Delhi Sultanate & the Mughal Empire

Alauddin Khalji (1296–1316) is the Sultanate's great administrator. Facing repeated Mongol invasions, he needed a huge army that he could actually afford — so he paid soldiers in cash instead of land, and then forced prices down so that cash salaries would stretch. This is the logic behind his famous market control regulations: fixed prices for grain, cloth, horses and slaves, compulsory registration of merchants, state granaries, and a controller of markets called the Shahna-i-Mandi under the department diwan-i-riyasat. He also introduced dagh (branding of horses) and chehra (descriptive rolls of soldiers) to stop corruption in musters.

• Alauddin was the first Sultan to maintain a large permanent standing army paid directly in cash from the treasury.
• He raised land revenue in the Doab to 50 per cent of produce and assessed it by measurement of land (masahat), cutting out village intermediaries.
• His general Malik Kafur led the southern campaigns — Devagiri, Warangal, Dwarasamudra and Madurai — the first time a Delhi army reached the far south. The aim was tribute and plunder, not annexation.
• The poet Amir Khusrau adorned his court; Ziauddin Barani later described his reign in the Tarikh-i-Firozshahi.

The Tughlaqs show what happens when big ideas meet weak execution. Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq (1325–1351) shifted his capital from Delhi to Devagiri, renamed Daulatabad (1327), to govern the Deccan better — then moved back when it failed. He issued a token currency of bronze/copper coins meant to circulate at the value of silver — but without controlling minting, forgery ruined it. He also created Diwan-i-Kohi, a department to promote agriculture. His grand Khurasan and Qarachil expeditions were abandoned. Barani called him a man of "opposites"; the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta served in his court as qazi of Delhi. Firoz Shah Tughlaq (1351–1388) was the opposite kind of ruler — cautious and building-minded: he dug canals (notably from the Yamuna towards Hisar) to extend irrigation, founded Firozabad, Fatehabad, Hisar and Jaunpur, set up Diwan-i-Khairat (charity) and Diwan-i-Bandagan (slaves), made iqtas hereditary, and levied jizya as a separate tax. He also brought Ashokan pillars from Topra and Meerut to Delhi and wrote the Futuhat-i-Firozshahi.

The Sultanate had one central problem: a small ruling class had to collect revenue from a vast countryside it barely knew. Its answer was the iqta. Instead of paying an officer a salary in cash, the Sultan assigned him the right to collect revenue from a territory. The holder — called an iqtadar or muqti — kept his own pay, maintained troops from the rest, and sent the surplus to the treasury. He was not the owner of the land, and iqtas were transferable, precisely so that no family could take root.

• Qutb Minar (Delhi) — begun by Aibak, completed by Iltutmish; the tallest brick minaret of its kind, beside the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque.
• Alai Darwaza (1311) — built by Alauddin Khalji as the southern gateway to the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque; it is the first building in India to use the true arch and true dome on scientific principles.
• Tughlaqabad — the fortress-city of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq; the Tughlaqs favoured sloping "batter" walls, grey stone and a stern, almost military plainness.
• Also from this age: Adhai Din ka Jhonpra (Ajmer), Siri fort and Hauz Khas (Alauddin), Jahanpanah (Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq), and the Lodi tombs of Delhi with their early double domes.

While Delhi weakened under Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq, two great powers rose in the Deccan and stayed rivals for over two centuries. Vijayanagara was founded in 1336 by the brothers Harihara I and Bukka Raya I (Sangama dynasty), with its capital at Hampi on the Tungabhadra. The Bahmani kingdom was founded in 1347 by Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah, with its capital first at Gulbarga and later at Bidar. The line between them ran through the fertile Raichur Doab — which is what they mostly fought over.

• Krishnadeva Raya (1509–1529) of the Tuluva dynasty was Vijayanagara's greatest ruler. He wrote the Telugu work Amuktamalyada, kept the Ashtadiggajas (eight great Telugu poets) at court, and built the Vittalaswamy and Hazara Rama temples at Hampi.
• Vijayanagara had four dynasties in order — Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva, Aravidu. Foreign visitors like the Italian Nicolo Conti and the Portuguese Domingo Paes and Duarte Barbosa left glowing accounts of Hampi's wealth.
• The Battle of Talikota (1565) — also called Rakshasa-Tangadi — was the turning point. A confederacy of the Deccan sultanates (Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar) crushed the Vijayanagara army under Aliya Rama Raya; Hampi was sacked and the empire never recovered. Its ruins at Hampi are today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• The Bahmani kingdom's ablest statesman was the prime minister Mahmud Gawan. After his execution the kingdom broke into five successor states — Bijapur (Adil Shahi), Golconda (Qutb Shahi), Ahmadnagar (Nizam Shahi), Berar (Imad Shahi) and Bidar (Barid Shahi). They gave us the Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur and the Charminar at Hyderabad.

Humayun (1530–1540, 1555–1556) inherited an unfinished conquest and a formidable rival — Sher Khan (later Sher Shah Suri) of Bihar. Humayun lost the Battle of Chausa (1539), near Buxar in Bihar, and then the Battle of Kannauj / Bilgram (1540), and fled into exile in Persia for fifteen years. He regained Delhi in 1555 after the Sur empire collapsed, only to die in 1556 falling from the stairs of his library at Din Panah. His tomb in Delhi — commissioned by Hamida Banu Begum — is the first great Mughal garden tomb and the design ancestor of the Taj Mahal.

Akbar (1556–1605) came to the throne at thirteen. Within months, at the Second Battle of Panipat (5 November 1556), his regent Bairam Khan defeated Hemu, the Afghan general who had briefly taken Delhi and crowned himself Vikramaditya. Bairam Khan governed as regent until Akbar dismissed him in 1560 and took power himself. What followed was not just conquest but institution-building — and that is why Akbar dominates the Mughal syllabus.

• Mansabdari system — every officer received a mansab (rank) with two numbers: zat, fixing his personal status and pay, and sawar, fixing how many horsemen he must maintain. Mansabs were not hereditary, so loyalty had to be re-earned in every generation.
• Todar Mal's revenue settlement — the zabti (also called bandobast) system measured land and classified it by fertility; the dahsala settlement of 1580 fixed the demand using a ten-year average of produce and prices, payable in cash. Predictable demand meant a peasant knew his dues in advance.
• Rajput policy — matrimonial alliances (beginning with the princess of Amber in 1562), high mansabs for Rajput nobles such as Raja Man Singh and Raja Bhagwant Das, and religious freedom. Mewar under Maharana Pratap refused submission; the Battle of Haldighati (1576) was fought against Mughal forces led by Man Singh.
• Religious policy — abolition of the pilgrimage tax (1563) and of jizya (1564); the Ibadat Khana (House of Worship) at Fatehpur Sikri from 1575 for inter-faith debate; the Mahzar (1579); and Din-i-Ilahi / Tauhid-i-Ilahi (1582), an ethical order of the emperor's close followers rather than a mass religion. His policy of sulh-i-kul ("peace with all") is the phrase to remember.
• Fatehpur Sikri — built from 1571 and used as capital till about 1585; its Buland Darwaza commemorates the Gujarat victory. Akbar's court legend lists the Navaratnas (nine gems): Abul Fazl, Faizi, Tansen, Birbal, Raja Todar Mal, Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana, Raja Man Singh, Mulla Do Piyaza and Fakir Aziao-Din. Abul Fazl wrote the Akbarnama and its statistical volume, the Ain-i-Akbari.

Jahangir (1605–1627) is remembered less for conquest than for two things: Nur Jahan and the English. He married Mehrunnisa (Nur Jahan) in 1611, and her family became the most powerful group at court — her father held the title Itimad-ud-Daulah, whose Agra tomb, built by Nur Jahan, is the first Mughal building of full white marble with pietra dura inlay. Jahangir hung a chain of justice (zanjir-i-adl) at Agra fort for petitioners. Two English visitors matter for exams: Captain William Hawkins (at court 1608–1611, sent by James I) failed to win trading rights, while Sir Thomas Roe (1615–1619) succeeded in obtaining permission for an English factory at Surat. Jahangir's own memoir is the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri; his reign is the golden age of Mughal painting, with masters like Ustad Mansur and Abul Hasan.

Shah Jahan (1628–1658) turned Mughal wealth into stone. The Taj Mahal at Agra was raised in memory of Mumtaz Mahal, with Ustad Ahmad Lahauri as its chief architect. He founded the new capital Shahjahanabad in Delhi, with the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, added the Moti Masjid at Agra, and commissioned the Peacock Throne (Takht-i-Taus). His reign is the zenith of Mughal architecture — marble replacing red sandstone, bulbous domes, and inlay work at its finest. He was deposed by his son and spent his last years imprisoned in Agra Fort.

Aurangzeb (1658–1707), who took the title Alamgir, had the longest reign of any Mughal — nearly forty-nine years — and under him the empire reached its greatest territorial extent while its foundations cracked. He reversed Akbar's religious accommodation, re-imposing jizya in 1679. His Deccan policy consumed his last twenty-five years: he annexed Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687), executed the Maratha ruler Sambhaji (1689), yet never subdued Maratha guerrilla resistance — he himself called the Deccan an "ulcer". Simultaneous Jat, Satnami, Rajput and Sikh revolts drained the treasury. The Fatawa-i-Alamgiri was compiled in his reign; he lies buried at Khuldabad.

• After 1707 the throne passed rapidly through weak hands — Bahadur Shah I, Jahandar Shah, Farrukhsiyar (who issued the 1717 farman of trading privileges to the English Company), and Muhammad Shah "Rangeela", in whose reign Nadir Shah won the Battle of Karnal (1739), sacked Delhi and carried off the Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor.
• Shah Alam II was the emperor on the losing side at the Battle of Buxar (1764); by the Treaty of Allahabad (1765) he granted the East India Company the Diwani (revenue rights) of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa — see the Medieval Bihar chapter.
• Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last Mughal emperor. Proclaimed the symbolic leader of the Revolt of 1857, he was deposed, tried, and exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862 — formally ending an empire that had begun at Panipat in 1526.

Mughal government rested on two linked institutions. Mansabdari graded every officer by zat (personal rank and pay) and sawar (cavalry to be maintained). Jagirdari was how those salaries were actually paid: a mansabdar was assigned a jagir, an area whose assessed revenue equalled his pay. Crucially, the jagirdar was not the landowner — he held only revenue rights, and jagirs were transferable, usually every three or four years. That mobility kept nobles dependent on the emperor; when transfers stopped being enforced in the eighteenth century, jagirdars became local powers and the empire fell apart.

The power that actually replaced the Mughals in much of India was Maratha. Shivaji built the Maratha state from the Western Ghats, was crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad in 1674, governed through a council of eight ministers (Ashtapradhan) headed by the Peshwa, and financed himself by the levies chauth and sardeshmukhi. Under the later Peshwas — Balaji Vishwanath, Baji Rao I, Balaji Baji Rao — Maratha armies reached Delhi and beyond. Then came the check: at the Third Battle of Panipat (14 January 1761), Ahmad Shah Abdali (Durrani) of Afghanistan defeated the Marathas; Sadashivrao Bhau and the young Vishwasrao were killed. The Marathas survived as a power but lost the chance to inherit the empire — and into that vacuum stepped the English East India Company.