Rise to power ) and the "
King of Colombo" ruler of the city of
Kollam (bottom, flag: , identified as Christian due to the early
Saint Thomas Christianity there, and the Catholic mission under
Jordan Catala since 1329), in the contemporary
Catalan Atlas of 1375. The captions are informative, and several of the location names are accurate. The
Khalji dynasty ruled the Delhi Sultanate before 1320. After Alauddin Khalji's death from illness in 1316, a series of palace arrests and assassinations followed, with Khusro Khan coming to power in June 1320, after killing the licentious son of Alauddin Khalji, Mubarak Khalji, initiating a massacre of all members of the Khalji family and reverting from Islam. However, he lacked the support of the Muslim nobles and aristocrats of the Delhi Sultanate. Delhi's aristocracy invited Ghazi Malik, then the governor in Punjab under the Khaljis, to lead a
coup in Delhi and remove Khusro Khan. In 1320, Ghazi Malik launched an attack and killed Khusro Khan to assume power.
Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq After assuming power, Ghazi Malik renamed himself
Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq – thus starting and naming the Tughlaq dynasty. He rewarded all those
maliks,
amirs and officials of Khalji dynasty who had rendered him a service and helped him come to power. He punished those who had rendered service to Khusro Khan, his predecessor. He lowered the tax rate on Muslims that was prevalent during Khalji dynasty, but raised the taxes on Hindus, wrote his court historian
Ziauddin Barani, so that they might not be blinded by wealth or afford to become rebellious. , a city near Delhi with a fort, to protect the Delhi Sultanate from Mongol attacks. Four months later, Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq sent large army reinforcements for his son asking him to attempt plundering Arangal and Tilang again. This time Jauna Khan succeeded. Arangal fell, was renamed to Sultanpur, and all plundered wealth, state treasury and captives were transferred from the captured kingdom to Delhi Sultanate. leading his troops in the capture of the city of
Tirhut, from the
Basātin al-uns by
Ikhtisān-i Dabir, a member of the Tughluq court. Ca.1410
Jalayirid copy of 1326 Tughlaq dynasty lost original. Istanbul, Topkapi Palace Museum Library, Ms. R.1032. The Muslim aristocracy in
Lakhnauti (Bengal) invited Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq to extend his coup and expand eastwards into Bengal by attacking
Shamsuddin Firoz Shah, which he did over 1324–1325, Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, along with Mahmud Khan, died inside the collapsed
kushk in 1325, while his eldest son watched. One official historian of the Tughlaq court gives an alternate fleeting account of his death, as caused by a lightning bolt strike on the
kushk. Another official historian, Al-Badāʾunī ʻAbd al-Kadir ibn Mulūk-Shāh, makes no mention of lightning bolt or weather, but explains the cause of structural collapse to be the running of elephants; Al-Badaoni includes a note of the rumour that the accident was pre-planned. and Vincent Smith, Ghiyasuddin was killed by his eldest son Jauna Khan in 1325. Jauna Khan ascended to power as
Muhammad bin Tughlaq, and ruled for 26 years.
Muhammad bin Tughluq During Muhammad bin Tughluq's rule, the Delhi Sultanate temporarily expanded to most of the Indian subcontinent, its peak in terms of geographical reach. He attacked and plundered Malwa, Gujarat, Mahratta, Tilang, Kampila, Dhur-samundar, Mabar, Lakhnauti, Chittagong, Sunarganw and Tirhut. His distant campaigns were expensive, although each raid and attack on non-Muslim kingdoms brought new looted wealth and ransom payments from captured people. The extended empire was difficult to retain, and rebellions all over Indian subcontinent became routine. Along with land taxes,
dhimmis (non-Muslims) were required to pay crop taxes by giving up half or more of their harvested crop. These sharply higher crop and land tax led entire villages of Hindu farmers to quit farming and escape into jungles; they refused to grow anything or work at all. Historical documents note that Muhammad bin Tughluq was cruel and severe not only with non-Muslims, but also with certain sects of
Musalmans. He routinely executed
Sayyids (Shia),
Sufis,
Qalandars, and other Muslim officials. His court historian Ziauddin Barni noted, Muhammad bin Tughlaq chose the city of Deogiri in present-day Indian state of
Maharashtra (renaming it to
Daulatabad), as the second administrative capital of the Dehli Sultanate. He ordered a forced migration of the Muslim population of Dehli, including his royal family, the nobles, Syeds, Sheikhs and 'Ulema to settle in Daulatabad. The purpose of transferring the entire Muslim elite to Daulatabad was to enroll them in his mission of world conquest. He saw their role as propagandists who would adapt Islamic religious symbolism to the rhetoric of empire, and that the Sufis could by persuasion bring many of the inhabitants of the Deccan to become Muslim. Tughluq cruelly punished the nobles who were unwilling to move to Daulatabad, seeing their non-compliance of his order as equivalent to rebellion. According to Ferishta, when the Mongols arrived in Punjab, the Sultan returned the elite back to Delhi, although Daulatabad remained as an administrative centre. One result of the transfer of the elite to Daulatabad was the nobility's hatred of the Sultan, which remained in their minds for a long time. The other result was that he managed to create a stable Muslim elite and result in the growth of the Muslim population of Daulatabad who did not return to Dehli. Revolts against Muhammad bin Tughlaq began in 1327, continued over his reign, and over time the geographical reach of the Sultanate shrunk particularly after 1335. The Indian Muslim soldier Jalaluddin Ahsan Khan, a native of
Kaithal in North India, founded the
Madurai Sultanate in South India. The
Vijayanagara Empire originated in southern India as a direct response to attacks from the Delhi Sultanate. The
Vijayanagara Empire liberated southern India from the Delhi Sultanate. In 1336 Kapaya Nayak of the
Musunuri Nayak defeated the Tughlaq army and reconquered
Warangal from the Delhi Sultanate. In 1338 his own nephew rebelled in Malwa, whom he attacked, caught and flayed alive. By 1347, the
Deccan had
revolted under Ismail Mukh, an
Afghan. Despite this, he was elderly and had no interest in ruling, and as a result, he stepped down in favour of
Zafar Khan, another Afghan, who was the founder of the
Bahmanid Sultanate. As a result, the Deccan had become an independent and competing Muslim kingdom Muhammad bin Tughlaq was an intellectual, with extensive knowledge of Quran,
Fiqh, poetry and other fields. The economic experiments of Muhammad bin Tughlaq resulted in a collapsed economy, and nearly a decade long famine followed that killed numerous people in the countryside. Tughlaq introduced token coinage of brass and copper to augment the silver coinage which only led to increasing ease of forgery and loss to the treasury. Also, the people were not willing to trade their gold and silver for the new brass and copper coins. Consequently, the sultan had to withdraw the lot, "buying back both the real and the counterfeit at great expense until mountains of coins had accumulated within the walls of Tughluqabad." Muhammad bin Tughlaq planned an attack on
Khurasan and Irak (Babylon and Persia) as well as China to bring these regions under Sunni Islam. The high mountain weather and lack of retreat destroyed that army in the Himalayas. The few soldiers who returned with bad news were executed under orders of the Sultan. During his reign, state revenues collapsed from his policies. To cover state expenses, Muhammad bin Tughlaq sharply raised taxes on his ever-shrinking empire. Except in times of war, he did not pay his staff from his treasury. Ibn Battuta noted in his memoir that Muhammad bin Tughlaq paid his army, judges (
qadi), court advisors, wazirs, governors, district officials and others in his service by awarding them the right to force collect taxes on Hindu villages, keep a portion and transfer rest to his treasury. suggest insanity. At the time of Muhammad bin Tughlaq's death, the geographic control of Delhi Sultanate had shrunk to the north of the
Narmada river. The court historian Ziauddin Barni, who served both Muhammad Tughlaq and the first six years of
Firoz Shah Tughlaq, noted that all those who were in service of Muhammad were dismissed and executed by Firoz Shah. In his second book, Barni states that Firuz Shah was the mildest sovereign since the rule of Islam came to Delhi. Muslim soldiers enjoyed the taxes they collected from Hindu villages they had rights over, without having to constantly go to war as in previous regimes. Firoz Shah Tughlaq tried to regain the old kingdom boundary by waging a war with Bengal for 11 months in 1359. However, Bengal did not fall, and remained outside of Delhi Sultanate. Firuz Shah Tughlaq was somewhat weak militarily, mainly because of inept leadership in the army. An educated sultan, Firoz Shah left a memoir. In it he wrote that he banned torture in practice in Delhi Sultanate by his predecessors, tortures such as amputations, tearing out of eyes, sawing people alive, crushing people's bones as punishment, pouring molten lead into throats, putting people on fire, driving nails into hands and feet, among others. The Sunni Sultan also wrote that he did not tolerate attempts by Rafawiz Shia Muslim and Mahdi sects from proselytising people into their faith, nor did he tolerate Hindus who tried to rebuild their temples after his armies had destroyed those temples. As punishment, wrote the Sultan, he put many Shias, Mahdi and Hindus to death (
siyasat). Shams-i Siraj 'Afif, his court historian, also recorded Firoz Shah Tughlaq burning a Hindu Brahmin alive for converting Muslim women. In his memoirs, Firoz Shah Tughlaq lists his accomplishments to include converting Hindus to Sunni Islam by announcing an exemption from taxes and
jizya for those who convert, and by lavishing new converts with presents and honours. Simultaneously, he raised taxes and jizya, assessing it at three levels, and stopping the practice of his predecessors who had historically exempted all Hindu
Brahmins from
jizya tax. He also vastly expanded the number of slaves in his service and those of amirs (Muslim nobles). Firoz Shah Tughlaq reign was marked by reduction in extreme forms of torture, eliminating favours to select parts of society, but an increased intolerance and persecution of targeted groups. When Firuz Shah came to power, India was suffering from a collapsed economy, abandoned villages and towns, and frequent famines. He undertook many infrastructure projects including an irrigation canal connecting Yamuna-Ghaggar and Yamuna-Sutlej rivers, bridges,
madrasas (religious schools),
mosques and other Islamic buildings. The Islamic historians Sirhindi and Bihamadkhani provide the detailed account of this period. These civil wars were primarily between different factions of Sunni Islam aristocracy, each seeking sovereignty and land to tax dhimmis and extract income from resident peasants. Firuz Shah Tughluq's favourite grandson died in 1376. Thereafter, Firuz Shah sought and followed Sharia more than ever, with the help of his
wazirs. He himself fell ill in 1384. By then, Muslim nobility who had installed Firuz Shah Tughluq to power in 1351 had died out, and their descendants had inherited the wealth and rights to extract taxes from non-Muslim peasants. Khan Jahan II, a wazir in Delhi, was the son of Firuz Shah Tughluq's favourite wazir Khan Jahan I, and rose in power after his father died in 1368. The young wazir was in open rivalry with Muhammad Shah, the son of Firuz Shah Tughluq. The wazir's power grew as he appointed more amirs and granted favours. He persuaded the Sultan to name his great-grandson as his heir. Then Khan Jahan II tried to convince Firuz Shah Tughlaq to dismiss his only surviving son. Instead of dismissing his son, the Sultan dismissed the wazir. The crisis that followed led to first civil war, arrest and execution of the wazir, followed by a rebellion and civil war in and around Delhi. Muhammad Shah too was expelled in 1387. The Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq died in 1388. Tughluq Khan assumed power, but died in conflict. In 1389, Abu Bakr Shah assumed power, but he too died within a year. The civil war continued under Sultan Muhammad Shah, and by 1390, it had led to the seizure and execution of all Muslim nobility who were aligned, or suspected to be aligned to Khan Jahan II. However, by then, most of India had transitioned to a patchwork of smaller Muslim Sultanates and
Hindu kingdoms. In 1394, Hindus in Lahore region and northwest South Asia (now Pakistan) had re-asserted self-rule. Muhammad Shah amassed an army to attack them, with his son Humayun Khan as the commander-in-chief. While preparations were in progress in Delhi in January 1394, Sultan Muhammad Shah died. His son, Humayun Khan assumed power but was murdered within two months. The brother of Humayun Khan, Nasir-al-din Mahmud Shah assumed power – but he enjoyed little support from Muslim nobility, the wazirs and amirs. invader, Timur (
Tamerlane) defeated four armies of the Sultanate. During the invasion, Sultan Mahmud Khan fled before Tamerlane as he entered Delhi. For eight days Delhi was plundered, its population massacred, and over 100,000 prisoners were killed as well. The capture of the Delhi Sultanate was one of Timur's greatest victories, as at that time, Delhi was one of the richest cities in the world. After Delhi fell to Timur's army, uprisings by its citizens against the Turkic-Mongols began to occur, causing a retaliatory bloody massacre within the city walls. After three days of citizens uprising within Delhi, it was said that the city reeked of the decomposing bodies of its citizens with their heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds by Timur's soldiers. Timur's invasion and destruction of Delhi continued the chaos that was still consuming India, and the city would not be able to recover from the great loss it suffered for almost a century. It is believed that before his departure, Timur appointed
Khizr Khan, the future founder of the succeeding
Sayyid dynasty, as his viceroy at Delhi. Initially, Khizr Khan could only establish his control over Multan,
Dipalpur and parts of
Sindh. Soon he started his campaign against the Tughlaq dynasty, and entered
Delhi victoriously on 6 June 1414. ==Ibn Battuta's memoir on Tughlaq dynasty==