Delhi Sultanate Founded
Qutb ud-Din Aibak took the Indian territories of the Ghurid empire in 1206 and founded the Delhi Sultanate. He had been bought as a boy in Turkestan and sold several times, and had been educated by one owner alongside his own sons — which is why he rose. He became Muhammad of Ghor's most trusted commander and was left as viceroy in India after the second battle of Tarain in 1192 opened the Gangetic plain. Muhammad was assassinated in 1206 without a son, and his empire divided among his slave generals. Aibak took Delhi and Lahore. He did not use the title of sultan or strike coins in his own name, because his legal position as a manumitted slave was ambiguous, and he ruled four years before dying in a polo accident. The dynasty is called the Slave Dynasty for that origin, and three more of its rulers had been slaves. Iltutmish, his son-in-law, consolidated it, obtained recognition from the caliph in Baghdad, and introduced the silver tanka. His daughter Raziyya ruled for three years from 1236 — the only woman to sit on the throne of Delhi — and was deposed and killed. The sultanate's most consequential achievement was defensive. It absorbed and repelled repeated Mongol invasions through the thirteenth century, at a time when the Mongols destroyed every other Islamic state from Baghdad eastward. Five dynasties ruled from Delhi over 320 years, and Babur ended the last of them at Panipat in 1526. The Qutb Minar he began still stands, the tallest brick minaret in the world.
- Year: 1206 CE
- Category: Empire
