Mamluk dynasty of Delhi

Slaves as sultans

The dynasty is called Mamluk or Slave because its founders were military slaves — men bought as boys, trained as soldiers and administrators, and freed on promotion. It was an established institution across the Islamic world, and it produced rulers of the first rank precisely because it selected for ability rather than birth.

Qutb al-Din Aibak was Muhammad of Ghor's slave commander in India, and on Muhammad's death in 1206 he took the Indian territories. Iltutmish, who succeeded him in 1210, had been Aibak's own slave. Balban, who ruled from 1266, had been one of Iltutmish's.

Iltutmish and the Mongols

Iltutmish consolidated what Aibak had seized: he secured recognition from the Abbasid caliph, introduced the silver tanka and copper jital that became the Sultanate's coinage, and organised the iqta system by which military commanders were assigned revenue from land in exchange for troops.

His most consequential decision was a refusal. When Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, the fugitive Khwarazmian prince, sought asylum in India in 1221 with Chinggis Khan in pursuit, Iltutmish declined — and the Mongol army turned back at the Indus. The Sultanate spent the next century absorbing Mongol raids, and it is among the very few states in Asia that were never conquered by them.

Balban's reign was given over to the same task: a rebuilt army, a fortified northwestern frontier, and a court ceremonial of deliberate severity intended to make the sultan's authority unquestionable.

Raziyya

Iltutmish designated his daughter Raziyya as successor over his sons, and she ruled from 1236 to 1240 — the only woman to sit on the throne of Delhi. The chronicler Minhaj, who knew her, wrote that she was a great sovereign, wise, just and generous, and a benefactor of her kingdom, but that she was a woman, and in the estimation of men all these virtues were worthless.

She discarded the veil, rode and appeared in court, and was deposed and killed by the Turkish nobility after four years.

Building

The Qutb complex at Delhi was begun by Aibak: the Quwwat al-Islam mosque, built from the material of demolished temples with the columns visibly reused, and the Qutb Minar, a victory tower and minaret of banded red sandstone and marble which Iltutmish and later sultans raised to seventy-three metres. The Alai Darwaza was added by Alauddin Khalji.

The complex is where the architecture of Islamic India begins — Persian and Central Asian forms executed by Indian masons, with the arch at first corbelled rather than true, because the craftsmen had not built one before. The dynasty ended in 1290 when the Khaljis took the throne.