Timur's Sack of Delhi (1398): Ruin of the Tughluq Capital

Timur’s sack of Delhi took place in December 1398, when the Central Asian conqueror Timur, known in Europe as Tamerlane, defeated the army of the Tughluq sultan outside the city and then let his soldiers plunder it. Thousands of inhabitants were killed or enslaved, and Timur returned to Samarkand with vast treasure and captive craftsmen. The disaster completed the collapse of the Tughluq dynasty and left the Delhi Sultanate weak and divided for decades.

Background: a divided sultanate

The Delhi Sultanate, founded in 1206, had reached its greatest extent under Muhammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325-1351), whose ambitious projects included moving much of the elite to Daulatabad in the Deccan (see the transfer of the capital to Daulatabad). His reign also saw the loss of the Deccan and Bengal.

His cousin Firuz Shah Tughluq (r. 1351-1388) brought a long period of relative peace and built extensively in and around Delhi. After his death in 1388, however, the dynasty fell into civil war. Several short-lived sultans followed, and by the mid-1390s two rival rulers claimed the throne.

Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq held part of Delhi, while his cousin Nusrat Shah was installed at Firozabad, the city built by Firuz Shah nearby. Real power in Mahmud’s camp lay with the minister Mallu Iqbal Khan. Provincial governors in Gujarat, Malwa, Jaunpur and elsewhere were becoming effectively independent.

Timur (c. 1336-1405) had built an empire from his base in Samarkand through decades of campaigning in Iran, the Caucasus, the Golden Horde lands and Mesopotamia. He was a Muslim of the Turkic-speaking Barlas tribe and presented his wars in both Islamic and Mongol terms.

His court historians, especially Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi in the Zafarnama (“Book of Victory”), explained the Indian campaign as a holy war against Muslim rulers who were too tolerant of Hindu practices. Modern historians, including Beatrice Forbes Manz, generally see the desire for plunder as the main motive. India was famously rich, and the divided sultanate offered an easy target.

The march to Delhi

In 1398 Timur’s grandson Pir Muhammad, governor of the eastern territories around Kabul, crossed the Indus and laid siege to Multan, which he eventually captured after a siege of several months. Timur himself left Samarkand in the spring of 1398 with the main army, crossed the Hindu Kush and campaigned against mountain peoples on the way.

Timur crossed the Indus in September 1398 and moved across the Punjab. His army stormed the fortress of Bhatnair (modern Hanumangarh) in November, killing many of its defenders and inhabitants. It then advanced through Samana, Kaithal and Panipat towards Delhi, plundering as it went.

By early December Timur’s army was encamped near Delhi. Along the way it had gathered a large number of Indian prisoners. According to the Zafarnama, Timur ordered them executed shortly before the battle because he feared they would rise against his army during the fighting. The Timurid historians give a figure of around 100,000; the true number is unknown and is likely to be exaggerated, but there is no doubt that a mass killing took place.

The battle outside Delhi

On 17 December 1398 the army of Sultan Mahmud and Mallu Iqbal came out to fight. Timur’s historians say it included about 10,000 cavalry, 40,000 infantry and some 120 war elephants, protected by armour. Timur’s army was much larger, though exact figures are unknown; it was certainly made up of tens of thousands of experienced cavalry.

Timur’s troops were reportedly nervous about the elephants, which they had never faced in large numbers. He had his men dig ditches, set up barriers and scatter iron caltrops (spiked devices) to break the elephants’ charge. A famous later story says he also loaded camels with burning straw and drove them at the elephants to frighten them; this appears in later accounts and may be a legend.

The Indian army was quickly defeated. The elephants were driven back or captured, and Sultan Mahmud and Mallu Iqbal fled. Mahmud escaped to Gujarat and Mallu Iqbal to Baran (modern Bulandshahr). According to the Timurid accounts, Timur then camped by the great royal reservoir of Hauz Khas, built by earlier sultans and restored by Firuz Shah.

The sack and Timur’s return

Delhi at this time was not one city but several walled settlements: Old Delhi around the Qutb complex, Siri, the walled area of Jahanpanah between them, and Firozabad to the north. After the victory, Timur entered the city, and the Friday sermon (khutba) was read in his name, a sign that he was now recognised as ruler.

Timur demanded a large ransom from the inhabitants, and his soldiers entered the city in growing numbers to collect it and to seize grain and supplies. Clashes broke out between soldiers and residents, and within a day or two the situation turned into a general sack. For several days Timur’s troops plundered houses, killed many inhabitants and took thousands of men, women and children as slaves.

The Timurid histories, written for Timur’s descendants, describe the violence as a reaction to resistance by the people rather than a planned order. Many historians doubt that Timur, who kept firm control of his army elsewhere, could not have stopped it had he wished.

Timur selected skilled craftsmen, especially stonemasons, and sent them to Samarkand. Tradition holds that they worked on his great building projects there, including the congregational mosque later known as Bibi Khanum.

Timur stayed in Delhi for about two weeks and left around the beginning of January 1399. On his way north he sacked Meerut, raided along the Ganges near Haridwar and fought his way through the foothills of the Himalayas and Jammu.

He recrossed the Indus in March 1399 and returned to Samarkand later that spring, laden with treasure, elephants and captives. He left no administration in Delhi. His only lasting arrangement was with Khizr Khan, a governor of Multan who had joined him and who was recognised as his representative in the Punjab.

Key people

Timur (c. 1336-1405) never took the title of khan because he was not descended from Genghis Khan. He ruled as emir, and a leg injury gave him the Persian nickname Timur-i Lang, “Timur the Lame”, from which comes the European form Tamerlane.

Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq (r. 1394-1412/13) was the last effective sultan of the Tughluq line. Mallu Iqbal Khan was his powerful minister, who returned to dominate Delhi after Timur left and was killed in 1405.

Pir Muhammad, Timur’s grandson, led the advance force that took Multan. Khizr Khan, Timur’s ally in the Punjab, later captured Delhi in 1414 and founded the Sayyid dynasty.

Consequences

The sack devastated Delhi. Later historians describe famine and disease following the departure of Timur’s army, and the city took many years to recover its population and wealth.

The Tughluq sultanate never recovered. Sultan Mahmud returned to Delhi in 1401 but ruled only a small area until his death around 1412-1413. In 1414 Khizr Khan took Delhi and founded the Sayyid dynasty, which at first acknowledged Timur’s son Shah Rukh as its overlord. Regional sultanates in Gujarat, Malwa, Jaunpur and Bengal, already breaking away, became fully independent.

Timur himself moved on to new wars. In 1402 he crushed the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara, and he died at Otrar in February 1405 while preparing to invade Ming China.

Myths and facts

A widely quoted autobiography, the Malfuzat-i Timuri or “Memoirs of Timur”, contains vivid first-person descriptions of the Indian campaign. Most historians regard it as a later composition, probably from the 17th century, rather than Timur’s own words, so it is not a reliable source.

Popular accounts sometimes say Timur conquered India. In fact he made no attempt to rule it: the campaign was a large-scale raid, and his only lasting influence came through local allies and, much later, his descendants.

Legacy

The memory of 1398 shaped Indian views of Timur as a destroyer. Yet his descendants left a very different mark on India. Babur, a Timurid prince from the Fergana valley, invaded India in the 1520s and founded the Mughal Empire after the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 (see Babur). The Mughals proudly called themselves the House of Timur and cited his conquest of Delhi as a basis for their right to rule.

Timeline

• 1388: Death of Firuz Shah Tughluq; civil war follows.
• 1394-1395: Rival Tughluq sultans Mahmud Shah and Nusrat Shah divide Delhi.
• 1398, spring: Pir Muhammad advances on Multan; Timur leaves Samarkand.
• 1398, September: Timur crosses the Indus.
• 1398, November: Timur storms Bhatnair.
• 1398, December: Mass execution of prisoners near Delhi, according to Timurid historians.
• 1398, 17 December: Timur defeats Sultan Mahmud and Mallu Iqbal outside Delhi.
• 1398, late December: Sack of Delhi.
• 1399, early January: Timur leaves Delhi and sacks Meerut on his way north.
• 1414: Khizr Khan takes Delhi and founds the Sayyid dynasty.

Why it matters

Timur’s sack of Delhi was one of the most destructive events in the history of medieval India. It ended the Tughluq dynasty in all but name, accelerated the break-up of the Delhi Sultanate into regional kingdoms, and created the Timurid claim that the Mughals later used to justify their empire.