Lodi dynasty

Afghan sultans

Bahlul Lodi, an Afghan noble who had risen in Sultanate service, took the throne in 1451 and began recovering territory — Jaunpur above all, whose Sharqi sultanate he annexed. His son Sikandar Lodi extended Sultanate authority across the Ganga plain, founded Agra in 1504 as a forward capital, and encouraged the cultivation of Persian letters among Hindus, from which the emergence of a Hindu Persian-writing service class dates.

The Afghan political tradition differed from the Turkish one in a way that mattered: Afghan nobles regarded the sultan as first among equals rather than as an autocrat, and expected to be consulted and to sit in his presence. Sikandar managed this; his son Ibrahim did not.

Panipat

Ibrahim Lodi's attempt to assert absolute authority over the Afghan nobility produced revolt. Daulat Khan Lodi, governor of the Punjab, and Ibrahim's own uncle invited Babur — the Timurid ruler of Kabul, who had already raided India several times — to intervene.

The two armies met at Panipat on 21 April 1526. Babur's force was much the smaller, perhaps twelve thousand against a hundred thousand, but he had field artillery and matchlocks, and used the Ottoman tactic of chaining carts across his front with gaps for cavalry to counter-attack through. The Lodi army, built around elephants and massed cavalry, was destroyed in half a day and Ibrahim was killed.

The battle ended the Delhi Sultanate after three hundred and twenty years and founded the Mughal empire. The Lodi Gardens in Delhi, with the tombs of Muhammad Shah Sayyid, Sikandar Lodi and others, preserve the architecture of these last Sultanate decades — octagonal domed tombs whose form the Mughals took up and transformed.