After Timur
Khizr Khan, whom Timur had left as governor of Multan, took Delhi in 1414 and founded the dynasty. Its members claimed descent from the Prophet, which gives the dynasty its name, and for some years continued to acknowledge Timurid overlordship rather than claiming the sultanate outright.
The territory they governed was small. Bengal, Jaunpur, Malwa, Gujarat, Kashmir and the Deccan were all independent sultanates by this point, and the Rajput and Khokhar chiefs of the surrounding country were effectively autonomous. The contemporary jibe that the realm of the sultan of Delhi ran from Delhi to Palam — a village a few miles away — belongs to this period.
The interest of a weak dynasty
The Sayyid period matters as an illustration of what the Delhi Sultanate actually was for much of its existence: not a continuous imperial state but a city and its hinterland, capable of expansion under a strong sultan and reduced to almost nothing under a weak one.
The fifteenth century, often treated as a trough between the Tughlaqs and the Mughals, was in fact one of the most creative periods in Indian regional history — the sultanates of Bengal, Malwa, Gujarat, Jaunpur and the Deccan each developed distinct architectural and literary traditions, and it was in these courts that Indian regional languages first received systematic royal patronage.
The last Sayyid abdicated in favour of Bahlul Lodi in 1451.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Eaton, Richard M. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier. University of California Press, 1993
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.