Medieval India · Topic 3 of 15
1290-1414: Khalji expansion and Tughlaq experiments
The Basics
After Balban died in 1286, Delhi had no strong successor ready. His chosen heir, Prince Mahmud, had died fighting the Mongols. His other son, Bughra Khan, preferred ruling Bengal and Bihar to taking the Delhi throne. So a young, inexperienced grandson of Balban was installed instead. The Sultanate drifted into confusion.
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Alauddin Khalji became sultan in 1296 after murdering Jalaluddin Khalji. He spent his early years crushing rebellions by nobles, Mongol settlers and even his own relatives. Having secured the throne through terror and tight control of the nobility, he turned this energy towards building a pan-Indian empire. No Delhi ruler had attempted this before.
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By the start of the thirteenth century the political map of the peninsula had changed. The old Chola empire of the Tamil country had declined by the early thirteenth century. The Chalukya empire of the Deccan had ended in the twelfth century. In their place rose four new kingdoms. These were the Yadavas of Devagiri in the northwest Deccan, the Kakatiyas of Warangal in the Telangana region, the Hoysalas of Dwarasamudra in Karnataka, and the Pandyas of Madurai in the far south. None of these kingdoms went back to the early eighth century. They consolidated power only from roughly the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, after the Chola and Chalukya empires weakened.
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In the 1290s, the Pandya kingdom still ruled the far south from Madurai. This was just before Malik Kafur's raids ended its independence. Its coastline was dotted with trading ports and pearl banks along the Coromandel coast.
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Alauddin Khalji returned from his campaigns, including the Chittor campaign, with great wealth. But a clear problem remained. The Mongols kept attacking Delhi, so he needed a very large standing army. A huge army meant huge salaries. Salaries meant the treasury would empty fast unless living costs for soldiers were kept low.
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Alauddin Khalji ruled from Delhi after his conquests had stretched Sultanate authority into the Deccan and South India. His market reforms had already shown his readiness to override local privilege to keep his army supplied. But the countryside still had powerful intermediaries, the khuts and muqaddams, Hindu village headmen and landholders who collected revenue on the state's behalf but often passed their own tax burden onto poorer peasants while keeping comforts for themselves.
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Alauddin Khalji died in 1316. His successors were weak, and his strict controls on nobles soon collapsed.
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Muhammad bin Tughlaq became sultan in 1324. His father Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq died when a hastily built wooden pavilion collapsed during a victory reception. Rumours said the new sultan had engineered it, but this cannot be proven. He was deeply read in philosophy, logic and religion. He spoke with Hindu yogis and Jain saints such as Jinaprabha Suri. He also gave offices on merit rather than birth. This earned him the label of a 'rationalist' and made orthodox theologians and old noble families suspicious of him.
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Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan scholar of Islamic law, born in Tangier. He had travelled across North Africa, Arabia and Central Asia before reaching Delhi around 1334. Muhammad bin Tughlaq valued learned men from distant lands and kept diplomatic ties with Egypt, Iran and China. He appointed Ibn Battuta as qazi, a judge administering Islamic law, in Delhi. Ibn Battuta held this post for about eight years. This gave him close access to court life, administration and everyday society.
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When Firoz Shah Tughlaq became sultan in 1351, he inherited an empire shaken by Muhammad bin Tughlaq's costly experiments and near-empty finances. Unusually, Firoz was chosen by the nobles themselves rather than by simple succession, so from the very start he owed his throne to their support and had to govern in a way that kept them satisfied. His guiding aim became conciliation, not conquest: appease the nobles, the army and the theologians, and hold on firmly only to the territory that Delhi could realistically administer.
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Firoz Shah Tughlaq died in 1388. Delhi had no strong heir ready to control the nobility he had indulged. His slave corps, built up during his reign, tried to install their own candidate on the throne. This showed how power had shifted from the sultan to palace factions. A rapid series of weak and short-lived rulers followed. None could command the loyalty of nobles or the obedience of distant governors.
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Timur invaded Delhi in 1398, exploiting the weak and disintegrating Delhi Sultanate.
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