Delhi Sultanate

"It is in the nature of governments to degenerate; for power, as Shelley said, poisons every hand that touches it. The excesses of the Delhi Sultans lost them the support not only of the Hindu population, but of their Moslem followers. When fresh invasions came from the north these Sultans were defeated with the same ease with which they themselves had won India."

"Particularly the Delhi Sultanate was hardly a functioning empire but rather an uneasy foreign occupation, with the occupiers settled in citadels and the countryside prey to unending and uncontrollable unrest."

"THE FIRST THREE centuries of Turkish rule in India exhibit a “similarity to the course of human life with its three stages of birth and adolescence, vigorous youth, and crabbed old age. During the first century the Empire established by men like Muhammad Ghori and Qutbuddin Aibak was nourished and nurtured by men like Iltutmish and Balban (1200-1290). In its period of youth (£290-1380) it was consolidated and strengthened by rulers like Alauddin Khalji, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firéz. Then came old age. It had just set in when Timir’s invasion (1398) struck it like palsy; thereafter for half a century the Sultanate began to live as if on crutches. It showed some signs of recovery under the Lodis (1451-1526); but that was like the last flicker of the dying lamp. Babur’s guns at Panipat sounded its death-knell."

"Islamic law was far from monolithic, with different schools providing competing accounts. Nevertheless, it was agreed that non-Muslims living under non-Muslim rule could readily be enslaved by Muslims, and their status was heritable, although owners could free as well as bequeath, sell and give slaves. However, although, even among orthodox Muslims, the notion that slaves were properly secured by conquest alone was very far from being observed, non-Muslims living under Muslim rule were protected from enslavement, Christians and Jews being regarded as Peoples of the Book, and thus related to Muslims, and enjoying religious freedom on payment of a poll tax. Thus, for the purposes of ensuring slave labour, Muslim societies were not able to draw on the bulk of the population under their control and had to rely on the slave trade. In India, Islamic rulers, such as the sultans of the Delhi sultanate (1206–1526), used enslavement as a form both of extracting revenues and of punishment, not least for not paying taxes. Fiscal factors were to the fore and territorial expansion was in part financed by the sale of slaves."