The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  It is difficult to see Aibak as a ruthless fanatic or as a savage invader, but these are the qualities that Muslim chroniclers laudatorily attribute to him, no doubt with considerable exaggeration. ‘His bounty was continuous and his slaughter was continuous,’ states Siraj. In Varanasi, according to Nizami, Aibak ‘destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations.’ And in his campaign against the Khokars, he was, according to Nizami, so ruthless in exterminating them that ‘there remained not one inhabitant [there] to light a fire.’

  THE MILITARY CAMPAIGNS that Aibak personally led were confined to the central and western Indo-Gangetic Plain; he left the conquest of the eastern Gangetic Plain to the initiative and enterprise of his lieutenant, Bakhtiyar Khalji. Bakhtiyar, according to Siraj, ‘was a very smart, enterprising, bold, courageous, wise, and experienced man.’ But he, like Aibak, was not physically personable. His appearance, according to Siraj, was rather gorilla-like, his arms reaching down to his calves. But his lack of handsomeness was more than offset by his enormous physical power and energy. Taunted by envious nobles, he is said to have once even subdued an elephant in a single combat.

  Aibak recognised Bakhtiyar’s potential and assigned to him the conquest of Bihar and Bengal, and in this he was phenomenally successful. But he was also phenomenally destructive—he was responsible for the destruction of the great Buddhist University of Nalanda in Bihar, though it has to be noted, as an extenuating circumstance, that he mistook the walled university to be a fort, and Buddhist monks to be Brahmins. As Siraj describes the scene, ‘Great plunder fell into the hands of the victors. Most of the inhabitants of the place were Brahmins with shaven heads. They were put to death. Large numbers of books were found there, and when Muhammadans saw them, they called for some persons to explain their contents, but all the men had been killed. It was then discovered that the whole fort and city was a university.’

  After subduing Bihar the general advanced into Bengal, which had been under the rule of the Sena dynasty for several centuries. Bakhtiyar with characteristic impetuosity rode into Nadia, the then capital of Bengal, with an escort of just eighteen cavalrymen, leaving his army behind. Nobody challenged him and his men, for they were taken to be horse traders. They ‘did not molest any man, but went on peaceably and without ostentation … In this manner he (Bakhtiyar) reached the gate … [of the royal palace, and there] he drew his sword and commenced the attack,’ writes Siraj. ‘At this time the raja (Lakshmana-sena) was at his dinner, and gold and silver dishes filled with food were placed before him according to the usual custom. All of a sudden a cry was raised at the gate of his palace.’ Hearing the commotion and learning about the attack, ‘the raja fled barefooted by the rear door of the palace, and his whole treasure, and all his wives, maid servants, attendants, and women fell into the hands of the invader. Numerous elephants were taken, and such booty was obtained by the Muhammadans as is beyond all compute.’

  Meanwhile Lakshmana-sena fled to east Bengal, a heavily forested region, and set up his rule there, but was not pursued there by Bakhtiyar. Lakshmana-sena was an aged, scholarly king, a patron of poets, and a poet himself. Jayadeva, the renowned author of Gita-Govinda, is said to have adorned his court. Quite probably the raja was not martially inclined. Besides, there was an ancient and widely believed prophecy that Muslim rule would be established in Bengal at this time. Bakhtiyar therefore had little difficulty in subjugating most of Bengal.

  Bakhtiyar’s sword now rested on the slopes of the Himalayas. Beyond the mountains lay the mysterious land of Tibet, which set Bakhtiyar dreaming. His thirst for adventure was insatiable, and it now led him to launch an invasion of Tibet. He set out on this campaign with a large force of 10,000 cavalry, but the operation turned out to be a total disaster, because of the extreme weather of Tibet as well as the virulence of the local tribesmen. Bakhtiyar gained nothing whatever from the campaign, but lost a good number of his soldiers in it, and himself barely managed to escape with his life.

  This was a humiliation that Bakhtiyar could not bear. ‘He would thereafter never go out, because he felt ashamed to look on the wives and children of those who had perished [in that campaign],’ writes Siraj. ‘If ever he did ride out, all people, women and children, from their housetops and the streets, cried out cursing and abusing him.’ According to Siraj, Bakhtiyar’s mental distress led to the collapse of his health, and presently he ‘took to bed, and died.’ Other sources however state that he was put out of his misery by his fellow officer, Ali Mardan, who subsequently assumed the leadership of the Khalji clan of Bakhtiyar.

  Bakhtiyar died in 1206. Four years later, in 1210, Aibak died in Lahore, in an accident while playing polo. ‘The sultan,’ writes Siraj, ‘fell from his horse in the field while he was playing chaugan, and the horse came down upon him, so that the pommel of the saddle entered his chest, and killed him.’

  Aibak had ruled North India in all for fifteen years, eleven years as the deputy of Muhammad Ghuri, and the last four years as a sovereign, ‘during which he wore the crown, and had the khutba read and coin struck in his name,’ records Siraj. The Delhi Sultanate that he founded would endure for 320 years, from 1206 to 1526, till Babur conquered Delhi and established the Mughal Empire.

  WHY DID THE Indian kingdoms, many of them ruled by Rajputs renowned for their martial valour, collapse so rapidly and abjectly? The reason that is commonly given for this is that Indian kings made no united stand against Turks. There could in fact be no such united stand by them, because, from the Indian point of view, there was no we/they divide between Indians and Turks. Turks were seen by Indians as just one element—though a new element—in the racial, linguistic, socio-cultural and political agglomeration of India. There was no sense of any unique Indianess among the people or the rulers anywhere in India at this time. Indians did not look like one people or speak like one people—the language of one regional group was entirely unintelligible to the other regional groups. And each of these regional groups was itself divided into several distinct socio-cultural groups based on caste and sect. India was a landmass, at best a civilisation, like Europe, but not a nation.

  Because of all this, Turks were hardly ever seen by Indians as aliens. Several other races from outside the subcontinent had entered India over the centuries, and they were all absorbed into the local society over time, and Indians presumably did not see Turks as any different from these earlier invaders and migrants.

  But of course Turks were different. Unlike the previous invaders and migrants, they could not be absorbed into Indian society, for there was an insurmountable barrier between them and the people of India. The problem was primarily religious. Polytheistic and poly-religious Indians had no problem in accommodating Turks and Islam in their society without in any way compromising their society and religion, but monotheistic Turks could not possibly accommodate Indians in their society without fundamentally altering the composition and ethos of their society and religion. The divide between the two civilisations was insurmountable.

  The Turkish invader was of course seen by the threatened Indian rajas as an enemy. But not as an alien—for the rajas, Turks were not much different from their enemies within India. The local rajas in fact persisted in their self-destructive internecine wars even when the Turks were invading India. Indeed, in several instances Indian chieftains and royal commanders defected to Turks, or connived with them against their own rajas. And very many Hindu soldiers served in the Turkish army. There was no sense among Indian kingdoms that they were facing a common danger from Turks. Though there were a few instances of rajas banding together to oppose Turks, these were evidently the banding together of subordinate chieftains under their overlord, as indicated by the very large number of the confederate chieftains—fifty of them!—joining Jayapala in his first battle of Tarain against Muhammad Ghuri.

  The absence of concerted military action by the rajas cannot however be considered as the decisive factor that led to their rout by Turks,
for many of the Indian kingdoms were much larger in size, population and resources than Ghazni, and the rajas often fielded armies which were very much larger than the Turkish army.

  But this numerical advantage of the Indian armies was more than negated by the decisive superiority of the Turkish army in weaponry, regimental discipline, innovative tactic, and group martial spirit. Indeed, the vast size of the Indian armies often proved to be a disadvantage, as their size was mostly made up of ill-trained and ill-disciplined hordes who could not act efficiently in concert. As individual soldiers, Rajputs, who constituted a large section of North Indian armies, were a match, or more than a match, to Turks in valour. But the lack of regimental training and discipline nullified that advantage. On the whole Indians had very little chance of prevailing over Turks.

  The main dependence of Turks was on their cavalry, which was far superior to the Indian cavalry in every respect, in men as well as in mounts. In contrast, the main dependence of Indian armies was on their elephant corps, but elephants, though forbidding in appearance, were no match for the storming, whirling charge of the Turkish cavalry. Elephants were in fact quite often a menace to their own side, for when wounded in battle or otherwise frightened they ran pell-mell, causing havoc in their own army.

  Equally decisive was the Turkish ability to rapidly innovate their tactics to suit any emergent military situation, and execute lightning manoeuvres, while Indians were slaves of tradition, and they generally fought in the same manner regardless of the actual military situation.

  Besides all this, Turks, as aggressors swooping down from the cool Afghan mountains, had irresistible kinetic energy, while Indians were mostly plains people leading a sedentary life in an enervating climate, and their posture, as defenders, was generally static. Psychologically too Indians were at a disadvantage, as they suffered from the victim syndrome, and were often sluggish in battle, unlike the spirited Turks. Moreover, the fatalistic value system of Indians inculcated in them a generally defeatist attitude. In some cases Indians were also demoralised by astrological predictions that the Turkish conquest of India was inevitable. In contrast, Turks were energised by religious fervour, confident in their faith that they were invincible as the soldiers of their god. Equally, they were motivated by the irresistible lure of plunder.

  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.

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  Heroes and Zeroes

  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.

  Iltutmish then turned to Bengal, where Ali Mardan, a barely sane megalomaniac, had assumed sovereign power on Aibak’s death, and preened himself as the monarch of the whole world. Once, according to Siraj, when an impoverished merchant requested for a donation from him, ‘the king enquired what his native place was. He replied, Isfahan [in Persia]. The king then ordered a firman (decree) to be written, granting to him Isfahan as his jagir.’ Besides being grotesquely delusional, Ali Mardan was also ‘a cruel and sanguinary man,’ notes Siraj. All this was too much even for his own nobles, so they eventually murdered him and placed one of their colleagues on the throne. At that point Iltutmish, freed from anxiety about his western frontier, marched into Bengal and brought it under his control. But the relief was only temporary. Trouble continued to brew in Bengal, and it was only after some five years that Iltutmish was finally able to establish his authority there with reasonable firmness.