Founding of the Delhi Sultanate in 1206: Qutb al-Din Aibak

The founding of the Delhi Sultanate is dated to 1206, when Qutb al-Din Aibak, a former slave and the leading general of Muhammad of Ghor, took power over the Ghurid conquests in northern India after his master’s assassination. Ruling first from Lahore, Aibak created a state that his successor Iltutmish consolidated with Delhi as its capital. The Delhi Sultanate went on to dominate much of the Indian subcontinent for more than three centuries.

Background: the Ghurid conquest of northern India

In the late twelfth century the Ghurid dynasty of central Afghanistan expanded into India under Mu’izz al-Din Muhammad, known in South Asia as Muhammad of Ghor or Muhammad Ghori. After taking Lahore in 1186, he defeated the Chahamana king Prithviraj III at the Second Battle of Tarain in 1192.

Muhammad spent most of his time fighting in Afghanistan and Central Asia, where the Ghurids competed with the Khwarazm-shahs. He left the conquest and government of India to his own slave commanders. The most important of these was Qutb al-Din Aibak, who took Delhi in 1192 or 1193 and made it his headquarters.

Over the next decade Aibak and his fellow officers extended Ghurid power across the Ganges plain. They captured Meerut, Kol (modern Aligarh), Gwalior, Badaun and the Chandela fortress of Kalinjar in 1202–1203, and raided Gujarat. Another commander, Bakhtiyar Khalji, pushed east into Bihar and Bengal.

Who was Qutb al-Din Aibak?

Aibak was a Turk from Central Asia who was enslaved as a child. According to Minhaj-i Siraj, the main chronicler of the period, he was brought to Nishapur in north-eastern Iran and bought by a qazi (judge), in whose household he learned to read the Quran, to ride and to use a bow. After his master’s death he was sold again and eventually bought by Muhammad of Ghor.

Military slavery was a common institution in the medieval Islamic world. Young slaves, called mamluks or ghulams, were trained as soldiers and administrators, and the most able could rise to the highest offices. Aibak won Muhammad’s trust, became master of the royal stables and then commander in India.

Chroniclers remember him as brave and extremely generous, and he was given the nickname lakh bakhsh, “giver of lakhs” (a lakh is 100,000), for his gifts. He also began some of the earliest Islamic buildings in India, including the great mosque in Delhi and the first storey of the Qutub Minar, as well as the Adhai Din ka Jhonpra mosque at Ajmer.

The crisis of 1206

On 15 March 1206 Muhammad of Ghor was assassinated in his camp at Damyak, on the bank of the Jhelum river in the Punjab, while returning from a campaign against the Khokhar tribes. The killers are identified in different sources as Khokhars or as Ismaili agents.

Muhammad had no son. His empire was divided between members of his family and his powerful slave commanders. His nephew Ghiyath al-Din Mahmud took the Ghurid homeland in Afghanistan. In the east, three former slaves held the main territories: Taj al-Din Yildiz at Ghazni, Nasir al-Din Qabacha at Multan and Uch in Sindh, and Aibak in Lahore and Delhi.

Aibak moved quickly to Lahore and assumed authority there in June 1206. He did not at first claim to be an independent sovereign. Around 1208 Ghiyath al-Din Mahmud, unable to control India from Afghanistan, sent him a letter of manumission (formal release from slavery) and a royal canopy, recognising him as ruler with the title of sultan.

Rivals and alliances

Aibak’s position was not secure. Yildiz at Ghazni also claimed to be Muhammad’s heir in India and pressed on the Punjab. In about 1208 Aibak drove him back and briefly occupied Ghazni itself, but he was soon forced to withdraw to Lahore.

Marriage ties linked the three former slaves. Aibak had married a daughter of Yildiz, while Qabacha and Aibak’s leading officer Iltutmish each married daughters of Aibak. These alliances did not stop them competing for power after Aibak’s death.

Aibak spent much of his short reign holding his territories together rather than expanding them. Many Rajput chiefs reasserted their independence, and regions such as Bengal under the Khalji amirs were only loosely attached to Delhi.

From Aibak to Iltutmish

Aibak died at Lahore in 1210 after a fall from his horse while playing chaugan, an early form of polo. He was succeeded by Aram Shah, whose relationship to him is unclear. Within a year the nobles of Delhi invited Shams al-Din Iltutmish, Aibak’s son-in-law and governor of Badaun, to take the throne. Iltutmish defeated Aram Shah in 1211.

Iltutmish, himself a former slave, is often seen as the true consolidator of the sultanate. He made Delhi the capital, defeated Yildiz in 1216 and Qabacha in 1228, and brought Bengal back under Delhi’s control. He kept his state out of the path of the Mongols, refusing to shelter the fleeing Khwarazm-shah Jalal al-Din when Genghis Khan’s armies reached the Indus in 1221. In 1229 he received formal recognition from the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad.

He also built a corps of loyal Turkish slave officers and introduced the silver tanka and copper jital as standard coins. When he died in 1236, he chose his daughter Razia as his successor, an unusual decision that led to years of conflict with the nobility.

How the early sultanate worked

The new state was ruled by a small military elite. At its core were Turkish slave officers and free soldiers from Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia, many of whom had come to India in the Ghurid armies. Later waves of refugees fleeing the Mongol invasions of the 1220s added scholars, officials and craftsmen to this community.

The sultans paid their commanders largely through the iqta system. An iqta was an assignment of the revenue from a district, which an officer (muqti) collected to support himself and his troops. Iqtas could be transferred, so they did not become hereditary estates, at least in principle. The system let the sultans govern large territories with a limited administration.

Most of the population remained Hindu, and local Rajput chiefs, village headmen and revenue intermediaries continued to collect taxes and keep order in the countryside. The sultans relied on them while trying to keep them under control. Muslim scholars (the ulama) served as judges and teachers, and Sufi orders such as the Chishtiyya, whose saint Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki settled in Delhi, became important in religious life.

Persian was the language of the court and administration. Over time contact between Persian, Turkic and local languages in the camps and markets of Delhi contributed to the development of Hindavi, the ancestor of modern Hindi and Urdu.

Legacy

The Delhi Sultanate lasted from 1206 to 1526 under five dynasties: the early Turkish or Mamluk sultans (1206–1290), the Khaljis (1290–1320), the Tughluqs (1320–1414), the Sayyids (1414–1451) and the Lodis (1451–1526). At its peak under Muhammad bin Tughluq in the 1330s, it controlled most of the subcontinent.

Its rulers repelled several major Mongol invasions in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, which spared northern India much of the devastation suffered by Iran and Central Asia. Delhi grew into one of the great cities of the Islamic world, home to a series of new citadels and monuments.

Historians continue to debate how far the sultanate brought fundamental change and how far it adapted existing Indian structures. What is clear is that 1206 began a long period in which political power in northern India was held by Muslim dynasties, a pattern that continued under the Mughals until the eighteenth century.

Myths and facts

Myth: the “Slave Dynasty” was a single family of slaves. The term, popularised by modern historians, is misleading. Aibak, Iltutmish and Balban were former slaves, but they were freed before ruling and belonged to different lines. Many scholars prefer “early Turkish sultans” or “Mamluk sultans”.

Myth: the sultanate was founded in one stroke in 1206. In reality it emerged gradually: Delhi was taken in 1192–1193, Aibak took charge in 1206, gained independence around 1208, and Iltutmish made Delhi the capital after 1211.

Myth: Aibak was a Persian or Afghan. The sources consistently describe him as a Turk from Central Asia, although the army and court of the sultanate included Persians, Afghans, Indians and others.

Timeline

• 1186: Muhammad of Ghor takes Lahore from the Ghaznavids.
• 1192: Muhammad defeats Prithviraj III at the Second Battle of Tarain.
• 1192–1193: Aibak occupies Delhi and makes it his base.
• 1206, 15 March: Muhammad of Ghor is assassinated on the Jhelum.
• 1206, June: Aibak assumes power at Lahore.
• c. 1208: Aibak receives manumission and recognition as sultan.
• 1210: Aibak dies after a polo accident; Aram Shah succeeds.
• 1211: Iltutmish takes the throne and makes Delhi his capital.
• 1229: The Abbasid caliph recognises Iltutmish as sultan.

Why it matters

The events of 1206 created the first lasting Muslim state ruled from northern India rather than from Afghanistan or Central Asia. Under five dynasties it controlled much of the subcontinent until the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. The Delhi Sultanate shaped the region’s politics, cities, architecture, languages and religious life, laying foundations later built upon by the Mughals.