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The Ignored Elites: Turks, Mongols and a Persian Secretarial Class in the Early Delhi Sultanate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

SUNIL KUMAR
SUNIL KUMAR*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Delhi University, Delhi, India Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The consolidation of the Delhi Sultanate coincided with the Mongol devastation of Transoxiana, Iran and Afghanistan. This paper studies the Persian literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries invested as it was in the projection of the court of the Delhi Sultans as the ‘sanctuary of Islam’, where the Muslim community was safe from the marauding infidel Mongols. The binaries on which the qualities of the accursed Mongols and the monolithic Muslim community were framed ignored the fact that a large number of Sultanate elites and monarchs were of Turkish/Mongol ethnicity or had a history of prior service in their armed contingents. While drawing attention to the narrative strategies deployed by Sultanate chroniclers to obscure the humble frontier origins of its lords and masters, my paper also elaborates on steppe traditions and rituals prevalent in early-fourteenth-century Delhi. All of these underlined the heterogeneity of Muslim Sultanate society and politics in the capital, a complexity that the Persian litterateurs were loath to acknowledge in their records.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 45 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 For a useful account of Mongol invasions into north India during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries see Peter Jackson, ‘The Mongols in India’, Cambridge University, Department of History, Ph.D. dissertation, 1976.

2 See Sunil Kumar, ‘When slaves were nobles: the Shamsi bandagan in the Early Delhi Sultanate’ in Studies in History, vol. 10 (1994), pp. 23–52 and idem, ‘Service, status, and military slavery in the Delhi Sultanate: Thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’ in Eaton, Richard and Chatterjee, Indrani (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 83–114Google Scholar.

3 Note the examples of the Shamsi slaves Qutlugh Khan and Kushlu Khan, competitors at different times with Ulugh Khan for influence over the Delhi Sultan, both of whom sought sanctuary with the Mongols. Slightly earlier, Ulugh Khan had supported the Shamsi prince Jalal al-Din Mas'ud who had fled to the Mongols for sanctuary in 1248. Ulugh Khan's cousin, Shir Khan, had also sought sanctuary for a brief time with the Mongols. See Jackson, Peter, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 73, 88–9Google Scholar, 111–14.

4 Jackson, Peter, ‘The dissolution of the Mongol Empire’ in Central Asiatic Journal, Vol. 22 (1978), pp. 186–244Google Scholar, idem, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 80–2, 115–6.

5 For a valuable comparison from China see, Lattimore, Owen, ‘Frontier feudalism’, in Studies in Frontier History, Collected Papers, 1928–1958 (London: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1962), pp. 514–41Google Scholar.

6 For a discussion of these kinds of narratives see Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, Status and Military Slavery’, pp. 97–102.

7 Sirhindi, Yahya, Ta'rikh- Mubarak Shahi, ed. Husain, M. Hidayat (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1931), p. 61Google Scholar. The text has Bughrush, which must be a mistake for Yughrush the form found in Juzjani, Minhaj-i Siraj, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, ed. Habibi, Abd al-Hayy (Kabul: Anjuman-i Ta'rikh-i Afghanistan, 1963–4, 2 vols.), Vol. 2, p. 88Google Scholar.

8 Cited in Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, p. 80.

9 Khusrau, Amir, Miftah al-Futuh, ed. Rashid, Shaikh Abdur (Aligarh: Publication of the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, 1954), p. 8Google Scholar. Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, p. 118, suggests a later date for these campaigns. The evidence is ambiguous on this point.

10 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, p. 88.

11 ‘Abd al-Malik ‘Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, ed. A.S. Usha (Madras: University of Madras, 1940), p. 195.

12 For an account of these years see Barani, Ziya' al-Din, Ta'rikh-i Firuz Shahi, ed. Khan, Sayyid Ahmad (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1860–2), pp. 170–84Google Scholar and Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 81–5.

13 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Mahdi Husain, (Baroda: Gaekwad's Oriental Series, no, 122, Oriental Institute, 1976 reprint), p. 47. See also the alternative translation of H.A.R. Gibb, (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society,2nd series, no. 141, Cambridge University Press, 1971), Vol. 3, p. 649.

14 Jean Aubin, ‘L'ethnogenèse des Qaraunas’ in Turcica, Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 65–94. See also Manz, Beatrice Forbes, The Rise and Fall of Tamerlane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 reprint), pp. 159–61Google Scholar, Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 119–22, 217–27, 328.

15 Babur, Zahir al-Din, The Babur Nama, Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, trans. Thackston, Wheeler M. (New York: The Modern Library Classics, 2002 reprint), p. 156Google Scholar.

16 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Mahdi Husain, p. 47; trans. Gibb, Vol. 3, p. 649.

17 Khusrau, Amir, Tughluq Nama, ed. Faridabadi, Sayyid Hashmi (Aurangabad: Urdu Publishing House, 1933), p. 136Google Scholar.

18 For a useful account of Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq's early career on the frontier see, Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Mahdi Husain, pp. 47–9; trans. Gibb, Vol. 3, pp. 648–52.

19 For a useful collation of Ghiyas al-Din's allies and opponents see Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, pp. 178–9. I am in agreement with Jackson's conclusion: ‘[Ghiyas al-Din] Tughluq's affinity . . . was markedly regional; his lieutenants were commanders who had fought alongside him on the Mongol frontier, sometimes themselves Mongol renegades, or Hindu warlords who were his close neighbours in the western Punjab’. For further details see below.

20 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, p. 80.

21 For further details on the differences and similarities in the deployment of Turkish slaves and Afghans see Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, status, and military slavery’.

22 Amir Khusrau, Tuhfat al-Sighar, IOL Persian Ms 412, fol. 50 seq., cited by Wahid Mirza, The Life and Works of Amir Khusrau, pp. 51–2.

23 Amir Khusrau, Tughluq Nama, p. 84.

24 ‘Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, pp. 382–3. Although Amir Khusrau ignored the Khokars in this list he gives them a prominent role in the battle with Khusrau Khan. See Tughluq Nama, p. 128.

25 Amir Khusrau, Wast al-Hayat, cited in ‘Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni, Muntakhab al-Tawarikh, ed. Maulavi Ahmad Shah (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1868), Vol. 1, p. 153.

26 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 1, pp. 357–8, 396.

27 For further details and references see below.

28 Babur, Babur Nama, trans. Thackston, pp. 150,155, 231.

29 See Kumar, Sunil, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), pp. 196–202Google Scholar.

30 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, pp. 175–6.

31 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 220–1.

32 Ibid.., Vol. 2, pp. 175–6.

33 Khusrau, Amir, Nuh Sipihr, ed. Mirza, M. Wahid (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 173Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p.176.

35 Khusrau, Amir, Dibacha-yi Diwan Ghurrat al-Kamal, ed. Haidar, Sayyid Ali (Patna: Institute of Postgraduate studies and research in Arabic and Persian learning, 1988), p. 40Google Scholar. These sentiments were very similar to Fakhr-i Mudabbir's in the first decade of the thirteenth century. For details see Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, pp. 196–7.

36 On the background and dispersal of the Turkish tribes, see: Anonymous, Hudud al-'Alam, trans. V. Minorsky (Karachi: Indus Publications, 1980 reprint), pp. 99–101, 304–12, 315–17. See also The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, s.v. ‘Kankli’; ‘Kipchak’; ‘Kimak’; ‘Ghuzz’; Golden, P.B., ‘The Migration of the Oghuz’ in Archivum Ottamanicum, Vol. 4, (1972), pp. 45–84Google Scholar; idem, ‘The peoples of the South Russian Steppe’, in Sinor, Denis (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 277–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Cumanica IV: the tribes of the Cuman-Qipcaqs’ in Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevii, Vol. 9 (1995–97), pp. 99–122; idem, ‘Cumanica II: The Ölberli (Ölperli): The fortunes and misfortunes of an inner Asian nomadic Clan’ in Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevii, Vol. 8 (1986), pp. 5–29; idem, ‘Nomads in the sedentary world: The case of pre-Chinggisid Rus and Georgia’, in Khazanov, Anatoly M. and Wink, André (eds.), Nomads in the Sedentary World (Cornwall: Curzon Press, 2001), pp. 24–75Google Scholar; Halperin, Charles J., ‘The Kipchak connection: The Ilkhans, the Mamluks and Ayn Jalut’ in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 63, (2000), pp. 229–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pritsak, O., ‘The decline of the empire of the Oghuz Yabghu’ in The Annals of the Ukrainian-American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., Vol. 2 (1952), pp. 279–292Google Scholar.

37 Barani, Ta'rikh-i Firuz Shahi, pp. 409–13, 422–3.

38 Amir Khusrau, Tughluq Nama, pp. 55–70 for details on military commanders in opposition to Ghiyas al-Din.

39 Ibid., pp. 128–30.

40 For a full discussion see Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, chapters 2 and 4.

41 Fakhr-i Mudabbir, Ta'rikh-i Fakhr al-Din Mubarak Shah, ed. E. Denison Ross, (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1927), p. 36.

42 For Iltutmish see Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 1, p. 441, and for Balban, Vol. 2, pp. 47–8.

43 For a fuller discussion see Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, Status and Military Slavery’.

44 Juzjani's history was exceptional in its internal organization where he adroitly used the tabaqat genre to detail events in eastern Iran, Afghanistan and India. And yet his chronicle remained devoid of more general introspection into the discipline of history, the chronicling tradition or kingship, the fundamental subject of his narrative. In this Juzjani was quite different from the Ghaznavid chronicler Baihaqi (on whom see Marilyn R. Waldman, Towards a Theory of Historical Narrative (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980) and Barani on whom see Sunil Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, pp. 370–3.

45 See ‘Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, ed. A.S. Usha (Madras: University of Madras, 1940), and Barani, Ziya’ al-Din, Fatawa-yi Jahandari, ed. Khan, A. Salim (Lahore: Idarah-i Tahqiqat-i Pakistan, no. 25, 1972)Google Scholar. The normative text, Fatawa-yi Jahandari and the didactic history of Barani, Ta'rikh-i Firuz Shahi share the same rhetorical frame. This is well brought out by Hardy, Peter, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-Muslim Historical Writing (London: Luzac and Company Ltd., 1966 reprint), pp. 20–39Google Scholar.

46 See respectively, Amir Khusrau, Khazain al-Futuh, Miftah al-Futuh, Tughluq Nama and Qiran al-Sa'dain.

47 This was most clearly developed in his Nuh Sipihr. For a useful recent assessment of the poet see Sharma, Sunil, Amir Khusrau: the Poet of Sultans and Sufis (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005)Google Scholar.

48 For a valuable interpretation of some of the intellectual roots of this urbane Sultanate society see Alam, Muzaffar, The Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200–1800, (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), pp. 26–46Google Scholar, 81–91.

49 Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, pp. 114–5.

50 Ziya' al-Din Barani, Ta'rikh-i Firuz Shahi, p. 447, and for a reference from the reign of ‘Ala al-Din Khalaji see also p. 245.

51 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans., Mahdi Husain, pp. 3–4; trans., H.A.R. Gibb, vol. 3, p. 594–5.

52 al-Din, Nizam, Tabaqat-i Akbari, ed. De, B., (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1927), Vol. 1, p. 195Google Scholar.

53 On the ulagh/ulaq see, ‘Ata’ al-Mulk Juwaini, Ta'rikh-i Jahan Gusha, trans. J.A. Boyle, The History of the World Conqueror (Manchester: University Press, 1958), Vol. 1, p. 30, Vol. 2, pp. 524, 599; Smith, John M. Jr., ‘Mongol and nomadic taxation’ in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 30 (1970), pp. 48–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Petrushevsky, I.P., ‘The socio-economic condition of Iran under the Il-Khans’, in Boyle, J.A. (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), Vol. 5, pp. 483–537CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Doerfer, Gerhard, Turkische und Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1965), Vol. 2, pp. 102–107Google Scholar, s.v. ‘ulag’.

54 Ziya' al-Din Barani, Ta'rikh-i Firuz Shahi, pp. 446–7.

55 al-Mulk, Nizam, Siyasat Nama, trans. Darke, Hubert (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978)Google Scholar. See also Ann K.S. Lambton, ‘The internal structure of the Saljuq Empire’ in Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 5, pp. 203–282.

56 Ziya' al-Din Barani, Ta'rikh-i Firuz Shahi, p.428.

57 Dankoff, Robert, ‘Kasgari on the tribal and kinship organization of the Turks’ in Archivum Ottomanicum, Vol. 4 (1972), pp. 23–43Google Scholar.

58 Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Vol. 2, p. 87.

59 For example, Qutb al-Din Ai-Beg/‘The Axis of Religion—Moon Prince’; Shams al-Din Iltutmish/‘The Light of Religion—Grasper of the Realm’; Ghiyas al-Din Balban/‘Rescuer of Religion—the Powerful’.

60 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans., H.A.R. Gibb, Vol. 3, pp. 663–664, trans., Mahdi Husain, p. 60. The translation is Gibb's.

61 Ibid., trans., H.A.R. Gibb, p. 668, trans., Mahdi Husain, p. 64. The translation is Gibb's.

62 See also the Qur'an, chapter 88, al-Ghashiya.

63 For a review of Turko-Mongol ideals of universal dominion see Turan, Osman, ‘The ideal of world domination among the Medieval Turks’ in Studia Islamica, Vol. 4 (1955), pp. 77–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and for a discussion of iconographic representations from the Seljuq period of the monarch, ‘the equerry and the honorific spare horse with saddle-cover’ see, Esin, Emel, ‘Ay-Bitigi, the Court Attendants in Turkish Iconography’ in Central Asiatic Journal, Vol. 14, (1970), pp. 108–9Google Scholar.

64 Gibb, H.A.R. et al. , (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2nd edition, 1956-), Vol. 2Google Scholar, s.v. ‘ghashiyya’, and Holt, P.M., ‘The position and power of the Mamluk Sultan’ in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 38, (1975), p. 245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 See references above and Holt, P.M., ‘The structure of government in the Mamluk Sultanate’ in Holt, P.M. (ed.), The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades (Warminster: Aris and Phillips Ltd., 1977), p. 47Google Scholar.

66 al-Qalqashandi, Subhal-a'sha (Cairo), Vol. 4, p. 7, cited in P.M. Holt, ‘The position and power of the Mamluk Sultan’, p. 243.

67 Ziya' al-Din Barani, Ta'rikh-i Firuz Shahi, p. 243. Thomas, Edward, The Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1967), pp. 157, 169–70Google Scholar, explains that the panj-man akhtar referred to the gold coinage, fanam/panam, i.e. fractions of the hun, seized as plunder by ‘Ala al-Din in his Deccan campaigns.

68 Yahya b. Ahmad b. ‘Abd Allah Sirhindi, Ta'rikh-i Mubarak Shahi, ed. M. Hidayat Hosain (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, no. 254, 1931), p. 97, trans., K.K. Basu (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1932), p. 99. I have followed Basu's translation.

69 Sirhindi apparently used Barani's first recension of the Ta'rikh- Firuz Shahi where the Mongol invasion of Tarmashirin was mentioned in Muhammad Shah Tughluq's reign. Other than ‘Isami, whose text seems to have been ignored by Sirhindi (note the contrasting accounts of Sultan Nasir al-Din Mahmud's death), only Barani's first recension mentioned this event.

70 For the most influential exposition of this argument see Irfan Habib, ‘Barani's theory of the history of the Delhi Sultanate’ in Indian Historical Review, Vol. 7 (1980–81), pp. 104–10 and for an alternative assessment, Sunil Kumar, ‘Service, status and military slaver’, pp. 97–102.

71 Ibn Battuta, Rehla, trans. Gibb, Vol. 3, p. 693.

72 Note the argument in Richard Eaton, ‘Introduction’, in Eaton, Richard M. (ed.), India's Islamic Traditions, 711–1750 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 25Google Scholar.

73 Digby, Simon, ‘Iletmish or Iltutmish? A reconsideration of the name of the Delhi Sultan’ in Iran, Vol. 8, (1970), pp. 57–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Ironically, the diligent restoration of Turkish titles by Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, passim, did not lead the author to ask why these titles came to be corrupted to such a large extent.