Medieval India · Topic 4 of 15
The Sayyid and Lodi dynasties, and the Sultanate's governing, economic and social structures
The Basics
When Timur withdrew from India in 1399, he left behind a governor to hold Punjab and Multan. That governor was Khizr Khan. His rise in 1414 marks the start of the Sayyid dynasty, the fourth ruling house of the Delhi Sultanate.
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After the Sayyids, Delhi's throne was weak and contested. Bahlul Lodi held the iqta of Sirhind in Punjab. He had checked the Khokhar tribe and come to dominate Punjab. Delhi called him for help against a threatened attack from Malwa. Instead, his men took control of Delhi. In 1451, Bahlul crowned himself sultan. This ended Sayyid rule and founded the Lodi dynasty. The Lodis were the only Afghan dynasty to rule Delhi.
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By the time the Turks had settled into Delhi, the Sultan stood at the top of the state. He held supreme political, military and legal authority. He commanded the army himself, since no sultan could safely hand over military command. He also acted as the final court of appeal against his own officials.
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The Delhi Sultanate had a large army and a growing bureaucracy, but medieval India had very little cash in circulation. Sending money over long distances every month was also difficult. So instead of paying nobles and soldiers in coin from the royal treasury, the early Delhi Sultans assigned them the right to collect land revenue from a territory. This territory was called the iqta, meaning a revenue assignment of land given in place of salary. The person who held an iqta was called the muqti or wali.
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By the time the iqta system matured, the Sultanate's territory had settled into a clear hierarchy. The iqta, or province, was governed by a muqti or wali. Each iqta was divided into smaller units called shiqs, headed by a shiqdar. Shiqs were further divided into parganas, clusters of villages headed by an amil.
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At the start of the Sultanate, the army was not a single centrally paid force. Most soldiers were maintained by muqtis, the nobles who held iqtas, revenue assignments given in return for military service and administration. A muqti used the revenue of his iqta to equip and pay his own contingent. He brought this contingent to the Sultan when summoned. This iqta-based levy system suited a new regime that lacked a large treasury. But it was risky, since it made troops loyal first to their muqti, not directly to the Sultan.
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Early Delhi Sultanate rulers taxed peasants mainly through kharaj, the standard land tax on cultivators. It was generally fixed at about one third of the produce, sometimes higher. Assessment in this early period was loose. One method was kankut, rough estimation of the standing crop. Another was batai, also called ghalla-bakhshi, sharing the actual harvest after cutting.
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Peasants formed the overwhelming majority of the population under the Delhi Sultanate. Most of them lived close to subsistence. They worked hard but kept little surplus for themselves.
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By the 13th and 14th centuries the Delhi Sultanate controlled much of north India. The peasant's surplus, collected as land revenue, moved into the hands of the Sultan and his nobles. They spent this wealth in towns, fuelling trade and town life. A stable currency, the silver tanka and copper jital or dirham, supported this growth.
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Before Iltutmish, Sultanate coins were mixed and irregular. They still mixed older Hindu and Arabic styles. Iltutmish ruled Delhi in the early thirteenth century. He is credited as the first Sultanate ruler to issue a purely Arabic silver coin. This coin, called the tanka, weighed about 175 grains. He also issued a copper coin called the jital for smaller transactions. The silver tanka became central to the monetary system. Historians see it as the ancestor of the modern Indian rupee. Around 1229 CE, the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad recognised Iltutmish's rule. He received a letter of investiture called the mansur. This gave his coinage the stamp of legitimate sovereign authority, since Islamic coins traditionally carried the ruler's claim to rule.
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By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Delhi Sultanate had a stable coinage and a settled, if harsh, revenue system resting on the peasantry. This state took half the crop from its cultivators. Yet it also needed them to grow more. This pushed rulers and craftsmen toward new tools and techniques.
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Turks introduced the true arch and dome to India.
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At the start of the Delhi Sultanate, power sat tightly in the hands of Turkish nobles. They tried to monopolise the high offices of state. They kept out Tajiks, Afghans and other non-Turkish immigrants. Noble birth and Turkish origin together decided who ruled.
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Slavery was not new to India when the Turks arrived. The Hindu shastras already discussed different categories of slaves. The Mahabharata treated enslaving prisoners of war as normal. The Delhi Sultanate gave slavery new political importance. Sultans used slaves not only for labour but to build loyal power bases independent of the fractious nobility.
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Women in Sultanate society lived under rules shaped by older Indian customs. New practices brought by the Turks and Arabs added further restrictions.
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The Sultanate state called itself Islamic. Sultans tried to follow the sharia, the Islamic holy law, as far as practical. They appointed Muslim divines to offices and granted them revenue-free land. But the Sultans never let theologians dictate policy. Iltutmish's wazir told clerics demanding forced conversion that Muslims were too few to enforce it, comparing them to 'salt in a dish of food'. Alauddin Khalji openly framed his own regulations, called zawabit, meaning state-made laws outside strict religious law. These were based on practical needs rather than scripture. The chronicler Barani therefore called the Sultanate's governance jahandari, or worldly rule, rather than a truly Islamic state.
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