until the advent of the Mughals, the greatest of these Muslim states was the Delhi Sultanate.
Mahmud of Ghazna laid the foundations for a powerful Muslim presence in South Asia. He raided the Punjab area as early as 1002, and captured Lahore in 1030. When the Saljuqs chased Mahmud’s successor out of Khorasan ten years later, Lahore increasingly became the most important city in the remaining areas of the Ghaznavid Empire, and it developed into a thriving center of Islamic culture.
In 1173, an Afghan family from the region of Ghur seized power in Ghazna and began a systematic conquest of Ghaznavid holdings in the Punjab, which they accomplished by 1192. Not content with the Punjab, these Ghurids conquered Delhi in 1193 and occupied areas as far east as Bihar on the lower Ganges. Their military power can be gauged by the fact that, while they were conquering the Punjab and the Ganges, they were also winning Khorasan from the shahs of Khwarazm, often regarded as the greatest Muslim military power of the day until their defeat by Chinggis Khan. The Ghurid realm grew until it extended from Bihar through Khorasan. But just as the Ghurids were poised to create a major state in South Asia, their ruler was assassinated in 1206, leaving no son to inherit the throne. The general who conquered Delhi for the Ghurids took over the reins of power in both Delhi and Lahore. But he in turn died in a polo accident in 1210. His former military slave, Iltutmish, then seized power. Iltutmish (1210–1236) is regarded to be the founder of the Delhi Sultanate, although it was over a decade before he made Delhi preeminent over Lahore.
Although the Delhi Sultanate was composed of several different dynasties, it is regarded as a single period in Muslim–Indian history because of the continuity of the ruling elite. Historians disagree on the issue of its duration. Some point out that it was the dominant state in South Asia from 1210 to 1398 and limit their treatment of the sultanate to the three dynasties of that period. Other historians include two later dynasties, in which case the sultanate’s history is considered to last until the arrival of the Mughals in 1526. Regardless of how one defines the duration of the sultanate, each dynasty began of either Turkish or Afghan lineage. Like almost all other Muslim regimes (the major exception was that of the Mamlukes), the rulers might choose wives or concubines of strikingly different ethnic origin,
but the patrilineal system of tracing one’s ancestors made it natural for each generation to see itself as the heir to the founder of the dynasty and to identify with his ethnic origin.
The early Delhi Sultanate experienced the same degree of political turbulence that the Mamluke regime did. The entire period from 1210 to 1320 was one of political tumult among the ruling elite itself. Powerful amirs attempted to check the power of others, and violence often resulted. Between 1236 and 1296, ten sultans reigned, eight of whom averaged a reign of less than three years. Only one of the ten is known to have died a natural death. Despite having to confront almost constant challenges within the elite and violent changes of dynasties in 1290 and 1320, the sultanate successfully withstood threats from the Mongols. A Mongol expedition actually sacked Lahore in 1241, but between 1290 and 1327, the Chaghatay khanate’s attacks were repulsed at least nine times.
In the periods between internal clashes and Mongol attacks, the sultanate expanded its area of control. By 1230, Iltutmish dominated a wide arc based on the Indus and Ganges river valleys. In that year, he sought and won recognition from the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad as the legitimate Muslim ruler of the area. By the early fourteenth century, the sultanate had extended its authority to Gujarat and the Deccan plateau, in addition to controlling most of the Ganges valley and the Punjab. Until the 1320s, the regime exercised authority in the conquered areas by a variety of means. The sultanate ruled directly in some areas, and in other areas it exacted tribute from Hindu or Muslim princes who were allowed to rule with little oversight.
The most influential of the Delhi dynasties was that of the Tughluq family, whose effective rule was from 1320 to 1388, although members of the family remained on the throne until 1413. Muhammad ibn Tughluq (1325–1351) was the most famous of the family. He was a fascinating figure of undoubted intellectual and creative talents, but his administration was a disappointment. On the one hand, he continued his father’s military campaigns and managed to extend the authority of the sultanate over almost all of South Asia. His domain extended from the Himalayas almost to the southern tip of the peninsula, and from the Punjab to Bengal. He also defeated the Chaghatay ruler Tarmashirin at the very gate of Delhi in 1327, the event that indirectly resulted in the division of the Chaghatay khanate into Transoxiana and Mogulistan. He was an accomplished scholar, proficient in both Arabic and Persian, and he recruited numerous new qadis from abroad in a major effort to facilitate the implementation of Islamic law. Toward his Hindu and Jain subjects, he practiced a conciliatory policy of offering them high positions in the government, allowing them to build new temples and inviting them to court to debate philosophical and theological issues.
Although these policies seem like the strategies of an accomplished politician, Muhammad actually found it difficult to devise realistic policies for some important issues. His fastidious need for symmetry made it impossible for him to tolerate the variety of relations that existed between the central government and the multitude of provinces that were at least nominally subject to it. He instituted a uniform policy of direct rule for all regions, provoking widespread resentment in the areas that had been allowed a degree of autonomy by previous Delhi sultans. The biggest problem was in the Deccan plateau. The area was hundreds of miles south of Delhi, and the Hindu rulers there had no intention of yielding on the issue of indirect rule. Muhammad thought that he could resolve the problem of distance by moving the capital from Delhi to the more centrally located site of Dawlatabad in the Deccan, but the change was implemented in a heavy-handed fashion that provoked resentment among his own followers.
These, and other unpopular measures, were followed by a catastrophic drought and famine in the Punjab and the Ganges valley during the years 1335–1342. The suffering brought on by the drought became the pretext for widespread rebellions throughout the northern tier of the sultanate, forcing Muhammad to lead his army on repeated campaigns to the northern as well as southern provinces of his realm. He responded to the uprisings, and even to the whisperings of criticism of his policies, with brutal punishment that caused him to develop a reputation for cruelty. By the end of his rule, he had lost control of his southern possessions, including Bengal, and the support of most of his remaining subjects.
The reign of Muhammad’s cousin Firuz (1351–1388) stood in sharp contrast to that of his own. Firuz practiced clemency where Muhammad had been brutal, although he responded to Muslim criticisms of his cousin’s religious toleration by destroying newly built Hindu temples and promoting proselytizing efforts among the Hindu majority. He made a concerted effort to assist the agricultural sector of the economy by constructing irrigation projects, and he promoted employment by building a new capital city near Delhi. In the end, however, he had not made a convincing case for the continuing authority of Delhi. When Firuz died in 1388, a power struggle broke out among his sons and grandsons. Many of the Hindu and Muslim rulers of the provinces took advantage of the confusion to renounce their allegiance to the dynasty, plunging the sultanate into a civil war that lasted a decade.
Delhi was not on a major trade route and probably would never have become the center of the sultanate had it not been for the Mongol threat. Chinggis Khan’s return route to Mongolia in 1222 passed through the Punjab, persuading Iltutmish to establish his headquarters at Delhi rather than at the Ghurid capital of Lahore. On the other hand, the valley of the Indus, the Punjab, and the Gangetic plain were all rich agricultural regions that supplied Delhi with wealth, and the acquisition of Gujarat granted the city access to the wider world of commerce. Gujarat was famous for its fine cotton cloths as well as for its role as an entrepot. Commodities shipped there from Southeast Asia or East Africa would be transshipped to yet another port, such as Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
As the capital of a rich and powerful regime, Delhi attracted soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, scribes, and scholars. Like Cairo and Damascus, it was a haven for refugees fleeing the depredations of Chinggis Khan and Hulagu. The Delhi sultans welcomed and offered patronage to foreign scholars and artisans, whose work enhanced the glory of the regime. Outstanding ulama were appointed to serve as qadis and administrators in the government, particularly during the reign of Muhammad ibn Tughluq, who seems to have been willing to trust foreign officeholders more than local ones. Most of the intellectuals who emigrated to Delhi came from Khorasan and Transoxiana, reinforcing the Persianate cast of the elite culture that had been bequeathed by the Ghaznavids to the Punjab. Poetry, music, and historical works composed in Persian flourished under the regime. Architecture, likewise, reflected the styles that had been developing in Iran and Central Asia. Magnificent mosques, Sufi lodges, madrasas, tombs, and palaces incorporated the vaulted halls, pointed domes, blue faience tiles, and gold plating of the Persian-speaking region. No contemporary Muslim city exceeded the architectural splendor of Delhi.
The sultanate shared many common characteristics with those of Muslim regimes to the west, but it was distinctive in one major feature: Not in several centuries had the Muslim rulers of any other major state represented such a small minority of the population. The population of the sultanate at its height (ca. 1310–1340) was remarkably complex linguistically. Over one thousand languages and dialects were spoken in South Asia. From the perspective of a Muslim government, however, the issue of religion was more vexing than that of language. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Muslims of the sultanate were a tiny minority of the total population. For many Muslims the ultimate responsibility for any Muslim ruler was the protection and advancement of the faith. Although opinions varied regarding what this duty actually entailed, for most it seems to have included the enforcement of the Shari‘a, the toleration of Jews and Christians within certain prescribed guidelines, and the eradication of polytheism.
In the Delhi Sultanate, the tension between the religious duty of the ruler on the one hand and the social reality on the other reached a level inconceivable in the rest of the Islamic world. The sultans depe
nded on millions of Hindu laborers, troops, bureaucrats, carpenters, masons, metallurgists, bankers, and merchants. The Ghaznavids, the Ghurids, and the early sultans at Delhi exploited the religious issue when they raided Hindu towns and temples, but as the later sultans began to consolidate their holdings, they followed a more pragmatic policy. The fourteenth-century rulers Muhammad ibn Tughluq and his successor Firuz exemplify the range of possibilities available to the Muslim rulers of South Asia in their treatment of non-Muslims. The former’s generosity to Hindus and Jains was criticized by devout Muslims, and the latter’s punitive measures against non-Muslims contributed to the outbreak of the civil war that followed his death in 1388. As we shall see, the disorder of that period exposed northern India to perhaps the greatest catastrophe that it has ever experienced: the invasion of Timur Lang.
The thirteenth-century Qutb mosque in Delhi.
The Ottoman Sultanate
The third of the great Muslim states to emerge on the periphery of the Islamic heartland in the thirteenth century was that of the Ottomans. During the second half of the fifteenth century it achieved the status of an empire, and it went on to become one of the greatest and most durable states in world history. It collapsed only after World War I. During the period prior to the fifteenth century, when its territory was relatively compact and its reputation was only regional, its status may best described as that of a “sultanate.”
A History of the Muslim World to 1405 Page 47