The many Sultanate Capital Cities in the Delhi riverine plain

Sunil Kumar
Department of History, Delhi University

Any historical study of Delhi inevitably mentions the presence of ‘several’ cities of

Delhi, seven, being a relatively consensual, but incorrect figure.1 Irrespective of the final

count, Delhi’s ‘many’ cities are generally seen as one of its characteristic features. Why there

were so many cities and capitals in the riverine plain of Delhi, on the other hand, has not

received careful historical attention. Scholars usually provide a mix of commonsensical

assumptions regarding shortage of water due to a burgeoning population, strategic

considerations of security, and the ostentatious display of power by newly arrived [insecure]

Sultans as explanations for the need to move the city.2 Some others extrapolate explanations

from Mughal contexts – thus, Shāh Jahān’s decision to construct a new capital in Delhi

because Agra was too congested and disorderly, or the commonly held assumption that

shortage of water led Akbar to abandon Fatehpur Sīkrī – to suggest that these problems

afflicted, more generally, all medieval cities.3 Certainly, in the argument of Athar Ali, some of

1 The seven cities usually mentioned include from north to south: Shāhjahānābād, Fīrūzābād, Dīnpanah, Sīrī,
Jahānpanah, Dihlī-i kuhna and Tughluqābād. See H.C.Fanshawe, Delhi Past and Present (Delhi: Vintage Books,
1991 reprint), p. 2. This not the list present in Alexander Cunningham, Four Reports Made During the year
1862-63-64-65, (Simla: Archaeological Survey of India, 1871), p. 134. For a contrasting enumeration of
Sultanate settlements in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, settlements that this paper will study, see table
1.

2 See, for example, M. Athar Ali, “Capital of the Sultans: Delhi during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”
in R.E. Frykenburg, ed., Delhi Through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society, (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1986),

3 Note, for example, the comments of the antiquarian H.C.Fanshawe on Tughluqabad and Fatehpur Sikri in
Delhi Past and Present, p. 288.

1
these problems – such as access to a greater volume of water -- also had a larger economic

dimension: “enormous settlements set on the Aravalli rocks, away from the river, must have

meant an extra drain of revenue, to meet the extra cost of water supply and expense of

transporting grain and goods. ...There was therefore good reason for a shift [during Fīrūz

Tughluq’s reign (1351-88)] to an economically more suitable position, i.e. along the river,

from the one set on the upper rocky grounds’.4

It is important to keep in mind that, expenses notwithstanding, post-Tughluq Sultans,

continued to invest in construction activity in the interior of the Delhi plain. Soon after Fīrūz

Tughluq constructed Fīrūzābād, Mubārak Shāh Sayyid (1421-35) built his new capital at

Mubārakpur, not on the banks of the Yamuna, but inland, to the north of Sīrī.5 Equally

significant is the continued patronage of construction activity by the Tughluqs, the later

Lōdīs and the Sūrs on sites very distant from the riverfront. The siting of the Tughluq Kalan

and Khirki mosques in Jahānpanah, the Lōdī Moth ki masjid south of Mubārakpur, the baolis,

mosques and constructions in the Mehrauli region and around Bakhtiyār Kākī’s grave shrine,

and the grand Sayyid and Lōdī mausoleum complex at Khairpur, all occurred after the

construction of Fīrūzābād. These were built in areas distant from the Yamuna riverfront. The

4 M. Athar Ali, “Capital of the Sultans”, p. 41.

5 Athar Ali’s article (ibid) has other details that are incorrect: there is no information, for example, to suggest
that Ghiyāspur derived its name from Ghiyās al-Dīn Balban (p. 36). In fact, just around Balban’s death (1287)
the sufi Niẓām al-Dīn Auliyā (d. 1325) reported that most people did not know the location of Ghiyāspur, a
somewhat surprising eventuality if it had been an imperially sponsored project; see, Amīr Ḥasan Sijzī, Fawā’id
al-Fu’ād, edited by Khwaja Hasan Thani Nizami Dihlawi, (Delhi: Urdu Academy, 1990), p. 243. Athar Ali also
ignores (ibid) that Kilōkhrī was constructed first by Sultan Rukn al-Dīn (d. 1236) and that Jūzjānī (d. Ca. 1270)
refers to it as a “new town” [shahr-i nau] already in 1258, some decades before Jalāl al-Dīn’s accession in 1290.
See Minhāj-i Sirāj Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāsirī, edited by Abdul Hay Habibi, (Kabul: Anjuman-i Tarikh-i Afghanistan,
1963-4, 2 vols.), vol. 2, p. 83. The confusion emanates from Baranī’s usage of shahr-i nau to describe Kilōkhrī
when, in 1287, Sultan Kayqubād made it his capital; see Ẓiyā’ al-Din Baranī, Ta’rīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, edited by
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1860-2), pp.175-6, 180-81.

2
histories of Yaḥyā Sirhindī and Bihāmad Khānī also confirm that areas inland from the river

were extremely important population settlements into the fifteenth century. They narrate,

for example, how Delhi’s four cities – Fīrūzābād, Sīrī, Jahānpanah and Dihlī-i kuhna [‘old

Delhi’] -- were competing centres of power during and after Timur’s invasion (1398-99) at

the end of the fourteenth and into the early fifteenth century.6

There is certainly considerable information that resides uneasily with the conclusions

of scholars regarding the siting of Delhi’s urban settlements and it may warrant a further

look at the old question: why did the Delhi Sultans construct so many cities and armed

encampments in the Delhi riverine plain? As I turn to this subject here, I realise that it is an

ambitious project where it is easy to get lost in the episodes of coups, internecine conflicts

and shifting of Sultanate settlements, even if it is only in the plain of Delhi. Let me hasten to

clarify therefore, that when I do get lost in contingencies it is so that I can eventually draw

out what I believe are larger social and political patternings noticeable through the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I am deliberately drawing on the Annaliste paradigm of

‘deep structures’, which I realise is somewhat inappropriate, given their deep distaste for a

history of political events. In that context, if I do get into the history of events, coups and

conflicts, I do so to draw attention to the structures of Sultanate politics that had a

significant impact in the longer duration and have received little historiographical attention.

6 For an accessible account of these years as reported by the two chroniclers see respectively, Gavin R.G.
Hambly, “The Twilight of Tughluqid Delhi: Conflicting Strategies in a Disintegrating Imperium”, in R.E.
Frykenberg, ed. Delhi Through the Ages, pp. 45-62, and Simon Digby, War Horse and Elephant in the Delhi
Sultanate: A Study of Military Supplies, (Karachi: Orient Monographs, 1971), pp. 74-82. Medieval chronicles
sometimes used Dihli, the name of the first city, quite generically for any or all of the later Sultanate capitals. To
distinguish the first Sultanate capital from the subsequent settlements, I have always referred to it as Dihlī-i
kuhna, literally ‘Old Delhi’, a term coined for the first city in the beginning of the fifteenth century by the
Timurid chronicler Sharaf al-Din Yazdi, Zafarnama, (Calcutta, 1888). Vol. 2, p. 125, cited in Athar Ali, “Capitals of
the Sultans: Delhi during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”, p. 35. When I use the term Delhi it will be
as a general term for Sultanate cities on the riverine plain.

3
As I try to show, these structural patterns remained relatively stable through the thirteenth

and fourteenth centuries. This might help us place the more évènementielle episodes of city

construction within larger contexts.

I have divided my paper into three sections. In the first two sections, I examine the

emergence and impact of Dihlī-i kuhna on Sultanate politics and the ways in which the

political and social structuring of the regime in Iltutmish’s lifetime cast a long shadow on a

significant part of the thirteenth. The third section studies the cities of Delhi in the century

and a half after Balban’s death, when the Sultans of Delhi constructed their many

settlements and capitals in the Delhi riverine plain. My paper would like to conclude with a

broader survey of what such a structural analysis of Sultanate habitations might suggest for

the writing of a history of the thirteenth and fourteenth history. But, to begin with, let me

turn to a brief overview of Iltutmish’s reign and the years shortly after to understand the

ways in which we can schematize the structuring of Sultanate political culture through the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The emergence of Dihlī-i kuhna as Sultanate capital

There has been considerable debate regarding the choice of Dihlī-i kuhna as the capital of

the fledgling Sultanate.7 Perhaps it is important to keep in mind that Lahore and not Dihlī-i

kuhna was the first choice of capital for Sultan Quṭb al-Dīn (1206-10) and Ārām Shāh (1210).

The area around Dihlī-i kuhna had been an important garrison town of Quṭb al-Dīn when he

was a Ghūrid military commander; but at that time (1192-1210), it was only one amongst

7 Note, for example, Athar Ali’s surprise that, its natural resources notwithstanding, Delhi’s “importance in the
historical period should date only from the twelfth century”. See “Capital of the Sultans”, p. 34.

4
some others. Iltutmish chose it as his capital initially because the notables of the city

supported his bid to the throne and he had lost Lahore anyway to his political competitors,

first Ildūz and then Qubacha.8 He retained Dihlī-i kuhna as capital in the long duration

because it was, to begin with, conveniently distant from the turbulent politics of Ghazni and

the Punjab. The city’s geo-political advantages were even more apparent once the north-

west tracts suffered Khwārazmī invasions, followed very quickly by the fearful Chinggisid

onslaught.9 The Punjab and Haryana belt then became an extremely useful buffer against

marauders from the north-west. It had subcontinental advantages as well since it was

located at an important commercial centre with an eponymous coinage, the dehlivāl, and

access routes to the Gangetic plain, northern Rajasthan and central India.10 Clearly, Iltutmish

did not spend too much time considering Dihlī-i kuhna as a second choice. Through the

course of his reign, his interest in the old Ghūrid dominions were replaced with greater

investment in the Sindh, Punjab, Haryana, northern Rajasthan, central India and the

Yamuna-Ganga riverine belt. He moved energetically to consolidate his position, besting the

residual Ghūrid commanders and his Quṭbī peers in Delhi, Lahore, Multan, Uchch, Bayana

and Avadh.

8 For details on the North Indian Sultanates (1192-1210) and the conflict between Ārām Shāh, the Quṭbīs and
Mu‘izzīs and Iltutmish see Sunil Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007),
p. 46-128, 138-142

9 See Peter Jackson, “Jalāl al-Dīn, the Mongols and the Khwarazmian Conquest of the Panjāb and Sind”, Iran,
vol. 28 (1990), pp. 45-54 and idem, “The Mongols and India 1221-1351”, (Cambridge: Ph.D. dissertation, 1976).

10 An extremely valuable discussion on the dihlīvāl and the presence of a mint in Delhi can be found in John
Deyell, Living Without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval North India, (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1990), pp. 144-83.

5
 It is important to consider Iltutmish’s interventions in the politics of the Sultanate for

their impact on the future of Delhi and north India. The most immediate and apparent

intervention came from the construction of a formidable military force around a nucleus of

old and tested slave military commanders, the bandagān-i khāṣṣ whose deracination was

underlined in their individual and collective identities: the Shamsīs. Iltutmish had started

purchasing military slaves, many of whom were of Turkish ethnicity, before his accession,

and he continued accumulating them throughout his reign.11 Jūzjānī speaks at length about

their mode of training and fostering which made his khāṣṣ slaves the bulwark of his

dispensation.12 Together with his sons, the slaves commanded the strategic towns of the

Sultanate – Lahore, Multan, Uchch, Lakhnauti, Budaun, Avadh and Gwalior.13 The Shamsī

bandagān were the dominating element in the central core of the army, the qalb, and the

capital was their main redoubt. It was here that the bandagān-i khāṣṣ drilled their juniors to

fight as a military unit and acculturate them in courtly conduct. At the beginning of their

career, they served as domestics and playmates to the Sultan’s children; a socialising that

created deep bonds of affection and loyalty between master and servant. A Persian

chronicler felicitously described how these sentiments made the Shamsī slaves especially

close to the monarch, qurbat tamam dasht.14 Interpersonal ties of this nature served to weld

11
For details see Sunil Kumar, “When Slaves were Nobles: The Shamsī bandagān in the Early Delhi Sultanate”,
Studies in History, vol. 10, (1994), pp. 23-52, idem, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, pp. 151-181.

Jūzjānī, abaqāt-i
12 Ṭ Nāsirī , vol. 2, pp. 3.4, 13-18, 18-20.

13
Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, Table 1, pp. 154-7.

14 Ṭ
Jūzjānī, abaqāt-i Nāsirī, vol. 2, p. 19.

6
 distant garrison outposts in Bengal and Sindh to Dihlī-i kuhna. It populated the city with a

military elite who would cast a long shadow on the politics of Delhi and north India.

Iltutmish also moved energetically to refurbish Dihlī-i kuhna in a way that might

reflect its arrival as a significant player in the politics of north India. The devastation of the

Persianate world of Transoxiana, Khurasan, and Afghanistan by the Chinggisid marauders

and the rush of immigrants that flooded north India from the 1220s helped in this

transformation. Dihlī-i kuhna became a sanctuary for traders, literati and artisans. Perhaps

even more significantly, the city came to possess historians and litterateurs that were

fashioning its pedigree in their narratives – even though Jūzjānī’s historical masterpiece was

still in the future, Fakhr-i Mudabbir and Ḥasan Niẓāmī’s texts had already won acclaim;

future scholars would cite and emulate their literary craft for centuries.15 As a sign of its axial

role in the politics of north India, Iltutmish reconstructed and expanded Dihlī-i kuhna’s

masjid-i jāmi‘ and minaret to dimensions that would remain unmatched. The Delhi monarch

also won considerable probity for his piety by excavating a huge reservoir on the plateau of

the hill adjacent to the city, the waters of which sustained the city’s increasing population.16

Tales of the monarch’s dream and the miraculous events surrounding its founding would be

the subject of folk tales in the future. Within an incredibly short space of time, Iltutmish and

the conjuncture of events surrounding his reign, gained for Dihlī-i kuhna a significance

15
See Muzaffar Alam, “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan”, in Sheldon Pollock, ed.,
Literary Cultures in History, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 131-98, Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the
Delhi Sultanate, pp. 362-77.

16
See Sunil Kumar, “Qutb and Modern Memory”, in Suvir Kaul, ed., The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of
the Division of India, (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), pp. 140-82, reprinted in Sunil Kumar, The Present in
Delhi’s Pasts, (Delhi: Three Essays Press, second edition, 2011), pp. 1-46 and Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of
Translation: Material Culture and Medieval "Hindu-Muslim" Encounter, (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2009).

7
missing in other Sultanate cities. From its early history as one of the frontier outposts in the

Ghūrid north Indian domains, Iltutmish’s city was extolled as the Qubba-i Islām in the

eastern hemisphere, ceremoniously hosting the emissary of the ‘Abbāsid Caliph in 1229.17

Iltutmish’s interventions created an aura around the city, especially bewitching when

it seemed that much of the world was facing a holocaust of unmatched dimensions. It is for

this reason that political competitors with ambitions of controlling north India, at least

through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, conceived of Dihlī-i kuhna and its environs

as a significant prize. It was a paradoxical legacy: it seemed that many monarchs preferred

not to stay in Dihlī-i kuhna, but if they did move, it was always within the riverine plain of

Delhi.

While Iltutmish’s career might help to contextualise the events that led to the great

significance attached to Dihlī-i kuhna, we need to keep in mind that it was also a part of the

deep structures that shaped the nature of settlement patterns in the thirteenth and

fourteenth century. Through the two centuries of my study, the Delhi Sultans established six

other settlements in the riverine plain, all marked on Table 1: Kilōkhrī, Sīrī, Tughluqābād,

‘Adilābād, Jahānpanah and Fīrūzābād. Some cities like Dihlī-i kuhna, Kilōkhrī, Sīrī, and

Fīrūzābād were the capitals of successive Sultans, sometimes serially, at other times after a

gap of several years, others like Tughluqābād or Jahānpanah remained settled but were the

capitals of only one Sultan. And there was also ‘Adilābād, inhabited very briefly, really more

of a citadel, than a city. What elements link these together?

The politics of constructing dispensations, military redoubts and cities

17 Ṭ
On Qubba-i Islām, see Jūzjānī, abaqāt-i Nāsirī , vol. 1, p. 441.

8
 One of the striking features of Barani’s insightful and controversial history of the

Delhi Sultans, the Tā’rikh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, is the way in which the narrative of each monarch

carries in its introduction a brief enumeration of the great notables of the realm.18 Although

such an enumeration, literally a recalling (tazkirāt) of the great elites of the realm, was not

unique amongst medieval Persian chronicles, Baranī’s text was interesting for the rare

repetition of names from one regnal list to another. As I have argued elsewhere, military

service in the Delhi Sultanate was normatively a one-generation affair:19 each ruler

dispensed power to a select body of supporters during his (and in the one solitary instance,

her) reign and this dispensation of power replaced the preceding ruler’s cohort. This was

largely because the core cadre in a Sultan’s dispensation consisted of military slaves. In

relying upon bandagān to consolidate his realm, Sultan Iltutmish was therefore hardly

unusual in Sultanate politics. Although slaves of Turkish ethnicity declined in numbers in the

fourteenth century, monarchs like ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Khalajī, Muhammad and Fīrūz Tughluq, still

had formidable slave retinues in their dispensations.20

Rather than merely relying upon military slaves, however, the Delhi Sultans also

recruited a variety of other personnel, many of whom were of humble origins, people that

18 Ẓ al-Din Baranī, Ta’rīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, for the reign of Balban, pp. 25,
For illustrative examples see in iyā’
Kayqubād, p. 126, Jalāl al-Dīn Khalajī, p. 174, ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Khalajī, pp. 240-1

19
See Sunil Kumar, “Service, Status and Military Slavery in the Delhi Sultanate of the Thirteenth and Early
Fourteenth Centuries”, in Richard Eaton and Indrani Chatterjee, eds, Slavery and South Asia, (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 83-114.

20
See Peter Jackson, “The Mamluk Institution in Early Muslim India” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,
(1990), pp. 340-58, idem, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 174-6, 183, 187.

9
the urbane litterateurs of the Delhi Sultans regarded as ‘social menials’. Persian chroniclers

described these new recruits in exaggerated, supercilious terms -- ‘lowest and basest of the

low and base born’ (siflatarīn wa raẓālatarīn-i siflagān wa raẓālagān).21 Clearly, the urban

literati were not impressed with the direction of the Sultan’s patronage and wanted to

underline the assorted humble backgrounds of the new recruits who included individuals

and groups like mahouts (Rukn al-Dīn), Afghans (Balban), ‘new-Muslim’ Mongols

(Kayqubād), a trader (‘Alā’ al-Dīn Khalajī), a wine-distiller, a barber, a cook, and gardeners

(Muḥammad Tughluq).22 Although the recruitment of such personnel appeared as an

inversion of social hierarchy to the cultured elite, the logic in the deployment of slaves and

‘social menials’ actually lay in the incongruity between their high political appointment and

their low social status. As Delhi Sultans sought to consolidate their authority, they were

extremely judicious of recruiting people of high lineage and entrenched social status.

Instead, they sought a body of people whose social subordination was conducive to the

production of a dependent, reliable cohort. Cohesion within these groups varied and since

stakes were high, aspirants seeking to control the Sultanate made assiduous attempts to

cultivate strong, dyadic, inter-personal bonds between themselves and their servants.

Since an aspiring Delhi Sultan’s survival was largely dependent upon the coherence

of his dispensation and its capacity to withstand challenge from competitors, it was also

important for the monarch to create a physical space to house his/her cohort. In other

words, the construction of a site that housed the Sultan and his dispensation helped in

21 This was Baranī’s description of the kinds of people patronised by the Muḥammad Tughluq. Tā’rikh-i
Fīrūz Shāhī, p. 505 Khan’s edition has a misprint: razālatarīn and razālagān should read as raẓālatarīn and
raẓālagān.

22 For a full discussion see Sunil Kumar, “Service, Status and Military Slavery in the Delhi”, pp. 97-102.

10
maintaining the integrity of the group, providing it protection and distance from its many

competitors in the Delhi plain. In the context of this political world, establishing a distinct

settlement carried deep public, political resonances.

This was certainly a cross cutting feature amongst the political dispensations of the

thirteenth and fourteenth century Delhi Sultans. To my mind, a neologism such as

‘bandagānī’ encapsulates some of the characteristics of this period, not as a marker of a

‘slave society’ but as an adjective that captures the sensibilities of a political culture where

denatalisation and deracination were extremely important in the self-identity of political

groups and their interrelationships.23 It might be worth asking then, how these ‘deep [social

and political] structures’ that characterised the thirteenth and fourteenth century Sultanate

realm were manifest in the frequent episodes of construction and movement of capitals and

encampments in the Delhi plain?

Constructing Cities: conflicts amongst and within dispensations

It is important to notice that every succession in the two centuries of authority

commanded by the rulers of the Shamsī and Ghiyāsī slave lineages, the Khalajī lineages of

the Jalālīs and ‘Alā’ī’s, the Barwārid interregnum, and the Tughluq lineages of the Ghiyāsīs

and Fīrūzīs was either contested or quickly devolved into violence. Most frequent in this

political world were conflicts amongst the political dispensations -- between the old

23 For a full discussion, see Sunil Kumar, “Bandagani and Naukari: Studying transitions in Political Culture and
Service under the North Indian Sultanates, 13th-16th centuries”. In Francesca Orsini, After Timur Came: Multiple
Spaces of Cultural Production and Circulation in fifteenth century North India, forthcoming.

11
dispensation of power-holders who resisted their political marginalisation by the supporters

of the new Sultan. I refer to these as ‘inter-dispensational’ conflicts.

These inter-dispensational conflicts also had spatial dimensions. The first time that

the capital shifted from Dihlī-i kuhna was immediately after the death of Iltutmish and the

succession of his oldest son, Rukn al-Dīn, in 1236. Rukn al- Dīn was an ambitious young

sovereign and before his accession had served several years as a governor in his father’s

dispensation, first at Budaun and then Lahore. His household included a large military

retinue and secretarial help and these personnel stayed with him when he became Sultan.24

Managing such a large household also provides us with a sense of the fiscal resources

available to him as governor and the confidence that it might have allowed him when facing

the challenges of governing Delhi. Writing in the middle of the fourteenth century ‘Iṣāmī had

very astutely understood Rukn al-Dīn’s intentions: ‘within three or four months, rather than

following his father’s customs, he followed his own conclusions (az rusūm-i pidar Shāh-i

khud rā’i gasht)…. I have heard that towards his father’s slaves, each of whom was a world

conqueror, he adopted an angry and arrogant demeanour (khishm wa gardan-kashī sāz

kard)’.25 To establish his independence, Rukn al-Dīn established a new settlement at Kilōkhrī,

situated on a low hillock by the banks of the River Yamuna, a day’s march to the northeast of

the old city. Sultan Rukn al-Dīn augmented his troops here and started a long-distance

24 For an account of Rukn al-Dīn’s, reign see, Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 1, pp. 455-7 and ‘Iṣāmī, Futūḥ al-
Salāṭīn, p. 130. For a detailed analysis of his reign see Sunil Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 1192-
1286, (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), pp. 181-5, 256-9. For a reference to Beg-Timur Ōr Khān Ruknī, who was,
as his ‘Ruknī’ nisba clarifies, a slave of Sultan Rukn al-Dīn see Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 1, p. 490, vol. 2, p.
29.

25 ‘Iṣāmī, Futūḥ al-Salāṭīn, edited by A.S. Usha, (Madras: University of Madras, 1940), p. 130.

12
interference in the politics of the ‘old city’: he had siblings executed and attempted to

attract junior Shamsī commanders to join the Ruknī dispensation. The Shamsī bandagān

responded quickly to the challenge: in the ensuing inter-dispensational conflict, they seized

and executed Rukn al-Dīn, placed a new Sultan on the throne in Dihlī-i kuhna, terminating

the brief attempts of a rival dispensation to construct a new settlement.

Inter-dispensational conflicts, in other words, frequently lead to the founding of a

new settlement and the making of a new dispensation. But it need not. For example, after

the death of Rukn al-Dīn, the succeeding two Sultans, Raẓiyya (1236-40) and Mu‘izz al-Dīn

(1240-42) were appointed by the Shamsīs. Both monarchs tried to raise independent

retinues, provoking fresh inter-dispensational conflicts with the Shamsīs. Neither of the

monarchs won their battles nor did they construct a new settlement. The remained in Dihlī-i

kuhna, for all practical purposes prisoners of the old city and its entrenched elites.26

In 1287, the capital did move from Dihlī-i kuhna, once again to Kilōkhrī, after the

death of Ghiyās al-Dīn Balban. At that time, the Ghiyāsī retinue controlled Dihlī-i kuhna, but

the young Sultan Mu‘izz al-Dīn Kayqubād was able to cobble together a sufficiently coherent

following to warrant a move out of the old city. That he chose to go to Kilōkhrī, a settlement

that had not declined in the years after Rukn al-Dīn’s unceremonious dethronement is

interesting. In the context of celebrations held in Dihlī-i kuhna in 1258, some years before

Balban’s accession, Jūzjānī described Kilōkhrī as shahr-i nau (the new town). In the

preparations to receive Mongol ambassadors in the ‘old city’, the ‘new city’ had functioned

26 For details on Raẓiyya see Peter Jackson, “Sultān Radiyya bint Iltutmish”, in Gavin R. G. Hambly, ed., Women
in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, Piety, (New York: Palgrave, 1998), pp. 81-97 and Jūzjānī,
Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 1, pp. 455-7. For Mu‘izz al-Dīn, see Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, pp.
261-6, and Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 1, pp. 462-6

13
as one of its outlying suburbs.27 Investments required for its refurbishment as a capital would

not be on the same scale than actually constructing a new site for the monarch.28 The ‘new

city’ was attached but independent from the old. Kayqubād nevertheless continued to face

hostility from members of the Ghiyāsī dispensation from Dihlī-i kuhna, but his youthful

excesses notwithstanding, he continued to recruit military personnel of sufficient standing to

protect him in his new capital for the duration of his short reign. One of these was Jalāl al-

Dīn Khalajī, recruited because he was a military commander from Samana and ‘foreign’ to

the court politics of Delhi. He was therefore dependent upon Kayqubād for his rise to

prominence. This dependence did not last for long. Jalāl al-Dīn Khalajī established his camp

near Kilōkhrī on Bhōgal Pahārī, consolidating his position and intervening in the politics of

Kilōkhrī only when challenged by the other commanders of Kayqubād.29 When he seized

power it was not so much from Kayqubād, but the monarch’s generals. By that time he was

master of Kilōkhrī and established that as his base.

The Sultanate capital remained in Kilōkhrī for some years and moved only in 1296

with the accession of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn the governor of Kara. He murdered Jalāl al-Dīn Khalajī, his

27 Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, vol. 2, p. 83. In 1287, when Sultan Kayqubād also established his capital at Kilokhri,
Barani used identical terms – shahr-i nau – to describe the young monarch’s capital; Barani, Tā’rikh-i Fīrūz
Shāhī, pp.175-6, 180-81. Curiously enough, Jūzjānī did not use this appellation for Rukn al-Dīn’s capital in 1236.
This may not be terribly significant: in all likelihood shahr-i nau was coined in Rukn al-Dīn’s reign as a name for
his capital and gained currency to differentiate it from the ‘old city’. The persistence of the name, however,
does suggest continued habitation in the area contradicting Niẓām al-Dīn’s more polemical remarks about the
desolate nature of the region when he first established his hospice in the neighbourhood; Amīr Ḥasan Sijzī,
Fawā’id al-Fuā’d, ed., Khwaja Hasan Thani Nizami Dihlawi, (Delhi: Urdu Academy, 1990), pp. 243.

28 In the course of Kayqubād’s reign, Kilōkhrī transformed into a bustling town. For details see, Ẓiyā’ al-Dīn
Baranī, Tā’rikh -i Fīrūz Shāhī, pp. 130-31,164-66, and for the congregational mosque in Kilōkhrī, see Ḥamīd al-
Dīn Qalandar, Khair al-Majālis, edited by K.A. Nizami, (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University, 1959), pp. 125, 283.

29 On Bhōgal Pahārī see ‘Iṣāmī, Futūḥ al-Salāṭīn, p. 203.

14
uncle, and marched towards Delhi, which at that time had two rival settlements, Dihlī-i

kuhna and Kilōkhrī. The former was still under the influence of the Ghiyāsīs and the latter

housed the retinue of the murdered Jalāl al-Dīn. Of the two available choices to him, the

new monarch chose Dihlī-i kuhna as his capital.30 This choice was not surprising. Baranī had

explained that the deposed monarch, Jalāl al-Dīn Khalajī had visited Dihlī-i kuhna but never

felt welcome there.31 As the commander responsible for ending that monarch’s reign ‘Alā’ al-

Dīn had reason to hope for a different response from the old city. In any case, the new

monarch left little to chance. Although ‘Alā’ al-Dīn marched to Delhi with his retinue from

Kara, Baranī describes the new monarch’s generous gifts to the residents of Dihlī-i kuhna, his

accommodation of the remnant Ghiyāsī and Jalālī notables at the outset of his reign when

his dispensation was extremely inclusive.32 But very quickly, first the Jalālīs and then the

Ghiyāsīs were purged, and as Baranī noted with horror, monarchical favour eventually

turned towards the ‘base-born’. 33

This was the high noon of the ‘Alā’ī dispensation when large-scale construction

activity in the city altered the face of Dihlī-i kuhna. ‘Alā’ al-Dīn had Delhi’s first

congregational mosque expanded until it was double in size to the old Shamsī masjid-i

30 Barani, Ta’rikh-i Fīruz Shahi, pp. 246.

31 Ibid, pp. 176.

32 Ibid, p. 247

33 For a useful summary of these developments see Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 171-3.

15
jāmī‘.34 He ordered for the repair and extension of the fortifications of the old city; the

dredging of the old ‘Sultan’s [Shamsī] reservoir’ (ḥauẓ-i Sulṭānī), the excavation of a new and

larger one (ḥauẓ-i khāṣṣ).35 New markets and price regulations were instituted and an army

cantonment – Sīrī – constructed just outside the ‘old city’.36 ‘Alā’ al-Dīn was not constructing

a new capital; he was reconstructing the old.

And yet, despite his energetic interventions ‘Alā’ al-Dīn was unable to marginalise the

elite households in the ‘old city’ or silence opposition to his authoritarian rule. It is

important to note that despite his investments in Dihlī-i kuhna, Barani mentioned that ‘Alā’

al-Dīn did not like living in the ‘old city’. Tired with the resistance that he faced from its old

households, he chose to live outside the city at a palace that Baranī describes as Hazār

Sutūn. This was very near Sīrī, a new military cantonment (lashkargāh) and served as an

alternate residence.37 Hazār Sutūn and Sīrī were critical in preserving ‘Ala’ al-Din’s authority:

Hazār Sutūn gave him the distance that he desired from Dihlī-i kuhna. Sīrī became the

34 For a development of this idea in the context of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn’s renovations and construction in Dihlī-i kuhna’s
congregational mosque see Sunil Kumar, “Assertions of Authority: a Study of the Discursive Statements of Two
Sultans of Delhi”, in Muzaffar Alam, et al.,eds, The Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies,
(Delhi: Manohar, 2000), pp. 37-65.

35 For a eulogistic account of the Sultan’s constructions see Amīr Khusrau, Khazā’in al-Futūḥ, edited by M.
Wahid Mirza, (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1953), pp. 23-32.

36 On ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Khalajī and Sīrī, see also the valuable work of Peter Jackson, “The problems of a vast military
encampment” in Delhi through the Ages, ed. R.E. Frykenberg, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 18-33.

37 Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, p. 283. On ‘Ala’ al-Din Khalaji and Siri, see also the valuable work of Peter
Jackson, “The problems of a vast military encampment”, pp. 18-33 and fn 73. On the Khalajī monarchs revenue
and market interventions see Irfan Habib, “Price Regulations of ‘Alā’uddīn Khaljī: A Defence of Ziā’ Baranī”,
Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 21 (1984), pp. 393-414.

16
cantonment where he garrisoned his huge standing army, a defensive outpost to counter the

threat of Mongol invasions and a redoubt for monitoring politics in the ‘old city’.

It would take ‘Alā’ al-Dīn’s death in 1316, an intervening bloody civil war for Mubārak

Shāh Khalajī to eventually bring the Sultanate capital to Sīrī.38 The decimation of many ‘Alā’ī

commanders during the civil war made the establishment of power easier for Mubārak Shāh

and he moved quickly to establish a reliable cohort of military slaves described as

Barwārī/Parwārī. With the support of his new dispensation led by his khāṣṣ slave, Khusrau

Khān, the Sultan left Dihlī-i kuhna, built a new masjid-i jāmī‘, took the grandiose title of

Khalīf and underlined the transformation that he had ushered by referring to his new capital

as Dār al-Khilāfat, ‘the residence of the Khalīf’.

The Sultanate capital would eventually shift from Sīrī after another inter-

dispensational conflict, in 1320, this time between the Barwārī/Parwārīs led by Khusrau

Khān and the old ‘Alā’ī commander on the northwest frontier, Ghiyās al-Dīn Tughluq. Ghiyās

al-Dīn’s chroniclers note how the frontier commander’s retinue were ‘from the upper lands

[iqlīm-i bālā – Khurasan and Transoxiana] not the region around Delhi [Hindūstān]’ and

included pastoral elements like the Ghuzz, Turks and Mongols from Rūm and Rūs, Khokars,

Afghans and some Tajiks, a motley group also known for their past animosity to the forces of

Delhi.39 Ostensibly, Ghiyās al-Dīn marched to Delhi to avenge his Khalajī masters and rescue

38 For Mubarak Shah Khalaji and Siri see, Amir Khusrau, Nuh Sipihr, ed. Wahid Mirza, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1950), pp. 76-80, Ibn Battūta, Rehla, trans. H.A.R. Gibb, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, Haklyut Society Series nos., 110, 117, 141, 1958-1971), vol. 3, p. 619 and Amir Hasan Sijzi, Fawa’id al-
Fu’ad, p. 311.

39 Amir Khusrau, Tughluq Nama, ed. Sayyid Hashmi Faridabadi, (Aurangabad: Urdu Publishing House, 1933),
p. 84; ‘Iṣāmī, Futūḥ al-Salāṭīn, pp. 382-3. For further details on Ghiyās al-Dīn’s retinue and its significance see
Sunil Kumar, “The Ignored Elites: Turks, Mongols and a Persian Secretarial Class in the early Delhi Sultanate”,
Modern Asian Studies, vol. 43 (2009), pp. 45-77.

17
Delhi from the Barwārī/Parwārīs. He stayed on as Sultan, residing in Sīrī out of affection for

his master’s memory and honouring his ‘Alā’ī comrades with high posts. This inclusive phase

ended quickly enough. By 1323, construction in his new capital of Tughluqābād had

progressed sufficiently for Ghiyās al-Dīn to shift his court there. The significance of imperial

construction projects was not lost on the great ‘Ala’i commanders of Sīrī who sensed their

gradual marginalisation in the Ghiyāsī dispensation. While campaigning in South India they

were ready to believe a rumour that the Sultan had ordered their execution. The ‘Ala’i

commanders rebelled, were captured and executed.40

Tughluqābād was the capital of the Ghiyāsīs for just over a year.41 Ghiyās al-Dīn’s

sudden death brought his son Muḥammad Tughluq to the throne. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa mentioned

rumours that Muḥammad Tughluq might have orchestrated his father’s death. There is little

corroborative evidence, but Ibn Baṭṭūṭa also mentioned that Muḥammad Tughluq’s secret

acquisition of slaves had gravely displeased Ghiyās al-Dīn.42 Muḥammad Tughluq’s actions

after succession certainly suggest that he was not comfortable residing in his father’s capital.

He had a substantial retinue of his own in Delhi and he constructed the citadel of ‘Adilābād

to house them.43
40 For one version of the events that led to the rebellion see Baranī, Tā’rikh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, pp. 447-8. For a
different account of Shaikh ‘Ubaid’s motivations in spreading the rumour that led to the rebellion see Ibn
Baṭṭūṭa, Rehla, translated by H.A.R. Gibb, vol. 3, pp. 652-3.

41 For a useful but not always accurate survey of Tughluqābād see Mehrdad and Natalie H. Shokoohy, A
Paradigm for Indo-Islamic Urban Planning and Its Architectural Components, (London: Araxus Press, 2007).

42 See Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Rehla, translated By H.A.R.Gibb, vol. 3, p. 654.

43 On ‘Adilābād see H. Waddington, “’Adilābād: a part of the ‘fourth’ Delhi” Ancient India vol. 1 (1946), pp. 60-
76.

18
 ‘Adilābād was in the shadow of Tughluqābād, close enough to oversee his father’s

household in Tughluqābād and sufficiently secure to withstand their challenge. Muḥammad

Tughluq’s campaigns in South India had also refurbished his treasury and Delhi witnessed

some of the most ambitious constructions during his reign. Much of the construction in

Tughluqābād that we see today might have been envisaged by Ghiyās al-Dīn, but had

remained incomplete because of his sudden death. The massive walls that girdle the city of

Tughluqābād date instead from Muḥammad Tughluq’s reign and were probably constructed

at the same time as ‘Adilābād. He also constructed defensive walls connecting Dihlī-i kuhna

and Sīrī, refurbished the old residence and court of hazār sutūn built by ‘Alā’ al-Dīn which fell

within it and eventually made this area his capital. He named the newly enclosed city,

somewhat grandly but given his ambitions, perhaps appropriately, Jahānpanah, the

sanctuary of the world.44

Muḥammad Tughluq was powerful and ambitious, and many of his political

measures were in synchrony with the authoritarian interventions of other monarchs of his

age.45 More than most Delhi monarchs, however, Muḥammad Tughluq took on the

entrenched elite of Delhi’s capitals and that was at least one reason why he had a terrible

press. Not only was he scorned for patronising ‘social menials’ but many of his projects were

described in exaggerated bewilderment. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa who visited his capital in the first

decade of his reign, probably sometime after the construction of the city walls of

Tughluqābād and before the completion of the Jahānpanah walls, commented in

44 A useful, but not always accurate account of Muḥammad Tughluq’s constructions are present in Anthony
Welch, “The Tughluqs: master-builders of the Delhi Sultanate” Muqarnas vol. 1 (1983), pp. 123-66.

45 For a very useful analysis of these see Peter Jackson, “The Mongols and the Delhi Sultanate” Central Asiatic
Journal 19 (1975): 118-156

19
astonishment that the monarch wanted to girdle all the cities in the Delhi riverine plain.

Amongst his other measures was the reputed shift of Delhi’s population to Daulatabad in the

Deccan. As Jackson has meticulously explained, this was yet another exaggeration and Ibn

Baṭṭūṭa’s description of Sīrī and Jahānpanah during his visit contradicts these narratives.46

Muḥammad Tughluq did evict the residents of Dihlī-i kuhna and used the city as a garrison

for the huge standing army mustered for his campaigns into Qarachil and Transoxiana. 47

To comprehend Muḥammad Tughluq’s measures against the residents of the ‘old

city’ we have to recall the continuing animosity of its elites against the new political groups

that appeared in the Delhi plain. The old city’s elites were the descendents of the great

families – the ‘debris of dispensations’ if you wish – who had suffered increasing

marginalisation as the city and its politics had shifted out of its precincts.48 Their

disgruntlement was evident in their continuing hostility to Rukn al-Dīn, Kayqubād, Jalāl al-

Dīn, ‘Alā’ al-Dīn, and Mubārak Shāh Khalajī in the past. The disgruntlement of the old city’s

residents was a huge problem for successive generations of monarchs. There were skills

possessed by members of these old elite families, particularly if they were secretaries and

civil administrators (more generally, the people of the pen – ahl-i qalam) and these led to

their occasional appointments to high offices in the chanceries of the state and in the court.

While in service, many of them, like the great historian Ẓiyā’ al-Dīn Baranī, protested their

46 See Jackson, “The problems of a vast military encampment”.

47 Ibid and idem, “The Mongols and the Delhi Sultanate in the reign of Muḥammad Tughluq”, Central Asiatic
Journal, vol. 19 (1975), pp. 118-57.

48 On the ‘debris of dispensations’ see Sunil Kumar, “Service, Status and Military Slavery in the Delhi Sultanate
of the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries”.

20
loyalty to the incumbent monarch and, as in the case of the poet Amīr Khusrau, had no

qualms in exchanging masters. 49

As the Sultanate matured from the middle of the thirteenth century, the remnants of

these old multi-generational families of Sultanate personnel also increased. It is extremely

difficult to resurrect the genealogies of old elite families from records that reported on a

political system which was paradigmatically ‘one-generational’, geared to patronising

deracines and which remained to the end, extremely wary of those with claims of a

birthright to social influence. Their hostility provoked Muḥammad Tughluq to evict them

from the ‘old city’ and to treat it like a cantonment to house his newly mustered forces. This

was similar to ‘Alā’ al-Dīn’s establishment of Sīrī to house his huge standing army. The

difference lay in the great bitterness with which many of the litterateurs recorded this

event.50 It was recorded most bitterly by people like ‘Isāmī, a descendent of a family of

Shaikhs who had settled in Dihlī-i kuhna in the 1220s, and whose grandfather was forced to

travel to Daulatabad in the Deccan.51 Although described in these records as an authoritarian

49 On Barani’s ancestry and the historiography on his political ideology see Mohammad Habib, “Introduction
to Elliot and Dowson’s History of India, vol. II”, in K.A. Nizami, ed., Politics and Society in Early Medieval India,
Collected Works of Professor Mohammad Habib, (New Delhi: People Publishing House, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 33-
110, Iran Habib, “Barani’s Theory of the History of the Delhi Sultanate” Indian Historical Review, vol. 7 (1981),
pp. 99-115, idem, “Ziyā Baranī’s Vision of the State”, Medieval History Journal, vol. 2 (1999), pp. 19-36 and
Peter Hardy, “The oratio recta of Barani’s Ta’rīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī -- fact or fiction?”, Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, vol. 20 (1957), pp. 315-21, idem, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-
Muslim Historical Writing, (London: Luzac and Company Ltd., 1966 reprint). On Amīr Khusrau see Wahid Mirza,
Life and Works of Amir Khusrau, (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, IAD Religio-Philosophy series no. 3, 1974) and,
more recently, Sunil Sharma, Amir Khusrau: the Poet of Sultans and Sufis, (Oxford: One World Publications,
2005).

50 For a reconstruction of events in Muḥammad Tughluq’s reign see the writings of Peter Jackson, “The
problems of a vast military encampment”, idem, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 255-77.

51 For an account by ‘Iṣāmī on his ancestors see Futūḥ al-Salāṭīn, pp.127-8.

21
measure of an unstable despot, Muḥammad Tughluq was operating completely within the

political traditions present in thirteenth and fourteenth century Delhi.

So too was the movement of the capital from Jahānpanah to Fīrūzābād at the death

of Muḥammad Tughluq. In the disputed succession, Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq triumphed with the

help of his followers. Chroniclers like Baranī and ‘Afīf underline the gentle, peaceable

persona of the new monarch, a characterisation that was in harmony with his personal

testimony inscribed in a long epigraph in his palace.52 These discursive formulations,

however, appear out of character to the record of many of his actions. Fīrūz Shāh may not

have had full control of the army at the time of his accession, but he refused to suffer

residence in Jahānpanah for long.

The chronology of his reign is uncertain but two of his actions were part of prior

precedent: he constructed a new capital eponymously named Fīrūzābād and he also raised a

huge retinue of military slaves who were deployed in the city and as provincial governors.53

Like Balban, he also rewarded loyalty by appointing sons to their father’s positions, most

famously the two Khān Jahāns, father and son, who succeeded each other as viziers.54 His

control over the old Sultanate provinces atrophied through his reign, but not so his sway

52 See the inscription of Fīrūz Shāh, Futūḥāt-i Fīrūz Shāhī, edited by Shaikh Abdur Rashid, (Aligarh: Aligarh
Muslim University, Department of History Publication, 1954).

53 Despite its problems, the old article of Sir Wolseley Haig serves to bring out some of the chronological
problems in reconstructing the history of the Tughluqs. See, Sir Wolseley Haig, “Five Questions on the history
of the Tughluq Dynasty of Dihli”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1922), pp. 319-72. For some corrections to
this narrative see, Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 296-311.

54 On the influence of the viziers Khān Jahān in Delhi see Barani, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, pp. 578-9 and Shams
Sirāj ‘Afīf, Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, edite by Maulavi Wilayat Hosain, (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1888-91), pp. 400-
11.

22
over the riverine Delhi plain. Here he stamped his presence with an ambitious construction

activity that rivalled Muḥammad Tughluq, but won him far greater renown. 55 He and his

vizier sponsored the construction of new mosques in Jahānpanah, the restoration of Dihlī-i

kuhna’s old congregational mosque and minaret, the dredging of the old reservoirs in Delhi,

and the refurbishment of old mausoleums. Equally important was his marking of the

suburbs with his signature hunting lodges and the construction of a huge festival ground

outside Fīrūzābād together with the holy shrine of the Prophet’s footmark. By all accounts,

the monarch and his dispensation had the capacity to leave a firm imprint on Delhi’s cities

and its neighbourhoods.

In an effort to better comprehend the impact of Fīrūz Shāh’s interventions we can

usefully compare the conflicts that raged in Delhi after his death with those that had

occurred at the demise of Mu‘izz al-Dīn Bahram Shāh (1242) and Mu‘izz al-Dīn Kayqubād

(1290). At the death of all three of these monarchs, there was no inter-dispensational

conflict; in the absence of any effective challenge from a rival dispensation, competition was

instead ‘intra-dispensational’, between the members of the same cohort. Here, as we have

already noticed, the followers of Mu‘izz al-Dīn Kayqubād were somewhat exceptional.

Despite the bitter conflict within Kayqubād’s dispensation, there was an unequal balance of

power amongst its members allowing one of them, Jalāl al-Dīn Khalajī, to very quickly gain

the upper hand. Jalāl al-Din’s own Khalajī followers swept away their competitors and seized

55 For a review of some of Fīrūz Shāh’s construction activity see Anthony Welch, “The Tughluqs: master-
builders of the Delhi Sultanate”, idem “ Architectural Patronage and the Past: The Tughluq Sultans of India”
Muqarnas, vol. 10 (1993), pp. 311-322, idem, “A Medieval Center of Learning in India: The Hauz Khas Madrasa
in Delhi” Muqarnas, vol. 13 (1996), pp. 165-190, idem, “The Shrine of the Holy Footprint in Delhi”, Muqarnas,
vo. 14, (1997), pp. 166-178.

23
Kilōkhrī very rapidly.56 With the control of Kayqubād’s capital, the master’s redoubt became

the home of the new Jalālī dispensation.

Similarly, somewhat earlier, with the dethronement of Mu‘izz al-Dīn Bahram Shāh in

1242, there was no external threat to the Shamsī dispensation from the followers of the

[puppet] descendents of Iltutmish. Instead there was a balance of power amidst the Shamsī

bandagān. This meant that only a protracted ‘intra-dispensational’ conflict would eventually

throw up a final victor. The intra-dispensational conflict raged in Dihlī-i kuhna between 1242

and 1266, during the reigns of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Mas‘ūd Shāh (1242-46) and Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd

(1246-66).57 It took a long while for Balban to dominate the Shamsī dispensation. His

influence was finally evident by 1254, but even then, it was not until 1266 that he was sure

that its members had exchanged their old Shamsī identity for a new Ghiyāsī one. In 1266

when he finally seized the throne, his dispensation controlled Dihlī-i kuhna. He, therefore,

did not need to move his capital to assert his authority.

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, in the 1380s, as Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq aged,

members of the Fīrūzī dispensation looked for opportunities to extend their influence in

Delhi and the Sultanate provinces. Within the Delhi region, the leading competitors asserted

their authority through a control of the monarch’s sons and grandsons. Although very similar

to the ‘intra-dispensational’ conflicts amongst the Shamsīs, its late-fourteenth context

meant the conflict was no longer over the control of one capital. Delhi had many

settlements now, and many of them had been refurbished by Fīrūz Shāh. As a result, the

56 The details of this conflict are provided by ‘Iṣāmī, Futūḥ al-Salāṭīn, pp. 203-09 and Baranī, Tā’rikh-i Fīrūz
Shāhī, pp. 172-3.

57 See Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, ch. 5 for details.

24
intra-dispensational conflict spilt over into the other Sultanate settlements as well. Not only

were the Fīrūzīs at war with each other, but Fīrūzābād, Sīrī-Jahānpanah and Dihlī-i kuhna

constituted rival encampments for the members of the Fīrūzīs dispensation.58 Just as the

Sultanate’s provinces were parcelled amidst the Fīrūzīs, so too the city. Quite unlike the case

of Balban who took over the Shamsī mantle, no Fīrūzī commander could dominate the Fīrūzī

dispensation or the Delhi plain for any length of time. Timur’s invasion did not immediately

alter this status quo.

When the protracted intra-dispensational conflict and the Fīrūzī dispensation finally

ended, it was at the hands of someone from outside the Delhi plain, Khiẓr Khān Sayyid

(1414-21), a Timurid confederate. And yet, what we need to appreciate is the resilience of

the Fīrūzī dispensation which was far more temporally and spatially extensive than many of

its predecessors. The rise and fall of political dispensations and Sultanate settlements

notwithstanding, through it all, the undercutting logic in the political patterning, its deep

structures remained unchanged through the two centuries.

Conclusion

As promised, narrating the history of Delhi’s Sultanate settlements almost inevitably

becomes a litany of coups and internecine conflict involving a myriad of competitors. Cutting

through this narrative, I tried to bring out how these wars would remain insensible to our

comprehension unless we paid attention to the social and political ties that gave coherence

58 For an account of these conflicts and protagonists, see Gavin R.G. Hambly, “The Twilight of Tughluqid Delhi:
Conflicting Strategies in a Disintegrating Imperium”, pp. 45-62, and Simon Digby, War Horse and Elephant in the
Delhi Sultanate: A Study of Military Supplies, pp. 74-82.

25
and a sense of identity to the various participants. As noticed earlier in the paper, the

presence of these identities was evident in the names of many participants – they carried

eponymous identifiers such as Shamsī, Ruknī, Ghiyāsī, ‘Alā’ī, Fīrūzī. These suggested that

their titles and public positions were dispensed to them by their masters. Lest it be

misunderstood as a practice somewhat akin to a public declaration of feudal allegiance, it

needs to be stressed that the offices and positions dispensed to these personnel were for

the duration of their lives; these were not the birthright of the high elites of the realm. The

children of high officers could succeed to the position of their father only through the very

carefully considered patronage of their master. The sense then of Sultanate military elites

constituting a ‘nobility’, a social group whose status was inherited and inviolate, and

protected by law as it was in medieval Europe is certainly inapplicable for Sultanate society.

As an alternative, I use the term ‘dispensations of authority’ or its contracted form

‘dispensations’ to refer to the body of personnel empowered by different Delhi Sultans,

enumerated, for example, in the tazkirāt provided by Baranī in his Tā’rikh at the onset of

each monarch’s reign.

As an extension of the idea of dispensations of authority that each monarch tried to

create at the onset of his/her reign was the resistance that this effort faced from entrenched

elite(s). I referred to these episodes as ‘inter-dispensational’ and ‘intra-dispensational’

conflicts. While there is a mechanistic, structural tone to the characterisation of the wide

ranging conflicts of the thirteenth and fourteenth century Sultanate, and hence an element

of synchronicity, let me hasten to add that there was an increasing complexity to these

military engagements over the passage of years, a complexity which should never be elided.

It is here, that a spatial plotting of these inter-generation dispensational conflicts in the

riverine plain of Delhi can be very useful.

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 If we recognise that by the middle of the thirteenth century, the Ghiyāsī dispensation

dominated Dihlī-i kuhna and this body of elites continued to offer resistance to the Jalālīs in

Kilōkhrī and the ‘Alā’īs into the turn of the century, we can appreciate the great tenacity with

which military households might have resisted marginalisation. In other words, defeat in

battle, or the denial of high offices and patronage did not in itself imply the complete

expulsion of these personnel from the politics of the Sultanate. Their successors lingered

and in recalling the khailkhānas of the maulāzādgān, the households of the ‘sons of slaves’

Baranī was recognising the influence that the ‘debris of dispensations’ could still play in the

politics of the Sultanate.59

As we move our gaze into the mid and late fourteenth century, it is to discover that

Delhi Sultans found it no longer sufficient to merely win ‘inter-dispensational’ and ‘intra-

dispensational’ conflicts and establish their own capitals. The riverine plain of Delhi was

suffused with these settlements and the detritus of past rivals. The new Sultan had to script

his authority not just by the construction of a new capital, but through the possession of the

old. We can understand then the energetic intervention of Muḥammad Tughluq in Dihlī-i

kuhna by enforcing the evacuation of its residents, and the construction activity of Fīrūz

Tughluq in the old Sultanate capitals and the suburbs, the deployment of his service men as

governors of these areas. ‘Inter’ and ‘intra-dispensational conflicts’ were far more

complicated by the end of the fourteenth century and were already getting to be unwieldy

to characterise the new modes of political organisation that were also appearing in the Delhi

plain. These developments were to become increasingly manifest under the Lōdīs, the

‘regional’ Sultanates in the fifteenth century, and the Mughals. But by that time Delhi was

59 Baranī, Ta’rīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, edited by Khan, p. 134.

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not the sole Sultanate capital. In the seventeenth century, when the capital of a paramount

political system of subcontinental proportions, did return to the riverine plain of Delhi, the

structural features of the polity and its society had transformed. As a result, the seventeenth

century capital was also quite different from the Qubba-i Islām of the thirteenth.

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 THE CAPITALS OF THE DELHI SULTANS, circa 1206-1388 CE
(*) denotes capitals outside the riverine plain of Delhi;
(>) denotes multiple capitals or transition from one capital to another;
(?) denotes insufficient information to confirm capital or date of transition
REGNAL YEARS NAME OF MONARCH NAME OF CAPITAL
1206-10 Quṭb al-Dīn Ay-Beg Lahore*
1210 Ārām Shāh Lahore*
Establishment of Sultanate capital in Delhi. Shamsī dominance over city. Reign ends
with an Inter-dispensational conflict.
1210-36 Iltutmish Dihlī-i kuhna (“old [city of] Delhi”)
Attempt by Rukn al-Dīn to break free of the Shamsīs. Ruknī dispensation and
establishment of Kīlōkhrī as base. Inter-dispensational conflict.
1236 Rukn al-Dīn Fīrūz Kīlōkhrī
Capital reverts to Dihlī-i kuhnah; Continued inter-dispensational conflict;
dominance of Shamsī dispensation
1236-40 Raẓiyya al-Dīn Dihlī-i kuhna
1240-42 Bahrām Shāh Dihlī-i kuhna
Shamsī dominance over Iltumish’s successors. Intra-dispensational conflict and dominance
of [Ulagh Khān] Ghiyās al-Dīn Balban over rivals, especially after 1254.
1242-46 ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Mas‘ūd Shāh Dihlī-i kuhna
1246-66 Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd Dihlī-i kuhna
Control of the Ghiyāsī dispensation. Reign ends with an inter-dispensational conflict.
1266-87 Ghiyās al-Dīn Balban Dihlī-i kuhna
Mu‘izzī dispensation with capital at Kīlōkhrī. Persisting Ghiyāsī opposition from Dihlī-i kuhna.
Gradual rise to power of Jalāl al-Dīn Khalajī and intra-dispensational conflict.
1287-90 Mu‘izz al-Dīn Kayqubād > ? Kīlōkhrī
Jalālī dispensation controls Kilōkhrī. Hostility from remnant Ghiyāsīs in Dihlī-i kuhnah.
Murdered during inter-dispensational conflict.
1290-96 Jalāl al-Dīn Khalajī Kīlōkhrī
Gradual formation of ‘Alā’ī dispensation. Initial accommodation of Ghiyāsīs and Jalālīs and shift
of capital to Dihlī-i kuhnah. Eventual deployment of ‘Alā’ī retinue with massive renovations in
the old city. Establishment of Sīrī as garrison town. Inter-dispensational conflict
1296-1316 ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Khalajī Dihlī-i kuhna > Sīrī
Barwarid slaves form core of new Quṭbī dispensation. Capital shifts to garrison town of Sīrī, now
refurbished as Dār al-khilāfat. inter-dispensational conflict
1316-20 Quṭb al-Dīn Mubārak Sīrī
Barwarid dispensation and inter-dispensational conflict amongst Barawārids and Ghiyāsīs
1320 Khusrau Khān Barwārī Sīrī
Ghiyāsī dispensation. Accommodative towards ‘Alā’īs in beginning, eventually purged. Shift of
capital to Tughluqabad. Inter-dispensational conflict
1320-24 Ghiyās al-Dīn Tughluq Sīrī > Tughluqābād
Muḥammadī dispensation, gradual purge of Ghiyāsīs -- refurbishment of Tughluqabad,
construction of ‘Ādilābād as new citadel. Gradual establishment of dispensation and shift of
capital to Jahānpanāh. Inter-dispensational conflict.
1324-51 Muḥammad Tughluq ? > ‘Ādilābād ? > Jahānpanāh ?
Fīrūzī dispensation. Establishment of capital at Fīrūzābād. Intra-dispensational conflict.
1351-88 Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq Jahānpanāh ? > Fīrūzābād

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