Delhi Sultanate Research Articles

Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, and: The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410, and: Daily Life in the Mongol Empire, and: The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, and: The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410, and: Daily Life in the Mongol Empire, and: The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century Donald Ostrowski Christopher P. Atwood , Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. x + 678 pp., maps, illus. New York: Facts on File, 2004. ISBN 0816046719. $85.00. Peter Jackson , The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410. xxxiv + 414 pp., maps. London: Pearson, 2005. ISBN 0582368960. $29.00. George Lane , Daily Life in the Mongol Empire. xvi + 312 pp. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. ISBN 0313332266. $49.95. Igor de Rachewiltz , trans. and ed., The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols., maps, illus. cxxvii + 1347 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2004. ISBN 9004131590. $259.00 cloth; $99.00 paper. Although the history of what David Christian has called "Inner Eurasia" may seem less than relevant to many who study Russia, being aware of steppe history and culture is of potential importance for understanding Russian history and culture.1 Russia existed in the context of Eurasian influence flows, not isolated from them. The books reviewed here can assist one in better understanding that context. Some years ago, as a result of the number of books in my library exceeding the amount of space available to it, I decided that I would reserve my purchase of books only to those I could justify using as reference materials, especially in terms of being the starting point for research on a particular topic. That decision has resulted in a sometimes fancy justification on my part for books that technically are not reference books but that I felt I needed anyway. The books under review here are each in its own way significant achievements, and all are candidates to be considered as "reference" books (with or without fancy justification) for those interested in beginning or continuing their research on the relationship of the Mongols to Eurasian history. [End Page 431] I would like to frame this review, however, within the context of analytical-versus-descriptive reference works. The distinction is between a reference book that is meant as an introduction to the topic, and thus tends to be mainly a descriptive read-write of consensus views, and one that is meant to add to scholarly understanding of the topic through analysis of primary and secondary sources as well as of the scholarly literature. Peter Jackson is professor of medieval history at Keele University. He is the author of The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History as well as a number of fine articles, including "From Ulus to Khanate: The Making of the Mongol States c. 1220–c. 1290," "The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire," and "The State of Research: The Mongol Empire, 1986–1999."2 The Mongols and the West is his highly touted study of the Mongol invasion of Europe and its repercussions. It has 7 maps in quarto format that are easy-to-use sharp black-and white-images, 3 appendices (one discussing whether Marco Polo traveled to China, one containing a glossary of terms used, and one with genealogical tables and lists of rulers mentioned), and a 29-page bibliography. Jackson writes that he is concerned mainly with presenting the chronological and geopolitical history of Mongol relations with "the West," here implicitly understood to mean "Latin Christendom." He begins his study with 1221 because that is the first time that Latin Christendom hears of the campaigns of Chinggis Khan in Central Asia. He ends with 1410 because the Battle of Tannenberg in that year marks the end of the Jochid Ulus (which he calls "the Golden Horde") as the dominant power in Eastern Europe. He states that he has avoided seeing Mongol relations with the West as "some great confrontation between 'nomadic' and 'sedentary' societies." Furthermore, he writes that he has "avoided casting the phenomena ... in terms of an age-old clash of the steppe and sown" (5). The reasons for these avoidances on his part are that our sources are "overwhelmingly" those of writers from sedentary societies, so that representations of "the thought-processes of...

Simon Digby. « Before Timur came: Provincialization of the Delhi Sultanate through the Fourteenth Century ». Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 47/3 (2004), pp. 298-356.

Cet article represente certainement un moment important pour affiner le cadre encore assez obscur de la litterature persane de l’Inde pre-moghole. En particulier, son analyse de sources primaires, telles que les hagiographies, apporte de nouvelles donnees sur l’epanouissement de l’Islam dans des regions eloignees de Delhi, capitale du sultanat. On signale en particulier l’œuvre d’auteurs tels que Yūsuf Gada, Sayḫ Aḥmad, Mawlānā Yūsuf, Ḫwāje Gorg, Asraf Jahāngīr, Moḥammad Gesudaraz, Moḥammad D...

Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India, and: Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 1000-1800 (review)

Reviewed by: Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India, and:Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia: 1000–1800 Barton C. Hacker (bio) Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India. By Iqtidar Alam Khan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xiv+263. £20.99. Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia: 1000–1800. Edited by Jos J. L. Gommans and Dirk H. A. Kolff. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. viii+395. £12.99. Speculation has often outrun research in that staple of South Asian military historiography, the introduction and spread of gunpowder weapons in the subcontinent. Not so in the work of Iqtidar Alam Khan. His new book, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India, sets the capstone on more than three decades of assiduous study. Khan, who recently retired from Aligarh Muslim University, offers a solid survey of the textual evidence for the introduction, spread, and military consequences of gunpowder and firearms in India, based on critical readings of sources in several languages and a careful review of modern English-language works. Nearly half of the twenty-page bibliography lists Persian and Asian primary sources, plus European travelers' accounts. On questions associated with the diffusion of gunpowder weaponry in India, Khan's conclusions seem unassailable. Khan's views on the larger consequences of gunpowder weaponry seem equally valid. He argues that gunpowder weapons contributed vitally to the formation of regional states in fifteenth-century India before they became crucial factors in the establishment and expansion of the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the battlefield use and effects of gunpowder weapons, however, his text-based conclusions seem less persuasive, especially with regard to such matters as the accuracy of matchlock muskets, their extensive use by Mughal cavalry, and their large role in rural resistance to Mughal rule. Such caveats should not, however, detract from the overall importance of this erudite work. Khan belongs to a generation that has radically altered the study of South Asian military history by dispelling the clouds of mythology and British imperialist propaganda that long obscured India's so-called medieval period, from the Islamic conquest to the British conquest, or roughly from 1000 to 1800. Western historians, as well as South Asian, have contributed to this historiographical transformation of medieval South Asian military history. Two such contributors, Dutch scholars Jos J. L. Gommans and Dirk H. A. Kolff, who both teach at Leiden University, have assembled a sterling collection of articles published between the 1940s and the 1990s to illustrate the range of research. The editors' introduction (pp. 1–42) is itself worth the price of admission, a splendid historiographical essay that [End Page 880] provides both an entree to the subject and useful background for the selections presented. Space precludes anything but a cursory description of the book's contents. The first section, "Conquest and Society," comprises three selections: M. Habib's Marxist analysis of the Muslim conquest (1949), B. N. S. Yadava on the conquest as more a failure of Hindu chivalry than a triumph of Muslim prowess (1973), and A. Wink on the tension between territorial state and religious domain in South Asia (1984). Topics addressed in the second section, "Military Labour Market," include V. N. Rao et al. on the uneven effects of the spread of gunpowder weaponry in South India (1992), C. E. Bosworth on the military organization of an Indo-Iranian state (1963), W. G. Orr on armed religious ascetics in northern India (1940), Kolff on Mughal military recruitment and the seasonal nature of warfare (1990), M. A. Ali on Mughal military organization (1997), and S. Alavi on the East India Company's co-optation of indigenous military institutions (1993). The final part, "Military Revolutions," includes a discussion by S. Digby of the sources of military power in the Delhi Sultanate (1971), I. A. Khan on the early use of gunpowder weapons in India (1981), D. Streusand on the differential character of Mughal field and siege operations (1989), and Gommans on indigenous versus European innovations in eighteenth-century North Indian warfare (1995). Even so brief a survey will suggest the range of topics and viewpoints, some contradictory, that enliven the present scene and contribute...

A History of Bayana Part II

The second part of the history of Bayana discusses the changing role of the town and its region following Tīmūr's invasion, when the fragmentation of the power of the Delhi sultanate allowed the Auhadīs—the local rulers of Bayana—to assert their independence. Under the Lodīs, the Jalwānīs rose briefly to prominence. Chosen by Sikandar Lodī as his capital, Bayana gradually declined after his decision to move to Agra. Bayana's lack of water, an earthquake in 1505, and the migration of the population to the new capital all contributed to its decline. Under Islām Shāh, the appearance of a Mahdī made it the scene of religious and social upheaval. Even in decline, its characteristic architectural style became a hallmark of that of the early Mughals, and it is in this resonance that we see how the culture of Bayana shifted geographically, but did not die out.

:Medieval India: Essays in Intellectual Thought and Culture, Vol. 1

Preface Introduction Abu Raihan al-Beruni: His Life & Works The Intellectual & Historical Dimensions of the Indo-Persian Poetry of the Thirteenth Century Pre-Modern Concepts of Time in Indo-Muslim Historical Writing Muslim Intellectual Life in India Learning & Intellectual Thought in the Sultanate of Delhi during the Lodi Period Khwaja Shah Mansur: The Tragic Career of an Intellectual Finance Minister Munajat (Invocation of God) of Shaykh Abu'l Fazal Allami (1551-1602) Badauni Revisited: An Analytical study of Najat-ur-Rashid A Sufi Psychological Treatise from India An Untapped Persian Source for the Administrative-cum-Economic History of Gujarat Literary Works of Qa'iam Chandpuri: A Source for Socio-Economic History of Rohilhand During the Later Half of the Eighteenth Century Index.

Scholars, Saints and Sultans: Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in the Delhi Sultanate

Scholars, Saints and Sultans: Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in the Delhi Sultanate

Tughluqabad, third interim report: gates, silos, waterworks and other features

An early-fourteenth-century capital of the Delhi sultanate, Tughluqabad is a prototype for the planning of many later cities. The ruins of Tughluqabad represent the extent of the architectural design and engineering skills of the time, while the street layout and other urban features remain as the earliest existing example of Indo-Muslim urban planning and its architectural components. In this report the survey of the major fortified gates with their corridors and guard rooms is presented, along with the granaries built to sustain the town in the event of siege or famine. A detailed study of the systems for controlling the water supply also shows how the flood plain was dammed and the water level managed by an ingenious system of sluices to create an artificial lake which supplied the moat and town. The report is part of the project of survey of Tughluqabad initiated in 1986 and complements the two earlier interim reports in BSOAS, 57 (1994) and 62 (1999), in which the architectural remains were studied together with urban planning and the method for construction of the town.

Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade

AbstractHistorical analyses of slavery in India generally emphasize the escalation of this social institution during the era of Muslim domination in north India. The present study is not an exception to this rule. However, while historical records make it clear that the Delhi Sultans and Mughal emperors retained slavery in order to suit their political and economic needs, it should be emphasized that Muslim rulers did not introduce slavery to the subcontinent. Sources such as the Arthaśāstra, the Manu-smrti and the Mahābhārata demonstrate that institutionalized slavery was well established in India by the beginning of the common era. Earlier sources suggest that it was likely to have been equally widespread by the lifetime of the Buddha (sixth century BC), and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period. Furthermore, just as slavery was common in India long before the eighth-century Islamic conquests in Sind, recent work demonstrates that the institution continued, in various manifestations, well after the decentralization of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century. Still, it is argued here that the expansion of slavery in Muslim India is an important component of the medieval and early modern history of the region and, at least in terms of its role in the commercial and cultural relations of India and Central Asia, it is a subject that would benefit from further historical analysis.

Epigraphs, Scripture, and Architecture in the Early Delhi Sultanate

Epigraphs, Scripture, and Architecture in the Early Delhi Sultanate

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History

Epigraphs, Scripture, and Architecture in the Early Delhi Sultanate

Epigraphs, Scripture, and Architecture in the Early Delhi Sultanate

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. By Peter Jackson. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xx, 367 pp. $64.95 (cloth).

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. By Peter Jackson. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xx, 367 pp. $64.95 (cloth). - Volume 59 Issue 2

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History

1. The background Part I. The Thirteenth Century: 2. From Ghurid Province to Delhi Sultanate 3. Sultans and sources 4. Turks, Tajiks and Khalaj 5. The centre and the provinces 6. The Mongol threat 7. Raid, conquest and settlement Part II. The Zenith of the Sultanate: 8. Sultans, saints and sources 9. The Khalji and Tughluqid nobility 10. An age of conquest 11. The Chaghadayid invasions 12. The military, the economy and administrative reform 13. Stupor mundi: the reign of Muhammad b. Tughluq 14. The Sultans and their Hindu subjects 15. Stasis and decline: Firuz Shah and his successors Epilogue.

The Delhi Sultanate: a military and political history

The Delhi Sultanate: a military and political history

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political And Military History: Peter Jackson

Digest of Middle East StudiesVolume 8, Issue 2 p. 82-83 The Delhi Sultanate: A Political And Military History: Peter Jackson Omar Khalidi Ph.D., Omar Khalidi Ph.D. Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, okhalidi@mit.eduSearch for more papers by this author Omar Khalidi Ph.D., Omar Khalidi Ph.D. Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, okhalidi@mit.eduSearch for more papers by this author First published: 16 March 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-3606.1999.tb00820.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume8, Issue2Winter 1999Pages 82-83 RelatedInformation

Tughluqabad, the earliest surviving town of the Delhi sultanate

Tughluqabad is the first of many sultanate and Mughul towns which were purposely planned and constructed on previously uninhabited sites. Built early in the fourteenth century, Tughluqabad was to serve as the capital of the newly established Tughluq dynasty. There were, of course, three earlier Muslim capitals in the vicinity, the first the Delhi of Rāi Pithūrā, converted to an Islamic town after the Ghurid conquest in 588/1192–3; the second Jalāl al-dīn Khahīs Shahr-i naw, which was founded by Muՙiẓẓ al-dīn Kai Qubād (685–8/1286–9) at Kīlukharī (or Kīlugharī) but left incomplete at the time of his death, and the third Sīrī, built by Alՙ al-dīn Khaljī between 698/1298–9 and 700/1300–1 in the fields outside the walls of the older Delhi, but nothing has remained from these towns except parts of the fortification walls and some isolated monuments. The ruins of Tughluqabad, on the other hand, are enshrined in a time capsule. Built between 1320 and 1325 by Ghiyāth al-dīn Tughluq, the town had a brief life, and within a generation was abandoned and its population reduced to the size of a small village. As a result, most of its remains are datable to the short period of its duration in the first half of the fourteenth century. The only exception, as we shall see, are the remains of a small settlement which continued to exist around the old town centre, and in the late Mughal period also occupied the citadel.

When Slaves were Nobles: The Shamsî Bandagân in the Early Delhi Sultanate

When Slaves were Nobles: The Shamsî Bandagân in the Early Delhi Sultanate

Living Without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval North India. By John S. Deyell. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990. xx, 369 pp. Rs. 325.00.

Introduction: Probing the fragile foundations of interpretive models Economic historiography: the evolving milieu Part I: The post-classical age: c.750-1000 The Gurjura-Pratiharas The Amirs of Sind The Turk and Hindu Shahis of Kabul and Gandhara Kashmir: Overview of the era: 750-10000 Part II: The Rajput period: c.1000-1200: The Yaminids of Ghazni and the Punjab The kingdoms of east and central India Western India Malwa North India: Tomares and Chauhans Minor coinages: Overview of the era: 1000-1200 Part III: The early Delhi sultanate: c.1200-1250: The Mu'izzid empire in India Derivative currencies in Afghanistan Establishment of the Delhi sultanate The precious metals famine in the Rajput kingdoms South India and the coinange frontier: Overview of the era: 1200-1250 Part IV: A reprise, and a look forward: Appendices

Eternal garden: mysticism, history, and politics at a South Asian Sufi center

FOREWORD PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 Sifism PART I : HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ORIENTATION: SUFISM AND ISLAM IN SOUTH ASIA Historiographies of Islam in India Religion and Empire in the Delhi Sultanate 4. The Textual Formation of Oral Teachings in the Early Chishti Order The Interpretation of the Sufi Biographical Tradition in India FROM DELHI TO THE DECCAN Burhan al-Din Gharib's Establishment and Teaching The Indian Envronment and the Question of Conversion POLITICAL RELATIONS OF THE KHULDABAD CHISHTIS Political History of the Khuldabad Shrines Khuladabad as a Sacred Center in the Local Context PART IV: CONCLUSIONS