Balban’s immediate successors, however, were unable to manage either the administration or the factional conflicts between the old nobility of the Slave dynasty and the new forces, led by the Khaljīs; after a struggle between the two factions, Jalāl al-Dīn Fīrūz Khaljī assumed the sultanate in 1290. During his short reign (1290–96), Jalāl al-Dīn suppressed a revolt by some of Balban’s officers, led an unsuccessful expedition against Ranthambhor, and defeated a substantial Mongol force on the banks of the Sind River in central India. In 1296 he was assassinated by his ambitious nephew and successor, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī (reigned 1296–1316).

The Khaljī dynasty was not recognized by the older nobility as coming from pure Turkic stock, and their rise to power was aided by impatient outsiders, some of them Indian-born Muslims, who might expect to enhance their positions if the hold of the followers of Balban and the Forty were broken. To some extent then, the Khaljī usurpation was a move toward the recognition of a shifting balance of power, attributable both to the developments outside the territory of the Delhi sultanate, in Central Asia and Iran, and to the changes that followed the establishment of Turkic dynasties in northern India.

In large measure, the dislocation in the regions beyond the northwest assured the establishment of an independent Delhi sultanate and its subsequent consolidation. The eastern steppe tribes’ movements to the west not only ended the threat to Delhi from the rival Turks in Ghazna and Ghūr but also forced a number of the Central Asian Muslims to migrate to northern India, a land that came to be known as Hindustan. Almost all the high nobles, including the famous Forty in the 13th century, were of Central Asian origin; many of them were slaves purchased from the Central Asian bazaars. The same phenomenon also led to the destabilization of the core of the Turkish mamlūks. With the Mongol plunder of Central Asia and eastern Iran, many more members of the political and religious elite of these regions were thrown into north India, where they were admitted into various levels of the military and administrative cadre by the early Delhi sultans.

Centralization and expansion

During the reign of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī, the sultanate briefly assumed the status of an empire. In order to achieve his goals of centralization and expansion, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn needed money, a loyal and reasonably subservient nobility, and an efficient army under his personal control. He had earlier, in 1292, partly solved the problem of money when he conducted a lucrative raid into Bhilsa in central India. Using that success to build his position and a fresh army, he led a brilliant and unauthorized raid on the fabulously wealthy Devagiri (present-day Daulatabad), the capital of the Yadavas, in the Deccan early in 1296. The wealth of Devagiri not only financed his usurpation but provided a good foundation for his state-building plans. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn already had the support of many of the disaffected Turkish nobles, and now he was able to purchase the support of more with both money and promotion.

Taxation and distribution of revenue resources

Centralization and heavy agrarian taxation were the principal features of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn’s rule. The sultan and his nobles depended in the 13th century largely on tribute extorted from the subjugated local potentates and on plunder from the unpacified areas. The sultanate thus had no stable economic base; the nobles were often in debt for large sums of money to the moneylenders of Delhi. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī altered the situation radically, implementing the principles of the iqṭāʿ (revenue district) and the kharāj (land tax) in their classic sense. The iqṭāʿ, formerly loosely used to mean a transferable revenue assignment to a noble, now combined the two functions of collection and distribution of the sultan’s claim to the bulk of the surplus agrarian product in the form of kharāj.

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn imposed a land tax set at half the produce (in weight or value) on each individual peasant’s holding, regardless of size. It was to be supplemented by a house and cattle tax. The revenue resources so created, divided into iqṭāʿs, or different territorial units, were distributed among the nobles. But the nobles had no absolute control of their iqṭāʿs. They had to submit accounts of their income and expenditure and send the balances to the sultan’s treasury. The sultan had prepared an estimate of the produce of each locality by measuring the land. A set of officers in each iqṭāʿ, separate from the assignee, ensured the sultan’s control over it. The khāliṣah, the territory whose revenues accrued directly to the sultan’s own treasury, was expanded significantly, enabling the sultan to pay a much larger number of his soldiers and cavalry troops in cash. Through these measures the sultan struck hard at all the others—his officials and the local rural potentates—who shared economic and political power with him.

The magnitude and mechanism of agrarian taxation enabled the sultan to achieve two important objectives: (1) to ensure supplies at low prices to grain carriers and (2) to fill the state granaries with a buffer stock, which, linked with his famous price regulations, came as a solution to the critical financial problem of maintaining a large standing army. Following their occupation of Afghanistan, the Chagatai Mongols began to penetrate well beyond the Punjab, necessitating a comprehensive defense program for the sultanate, including the capital, Delhi, which underwent a two-month siege in 1303. Besides fortifying the capital and supplying the frontier towns and forts with able commanders, marshaling a large army was the task of the hour. Further, the vast expenditure was to be financed by means of the existing resources of the state. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn planned to compensate for the low cash payments to his soldiers by a policy of market control. The policy enhanced the purchasing power of the soldiers and enabled them to live in tolerable comfort.

Expansion and conquests

The result of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn’s reforms and his energetic rule was that the sultanate expanded rapidly and was subject to a more unified and efficient direction than during any other period. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn began his expansionist activities with the subjugation of Gujarat in 1299. Next he moved against Rajasthan and then captured Ranthambhor (1301), Chitor (1303), and Mandu (1305), later adding Siwan (1308) and Jalor (1312). The campaigns in Rajasthan opened the road for further raids into south India.

These raids were intended to result not in occupation of the land but rather in the formal recognition by Hindu kings of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn’s supremacy and in the collection of huge amounts of tribute and booty, which were used to finance his centralizing activities in the north. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn’s lieutenant Malik Kāfūr again subdued the Yadava kingdom of Devagiri in 1307 and two years later added the Kakatiya kingdom of Telingana. In 1310–11 Malik Kāfūr plundered the Pandya kingdom in the far south, and in 1313 Devagiri was again defeated and finally annexed to the sultanate.

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn also managed to fend off a series of Mongol attacks—at least five during the decade 1297–1306. After 1306 the invasions subsided, probably as much because of an intensification of internal Mongal rivalries as of the lack of their success in India.

Ambition, a talent for ruling, and the gold of southern India carried ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn a long way, but it is also significant that he was one of the first rulers to deliberately expand political participation within the sultanate government. Not only did he partly open the gates to power for the non-Turkish Muslim nobility—some of whom were even converted Hindus—but he also at least made gestures toward the inclusion of Hindus within the political world he viewed as legitimate. Both ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn and his son married into the families of important Hindu rulers, and several such rulers were received at court and treated with respect.

The urban economy

The expansion and centralization of the Khaljī sultanate paralleled economic and technological developments of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Delhi in the 13th century became one of the largest cities in the whole of the Islamic world, and Multan, Lahore, Anhilwara, Kar, Cambay (Khambhat), and Lakhnauti emerged as major urban centers. The repeated Mongol invasions certainly affected the fortunes of some northwestern cities, but on the whole the period was marked by a flourishing urban economy and corresponding expansion in craft production and commerce. Advancements in the textile industry included the introduction of the wooden cotton gin and the spinning wheel and, reportedly, of the treadle loom and sericulture (the raising of silkworms). In construction technology, cementing lime and vaulted roofing radically changed the face of the city. The production of paper gave rise to increased record keeping in government offices and to widespread use of bills of exchange (hundis).

An expanding trade in textiles and horses provided constant nourishment to the economies of these towns. Bengal and Gujarat were the production centers for both coarse cloths and fine fabrics. Since cavalry came to be the mainstay of the political and military system of the Delhi sultans, horses were imported in large numbers beginning in the early years of the 13th century. Earlier in the 12th century the Hindu kings also kept large standing armies that included cavalry. The Turks, however, had far superior horsemen. Iron stirrups and heavy armour, for both horses and horsemen, came into common use during the period, with significant impact on warfare and military organization. The Battles of Taraori, between Prithviraja III Cauhan and Muḥammad of Ghūr, were mainly engagements of cavalrymen armed with bows and spears; superior Ghūrid tactics were decisive.

The Multanis and Khorāsānīs, in the main, controlled the long-distance overland trade. Trade between the coastal ports and northern India was in the hands of Marwaris and Gujaratis, many of whom were Jains. A measure of commercial expansion was the emergence and increasing role of the dallals, or brokers, who acted as middlemen in transactions for which expert knowledge was required, such as the sale of horses, slaves, and cattle. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī extended a large loan to the Multanis for bringing goods from afar into Delhi. By the mid-13th century a stable equation between gold and silver was attained, resulting in a coinage impressive in both quality and volume. Northern Indian merchants now benefited from the unification of the Central Asian steppes, which from 1250 until about 1350 (following an initially quite destructive Mongol impact) opened up a new and secure trade route from India to China and the Black Sea. Further, there arose a chain of sea emporia all along the Indian Ocean coast. It was, however, plunder and tribute from Gujarat, the Deccan, eastern and central India, and Rajasthan—combined with regular taxation in the Indo-Gangetic Plain—that sustained the economy and the centralizing regime of Delhi.