Delhi Sultanate Research Articles

The Content and the Form in Amīr Khusraw'sDuval Rānī va Khiẓr Khān

AbstractModern scholars approach Amīr Khusraw'sDuval Rānī va Khiẓr Khānas either a historicalmaavīthat relates Delhi Sultanate conquests or as a romanticmaavīthat combines the love story between the crown prince and a Hindu princess with tragedy resulting from their fate. While the content of theDuval Rānī va Khiẓr Khānis well known, the form of the text and its implications for reading both history and romance remains unexplored. Reading the form inverts the historic and romantic division of the text. It reveals the historical elements as romantic panegyric created by Khusraw in praise of the Delhi Sultanate and the romance as a source-based historical biography.

Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam: History, Religion and Muslim Legitimacy in the Delhi Sultanate By BLAIN H. AUER.

To what extent the legitimacy of the Sultanate of Delhi was based on religious or political foundations, and how the issues of legitimacy were contested, sustained and expressed, are questions which continue to be a subject of scholarly debate. The views expressed cover a wide spectrum—from those which see the Sultanate as a progenitor of the modern secular Indian state with a complete separation between religious institutions and political governance, to those that consider it a theocracy. Blain Auer’s book is a welcome addition to this debate and advocates a more nuanced approach to the whole issue. Auer’s study covers the period from the conquest of Delhi by Muʿiz al-Dīn Muḥammad bin Sām in 1192 to its destruction at the hands of Amīr Tīmūr in 1498. He bases this study primarily on the three major ‘official’ histories written during the period: Minhāj al-Sirāj Juzjānī’s Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, Ḍiyāʾ Baranī’s Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, and Shams al-Dīn Sirāj ʿAfīf’s Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī. Auer has concentrated on the rhetorical and didactic contents of narratives, motifs and themes contained in the above historical writings. He explores the efforts of Sultanate historians to craft an image of the Sultans and to set up standards against which their actions could be judged. Auer re-interprets the relationship between religious and political authority in the Delhi Sultanate and takes up the challenge of ‘understanding the peculiar relationship between history and historiography’.

What Do You Understand of the Nature of Rural and Urban Society in the Light of Economy and Production in Sultanate Delhi?

The establishment of Delhi Sultanate in the beginning of thirteenth century and its continued existence until early sixteenth century unfolded a gradual series of political, economic and social transformations and developments throughout the Indian sub-continent. The very presence of Sultanate was an intriguing journey of encounter of the two very different lifestyles, one being predominantly sedentary-agrarian indigenous population while the other Central Asian pastoral-nomadic. This paper is an attempt to unwind convoluted threads of economic and social interaction as a result of coming together of the two disparate backgrounds.

Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam

This insightful book, useful to scholars and students of Islamic and SouthAsian history, illuminates the place of Islamic thought and institutions in thepolitical regimes of the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). Finding late approachesto the historiography of the period unduly focused on “fact” and “fiction,”rather than “meaning,” the author unravels the more complex relationshipbetween history and historiography in six pertinent chapters (p. xix). Theseare complemented by maps, illustrations, thorough endnotes, and a usefulbibliography. As a whole, the cohort of Persian histories read lead to the convincingconclusion that “historians played a major role in producing and sustainingideas about power, justice and Islamic rule of the premodern empire”(p. 160) ...

In Midnight's Children, the Subalterns Speak!

My main point in this article is to suggest that even though the subalterns “do not speak directly in archival documents which are usually produced by the ruling classes” (Chakrabarty, “Small History” 478), they speak nonetheless in bits and traces within the elite discourses. Wherever the elite speak, the subaltern speaks as well because “supplementarity” is the condition of their possibility.1 “Man is aristocratic,” Antonio Gramsci argues, “because he is the servant of the soil” (80). Just like other structural opposites, the subaltern constitutes the elite not by being outside the domains of modern knowledge production but by inhabiting them. It is, therefore, hard to imagine the one without imagining the “other.” I do not at all mean to suggest, however, that the subalterns are able to speak for themselves or to suggest that the intellectuals’ role is now over, but to submit that there is a more complicated nexus between the rulers and the subalterns than it is often thought. In his article “The Impossibility of Subaltern History,” the critic Gyan Prakash argues that the subaltern refuses to be outside modernity, and the discourse that puts him or her outside history is indicative of the will of those who practice such exclusionary discourse. He further contends,

Ibn Baṭṭūṭa on Shedding of Blood in the Delhi Sultanate

Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's longest sojourn (734–748/1333-ca. 1347) in his famous world travels was in the domains of the Delhi sultanate ruled by Muḥammad b. Tughluq. He presents a vivid picture of court life in Delhi and a portrait of the sultan, whom Ibn Baṭṭūṭa describes in contrasting terms of generosity and violence. This essay examines the latter phenomenon, first by briefly noting the contribution of two contrasting studies on the complex nature of violence itself (Part One), followed by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's depiction of Ibn Tughluq's accession to power (Part Two), and then his perception of the sultan's use of capital punishment during his reign (Part Three). The last section (Part Four) adds further detail on the sultan's policy and then briefly compares Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's perception of the sultan's violence with that of another contemporary witness, the historian Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī. The result suggests that Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's representation of violence is as nuanced as the phenomenon of violence itself.

Book Review: Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, Delhi Sultanate: Urbanisation and Social Change

Book Review: Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, <i>Delhi Sultanate: Urbanisation and Social Change</i>

Indian Emergencies: Baranī's Fatāwā-i Jahāndārī , the Diseases of the Body Politic, and Machiavelli's accidenti

This essay proposes a novel interpretation of the Fatāwā-i Jahāndārī (Precepts of world rulership), one of the major sources of Indo-Islamic political thought produced by Ziyā' al-Dīn Baranī, a seminal Indo-Islamic political theorist and historian (fourteenth century). It shows that one of the main thrusts of Baranī's theory is to offer a comprehensive account of the various kinds and manifestations of emergencies and modes of treating the diseases afflicting the body politic. It also investigates the ways in which Baranī's ideas on emergencies relate to the political circumstances that prevailed during the Delhi Sultanate period as well as to previous works of political and moral advice, particularly Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's Nasirean Ethics . In addition, this essay is the first systematic endeavor to place Barani in conversation with Western political writers, especially Niccolò Machiavelli. It explores the affinities between these two authors' views on emergencies and, more broadly, on the challenges associated with rulership and the qualities requisite for an efficient ruler. My analysis of Baranī's ideas within the context of the Islamic tradition and the cross-cultural comparison with Machiavelli highlights the normative dimensions of his theory and its relevance to current debates on emergencies.

The legacy of Islam in Somnath

AbstractSince the sack of Somnath by Maḥmūd of Ghazna in 1025–26, Somnath has been a byword for religious orthodoxy, intolerance and conflict between Muslims and Hindus. Yet looking further than Maḥmūd's greed for the temple's gold and later the Delhi sultans' appetite for territory, Somnath and most other towns of Saurashtra had long-established settlements of Muslims engaged in international maritime trade. The settlers, while adhering to their own values, respected their hosts and their traditions and enjoyed the support of the local rajas. It is only in recent years that Hindu nationalist parties have revived the story of Maḥmūd to evoke resentment against the era of Muslim domination, with the aim of inducing communal tensions and gaining political power. The inscriptions and many mosques and Muslim shrines in this Hindu holy city and its vicinity bear witness to the long history of harmonious co-existence between Hindus and Muslims. This paper explores the Muslim culture of Somnath by studying its major mosques. Through an analytic exploration of the typology of the mosques of Saurashtra, the paper demonstrates that while the old centres of power in Gujarat lay outside Saurashtra it is in Somnath and its neighbouring towns that numerous mosques dating from prior to the sultanate of Gujarat still stand. These monuments help illuminate our understanding of early Muslim architecture in Gujarat and its aesthetic evolution from the time of the peaceful maritime settlements to the establishment of the Gujarat Sultanate.

Science of Medicine and Hospitals in India during the Delhi Sultanate Period

The Arab conquerors of Iran found Bimaristan there functioning as a centre of public health care. Later, the Muslim rulers in Central Asia and Khurasan changed its Persian name to Arabic Dārul-Shifa. The Sultans of Delhi also built dārul-shifas. Another development that took place in India was the beginning of the process of synthesizing Muslim system of medicines and the indigenous Ayurvedic system. This process continued during the Mughal period as well.

The history of Islamic political thought: from the Prophet to the present

Part 1 Early Islam: the messenger/the mission of Muhammad the notion of monarchy under the Umayyads and Abbasids c.661-900 the development of the Sunni way c.700-900 Shi'ism political culture in the Persian renaissance c.850-1050 the early Falasifa (philosophers) - Plato without the Polis. Part II Religion and state power (din wa dawla): Sunni doctrine and the state c.900-1220 the theory of the Caliphate the order of the realm Ghazali's balance the ethics of power - advice-to-kings (nahisat al-muluk) political philosophy in the 12th century Sufism and politics. Part III The Shari'a and the sword c.1220-1520: the rape of Asia Mamluk ideology and the Sultan-Caliph Nasir al-Din Tusi (1263-1328) - shara'a governance (al-siyasa al-shari'yya) the Delhi sultanate and al-Barani - statecraft and morality Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) - the science of civilization and the governance of Islam the decline of classical Islamic political thought. Part IV Islam and the west: the Age of Modernism - c.1830-1920 the Age of Fundamentalism c.1920-2000.

The Maratha Complex at Ellora

The cave-temples at Ellora, dating back to the sixth century, are well known to scholars and visitors, in contrast to the nearby Hindu memorials (samadhis), temple, and tank associated with the Marathas. These later monuments were sponsored by figures belonging to the Bhonsle and Holkar Maratha families, who at different times held the estate of what was then known as Verul. The samadhis of the early-seventeenth century Bhonsles, ancestors of the great warrior king Shivaji, are built in the prevailing Nizam Shahi architectural style, giving visual expression to the close link between these figures and their Deccan sultanate overlords. Indeed, the samadhis appear at first to be Muslim tombs, but, being merely commemorative in function, they contain no corporeal remains. The samadhis are clustered around the Ghrishneshvara, a temple that enshrines a sacred jyotirlinga erected by the Holkar queen Ahilyabai at some date in the second half of the eighteenth century. Significantly, this is a replacement edifice built in an archaic style that recalls the sacred architecture of the Yadava rulers of this part of the Deccan in the eleventh to twelfth centuries. Nothing can now be seen of this earlier monument, other than the odd worn sculpted panel. Presumably the temple was severely damaged as a result of the depredations of the Delhi sultanate invasions of the Deccan in the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, prompting Ahilyabai to finance its reconstruction. The tank a short distance away, known as the Shivalayatirtha, has an inscription that records Ahilyabai as its sponsor, and 1769 as the date of completion. The sacred function of this water monument is confirmed by eight small linga shrines arranged symmetrically around a central square pool.

Was the Black Death in India and China?

Firsthand accounts of the Black Death in Europe and the Middle East and many subsequent historians have assumed that the pandemic originated in Asia and ravaged China and India before reaching the West. One reason for this conviction among modern historians is that the plague in the nineteenth century originated and did its worst damage in these countries. But a close examination of the sources on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan Dynasty provides no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague among the many troubles that afflicted fourteenth-century China.

In Reality a Man: Sultan Iltutmish, His Daughter, Raziya, and Gender Ambiguity in Thirteenth Century Northern India

AbstractRuler of the Delhi Sultanate in northern India from 1236 to 1240, Raziya is a striking example of a woman who rose to power in a pre-modern Islamic society. It was Raziya’s father’s recognition and cultivation of her wisdom and ruling capacities, as well as his apparent naming of her as his successor, that paved the way for her accession to the throne. This article offers an explanation of how Raziya was able to rule in an environment in which the birth of daughters normally gave rise to disappointment and women had few avenues for authority. It will argue that despite medieval Muslim India’s assigning to women a status separate from and inferior to that of men, a metaphorical space existed in which women could identify or be identified as men. As in many non-Muslim societies, such identification could become a means for a daughter to enter into male sociopolitical spheres.

Political Ideas &amp; Institutions of Mughal State

The Mughal Period on a clearer basis extended from 1526-1540 and 1555-1712 (due to the interregnum of Sher Shah Suri 1540-1555). The Mughal Empire was an Islamic imperial power which ruled most of the India subcontinent from the early 16th to the mid-19th centuries. The Mughal Emperors were of Turko-Mongol descent, but developed a highly sophisticated mixed Persian culture. At the height of its power, around 1700, it controlled most of the Subcontinent - extending from present-day Bangladesh to Kashmir and part of what is now Afghanistan. To be mentioned in a more precised manner, the rule of Mughal Empire stretched from Mughal period, an exemplary period in its own particular ways. This period is sometimes considered to be the blue print of modern India. In the fifteenth century when the political condition of India had deteriorated and there was no powerful kingdom in the northern India. The last ruling dynasty was of the Lodhis with a weekend position. Such a situation invited invasions from the northwestern borders of India. Babur’s invasion and subsiquent were indeed its result. Babur invaded India in 1526, i.e. Battle of Panipat, in which Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodhi and thus established his empire over India. Expansion and annexation of India by Mughals and diplomatic absorption of the Rajputs, economic policies, religious policies and socio-economic policies, the sovereign, his power and duties are worth mentioning. Punjab to Bengal including Jaunpur and Bihar in the 16 century. Included Kabul in the north-west and Kashmir in the north, Sindh, Multan and Gujrat in the west, Malwa and Benar in the south and Orrissa and Bengal in the east at the time of Akbar’s death. It stretched from Kabul, Kandhar and Peshawar in the north and Kaveri in the south by the end of seventeenth century. Its population at that time has been estimated as between 110 and 130 million, over a territory of over 4 million km² (1.5 million mi²). The foundation for the Baburids empire (Mughal Period) was established around the early 1500s by the Timurid prince Babur, when he took control of the Doab and eastern regions of Khorasan controlling the fertile Sindh region and the lower valley of the Indus River. In 1526, when Babur defeated the last of the Delhi Sultans, Ibrahim Shah Lodhi, at the First Battle of Panipat, Babur was invited to invade the Delhi Sultanate by Rana Sanga, who thought that after defeating Ibrahim Lodhi, Babur would go back and he would become the Ruler of Delhi. To secure his newly founded kingdom, Babur then had to face the Rajput confederacy led by Rana Sanga of Chittor, at the battle of Kanwah, 1527. These early military successes of the Turks, achieved by an army much smaller than its opponents, have been attributed to their cohesion, mobility. Every ruler contributed in his own particular way, which hold a great importance in adding glitters to the shining empire. Beginning from the very first ruler everyone did his best or tried do his best.

REWRITING BARANĪ? THE DESCRIPTION OF THE DELHI SULTANATE IN THE RIHLA OF IBN BATTŪTA/IBN DJ UZA YY AND THE TĀRĪ KH -I FĪRŪZ SH ĀHĪ OF DIYĀ' AL-DĪN BARANĪ

The Rihla of the famous Moroccan Ibn Baṭṭūṭa describes his travels, which led him through the whole Islamic world and beyond that to the South Seas and China, in an elaborate and rousing way: different people and their mannerisms, famous metropolises, the flora and fauna of distant territories and, last but not least, his adventures on the road. All this made the Rihla, besides its being an entertaining and enthralling text, one of the main sources on the relatively poorly documented Islamic World of the 14 th century. It retained this status until today. The fact that over the years more and more forgeries and plagiarisms could be proven to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa has not principally altered the approach to regard this text as an authentic travelogue as long as no opposite is definitively proven. This article deals with the issue of what one needs to write a travelogue; this is, besides writing skill and imaginativeness, information. It focuses on the question where this information comes from or, to get to the heart of it, whether one needs to have travelled. The subject of this study is one of the most significant parts of the Rihla, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's description of the Delhi Sultanate. If he probably never was in India, how could he have gained his vast amount of information about this distant region? The answer to this question is, as I think, the Bārī kh -i Fīrūz Shā hī of the Indian court scribe Diyā' al-Dīn Baranī.

The Ignored Elites: Turks, Mongols and a Persian Secretarial Class in the Early Delhi Sultanate

AbstractThe consolidation of the Delhi Sultanate coincided with the Mongol devastation of Transoxiana, Iran and Afghanistan. This paper studies the Persian literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries invested as it was in the projection of the court of the Delhi Sultans as the ‘sanctuary of Islam’, where the Muslim community was safe from the marauding infidel Mongols. The binaries on which the qualities of the accursed Mongols and the monolithic Muslim community were framed ignored the fact that a large number of Sultanate elites and monarchs were of Turkish/Mongol ethnicity or had a history of prior service in their armed contingents. While drawing attention to the narrative strategies deployed by Sultanate chroniclers to obscure the humble frontier origins of its lords and masters, my paper also elaborates on steppe traditions and rituals prevalent in early-fourteenth-century Delhi. All of these underlined the heterogeneity of Muslim Sultanate society and politics in the capital, a complexity that the Persian litterateurs were loath to acknowledge in their records.

Evolution of the Persianate Polity and its Transmission to India

AbstractThe critical importance of the Samanid dynasty for the emergence of New Persian as a language destined to serve as the lingua franca of the Persianate world has long been recognized. Not so of the distinctive Persianate polity that first emerged under the Samanids in Central Asia in the tenth/fourth century and was later transplanted throughout the Persianate civilizational zone. As this paper was written as an address to the 4th ASPS convention in Lahore, it stresses the significance of that historic city in the transmission of the Persianate polity as a model of political and military organization and its political culture to India with the expansion of Muslim power and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in the early thirteenth/seventh century.

The Salience of Political Ethic in the Spread of Persianate Islam

AbstractPersianate Islam developed in close connection with the rise of independent monarchies and state formation in Iran from the last decades of the ninth century onward. Political ethic and norms of statecraft developed under the Sāmānids and Ghaznavids, and constituted a major component of Persianate Islam from the very beginning. When Islam spread to India under the Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth century and to the Sultanates in Malaysia and Indonesia after the fifteenth, Persianate political ethic was one of its two salient components, Sufism being the other. The immigrating Persian bureaucratic class engaged in state formation for Indian rulers became the carriers of this political ethic, importing it in its entirety and together with symbols and institutions of royalty and justice. With the continued eastward expansion of Islam, Persianate political ethic and royal institutions spread beyond India into the sprawling Malay world.

A global history of architecture

Preface. Color Portfolio. Introduction. 3500 BCE. Beginnings of China's Civilization. Early Indus Settlements. Predynastic Egypt. Mesopotamia. European Megalithic Tombs. 2500 BCE. Indus Ghaggar-Hakra Civilization. Early Empires of Mesopotamia. Egypt: The Old Kingdom. Megalithic Temples of Malta. Stonehenge. First Civilizations of the Americas. 1500 BCE. Egypt: The New Kingdom. Hittite Empire. Minoan Civilization. Mycenaean Civilization. Civilization of the High Andes. Poverty Point. Shang Dynasty China. 800 BCE. The Olmecs. Chavin de Huantar. Zhou Dynasty China. Varanasi: The Aryan Conquest. Etruscan Civilization. Greece: The Geometric Period. Temple of Solomon. Kingdom of Kush. Neo-Assyrian Empire. 400 BCE. Achaemenid Dynasty. Classical Greece. Early Hellenic Age. Advent of Bhuddism. China: The Warring States Period. Late Olmec Centers. 0. Republican Rome. Augustan Rome. Post-Augustan Rome. Imperial Rome. Mahayana Buddhism. Taxila: The Gandharan Cosmopolis. Qin Dynasty China. Shaft Tombs of Teuchitl n. 200 CE. Roman Empire. Zoroastrian Fire Temples. Buddhism of the Satvahanas. The Kushan. Han China. The Moche and Nazca Civilizations. Teotihuacan. Ohio's Hopewell Mounds. 400 CE. Hindu Renaissance. Kushans of Bamiyan. Establishment of Chinese Buddhism. Emergence of Christianity. Post-Constantinian Age. Zapotecs of Oaxaca. Kofun Period: Japan. 600 CE. Maya of the Yucatan. Tiwanaku. Age of Justinian. Armenian Architecture. Ries of the Temple Kingdoms. The Sui and Tang Dynasties. Nara Period: Japan. 800 CE. Chang'an, the Tang Capitol. Korean Buddhism. South Asian Hindu-Buddhism. Indonesia at a Crossroads. Hindu Kingdoms of Cambodia. Construction in Southeast Asia. Rise of Islam. Carolingian Empire. Byzantine Empire. Pueblo Bonito. Maya City-States. 1000. Rise of Rajput Kingdoms. Song Dynasty China. Pure-Land Buddhism. Seljuk Turks. The Fatimids. Almoravid Dynasty. Byzantine Revival. Ottonian Germany. The Normans. Pilgrimage Churches. Italian City-States. Medieval Scandanavia. Kievan Russia. Mayan Uxmal. Native Americans of Cahokia. 1200. Khmer Vrah Vishnulok. Kingdom of Pagan. Kamakura Japan. Southern Song Dynasty. Delhi Sultanate. The Hoysalas. African Kingdoms. Europe: The High Middle Ages. Republic of Novgorod. Nasrid Sultanate. Toltec Empire. 1400. The Mexica: Tenochtitlan. Nomadic Invaders. Ming Dynasty China. Joseon Dynasty. Muromachi Japan. Timurid Dynasty. The Deccan Sultanates. Ottoman Empire. Mamluk Sultanate. Republic of Venice. Italian Renaissance. French Chateaux. 1600. Tokugawa Shogunate. Voyages of Zheng He. The Mughals. Spanish Conquest of America. Italian High Renaissance. Place Royale. Elizabethan England. The Kremlin?s New Churches. Baroque Italy. The Dogons of Mali. Architecture of the Eurasian Power Bloc. 1700. Colonialism. The French Culture of Empire. England: House of Stuart. Spread of the Baroque. Georgian Architecture. Qing Dynasty China. Edo and The Kyoto Odoi. Choson Dynasty. Nayaks of Madurai. The Mallas of Nepal. End of the Mughals. 1800. Qianlong Emperor. Neo-Classicism. Japan: The Edo Period. Romantic Nationalism. Shakers. Greek Revival. Synagogues. Viollet le Duc. Wat Pra Kaeow. 1900. London Metropolitan Board of Works. World?s Fairs. National Museums. Colonial Bombay. cole des Beaux-Arts. Arts and Crafts Movement. The Indo-Saracenic. Dutch Kampung. Shingle Style. The City Beautiful Movement. Rise of Professionalism. Skyscrapers. Art Nouveau. International Beaux Arts. Colonial Africa. The Deutsche Werkbund. Expressionism. De Stijl. 679 Russian Constructivism. Bauhaus. 1950. Modernism. Postmodernism. The Postmodern Museum. The Postmodern Postcolonial World. Globalization. Glossary. Bibliography. Photo Credits. Index.