1206 - 1526 CE

Public Administrative during the Delhi Sultanate

The Muslim invasions into India led to the establishment of Delhi Sultanate which existed from 1206 to 1526. The Slave or Mamluk (1206–1290), Khalji (1290–1320), Tughlaq (1320–1414), Sayyid (1414–1451) and Lodhi (1451–1526) ruled under the Delhi sultanate. Their rule extended from North to South India. The establishment and expansion of the Delhi sultanate led to the evolution of a powerful administrative system. At its zenith, the authority of Delhi Sultan had extended as far south as Madurai.^[1] Even after the disintegration of Delhi sultanate, their administrative system made a powerful impact on the Mughal system of administration.

Preceding Linkages

In the early period, the sultans of the Delhi Sultante utilized whatever pre-Ghurian administrative machinery was available in India. They did not alter traditional administrative structure under the local chiefs, Rais and Ranas who acknowledged the Sultan at Delhi and sent them tributes. But, in due course, as Delhi Sultanate expanded, we see new structures and institutions of administration evolving with it. The existing administrative system of pre-Ghurian India was also influential in shaping this new system. As far as the local administration is concerned, village headmen were responsible for that. The territorial growth of the Sultanate also demanded that administrative institutions developed at central, provincial and local levels.

Following Muhammad of Ghur's death in 1206, Qutbuddin Aibak declared himself independent. Later, his son-in-law Iltutmish made Delhi his capital of the independent Delhi Sultanate. The administrative structures of Abbasids, Ghaznavid, Seljuks and Mongols were instrumental in developing the administration of the Delhi Sultanate. Some of the ideas and institutions elemental to the centralized power and authority of a kind developed by the Turks were absent in India before the advent of Islam.^[2] Thus the political elite of the Delhi Sultanate comprised overwhelmingly immigrants from Persia and Central Asia such as Ghuris, Turks, Persians, Khalaj and Afghans.^[3] Muslim dynasties over the time created a centralised administrative structure in the Persian tradition in order to mobilise all their resources for the armed struggles.

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