In the twelfth century a new line of Turkish rulers arose in Afghanistan, led by Muhammad of Ghur (d. 1206). Muhammad captured Delhi and extended his control nearly throughout north India. When he fell to an assassin in 1206, one of his generals, the former slave Qutb-ud-din, seized the reins of power and established a government at Delhi, separate from the government in Afghanistan. This sultanate of Delhi lasted for three centuries, even though dynasties changed several times.

The North African Muslim world traveler Ibn Battuta (see “Individuals in Society: Ibn Battuta”) served for several years as a judge at the court of one of the Delhi sultans. He praised the sultan for his insistence on the observance of ritual prayers and many acts of generosity to those in need, but he also considered the sultan overly violent. Here is just one of many examples he offered of how quick the sultan was to execute:

During the years of the famine, the Sultan had given orders to dig wells outside the capital, and have grain crops sown in those parts. He provided the cultivators with the seed, as well as with all that was necessary for cultivation in the way of money and supplies, and required them to cultivate these crops for the [royal] grain-store. When the jurist ’Afif al-Din heard of this, he said, “This crop will not produce what is hoped for.” Some informer told the Sultan what he had said, so the Sultan jailed him, and said to him, “What reason have you to meddle with the government’s business?” Some time later he released him, and as ’Afif al-Din went to his house he was met on the way by two friends of his, also jurists, who said to him, “Praise be to God for your release,” to which our jurist replied, “Praise be to God who has delivered us from the evildoers.” They then separated, but they had not reached their houses before this was reported to the Sultan, and he commanded all three to be fetched and brought before him. “Take out this fellow,” he said, referring to ’Afif al-Din, “and cut off his head baldrickwise,” that is, the head is cut off along with an arm and part of the chest, “and behead the other two.” They said to him, “He deserves punishment, to be sure, for what he said, but in our case for what crime are you killing us?” He replied, “You heard what he said and did not disavow it, so you as good as agreed with it.” So they were all put to death, God Most High have mercy on them.7

A major accomplishment of the Delhi sultanate was holding off the Mongols. Chinggis Khan and his troops entered the Indus Valley in 1221 in pursuit of the shah of Khurasan. The sultan wisely kept out of the way, and when Chinggis Khan left some troops in the area, the sultan made no attempt to challenge them. Two generations later, in 1299, a Mongol khan launched a campaign into India with two hundred thousand men, but the sultan of the time was able to defeat them. Two years later the Mongols returned and camped at Delhi for two months, but they eventually left without taking the sultan’s fort. Another Mongol raid in 1306–1307 also was successfully repulsed.

Although the Turks by this time were highly cosmopolitan and no longer nomadic, they had retained their martial skills and understanding of steppe warfare. They were expert horsemen, and horses thrived in northwest India. The south and east of India, however, like the south of China, were less hospitable to raising horses. In India’s case, though, the climate of the south and east was well suited to elephants, which had been used as weapons of war in India since early times. Rulers in the northwest imported elephants from more tropical regions. The Delhi sultanate is said to have had as many as one thousand war elephants at its height.

During the fourteenth century, however, the Delhi sultanate was in decline and proved unable to ward off the armies of Timur (see “The Mongols as Rulers”), who took Delhi in 1398. Timur’s chronicler reported that when the troops drew up for battle outside Delhi, the sultanate had 10,000 horsemen, 20,000 foot soldiers, and 120 war elephants. Though alarmed at the sight of the elephants, Timur’s men dug trenches to trap them and shot at their drivers. The sultan fled, leaving the city to surrender. Timur took as booty all the elephants, loading them with treasures seized from the city. Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, an ambassador from the king of Castile (now part of Spain), who arrived in Samarkand in 1403, was greatly impressed by these well-trained elephants. “When all the elephants together charged abreast, it seemed as though the solid earth itself shook at their onrush,” he observed, noting that he thought each elephant was worth a thousand foot soldiers in battle.8

Timur’s invasion left a weakened sultanate. The Delhi sultanate endured under different rulers until 1526, when it was conquered by the Mughals, a Muslim dynasty that would rule over most of northern India from the sixteenth into the nineteenth century.