Alauddin Khalji: Sultan of Delhi, 1296-1316

Alauddin Khalji (c. 1266–1316 CE / c. 664–715 AH), also recorded under the given names Ali and Garshasp, was the second ruler of the Khalji dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate and reigned from 1296 to 1316. The Encyclopaedia of Islam summarises his reign under three heads: conquests that annexed much of central and southern India, the ending of the frequent Mongol raids in the north, and a series of administrative and economic measures.¹ He came to the throne by killing his uncle and father-in-law Jalal al-Din Firuz Khalji, the founder of the dynasty, in July 1296, and his accession at Delhi followed in December of that year.²

The reign is comparatively well documented, because the court itself produced much of the record. Zia al-Din Barani wrote his Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi within living memory of it; the poet Amir Khusraw was present on campaign, including at the siege of Chittor, and left verse narratives of several of the expeditions; 'Isami's Futuh al-Salatin supplies the fullest account of the battle of Kili. Ferishtah and Haji-ud-Dabir wrote three centuries later and are correspondingly further from the events.

Those chronicles are reached in this article through two modern historians, both named repeatedly in the pages that follow, and it is worth knowing which is which before meeting them. K. S. Lal, whose History of the Khaljis, 1290–1320 was published at Allahabad in 1950, supplies the detailed narrative of the reign and quotes and weighs the chronicles at length; most of the campaign detail below is his. Peter Jackson, whose The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History was published by Cambridge University Press in 1999, provides the standard modern account of the sultanate as a whole and the closest scrutiny of the Mongol wars. Neither was a witness to anything described here: where the text says that Lal records something or that Jackson judges something, it is reporting the view of a twentieth-century scholar, not the testimony of a contemporary.

Where these sources disagree — over numbers, over dates, and over whether a famous episode happened at all — the disagreements are set out in the Historiographical Note below rather than resolved silently. Where Lal and Jackson disagree on chronology or interpretation, this article follows Jackson.

The Khaljis and the revolution of 1290

Origins of the family

The Encyclopaedia of Islam places the Khalji dynasty's rule at 689–720 / 1290–1320 and describes the family as probably of Turkish origin. It records that the alternative view, which treats the Khaljis as Afghans, probably arose from a statement of Barani's, and it notes in the same entry that Barani used the general term "Hindu" in ways that have been misunderstood by some later writers — a caution that applies to his vocabulary generally.¹ The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi observes that the Western forms "Halcî" and "Hılcî" derive from a mispronunciation of halaç.²

Jalal al-Din Firuz

Jalal al-Din Firuz, a son of Yughrush, had risen in Mamluk service and held the office of 'arid-i mamalik — the 'arid being the officer charged with mustering, reviewing and inspecting the troops — together with the fief of Baran and the title Sha'ista Khan.¹³ He had been governor of Samana and had spent long years fighting on the north-western frontier.⁴

The last years of the Ilbari dynasty at Delhi were unsettled. Sultan Mu'izz al-Din Kayqubad was struck with paralysis, and the Balbani nobles placed an infant son of his on the throne with the title Shams al-Din, appointing Jalal al-Din as his deputy — an arrangement Barani describes as keeping the kingship in Balban's house rather than letting it pass to someone of another race. The nobility at Delhi then divided into two parties, one of old Balbani barons led by Aitmar Kachhan and Aitmar Surkha, the other around Jalal al-Din, whom, as K. S. Lal puts it, public opinion did not regard as of Turkish blood. The Turkish party drew up a list of nobles who were not "real Turks" and were to be stripped of office, with Jalal al-Din's name at its head; warned by the chief hajib Ahmad Chap, he withdrew from Delhi to Baharpur.⁴

The attempt to decoy him from Baharpur failed, and it was Alauddin who pulled Aitmar Kachhan from his horse and beheaded him when he arrived at the house. Jalal al-Din's sons rode to Delhi with a small company, seized the infant king and carried him off; Aitmar Surkha overtook them near Baharpur and was killed in the scuffle by Ikhtiyar al-Din, Jalal al-Din's eldest son. Kayqubad was killed in his palace and his body thrown into the Jumna on 19 Muharram 689 / Wednesday 1 February 1290. With the Turkish party broken, Jalal al-Din ruled first as regent, assigned Kara to Balban's nephew Malik Chhajju, and then crowned himself at Kilughari; Shams al-Din was imprisoned and died there. Barani records that Delhi was full of men of rank and wealth, but that no voice of congratulation hailed the installation.⁴

Alauddin as prince

Alauddin was a son of Shihab al-Din Mas'ud, a brother of Jalal al-Din. Shihab al-Din had four sons — Ali, who is Alauddin, Almas Beg, Qutlugh Taghin and Muhammad, the father of the Sulayman later known as Akat Khan — and appears to have died well before Jalal al-Din's accession, since he is not mentioned in the history of that reign; Alauddin was brought up by his uncle.⁵

No contemporary historian gives the date of his birth. The seventeenth-century historian Haji-ud-Dabir states that he was thirty-four years of age when he marched to the conquest of Ranthambhor in 1300–1301, and Lal observes that if that statement is correct he was born about 1266–67. The conditional is Lal's own and is retained here, because it is the only basis on which the date rests.⁵

On Jalal al-Din's accession, Alauddin — nephew and son-in-law of the sultan — was made Master of Ceremonies (amir-i tuzuk), and his younger brother Almas Beg, married to another of the sultan's daughters, Master of the Horse (akhurbeg). Alauddin was afterwards given Kara, and then the office of 'arid-i mamalik that his uncle had once held. The chroniclers record nothing of his childhood; he received no regular schooling in reading and writing, but was trained in arms and riding.⁵ The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi names him as governor of Kara.²

From Kara he raided Bhilsa, and that raid was followed by the expedition to Devagiri.⁵

The Devagiri expedition of 1296

In 1296 Alauddin marched from Kara on Devagiri, the Yadava capital in the Deccan, without his uncle's permission; the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records the raid and the absence of authorisation in those terms.² He moved by way of Chanderi and the Ghati Lajaura, met and overcame opposition from a chief named Kanha, and reached the citadel. Ramachandra, the Yadava king, was not in a position to resist: his son Singhana was away with his forces towards the Hoysala frontier. Singhana returned and gave battle, and was beaten. Alauddin left Devagiri twenty-five days after entering it, having obtained a treasure the chroniclers describe as immense, and stormed the fort of Asirgarh on the way back to Kara.⁶

While this was happening, Jalal al-Din had marched to Gwalior, and Malik Ala al-Mulk was sending him reports from Kara to the effect that the prince was engaged in reducing refractory chiefs. It was at Gwalior that the sultan first learned that his nephew had sacked Devagiri and was returning with the spoil.⁷

The killing of Jalal al-Din

Jalal al-Din consulted his closest nobles on what to do about a nephew who had invaded a foreign country without leave and was coming back with a treasure larger, it was rumoured, than any Delhi sultan had possessed. Malik Ahmad Chap, the naib barbak and the sultan's sister's son, advised intercepting him at Chanderi so that the spoil would have to be surrendered to the throne. That advice was not taken.⁷

Alauddin had prepared an alternative. Barani records that while the correspondence with his uncle was going on he was making arrangements to withdraw east to Lakhnauti with his treasure should the sultan march on Kara, and had sent Zafar Khan ahead to assemble a flotilla for crossing the Sarju; Lal notes that east was the only direction open to him, the sultan being to the west and a number of powerful rajas to the south. Nobles at Delhi had learned of the plan and did not report it.⁸

Alauddin instead wrote to his brother Almas Beg at court, saying that he had been disloyal, that he was so mortified he might take his own life, and that only the sultan's coming to Kara in person would set his fears at rest. Almas Beg was sent ahead to reassure him, and the sultan followed with some trusted nobles and a thousand horsemen. At Damhai he took to boats with a few companions while Ahmad Chap was ordered to bring the troops on by land. Barani's account of this journey is the source for the detail that follows.⁷

The boats were sighted at Kara on 17 Ramadan 695, which falls on 19 or 20 July 1296. Alauddin had crossed the Ganges with his treasure and elephants and made his headquarters at Manikpur on the far bank, so that the part of the army marching by land could not easily reach him. Almas Beg went out by boat and persuaded the sultan to leave even his small retinue behind, and then to order the few nobles in the two remaining boats to lay down their arms, lest the sight of them alarm his brother. The order was given and obeyed. Jalal al-Din was killed that afternoon as the boats came in to the bank.⁷⁹

Accession

Alauddin was proclaimed at Kara and then at Manikpur. At Delhi, Jalal al-Din's widow Malka-i Jahan raised her younger son to the throne as Rukn al-Din Ibrahim, passing over the elder, Arkali Khan, who was at Multan; the Encyclopaedia of Islam dates Alauddin's accession to Ramadan 695 / July 1296, and the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records that he removed Rukn al-Din Ibrahim and became ruler at Delhi on 21 December 1296.¹² Negotiations with Arkali Khan came to nothing; Alauddin marched on the capital, the kotwal Biranjtan deserted, and Qadr Khan escaped from the city.¹⁰

Ulugh Khan — the title Almas Beg now carried — and Zafar Khan were sent to Multan, where Arkali Khan surrendered. Alauddin's brother thus held the title by which the sources know him for the rest of the reign.²¹⁰

Consolidation of the reign

Gujarat, 1299

In 698 / 1299 Ulugh Khan and Nusrat Khan were sent against Gujarat. They took Anhilwara, the capital, which the sources also call Patan; Raja Karan — credited by the chronicler Yahya with a standing army of thirty thousand horse and eighty thousand foot — fled, and the idol of the temple of Somnath was carried to Delhi.¹¹¹ The temple had been rebuilt by Kumarapala in the twelfth century after the earlier building fell to Mahmud of Ghazna in 1026. Both the Persian writers and the Jain account of Chandra Prabha agree that the sack of Gujarat was thorough; the Jain source names Asavalli, Vanmanthali and Surat among the towns destroyed, and records the looting of monasteries, palaces and temples.¹¹

Two consequences followed the campaign. A mutiny broke out among the troops near Jalore on the return march, and the relatives of the mutineers were punished.¹¹ And at Kambayat — Cambay — a slave was taken in the booty who had been bought for a thousand dinars, from which he was afterwards known as the thousand-dinar slave: Malik Kafur, who would command the southern campaigns of the next decade.¹²

The projects of 1299

By 1299 Multan had been taken, the Mongol adventurer Saldi had been driven out of Sivistan, and Gujarat had been annexed. Barani describes the position as the sultan saw it: despatches of victory arriving from every quarter, vast treasure and numerous elephants in the magazine, seventy thousand horses, and two or three large countries firmly under his rule.¹³

Barani then records two schemes that Alauddin discussed with his companions at this period. One was to found a new religion, so that his name might be carried down to posterity as the Prophet's had been; the sultan argued that as the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) had four comrades — Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali — so he had four generals, Alp Khan, Nusrat Khan, Ulugh Khan and Zafar Khan. The other was to leave a viceroy at Delhi and march out to conquer east and west as Alexander had done; he had himself styled Sikandar-i Sani, the Second Alexander, on his coins and in the public prayers. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records both the title and an intention to conquer China.¹³²

Neither scheme was pursued. Both the Encyclopaedia of Islam and Lal record that the counsellor Ala al-Mulk dissuaded the sultan from the plan of a new religion.¹¹³ Lal notes that Barani himself speculated no further about what the religion would have contained, and that nothing beyond the expressed wish is recorded.¹³

Bengal, 1302–03

Bengal had been a concern from the beginning. The contingency plan of 1296 had looked to Lakhnauti, and Lal records that when Zafar Khan's popularity drew the sultan's attention there was a proposal to give him a large force and send him to take and govern Bengal. Nothing came of either. When Shams al-Din Firuz assumed independence at Lakhnauti, an army was sent in 1302–03, with the double object of reducing him and, if it proved possible, of taking Warangal.⁸

Neither Barani nor Ferishtah gives a detailed account, and from their narratives it is not clear that the army ever reached Warangal. Ferishtah, writing of Malik Kafur's later expedition, says that an earlier force had been sent to Warangal by way of Bengal and had come back without accomplishing anything, which is why a second was sent; he does not say where it failed. Lal's reading of the evidence is that the expedition described as aimed at Warangal was in substance sent to Bengal, and he gives his reasons: in 1302 Chittor, Jalore, Siwana, Malwa, Bihar and Bengal were all still outside the sultanate, and the Deccan kingdoms were not in fact attacked until 1308 onwards, when northern India had largely been subdued. Firuz remained established in western Bengal: an inscription of 713 / 1313–14 on Zafar Khan's madrasa in the Hooghly district names Shams al-Din Abu al-Muzaffar as the reigning monarch.⁸

Conspiracy and the measures against revolt

The early years brought a succession of attempts against the sultan. Akat Khan, a nephew, tried to kill him with an arrow near Ranthambhor; a paik named Manik is named in Barani as having saved him.¹¹⁴ The nephews Umar and Mangu revolted, and a rising under Haji Maula broke out at Delhi while the siege of Ranthambhor was in progress.¹⁵

The Encyclopaedia of Islam lists the measures the sultan took in response: rent-free land was confiscated, a system of espionage was established, alcohol was banned — the stocks being poured out at the Badayun gate — and the nobles were required to obtain permission before contracting marriages between their families.¹ Lal's account of the prohibition records the reason Barani gives for it: not that drinking harmed the people, but that it brought men together in gatherings where they lost themselves and thought of revolt.¹⁶

The Mongol wars

The Encyclopaedia of Islam names the ending of the frequent Mongol raids as one of the three achievements of the reign.¹ Lal's chapter on the subject treats six: Keder's raid on the Punjab, the expulsion of Saldi from Sivistan, the invasion of Qutlugh Qocha, that of Taraghai, that of Ali Beg and Tartaq, and that of Kopek and Iqbal.¹⁷

A note on the names is needed, because the forms in the older literature are not those a reader will meet in recent scholarship. Peter Jackson establishes that the commander usually called Targhi was in fact Taraghai, from the Turkish taraqai, "bald" — a reading confirmed by a pun of Amir Khusraw's — and the spelling "Targhi" common in the secondary literature is incorrect. Qutlugh Khwaja appears in his account as Qutlugh Qocha, Kadar as Keder, and Kubak as Kopek. The man Lal names as a Mongol wing commander at Kili, Tamar Bugha, Jackson identifies as Temur Buqa, Qutlugh Qocha's own brother. The newer forms are used below.¹⁸¹⁹

Jackson sets the wars in their wider context. The Central Asian Mongols under Qaidu and Du'a had taken over the direction of operations on this frontier, and pressure on India increased accordingly; Rashid al-Din, in the Persian universal history Jami' al-Tawarikh, writes of Qutlugh Qocha's forces that "they must forever be doing battle with the sultan of Delhi, and the army of Delhi has many times defeated them." The Mongols appear to have been well informed about conditions inside the sultanate, and timed their heaviest assaults to coincide with the Delhi army's absence on campaign elsewhere — an opportunity the sultan's own expansion against the Hindu powers repeatedly gave them.²⁰

The early raids

The earliest unequivocal evidence of operations in India by the Central Asian Mongols belongs to 697 / 1297–98, when Qaidu's noyan Keder invaded the Punjab and ravaged the country as far as Qasur. Ulugh Khan crushed the invaders at a place called Jaran Manjur near the banks of the Sutlej on 22 Rabi' II / 6 February 1298; the Mongol dead numbered twenty thousand, and the prisoners were taken to Delhi and executed. Barani places this invasion a year earlier, in 696 / 1296–97, does not name the Mongol leader, and gives the sultan's commanders as Ulugh Khan and Zafar Khan.²¹ Saldi was expelled from Sivistan by Zafar Khan, who took two thousand prisoners.¹¹³

Kili, 1299

The first major strike by Qutlugh Qocha's forces came in 699 / 1299–1300, during the absence of the Delhi army on the first Gujarat campaign; the Egyptian sources expressly connect the two. He advanced directly on Delhi, accompanied by his brother Temur Buqa.¹⁸ Lal, following Barani, describes the invasion as prompted instead by the defeat the Mongols had suffered at Sivistan.²²

How large the invading army was cannot be settled, because Barani's own figures are inconsistent. Jackson notes that they vary considerably between and within the recensions — twenty tumans at one place in the Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi, ten at another, and "ten or fifteen" and "ten or twelve" in two manuscripts — and takes the lowest, ten tumans or one lak, a hundred thousand men. Lal takes the higher reading of twenty tumans, two hundred thousand. Barani gives no figure at all for the sultan's army; reports reaching Egypt put it at thirty thousand, which would have left it outnumbered.¹⁸²²

Lal gives the preparations at Delhi. Ala al-Mulk was made kotwal and told to hand the keys to the victor; the sultan declared that he was bent upon marching the next day into the plain of Kili. The position was secured by the Jumna on one side and by thorn and scrub on the other.²³ Where Kili actually stood is not known. Jackson records that it apparently lay some fifteen miles north of the capital: Ferishtah says only that it was in the Doab, while one manuscript of Barani's first recension has the sultan march seven kurohs from Delhi to the battlefield.¹⁸

The dispositions were these. Malik Hizabr al-Din Zafar Khan, governor of Samana, the Punjab and Multan, held the right wing with the rajas of Hindustan. Ulugh Khan held the left, with orders to reinforce whichever wing weakened. The sultan commanded the centre with Nusrat Khan and twelve thousand men. Twenty-two elephants were stationed in front of each division. The sultan reviewed the whole army himself and ordered that no one was to move without his word. On the Mongol side Qutlugh Qocha held the centre, Hajlak the left and Temur Buqa the right, with Taraghai commanding a major division and Isakilba, Kijya and Utna also holding rank.²³

Zafar Khan had sent Qutlugh Qocha a personal challenge to single combat before the Mongol army even came near Delhi. He opened the battle with an assault on the Mongol left and was locked hand to hand with Hajlak; his son Diler Khan charged simultaneously, and Temur Buqa fell back. Temur Buqa's men shot arrows backwards at their pursuers as they withdrew — a practice, Lal notes, in which the Mongols were expert. The sultan met and repulsed the assault on his own centre and recovered a large number of Indian soldiers whom the Mongols had taken prisoner. He did not pursue.²³

On the right, Zafar Khan received neither reinforcement nor an order to withdraw. Lal records that Ulugh Khan, who bore ill-will towards Zafar Khan on account of the latter's popularity, did not move to help him.²⁴ Zafar Khan ordered a charge; Hajlak retreated, and Zafar Khan pursued him for eighteen kos. About ten thousand Mongols lay in ambush under Taraghai, and closed around him. He had roughly a thousand horse against ten times that number. He held a council with Usman the akhurbeg and Ali Shah the rane-i pil, and all present chose battle, in the belief that the sultan would punish a withdrawal as cowardice. They broke the encirclement. 'Isami puts the Mongol dead at five thousand and Zafar Khan's losses at eight hundred. He fought on with two hundred men, and then on foot; his horse was killed under him, and 'Isami's account has it that every shaft he loosed brought down a Mongol horseman. Qutlugh Qocha sent him an offer: "Come over to me, so that I may take you to my father who will treat you with higher honour than the emperor of Delhi has done." Zafar Khan was killed in the field. Jackson's summary of the episode is that Zafar Khan's right wing crushed the Mongol left and was then ambushed on the way back from the pursuit by the enemy rearguard under Taraghai, and annihilated.²⁴¹⁸

The sultan had offered a gold tankah for every Mongol head, a detail Amir Khusraw records in the Deval Rani.²⁴

The Mongol army then retired, and why it did so is the substantive question about the battle. Barani's explanation is that its appetite for further fighting had been reduced by Zafar Khan's resistance, whose name became a byword among the Mongols; Jackson calls that explanation unsatisfactory and gives the reason the contemporary sources supply — Qutlugh Qocha had been mortally wounded, and died during the long return journey to his base. Amir Khusraw's verse in the Deval Rani says that he escaped the sword but died of a weapon-wound, and the detail is reproduced in three later chronicles — Bihamad Khani's, the Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi and Bada'uni's Muntakhab al-Tawarikh. 'Isami records that the Mongols hovered about Delhi for a few more days before leaving.¹⁸²⁴

Jackson also records that although Qutlugh Qocha's Mongols did not reach the outskirts of the city, Delhi felt the invasion: refugees from the countryside drove up the price of food when traders proved unwilling to come near the city.¹⁸

Taraghai before Delhi, 1303

Over the next few years Mongol bands of ten or fifteen thousand horse went on raiding the Punjab without causing general alarm, retiring each time without a pitched battle. Then in 702 / 1302–03, with the Delhi forces again scattered on distant campaigns, Taraghai — the noyan who had commanded the ambush at Kili and now held Qutlugh Qocha's army — moved on Delhi a second time. Jackson judges this the greater danger of the two.²⁵

The sultan, busy with the reduction of Chittor, realised the scale of the crisis late, and there was no prospect of reinforcement: the garrisons of Multan, Deopalpur and Samana were occupied by a second Mongol incursion into Sivistan, and Taraghai had secured the Jumna crossings, so that the divisions returning from Tilang had to halt at Kol and Baran. Alauddin fell back on the defensive tactics he had avoided in 1299, barricading himself and his army in the Siri plain. The Mongol position ran from the Jumna to the plain of Lohrawat, and raiding parties reached as far into the suburbs of the old city as the Hawd-i Khass, but they could not move there in force without exposing their flank. The stalemate lasted about two months, and then Taraghai withdrew. His retreat was regarded at the time as one of the marvels of the age, and Jackson records that the sources offer no explanation for it; he suggests that Taraghai had expected a pitched battle and come unprepared for a siege, or, more probably, that events beyond the Oxus required his attention.²⁵

Two kinds of response followed. Fortresses in the path of the Mongol advance were repaired: Kaithal was refortified, and an inscription on the Barsi Gate at Hansi dates the restoration there to Rabi' II 703 / November 1303. Lal records the same policy in general terms — existing fortifications repaired, new ones built at strategic points and all of them strongly garrisoned, fresh recruitment ordered, and provincial governors called in to defend the capital.²⁵²⁶²⁷ And the sultan enacted the fiscal and administrative measures described below, which Jackson reads as designed to enlarge the armed forces and prevent any repetition of the crisis.²⁵

Amroha, 1305, and the last invasions

In 705 / 1305 Ali Beg and Tartaq advanced on Hindustan. Amir Khusraw puts their strength at fifty thousand horse, and other sources lower; Barani gives thirty to forty thousand and adds that Ali Beg was a descendant of Chinggis Khan. Knowing the capital to be strongly defended and that earlier attempts on it had failed, they bypassed Delhi for the Doab and Awadh, crossing the Ganges. Amir Khusraw's account describes the inhabitants rushing to the fords and smoke rising from the towns.¹⁴¹⁹

The sultan sent Malik Nayak, Master of the Horse of the left, with thirty to forty thousand men. The royal army met the Mongols near Amroha and defeated them on Thursday 12 Jumada II 705 / 30 December 1305, taking twenty thousand of their horses.¹⁴ Jackson notes that one manuscript reading turned Malik Nayak's name into na'ib, so that the Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi and Bada'uni both name Malik Kafur as the commander on this occasion, which is an error.¹⁹ Ali Beg and Tartaq were taken into the sultan's service, and captured Mongols were crushed beneath elephants at a durbar held as a spectacle for the citizens of Delhi; Barani records that a tower built of the heads of the slain still stood in front of the Badayun Gate in his own day.¹⁹

The last invasion came under Kopek, who commanded Du'a's forces south of the Oxus, with Iqbal and Taibu. The Mongols entered near Multan, plundered along the Ravi, moved on Kuhram and Samana and then turned south towards Nagawr. Malik Kafur, Tughluq and other commanders were sent against them and caught them near a river that Amir Khusraw calls the 'Ali-Wahan and Barani the Ghaggar. The Mongol vanguard was routed and Kopek taken prisoner; Malik Kafur then broke the force following some distance behind, and Iqbal and Taibu fled back across the Indus. Barani gives two further incursions — one into the Siwalik region, where the Delhi army held the river crossings and cut off the retreat, and a last one in which the Iqbalmanda of his account was defeated and killed near the 'Ali-Wahan — but Jackson's reading is that all three episodes in the Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi belong to the single invasion Amir Khusraw describes.¹⁹

These later attacks reached more deeply into the sultanate, and in 1305 crossed the Ganges, but Jackson judges them a smaller menace than the invasions of Qutlugh Qocha and Taraghai, the armies being smaller in each case.¹⁹ Lal records that from this point every Mongol invasion of India was defeated and the invaders' families taken prisoner.¹⁴

The scale of the frontier fighting in these years is recorded independently. Ibn Battuta reports an inscription at Multan stating that Tughluq, later Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, met the Mongols on twenty-nine occasions, from which he took the title Ghazi Malik.¹

Rajasthan and Malwa

The Encyclopaedia of Islam's entry on Delhi gives the dated sequence of these conquests: Ranthambhor 700 / 1301, Chitor 702 / 1303, Mandu 705 / 1305, Siwana 708 / 1308 and Jalor 711 / 1311–12.²⁸

Jaisalmer and Ranthambhor

An attack on Jaisalmer preceded the move on Ranthambhor.¹⁷ A first attempt on Ranthambhor against Rai Hammir Deva failed, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam's supplement entry on Rajasthan records.²⁹ Negotiations between Hammir and Ulugh Khan came to nothing, the imperial losses were heavy, and Nusrat Khan was killed. Alauddin marched to Ranthambhor himself; it was on this march that Akat Khan made the attempt on his life, and during the siege that Umar and Mangu revolted and Haji Maula rose at Delhi. The fort capitulated. Ulugh Khan died not long afterwards.¹⁵

Chittor, 1303

Alauddin marched for Chittor on Monday 8 Jumada II 702 / 28 January 1303. Amir Khusraw, who was present, left a description of the citadel and the siege. The sultan pitched his tents between the rivers Gambheri and Berach while the army encircled the town, and planted his flag on a hillock known as Chattravardi, from which he held court and directed the operations himself.³⁰

The ruler was Rana Ratan Singh, son of Rana Samar Singh, who had come to the throne about 1301 — an inscription of 1301 found at Chittor still names his father as the ruling prince. Amir Khusraw describes the Rana of Chittor as the most exalted of the Hindu rulers, whose superiority the kings of Hindustan acknowledged, and the citadel, cut out of a single rock, as unaffected by the stone-throwing engines brought against it. The defence lasted eight months. No detailed account of the siege operations survives from any source, contemporary or later; Barani, the chief authority for the period, gives the surrender a single line.³⁰

Before the final surrender the women of the fortress performed jauhar in a subterranean cavern, which Lal records as still existing, dying in the fire rather than be taken. The fort capitulated after an open engagement on Monday 11 Muharram 703 / 26 August 1303. Amir Khusraw records that thirty thousand Hindus were killed in a single day and that the sultan remained at Chittor for some days afterwards, and the temples and monuments were destroyed. Chittor was renamed Khizrabad after the sultan's eldest son Khizr Khan, to whom the citadel was assigned together with a red canopy — ordinarily the mark of an heir apparent — a robe embroidered with gold, and two standards, one black and one green. Alauddin returned quickly to the capital, Lal suggests because he had word of a coming Mongol invasion.³⁰ Jackson makes the connection firmly in the other direction: it was precisely because the sultan was occupied with the reduction of Chittor that he was slow to grasp the scale of Taraghai's investment of Delhi in the same year, and the siege above is one of the "distant campaigns" that drew his forces away and gave the Mongols their opening.²⁵

The sources disagree about Ratan Singh's fate. Amir Khusraw states that his life was spared, and 'Isami agrees; Nainsi's Khyat, a chronicle in Hindi rather than Persian, records that he died fighting, and so does Colonel Tod, whose Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan drew on Rajput tradition and on bardic literature of the eighteenth century, though Tod gives the prince's name incorrectly. Nothing is known of Ratan Singh's later life.³⁰

The legend of Rani Padmini

The best-known story attached to the siege of Chittor is a work of literature rather than a part of its history, and it is set out here as such. Lal's own summary of the position is that "Padmini is nothing more than the growth of a legend."³¹

The story first appears in the Padmavat, an epic by the sixteenth-century poet Malik Muhammad Jaisi, which attributes the invasion of Chittor to Alauddin's desire to possess Padmini, the queen of the Raja of Chittor. In Jaisi's telling Padmini is a princess of Ceylon whom Ratan Singh, having heard of her beauty from a parrot, courts for twelve years in a mendicant's dress; a mendicant named Raghava carries word of her to Delhi; the sultan besieges Chittor for eight years, then reduces his demand to a sight of her reflection in a mirror, and treacherously seizes Ratan Singh at the gate. Padmini goes to Delhi with armed Rajputs concealed in litters, rescues her husband, and he escapes while Gora is killed covering the retreat.³²

Lal sets out the grounds on which the narrative cannot stand as history. Ratan Singh had reigned about a year when Alauddin invaded, so he cannot have spent twelve years in Ceylon beforehand; the contemporary king of Ceylon was Parakramabahu IV, neither of the names the later tellings give; the eight-year war the epic describes is corroborated nowhere, contemporary or later. Ferishtah and Haji-ud-Dabir, who both adopt the story, do not give the acquisition of Padmini as the reason for the invasion, which is the whole point of Jaisi's version. Ferishtah, writing some seventy years after Jaisi, is uncertain whether Padmini was Ratan Singh's wife or his daughter, and does not name the ruler of Chittor at all in his account of the capitulation. Haji-ud-Dabir gives more than one version, does not name Ratan Singh either, uses padmini not as a name but as a term for a woman possessing certain qualities, and is unsure whether the demand was made before the surrender or after. The number of litters is sixteen thousand in Jaisi, seven hundred in Ferishtah and five hundred in Haji-ud-Dabir.³²

Two further points weigh against it. The Padmavat was completed 224 years after Alauddin's death and 237 years after the siege, and no historian or chronicler, Persian or Rajasthani, wrote of Padmini before it.³² And Jaisi states his own intention at the end of the book: in this narrative Chittor stands for the body, the Raja for the mind, Singhaldvip for the heart, Padmini for wisdom and Sultan Alauddin for lust. Lal's conclusion is that he was writing an allegory rather than narrating an event, and suggests the theme may have been suggested to him by the jauhar of Chittor in his own lifetime, when Bahadur Shah of Gujarat invaded in 1534.³³

Lal notes the one consideration on the other side — that the Mewar tradition accepting the story is old and widely held — and answers it: tradition is not an authentic source, the bardic chronicles were written long after both the Padmavat and Ferishtah's history, and it cannot be established that the bards drew on oral tradition rather than on Jaisi.³³

Malwa, Siwana and Jalore

Malwa was taken, and then Siwana, whose ruler Sital Deo is recorded as having a hundred elephants, and Jalore, whose ruler Kanhar Deo was put to death. These were the last of the campaigns in Rajasthan and Malwa, and Lal's chapter on them closes with the achievements in north India.¹¹⁷

The Deccan and the far south

Malik Kafur

The southern campaigns were commanded by Malik Kafur, the slave taken in the booty at Cambay after the conquest of Gujarat. He was given the title na'ib malik, which the Encyclopaedia of Islam renders "Regent of the King", and the army he led into the peninsula was, in that entry's words, the first Muslim army to cross the Vindhyachal.¹² He is referred to below as Malik Kafur.

Devagiri, 1307

In 706 / 1307 Malik Kafur was sent to the Deccan with thirty thousand horsemen. Ramachandra Deva of Devagiri surrendered without resistance.¹² He was left in place as a vassal and given the title ray-rayan, and his daughter Dawal Rani was married to the sultan's son Khizr Khan — the marriage that Amir Khusraw made the subject of his Khidr Khan–Dawalrani.¹

Warangal

In 709 / 1309 Malik Kafur was sent against Telingana, and took Warangal from Prataparudra Deva II.¹¹² Tribute from Telingana and the Carnatic was sent north.³⁴

Dwarasamudra and Ma'bar

In 710 / 1310 Malik Kafur marched with Khwaja Hajji against Dwarasamudra and the Hoysala ruler Vira Ballala III, and then into the Pandya country against Sundara Pandya.¹ The temples of Chidambaram and Srirangam were sacked and Madurai raided.¹⁷ A third expedition to Devagiri followed. An embassy from Persia reached the court in this period.¹⁷

An inscription of Alauddin Khalji dated 715 AH / 1315–16 has been found at Nalatward in the Muddebihal taluka of the Bijapur district, using the same titles and epithets as contemporary inscriptions at Delhi.³⁴

Why the southern campaigns succeeded

Lal sets out the reasons, and they lie as much in the condition of the southern kingdoms as in the army that invaded them. The Yadava, Kakatiya, Hoysala and Pandya kingdoms were constantly at war with one another, and the pattern recurs at every stage: when Alauddin marched on Devagiri in 1296, Singhana Deva had gone with his forces towards the Hoysala frontier; when Malik Kafur marched on the Hoysala country, Ballala Deva was away in the far south trying to take a portion of the Pandya territory; and the two Pandya princes, Sundara and Vira, were fighting each other. Rather than combine, the southern rulers assisted the invaders against their neighbours — Ramachandra helped in the conquest of Telingana, Vira Ballala escorted the imperial army further south into Ma'bar, and Sundara Pandya sought Malik Kafur's assistance against his own half-brother. To this Lal adds that the army was efficient, well equipped and organised as a result of the military measures described below.³⁴

By the close of 1312, the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records, the territory ran from Multan, Lahore and Delhi to Dvarasamudra, and from Lakhnauti and Sonargaon to Thatta.²

Government and the reforms

The administrative and economic measures are the third of the three heads under which the Encyclopaedia of Islam summarises the reign.¹ They are set out here as a group because they were interlocking: the revenue settlement paid for the army, the army was paid in cash rather than in land, and the market regulation existed to make a cash wage sufficient. Lal states that connection directly — the sultan could not pay his soldiers a high salary and was opposed to assigning them land, and "consequently he cheapened the necessaries of life, controlled the market, and undertook other economic measures," which "were undertaken primarily for the benefit of the soldiery."³⁵

Justice, police and intelligence

The sultan constituted the chief court of appeal and heard cases himself in open court, as Iltutmish, Balban and later Muhammad Tughluq also did; Lal notes that the contemporary historians do not describe the manner in which he did so. Below him the head of the judicial department was the Sadr-i Jahan, or Qazi al-Quzat, the chief justice of the empire, under whom served deputy qazis assisted by muftis who expounded the law on difficult cases. A Dadbeg-i Hazrat served as judge of the capital, as distinct from the Qazi-i Lashkar, the judge of the camp; Malik Fakhr al-Din Kuchi was appointed to that office in the first year of the reign. A Mir Dad was charged with producing before the court any person too powerful for the qazi to compel. The provinces reproduced the same gradations under the governor, and in smaller towns and villages headmen and panchayats settled disputes. Cases needing no expert knowledge of the law were decided by princes, vazirs and army commanders, and revenue cases went to the governor or his diwan rather than to the qazis. There were no pleaders, and judges worked largely by qiyas — their own reasoned judgement on the statements of the witnesses.²⁷

Alongside the courts, the Encyclopaedia of Islam records the establishment of a system of espionage, and Lal treats the police, the secret intelligence and the postal system as departments of the administration in their own right.¹¹⁷

Revenue and the land

The Encyclopaedia of Islam records the confiscation of rent-free land.¹ Lal sets out the assessment that replaced the older arrangements: by ordinance the government share was fixed at fifty per cent of the produce, and the method of assessment laid down. Alauddin was the first Muslim ruler in India to fix revenue on the actual measurement of land. Measurement was known to the Hindu kings and in use in the south, but had fallen out of use in the north; it was now revived, and Barani's reference to collection by the bisvah — a unit still in use — suggests a uniform system. All land, of rich and poor alike, was brought under assessment at the same rate. Half the produce went to the treasury, and grazing and other minor taxes were paid out of the remainder.³⁶

Lal records the effect plainly: the chiefs, whose surplus income was stopped, were reduced in practice to the position of peasants, and Barani describes the cultivators as impoverished to the point that the wives of the khuts and muqaddams took paid work in the houses of Muslims. He also records the comparison that sets the figure in context — under Hindu sovereigns the state demand had been a quarter to a sixth of the produce, rising to a third or falling to a sixth as circumstances required, and that Iltutmish and Balban had taken lower rates. On Barani's framing of these measures as a programme directed against Hindus, Lal's view is that this expresses the sentiments of the orthodox historian rather than those of the sultan, and that the evidence shows the Hindu middle class to have been well off and not disposed to servility; his reading is that the sultan, having already broken the nobility, was acting to ensure that nobody in his dominions remained rich or powerful enough to threaten the state.³⁶ The Encyclopaedia of Islam makes the related point about vocabulary: the measures bore on the village muqaddams, balahars and khuts, and Barani's use of the general term "Hindu" for them has been misunderstood by some writers.¹

The system was not applied everywhere. Lal credits its enforcement to the deputy vazir Sharf Qayini, who introduced measurement in the districts around Delhi — Palam, Rewari, Afghanpur, Amroha, Badaun and Koel — and in the divisions of Deopalpur, Lahore, Samana and Sunam in the west, as far as Katehar in the east and into parts of Malwa and Rajputana, but not in Gujarat, Malwa as a whole, or Awadh. Measurement, the fifty per cent demand and the grazing tax were therefore enforced in the central part of the country and some northern and western provinces rather than across the whole empire. Barani pays Sharf Qayini a tribute for the work.³⁷

Lal also records why zakat had no place in this revenue system: it could not be collected by force, since compulsion vitiates it; it applied only to property held for a full year, so that a transfer shortly before the due date escaped it; and its collectors were not subject to audit. Import duties stood at five per cent for Muslims and ten for non-Muslims.³⁷

The army

A large standing army was maintained on a permanent footing and was not disbanded when a conquest was completed or an invasion repulsed. The Diwan-i 'Arz, the muster office, kept a descriptive roll of every soldier, and Alauddin introduced the branding of horses so that at review no horse could be shown twice or replaced by an inferior one. Reviews were held from time to time and the soldiers' horses and arms inspected. Ferishtah puts the standing army at 475,000 horsemen.²⁶

Pay was in cash. A soldier received 234 tankahs a year, or 19½ a month, and a do aspah — a soldier maintaining two horses — a further 78 tankahs a year for the second horse, a soldier with one horse being a yak aspah. Lal notes that the passage of Barani on which this rests is defective and has caused much controversy, turning on the word martab or murattab; he sets out the reading he adopts and the reasons for it, and rejects Ferishtah's gradations of soldiers as unsupported. Raw recruits were not taken and trained by the state; only professional soldiers were enrolled, so a soldier was assumed to have at least one horse.³⁵

Lal's assessment of the figure is that the pay was meagre, and that the sultan was nevertheless careful of his soldiers: he gave largesses to generals and troops returning from the Deccan, and the instructions he gave Malik Kafur on the march to Warangal show the same concern.³⁵

The regulation of the markets

Lal devotes his longest chapter to the market control, covering food control, the prices fixed, the grain market, the grain stores, rationing, the market officials, the cloth market, the prices of cloths, the horse market, and the means by which the orders were enforced.¹⁷

The prices fixed for grain, as Barani gives them, were 7½ jital per man for wheat, 4 for barley, 5 for rice, and figures for mash, urad and moth.³⁸ The units can be fixed with some precision. Ferishtah states that the tankah weighed one tola and was worth 50 jitals; Lal follows the numismatist Nelson Wright, author of The Sultans of Delhi: Their Coins and Metrology, in correcting this to 48, observing that Ferishtah's statement, made some centuries later, "must be regarded as indirectly corroborative rather than implicitly correct." A jital was about two rattis of silver. Alauddin's tankah was equal in weight to the modern rupee, which Babur also confirms, and on that basis Lal calculates that a present-day rupee would have bought about two present-day maunds of wheat.³⁸

Lal does not accept Barani's claim that prices under Alauddin were the lowest ever reached: he notes that bread sold at two sers a jital under Balban. His comparative table sets Alauddin's prices against those under Firuz Shah — wheat at 7½ against 8, barley at 4 against 4, sugar at 100 against 120 and 140 — and he suggests that Shams-i Siraj 'Afif, who chronicled Firuz Shah's own reign and so was writing about his own sovereign, may have exaggerated how cheap it was — since Shaikh Nasir al-Din Chiragh, in the Khair al-Majalis, held Alauddin's days to have been the cheaper. The Tarikh-i Daudi records that under Ibrahim Lodi prices were cheaper than under any sultan except in Alauddin's last days, and draws the distinction that Alauddin's cheapness "was maintained by resorting to coercion and force," whereas "in Ibrahim's reign prices remained low without anything like that." Lal's own conclusion is that the significant achievement was not the absolute level of prices but "the establishment of a fixed price in the market, which was considered one of the wonders of the age."³⁸

Prohibition and the social ordinances

The sale and use of intoxicants was prohibited, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam records that the stocks were poured out at the Badayun gate.¹ Lal gives Barani's reason for the measure — that drinking brought men together in gatherings where thoughts of revolt arose — and notes that it was an outcome of political necessity rather than of a general policy of welfare.¹⁶ The requirement that nobles obtain permission before arranging marriages between their families belongs to the same group of measures.¹ Lal treats the prohibition of incest and adultery under the same head.¹⁷

The last years

Illness, Alp Khan and Malik Kafur

Malik Kafur remained in the Deccan until about 1315, when the sultan, who had fallen seriously ill, recalled him; Alp Khan was recalled from Gujarat at the same time. Barani records that Alauddin was suffering from dropsy, Amir Khusraw from fever. Lal's reading is that the dropsy was of long standing and that a fever developed as he approached death.³⁹

Malik Kafur returned to a court in which the queen Malka-i Jahan, her brother Alp Khan and the heir Khizr Khan were in the ascendant. Barani's account has the ailing sultan complaining to him of being neglected — that the queen was occupied with marriages and ceremonies in the haram, and that Khizr Khan, having married Dawal Rani, cared little for the king or the court. Malik Kafur told the sultan in a private audience that his enemies intended to kill him once the king was dead, and named Alp Khan as the source of the trouble, saying that Alp Khan's reluctance to return to his iqta in Gujarat showed that he was waiting to seize power. 'Isami records that Alauddin refused to believe the accusations against the governor.³⁹ Alp Khan was nonetheless murdered.¹⁷

Death and the succession

Alauddin died on 6 Shawwal 715 / 3 January 1316, the date the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives.² Jackson gives the same regnal dates, 695–715 / 1296–1316.⁴⁰ The Encyclopaedia of Islam's entry also gives the reign as twenty years, 695–715 / 1296–1316, but then states the death as Shawwal 716 / January 1316; the two statements cannot both be right, and the point is taken up in the Historiographical Note.¹

The succession had been altered before his death. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records that Malik Kafur persuaded the sultan to disinherit Khizr Khan, who was sent to Gwalior, and that Shihab al-Din Umar was made heir in his place. Shadi Khan and Mubarak were blinded. Malik Kafur was himself killed thirty-five days after his master. The throne then passed to Qutb al-Din Mubarak Shah, a youth of eighteen, who rescinded the price controls.¹ Jackson dates Mubarak Shah's accession to 716 / 1316 and his reign to 716–20 / 1316–20, an interregnum intervening, and records that he observed the practice, established at Delhi since Balban's reign, by which a new sultan ordered the release of prisoners.⁴⁰

The court

Two poets were attached to the court: Amir Khusraw Dihlavi, who accompanied the army on campaign and wrote narrative poems on several of its expeditions, including the Khidr Khan–Dawalrani on the marriage of the heir to Ramachandra's daughter, and Hasan Dihlavi.²¹ Amir Khusraw's presence at Chittor is the reason the fullest description of that siege exists at all.³⁰

The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records that Alauddin was without formal education but a capable administrator, that trade, industry and agriculture developed during the reign, and that he ruled over Muslim and non-Muslim subjects alike with justice.²

Lal gives the buildings of the reign an appendix of their own, and illustrates four of them: the Alai Darwaza, an ornamented panel from it, the madrasa of Alauddin, and the Jama'at Khana Mosque. The quarter of Siri, which gave its name to the plain where the army encamped against Qutlugh Khwaja, belongs to the same building programme. The same appendices take up two questions the main narrative leaves open — the sultan's relations with Nepal, and whether Malik Kafur's southern march reached Rameshvaram.¹⁷

Historiographical Note

Seven points in the record need stating plainly rather than being settled silently in the narrative above. Several of them are disagreements between the two modern historians named in the introduction — K. S. Lal, writing in 1950, and Peter Jackson, writing in 1999. Where those two conflict on chronology or interpretation the account above follows Jackson; Lal is followed for the detailed narrative and for the chronicle citations it carries.

The date of death. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives 6 Shawwal 715 / 3 January 1316. The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives the reign as 695–715 / 1296–1316 and then states the death as Shawwal 716 / January 1316, which contradicts its own regnal dates; 716 AH does not contain January 1316. Jackson independently gives the reign as 695–715 / 1296–1316 and dates the accession of Qutb al-Din Mubarak Shah to 716 / 1316, which would be impossible if Alauddin had himself died in Shawwal 716, since an interregnum and Shihab al-Din Umar's short reign stand between the two. The Hijri year 715 is also the date of the Nalatward inscription, which Lal dates 715 AH / 1315–16. The date given above follows the TDV reading, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam's "716" is an error for 715 within its own entry.²¹³⁴⁴⁰

The date of Jalal al-Din's killing. The Hijri date is secure and the Common Era date is not, and the distinction is worth keeping in view because it is the ordinary shape of a medieval Indian date.

The date is preserved chiefly in Barani's Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi, the chronicle on which almost everything known about this reign ultimately rests. Barani sets out the plot and records that the sultan reached Kara-Manikpur and was killed on the afternoon of 17 Ramadan 695. That figure is not in dispute: it is the date Lal prints from the chronicle, and it is the datum from which every Common Era equivalent is derived.

The Common Era equivalent is 19 or 20 July 1296, and the one-day spread is a matter of conversion convention rather than of historical disagreement — whether the lunar month is reckoned arithmetically or from the local sighting of the new moon. Lal prints 20 July. Both readings are of the same day in Ramadan.

The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives 29 July 1296 and supplies no Hijri day-date. That does not correspond to 17 Ramadan 695 on either convention, and it is treated here as an error rather than as a rival account; the article gives the Hijri date with its two Common Era equivalents.⁷²⁹

The numbers at Kili. Three separate questions are tangled here, and they have different answers.

On the royal army, Ferishtah puts it at 300,000 horse and 2,700 elephants. Lal rejects the figure as inflated, reasoning that the sultan would not have been so anxious about the invasion had he had a force of that size in readiness, and gives instead the dispositions 'Isami records — twelve thousand men in the centre with the sultan, and twenty-two elephants in front of each division. Those are the figures used above. Jackson notes that Barani gives no figure for the sultan's army and that reports reaching Egypt put it at thirty thousand.²³¹⁸

On the Mongol army, Lal and Jackson both follow Barani and reach different numbers because Barani's text is not consistent with itself: it gives twenty tumans in one passage and ten in another, and two manuscripts of the first recension give "ten or fifteen" and "ten or twelve". Lal takes twenty tumans, two hundred thousand; Jackson takes the lowest figure, ten tumans or one lak, a hundred thousand. Both numbers are reported above with their source, since the choice between them is a choice between readings of one chronicle rather than between two bodies of evidence.¹⁸²²

On the location, Lal states that Kili lay north of Delhi and not far from it, citing two earlier authorities: Keene's History of Hindustan and the Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi by Thomas, one of the numismatists on whom Lal draws elsewhere for the coinage. Jackson's position is that the place is now unknown, apparently some fifteen miles north of the capital, with Ferishtah saying only that it was in the Doab and one Barani manuscript giving the sultan a march of seven kurohs. The uncertainty is stated above rather than resolved.¹⁸²³

Lal takes the distance of Zafar Khan's pursuit, eighteen kos, from the manuscript of Barani used by Major Fuller, who translated the chronicle for the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, rather than from the printed Bibliotheca Indica text, which does not carry it. The two differ in places, and Lal says where.²⁴

Which invasion the Siri plain belongs to. The Encyclopaedia of Islam places the encampment in the plain of Siri in the invasion of Qutlugh Qocha, and reports that the Mongols reached the gates of Delhi on that occasion. Jackson assigns the Siri plain to Taraghai's investment of 1303 and is explicit that it represented a reversal of the tactics the sultan had deliberately avoided in 1299, and equally explicit that Qutlugh Qocha's Mongols did not reach the outskirts of the city. The account above follows Jackson and places Siri in 1303.¹¹⁸²⁵

How Taraghai died. Amir Khusraw, as Lal reports him, has Taraghai shot by an arrow and killed in 1305 before the invading army reached the Doab, which Lal offers as the reason Barani does not name him among that invasion's leaders. Jackson's account is quite different: Taraghai's attempt to flee to India in 705 / 1305 was obstructed by Qutlugh Qocha's widows, who would not let him pass, so he joined the Negüderis, and he was killed not long afterwards when Esen Buqa went to the Indian borderlands to put down dissension within Qutlugh Qocha's army. The two accounts cannot be reconciled, and the narrative above asserts neither.¹⁴¹⁹

The date of the Warangal campaign. The Encyclopaedia of Islam's entry on the Khaljis dates Malik Kafur's march on Telingana to 709 / 1309, and its entry on Malik Kafur gives 709 / 1310 for Warangal. The Hijri year is the same in both and spans parts of both Common Era years; this is ordinary conversion variance rather than a disagreement about when the campaign took place.¹¹²

The Padmini story. Set out in full above. Nothing before Jaisi's Padmavat, completed 237 years after the siege, mentions Padmini; Jaisi states at the end of the work that his characters are allegorical; and the later tellings in Ferishtah, Haji-ud-Dabir and the Rajput bardic literature disagree with one another on every material point while agreeing with Jaisi in outline. Lal's conclusion, stated in his preface, is that "Padmini is nothing more than the growth of a legend." It is accordingly treated above as literature rather than as an episode of the reign.³²³³³¹

See also

• Delhi Sultanate — the state Alauddin ruled, and the dynasties before and after the Khaljis
• Qutb ud-Din Aibak — founder of the sultanate the Khaljis inherited
• Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq — the Ghazi Malik of the Multan inscription, who fought the Mongols on this frontier and founded the dynasty that followed the Khaljis
• Muhammad bin Tughluq — the later sultan whose revenue and currency measures are the nearest comparison to those described here
• Battle of Ain Jalut — the other great check on Mongol expansion into the Muslim world in this period

References

Citations

Footnotes

1. 'Khaldjis', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 4 — the dynastic entry: the dates of the dynasty, the probable Turkish origin of the family and the source of the Afghan view, Jalal al-Din Firuz's office and title, the accession in Ramadan 695/July 1296, the Mongol invasions under Saldi, Kutlugh Khwadja and Targhi, the Gujarat campaign under Ulugh Khan and Nusrat Khan, Akat Khan's attempt, 'Ala' al-Mulk's counsel against the new religion, Rama Candra as vassal with the title ray-rayan, the marriage of Dawal Rani to Khidr Khan, Siwana and Jalore, the Telingana and Dwara Samudra campaigns, the administrative measures and the caution on Barani's use of the word "Hindu", the death, the altered succession, and Malik Kafur's death thirty-five days after his master. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷

2. Yusuf Halaçoğlu, 'Alâeddin Halacî', TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, 1989 — the derivation of the Western forms of the dynastic name, the governorship of Kara, the Devagiri raid of 1296 undertaken without permission, the killing of Jalaluddin on 29 July 1296, the removal of Rükneddin İbrâhim, the accession at Delhi on 21 December 1296, the title Uluğ Han given to Elmas Beg, the extent of the territory by late 1312, the intention to conquer China, the title İskender-i Sânî, the death on 6 Şevval 715 / 3 January 1316, the absence of formal education alongside administrative capability, the development of trade, industry and agriculture, the just rule over Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, and the poets Hasan Dihlevî and Emîr Hüsrev-i Dihlevî. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

3. 'Isti'rad', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 4, and the Glossary entry 'arid, vol. 13 — the officer charged with mustering, review and inspection of troops. ↩

4. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. I — Jalal al-Din's titles and offices, the division of the nobility, the flight to Baharpur, Alauddin's beheading of Aitmar Kachhan, the death of Aitmar Surkha, the killing of Mu'izz al-Din on 19 Muharram 689 / 1 February 1290, the regency and the coronation at Kilughari, and Barani's remark that no voice of congratulation was heard. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. III, 'Alauddin as Prince' — his father Shihab al-Din Mas'ud and his brothers, the alternative given names Ali and Garshasp, Haji-ud-Dabir's statement of his age at Ranthambhor and the conditional inference of a birth date of about 1266–67, the absence of schooling and the training in arms, the offices of amir-i tuzuk and akhurbeg, and the raid on Bhilsa. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. IV — the march by Chanderi and the Ghati Lajaura, the opposition of Kanha, the citadel, Singhana Deva's return and defeat, the departure twenty-five days after entering the city, and the storming of Asirgarh. ↩

7. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. V, 'Murder of Jalaluddin Khalji' — Jalal al-Din at Gwalior, Ala al-Mulk's reports from Kara, Ahmad Chap's advice to intercept at Chanderi, Alauddin's letter to Almas Beg, the boats at Damhai, the sighting at Kara on 17 Ramadan 695 / Friday 20 July 1296, the headquarters at Manikpur across the Ganges, Almas Beg's requests, the disarming of the nobles, and the killing. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

8. Lal, History of the Khaljis, chs. V and VII — Barani's record of the plan to withdraw to Lakhnauti with the treasure and of Zafar Khan's despatch east to assemble a flotilla for crossing the Sarju, with Lal's observation that east was the only direction open; the knowledge of the plan among the nobles at Delhi; the later proposal to send Zafar Khan to take and govern Bengal; the expedition of 1302–03 against Shams al-Din Firuz with its double object; the absence of a detailed account in Barani and Ferishtah; Ferishtah's statement that an earlier force had gone to Warangal by way of Bengal and returned having accomplished nothing; Lal's reasons for reading the expedition as directed at Bengal; and the inscription of 713/1313–14 on Zafar Khan's madrasa in the Hooghly district naming Shams al-Din Abu al-Muzaffar. ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. The dating of the killing to the afternoon of 17 Ramadan 695, on the authority of Barani's Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi, and the treatment of the Common Era spread of 19–20 July 1296 as a matter of conversion convention rather than of historical disagreement, follow the owner's decision of 20 October 2026 under §4B.1 of the project standards, which reserves conflicts between approved sources to the owner. The Hijri date is the one Lal prints from the chronicle; the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi's 29 July is set aside as an error, since it corresponds to no reading of 17 Ramadan 695. ↩ ↩²

10. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. VI, 'Accession of Alauddin' — the accession at Kara and Manikpur, events at Delhi after the killing, the negotiations between Arkali Khan and Malka-i Jahan, the march to Delhi, the desertion of the kotwal, Qadr Khan's escape, and the Multan expedition under Ulugh Khan and Zafar Khan ending in Arkali Khan's surrender. ↩ ↩²

11. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. VII — Yahya's figures for Raja Karan's army, the rebuilding of Somnath by Kumarapala after 1026 and the seizure of its wealth and idol, the agreement of the Persian writers and the Jain account of Chandra Prabha on the thoroughness of the sack with the towns named, and the mutiny of the troops near Jalore with the punishment of the mutineers' relatives. ↩ ↩² ↩³

12. 'Malik Kafur', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 6 — the thousand-dinar purchase price, the capture at Kambayat after the Gujarat conquest of 698/1299, the title na'ib malik, the first Muslim army to cross the Vindhyachal, the Devagiri expedition of 706/1307 with thirty thousand horsemen, and Warangal. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

13. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. VII, 'The Wild Projects of Alauddin' — Barani's description of the position in 1299 including the seventy thousand horses, the plan to found a new religion with the four generals set against the Prophet's four comrades, the plan to repeat Alexander's conquests, the style Sikandar-i Sani on the coins and in the public prayers, Ala al-Mulk's intervention, and the earlier expulsion of Saldi from Sivistan. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

14. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XI — the invasion of Ali Beg, Tartaq and Targhi in 1305, Amir Khusraw's figure of about fifty thousand against Barani's thirty to forty thousand, Barani's note that Ali Beg descended from Chinggis Khan, Targhi's death by an arrow before the army reached the Doab, the decision to bypass Delhi for the Doab and Awadh, Amir Khusraw's description of the flight to the fords of the Ganges, the appointment of Malik Nayak with thirty to forty thousand men, the victory near Amroha on Thursday 12 Jumada II 705 / 30 December 1305 and the twenty thousand horses taken, the subsequent pattern of defeat for every later invasion, and the paik Manik who saved the sultan at Akat Khan's assault. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

15. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. VIII — the negotiations between Rana Hammir and Ulugh Khan, the imperial losses, the death of Nusrat Khan, the sultan's march to Ranthambhor and the attempt on his life, the revolt of Umar and Mangu, the insurrection of Haji Maula at Delhi, the capitulation, and the death of Ulugh Khan. ↩ ↩²

16. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XVI, 'Social Reforms' — the prohibition of the sale and use of intoxicants, Barani's reason that drinking brought men together in gatherings where revolt was contemplated, and the observation that the social measures followed from political necessity. ↩ ↩²

17. Lal, History of the Khaljis, the table of contents and chapter headings — the attack on Jaisalmer; the conquest of Malwa, the capture of Sevana and the capitulation of Jalor; the invasion of Kubak and Iqbalmand; the sack of the temples of Chidambaram and Srirangam, the raid on Madura and the third expedition to Devagiri; the embassy from Persia; the departments of police, secret intelligence and the postal system; the prohibition of incest and adultery; the subjects of the chapter on economic measures; the murder of Alp Khan; the Siri quarter; and Appendix C on the buildings of Alauddin Khalji with its illustrations of the Alai Darwaza, an ornamented panel, the madrasa and the Jama'at Khana Mosque, together with Appendix A on Alauddin and Nepal and Appendix B on whether Malik Kafur raided Rameshvaram. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

18. Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate — the first major strike by Qutlugh Qocha's forces in 699/1299–1300 during the Delhi army's absence on the first Gujarat campaign and the Egyptian sources' connection of the two; Qutlugh Qocha accompanied by his brother Temur Buqa and advancing directly on Delhi; the location of Kili as now unknown but apparently some fifteen miles north of the capital, with Ferishtah placing it only in the Doab and one manuscript of Barani's first recension giving a march of seven kurohs; the correction of "Targhi" to Taraghai, from Turkish taraqai, "bald", confirmed by Amir Khusraw's pun; Zafar Khan's right wing crushing the Mongol left and being ambushed on the return from the pursuit by the rearguard under Taraghai and annihilated; Barani's explanation of the Mongol withdrawal and Jackson's rejection of it; Qutlugh Qocha's mortal wound and death on the long return journey, with Amir Khusraw's verse in the Deval Rani and its reproduction in Bihamad Khani, the Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi and Bada'uni; the inconsistency of Barani's figures for the Mongol army across the recensions and manuscripts and Jackson's adoption of the lowest, ten tumans or one lak; the absence of any figure for the sultan's army in Barani and the figure of thirty thousand in the Egyptian reports; and the Mongols' failure to reach the outskirts of the city together with the rise in food prices caused by refugees. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

19. Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate — Amir Khusraw's fifty thousand horse for Ali Beg and Tartaq in 705/1305 with lower figures in other sources, and the crossing of the Ganges; the manuscript reading that turned Malik Nayak into na'ib and so produced the erroneous naming of Malik Kafur as commander in the Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi and Bada'uni; the recruitment of Ali Beg and Tartaq into the sultan's service; the durbar at which captured Mongols were crushed beneath elephants as a spectacle for the citizens, and Barani's record of the tower of heads still standing before the Badayun Gate in his own day; the final invasion under Kopek with Iqbal and Taibu, the entry near Multan, the plundering along the Ravi, the move on Kuhram and Samana and the turn south towards Nagawr, the interception by Malik Kafur and Tughluq near the river Amir Khusraw calls the 'Ali-Wahan and Barani the Ghaggar, the routing of the vanguard and capture of Kopek, and the flight of Iqbal and Taibu across the Indus; Barani's two further incursions into the Siwalik and the death of Iqbalmanda, with Jackson's reading that all three TFS episodes belong to the single invasion Amir Khusraw describes; 'Isami's figure of a hundred thousand for Kopek's army; and the judgement that the later attacks reached more deeply but were a smaller menace, the armies being smaller. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

20. Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, the chapter on the Chaghadayid invasions — the direction of operations assumed by Qaidu and Du'a and the consequent increase of pressure on India, Rashid al-Din's remark on Qutlugh Qocha's forces, and the Mongols' information about conditions inside the sultanate with their practice of timing assaults to the Delhi army's absence on campaign. ↩

21. Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate — the invasion of 697/1297–98 by Qaidu's noyan Keder as the earliest unequivocal evidence of Central Asian Mongol operations in India, the ravaging as far as Qasur, Ulugh Khan's victory at Jaran Manjur near the Sutlej on 22 Rabi' II / 6 February 1298, the twenty thousand Mongol dead and the execution of the prisoners at Delhi, and Barani's placing of the invasion in 696/1296–97 without naming the Mongol leader and with Ulugh Khan and Zafar Khan as the commanders. ↩

22. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XI — Qutlugh Khvaja's departure from Transoxiana towards the close of 1299 with twenty tumans, or two hundred thousand Mughals, and the defeat at Sivistan that prompted the invasion. ↩ ↩² ↩³

23. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XI — Ala al-Mulk made kotwal and told to hand the keys to the victor, the sultan's declaration that he would march into the plain of Kili, the location of Kili north of Delhi on the authority of Keene and Thomas, the ground secured by the Jumna and the scrub, the dispositions of both armies from 'Isami's Futuh, the twenty-two elephants in front of each division, the rejection of Ferishtah's 300,000 horse and 2,700 elephants as inflated, Zafar Khan's challenge and opening assault, Diler Khan's charge, Tamar Bugha's withdrawal under covering fire, and the sultan's repulse of the centre with the recovery of the Indian prisoners. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

24. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XI, 'Death of Zafar Khan' — the absence of reinforcement or withdrawal order, Ulugh Khan's ill-will on account of Zafar Khan's popularity and his failure to move, the pursuit of eighteen kos taken from Major Fuller's manuscript, the ambush of about ten thousand Mongols under Targhi, the council with Usman the akhurbeg and Ali Shah the rane-i pil, 'Isami's figures of five thousand Mongol dead and eight hundred of Zafar Khan's men, the last stand on foot, Qutlugh Khvaja's offer in direct speech, the gold tankah offered for each Mongol head from the Deval Rani, 'Isami's note that the Mongols hovered about Delhi for a few more days, and Amir Khusraw's statement that Qutlugh Khvaja died on his way back to Transoxiana. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

25. Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate — the Mongol bands of ten or fifteen thousand horse raiding the Punjab in the intervening years without a pitched battle; the second advance on Delhi in 702/1302–03 with the Delhi forces again scattered, Taraghai now commanding Qutlugh Qocha's army, and Jackson's judgement that it was the greater danger; the sultan's preoccupation with the reduction of Chittor and his late recognition of the crisis; the absence of reinforcement with the Multan, Deopalpur and Samana garrisons occupied by a second Mongol incursion into Sivistan and Taraghai holding the Jumna crossings so that the divisions returning from Tilang halted at Kol and Baran; the barricading of the army in the Siri plain as a reversal of the tactics of 1299; the Mongol position from the Jumna to the plain of Lohrawat and the raids reaching the Hawd-i Khass without a move in force for fear of the flank; the two-month stalemate and the withdrawal regarded as a marvel of the age with no explanation in the sources and Jackson's two conjectures; the refortification of Kaithal and the inscription on the Barsi Gate at Hansi dating the restoration to Rabi' II 703 / November 1303; and the fiscal and administrative measures read as designed to enlarge the forces and prevent a repetition. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

26. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XVI — the decision to repair and build fortifications and to raise a large army, the Diwan-i 'Arz and its descriptive roll, the branding of horses and the reason for it, the periodic reviews, the permanent standing army, and Ferishtah's figure of 475,000 horsemen. ↩ ↩²

27. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XIV, 'Administration of Justice' — the sultan as the chief court of appeal and the silence of the contemporary historians on his manner of hearing cases, the Sadr-i Jahan or Qazi al-Quzat with his deputies and muftis, the Dadbeg-i Hazrat and Malik Fakhr al-Din Kuchi's appointment to it in the first year of the reign, the Qazi-i Lashkar, the Mir Dad, the provincial gradations and the village panchayats, the exclusion of revenue cases from the qazis' jurisdiction, the absence of pleaders and the use of qiyas, and the recall of provincial governors to defend the capital during Targhi's invasion. ↩ ↩²

28. 'Dihli', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2 — the dated sequence Ranthambhor 700/1301, Chitor 702/1303, Mandu 705/1305, Siwana 708/1308, Jalor 711/1311–12. ↩

29. 'Radjasthan', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 12 (Supplement) — the failed first attempt on Ranthambhor against Rai Hammir Deva. ↩

30. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. IX, 'The Siege' — the march on Monday 8 Jumada II 702 / 28 January 1303, Amir Khusraw's presence and description, the camp between the Gambheri and the Berach, the flag on the Chattravardi hillock, Ratan Singh's accession about 1301 with the inscription of 1301 naming his father, Amir Khusraw on the standing of the Rana and on the citadel's resistance to the stone-throwing engines, the eight-month defence, the absence of any detailed account of the siege operations and Barani's single line on the surrender, the jauhar in the subterranean cavern, the capitulation after an open engagement on Monday 11 Muharram 703 / 26 August 1303, Amir Khusraw's figure of thirty thousand killed in a day, the destruction of the temples and monuments, the renaming as Khizrabad with the assignment to Khizr Khan and the red canopy, robe and two standards, the quick return to the capital, and the disagreement between Amir Khusraw and 'Isami on one side and Nainsi and Tod on the other over Ratan Singh's fate. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

31. Lal, History of the Khaljis, the preface — "Padmini is nothing more than the growth of a legend." ↩ ↩²

32. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. IX, 'The Legend of Rani Padmini' — Jaisi's Padmavat and its plot, the adoption of the story by Ferishtah and Haji-ud-Dabir, Tod's reliance on eighteenth-century bardic literature, and the grounds of refutation: Ratan Singh's single year on the throne, Parakramabahu IV as the contemporary king of Ceylon, the uncorroborated eight-year war, the failure of Ferishtah and Haji-ud-Dabir to give Padmini as the cause of the invasion, Ferishtah's uncertainty whether she was wife or daughter and his omission of the ruler's name, Haji-ud-Dabir's multiple versions and his use of padmini as a description rather than a name, the litter counts of sixteen thousand, seven hundred and five hundred, the completion of the Padmavat 224 years after Alauddin's death and 237 after the siege, and the absence of any earlier mention. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

33. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. IX — Jaisi's statement of his own allegory at the close of the Padmavat, with Chittor for the body, the Raja for the mind, Singhaldvip for the heart, Padmini for wisdom and Alauddin for lust; the suggestion that the theme was prompted by the jauhar of 1534 under Bahadur Shah of Gujarat; and the answer to the argument from Mewar tradition. ↩ ↩² ↩³

34. Lal, History of the Khaljis, chs. XII and XIII — the tribute sent from Telingana and the Carnatic, Malik Kafur's recall about 1315 with Barani's account of the summons to him and to Alp Khan, the Nalatward inscription of 715 AH in the Muddebihal taluka of the Bijapur district published in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica, and the causes of the success of the southern expeditions: the mutual wars of the Yadava, Kakatiya, Hoysala and Pandya kingdoms, the absences of Singhana Deva and Ballala Deva on campaign at the moment of each invasion, the quarrel of the two Pandya princes, the assistance given to the invaders by Ramachandra, Vira Ballala and Sundara Pandya, and the efficiency of the army following the military measures. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

35. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XVI, 'Salary of a Soldier' — the 234 tankahs a year and 19½ a month, the additional 78 tankahs for a second horse, the do aspah and yak aspah, the defective passage of Barani and the martab or murattab reading with Lal's translation of it, the rejection of Ferishtah's gradations, the enrolment of professional soldiers only, the largesses to troops returning from the Deccan and the instructions to Malik Kafur on the Warangal march, and the statement that the market control and the other economic measures were undertaken primarily for the benefit of the soldiery. ↩ ↩² ↩³

36. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XV — the ordinance fixing the government share at fifty per cent of the produce and laying down the method of assessment, Alauddin as the first Muslim king in India to fix revenue on actual measurement, the revival of measurement from southern and earlier Hindu practice, Barani's reference to the bisvah, the uniform rate across rich and poor, the reduction of the chiefs to the position of peasants, Barani's description of the impoverishment of the cultivators, the comparison with the quarter-to-sixth demand under Hindu sovereigns and the lower rates under Iltutmish and Balban, and Lal's reading of Barani's framing of the measures as the sentiment of the orthodox historian rather than the policy of the sultan. ↩ ↩²

37. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XV, 'Revenue Officials' — the deputy vazir Sharf Qayini, the districts and divisions in which measurement was introduced and those in which it was not, Barani's tribute to him, the reasons zakat had no place in the revenue system, and the import duties of five and ten per cent. ↩ ↩²

38. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XVII, 'Economic Measures' — Barani's fixed prices of 7½ jital per man for wheat, 4 for barley and 5 for rice with the figures for mash, urad and moth; Ferishtah's tankah of one tola worth 50 jitals and Nelson Wright's correction to 48 with Lal's remark on the standing of Ferishtah's evidence; the jital of about two rattis of silver; the equivalence of the tankah to the modern rupee confirmed by Babur and the resulting calculation; the disagreement with Barani's claim of the lowest prices ever and the comparison with bread at two sers a jital under Balban; the comparative table against Firuz Shah's prices; the suggestion that 'Afif exaggerated, with Shaikh Nasir al-Din Chiragh's contrary view in the Khair al-Majalis; the Tarikh-i Daudi on Ibrahim Lodi's prices and its distinction between cheapness maintained by coercion and cheapness without it; and Lal's conclusion that the achievement was the establishment of a fixed price in the market. ↩ ↩² ↩³

39. Lal, History of the Khaljis, ch. XVIII, 'Last Days of Alauddin' — Barani's statement that the sultan suffered from dropsy and Amir Khusraw's that he suffered from fever, with Lal's reading of the two together; the recall of Malik Kafur from the Deccan and of Alp Khan from Gujarat; the ascendancy of Malka-i Jahan, Alp Khan and Khizr Khan at court; Barani's account of the sultan's complaints of neglect; Malik Kafur's accusations in private audience and his naming of Alp Khan; and 'Isami's statement that Alauddin refused to believe them. ↩ ↩²

40. Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, the preface and the chapters on the sultans and the provinces — the reign of Alauddin Khalji given as 695–715/1296–1316 and treated as the watershed of the period, the accession of Qutb al-Din Mubarak Shah in 716/1316 with the reign 716–20/1316–20, and the practice by which a new sultan ordered the release of prisoners, still observed at that accession. ↩ ↩² ↩³

Sources

Primary and contemporary sources. The works below are cited as they are quoted, translated and discussed in K. S. Lal's History of the Khaljis, in Peter Jackson's The Delhi Sultanate and in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and were not consulted directly. They are listed so that the chain of attribution can be followed.

• Zia al-Din Barani, Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi — the principal narrative authority for the reign. Lal cites both the Bibliotheca Indica text and Major Fuller's manuscript, and notes where they differ.
• Amir Khusraw Dihlavi, Khaza'in al-Futuh (in Habib's translation) and Khidr Khan–Dawalrani, called Deval Rani by Lal — the eyewitness accounts of the siege of Chittor and of the Mongol invasions.
• 'Isami, Futuh al-Salatin — the fullest account of the battle of Kili and of the dispositions on both sides.
• Tabaqat-i Akbari and Yahya, Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi — consulted by Lal for the names of the nobles in the boats at Manikpur and for Raja Karan's forces.
• Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni, Muntakhab al-Tawarikh, in Ranking's translation.
• Ferishtah, Tarikh-i Ferishtah — written some three centuries after the events; the source of the inflated figures at Kili, of the gradations of soldiers' pay, and of one of the later versions of the Padmini story.
• Haji-ud-Dabir, Zafar al-Vali — the source of the only statement of Alauddin's age, and of a further version of the Padmini story.
• Malik Muhammad Jaisi, Padmavat — the sixteenth-century epic in which the Padmini story originates, with the author's own allegorical key at its close.
• Shaikh Nasir al-Din Chiragh, Khair al-Majalis, and the Tarikh-i Daudi — cited by Lal on the comparison of prices across reigns.
• The Nalatward inscription, Muddebihal taluka, Bijapur district, dated 715 AH, published in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1927–28.
• Ibn Battuta — for the Multan inscription recording Tughluq's twenty-nine engagements with the Mongols, cited in the Encyclopaedia of Islam.

Academic and scholarly sources.

• K. S. Lal, History of the Khaljis, 1290–1320. Allahabad: The Indian Press, 1950 — the detailed narrative of the reign and the examination of its sources.
• Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999 — chiefly the chapter on the Chaghadayid invasions, and the regnal dates.
• 'Khaldjis', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 4 — the dynastic entry.
• 'Malik Kafur', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 6.
• 'Dihli', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2 — the dated sequence of the Rajasthan conquests.
• 'Radjasthan', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 12 (Supplement).
• 'Isti'rad', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 4, with the Glossary entry 'arid, vol. 13.
• Yusuf Halaçoğlu, 'Alâeddin Halacî', TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, 1989.
• Nelson Wright, The Sultans of Delhi: Their Coins and Metrology — on the weight and value of the tankah, cited in Lal's correction of Ferishtah.
• Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India; Ojha, Rajputana ka Itihas; Col. Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Crooke's edition; Nainsi, Khyats, 2 vols. in Hindi; Keene, History of Hindustan; Thomas, The Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi — all cited by Lal and used here only as he reports them. Initials and forenames are omitted where Lal's own citations and bibliography do not supply them, rather than being completed from elsewhere.

Further reading

Offered to the reader for further study. Nothing in this article rests on the works below.

• Zia al-Din Barani, Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi — for a reader who wishes to go to the chief contemporary authority itself, available at archive.org.
• The remaining chapters of Jackson's The Delhi Sultanate, which place this reign within the sultanate's whole history and treat the thirteenth-century background and the Tughluq reigns that followed.
• The Encyclopaedia of Islam entries on the Mongol rulers named in the invasions, for the view from the other side of the frontier.

External links

Approved sources only, each with its number on the Register of Approved External Web Sources.

• Alâeddin Halacî and Halacîler — the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, register entry 2: the entries on the sultan and on the dynasty
• History of the Khaljis, 1290–1320 — K. S. Lal, read in full at archive.org, register entry 12
• The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History — Peter Jackson, read at archive.org, register entry 12