The Tughlaq Dynasty

1. Who was Ghazi Malik?

The founder was Ghazi Malik. He was not born to power. He joined Khalji service as a minor attendant and rose through Mongol-frontier wars.

• He fought at Amroha in 1305, where the Khalji army beat a Mongol force.
• Alauddin made him governor of Multan and then Dipalpur. Both lay on the Mongol routes.
• Court writers say he beat the Mongols many times. Amir Khusrau counts 18 wins and Barani counts 20.

Tughluq was his personal name, not a family name. The dynasty took its name from it later.

2. How did the coup of 1320 happen?

Khusrau Khan murdered Mubarak Shah in July 1320 and took Delhi. Ghazi Malik refused to accept him. His son Fakhruddin Jauna slipped out of Delhi and joined him at Dipalpur.

Father and son then marched on Delhi. The war went in three steps:

• Ghazi Malik wrote to five nearby governors for help. Only some of them backed him.
• His army beat Khusrau Khan at the Battle of Saraswati and then at Lahrawat.
• Khusrau Khan fled, was caught and was killed a few days later.

Ghazi Malik was proclaimed Sultan on 6 September 1320. He took the title Ghiyasuddin Tughluq.

3. What did Ghiyasuddin do as Sultan?

Ghiyasuddin ruled from 1320 to 1325. He was harsh with the Mongols. He had killed envoys from the Ilkhan ruler and punished Mongol prisoners hard.

His main works were:

• He began Tughluqabad, a massive fortified capital just south-east of old Delhi.
• In 1323 his son Jauna besieged Warangal and ended the Kakatiya dynasty.
• In 1324 he went to Bengal, which was in civil war. He made West Bengal a vassal and annexed East Bengal.
• He also beat the Raja of Tirhut in north Bihar on the way back.

In 1323 he named Jauna as his heir. The nobles signed a written promise to back this.

4. Was the pavilion fall an accident or murder?

Ghiyasuddin died in February 1325 at Kara-Manikpur. A wooden pavilion built to welcome him collapsed. His second son Mahmud Khan died with him.

Chroniclers disagreed on the cause:

• Ibn Battuta claimed a plot by court men.
• Other accounts blame the son who then took the throne.
• Some writers call it an accident.

No source settles it. So treat it as an open question, not a proven murder.

5. Who was the scholar-Sultan?

Muhammad bin Tughluq took the throne in February 1325. His birth name was Fakhruddin Jauna Khan. He ruled until March 1351.

He was clever and well read. He knew Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Turkic and Hindavi. He also took an interest in medicine and philosophy.

Writers still judge him in two opposite ways. Some call him the “Wisest Fool”. Barani blames his hasty ideas, which were ahead of their time but poorly prepared.

6. Why was a second capital set up at Daulatabad?

In 1327 Muhammad ordered his capital moved from Delhi to Daulatabad, the old Devagiri. His reasons were practical:

• Daulatabad sat near the centre, so it could govern both north and south.
• It was safer from Mongol attack than open Delhi.

Many people were made to travel south. A shaded road, rest stops and a post service were set up. Even so, many died of hunger and exhaustion on the way.

In 1335 he moved the capital back to Delhi. Barani says Delhi was left empty. Historians think this is an exaggeration. Mostly the nobles and elite were moved.

One effect lasted. The Muslim elite settled in the Deccan. A Deccan sultanate rose from it later.

7. Why did the token currency fail?

Around 1330 Muhammad issued token coins of brass and copper. They were meant to have the same value as silver and gold coins. The idea is said to come from Chinese practice.

The plan failed for simple reasons:

• The coins had no mark that stopped copying.
• People made fake coins at home.
• Traders refused to take the new coins, and the value fell.

The coins were out of use by 1333. Ibn Battuta reached Delhi in 1334 and did not mention them.

8. Why did his armies go nowhere?

Muhammad raised a very large army in 1329 for a plan to take lands in Central Asia. Barani says soldiers were paid a year in advance. The army sat idle for a year. The Sultan then found he could not keep paying it and disbanded it.

The Qarachil campaign came in 1333. It aimed at the Himalayan foothills in modern Uttarakhand. Hill resistance and hard ground ruined the army, and heavy losses followed.

So both plans failed. Both also drained the treasury.

9. Who was Ibn Battuta, and what is the Rihla?

Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan traveller. He reached Delhi in 1334 and served the Sultan as a judge. His travel book, the Rihla, is a major eyewitness source for this reign.

He praised the Sultan’s generosity. He also criticised his harsh punishments.

The Rihla covers Muhammad bin Tughluq’s reign. It does not cover the later Mughal age.

10. How wide was the Sultanate at its peak?

The Tughlaq dynasty reached its widest extent through Muhammad’s campaigns between 1330 and 1335. It then ruled most of the subcontinent.

His campaigns took in Warangal, Madurai and areas up to the south of modern Karnataka. He set up new revenue officials in the conquered lands.

But reach was not strength. The wars were costly, and control over far provinces was thin.

11. Which regions broke away under one Sultan?

Revolts began in 1327 and continued through his reign. The map shrank after 1335:

• Madurai: a rebel founded the Madurai Sultanate around 1334-35.
• Bahmani Sultanate: founded in the Deccan in 1347 after the rebellion of the Deccan amirs.
• Vijayanagara: two brothers, Harihara and Bukka, built a new southern empire.
• Bengal: it stayed outside Delhi’s control from now on.

Muhammad died in March 1351 near Thatta in Sindh, while chasing rebels. He had ruled for twenty-six years.

12. Why did the Sultanate come apart?

Several problems fed each other. The costly wars drained the treasury. To make up the loss, taxes were raised on a shrinking realm.

Ibn Battuta says officials were often paid by grants of revenue, not from the treasury. Barani writes of a famine that lasted close to ten years.

So the failed experiments did not break the Sultanate alone. They weakened it just as revolts began.

13. How did a cousin take the throne?

Firuz Shah was Ghiyasuddin’s nephew and Muhammad’s cousin. He took the throne on 23 March 1351 on the banks of the Indus. He ruled for thirty-seven years.

Muhammad had left the army in disorder. Firuz first beat a Mongol raid and then moved to Delhi.

He did not try to win back the south. He accepted the Deccan’s independence. He did fight Bengal in 1353 and again in 1359. Bengal still did not fall.

14. Which canals and cities did Firuz build?

Firuz is remembered as a builder. He dug five major canals, including a rebuilt western Yamuna canal. The canals brought more land under grain and fruit. Some were still in use in the nineteenth century.

He founded or built several towns:

• Firozabad, near Delhi.
• Hisar, where he built a palace complex in 1354.
• Fatehabad and Firozpur.
• Jaunpur, according to the sources.

15. What welfare and monument work did Firuz do?

Firuz set up a charity department, the Diwan-i-Khairat. It gave money for the marriage of poor girls. He also opened hospitals for free treatment.

He stopped harsh punishments such as cutting off hands. He wrote in his memoir that he banned many forms of torture. He lowered the land taxes that Muhammad had raised.

He also looked after old monuments:

• He moved two Ashokan pillars, from Meerut and Topra, to Delhi.
• One was re-erected at Firuz Shah Kotla.
• In 1368 lightning knocked off the top of the Qutb Minar. He rebuilt the top storeys.

16. What did the calm cost?

Firuz bought peace, and some of it was expensive:

• Sons could take over their fathers’ posts and land grants. Merit counted for less.
• His reign has been called a great age of corruption.
• He also tried to follow Islamic law more closely and persecuted sects that theologians called heretical.

His religious policy is debated. Some sources show strict acts against Hindus. Others show him paying for temple repairs and translating Sanskrit works.

Historians weigh his charity record against his strictness. Do not treat either side as settled.

17. How could two Sultans rule at once?

Firuz’s favourite grandson died in 1376. Civil war began in 1384, as nobles and princes fought over the succession. Firuz died in September 1388.

After him came a run of weak rulers. By late 1394 there were two rival Sultans:

• One ruled from Delhi.
• The other ruled from Firozabad, a few kilometres away.

Battles were frequent, and nobles kept changing sides. The civil war lasted until Timur came in 1398.

18. Why did the governors walk away?

Provincial governors saw the weakness and left. Dates in the sources differ a little:

• Gujarat: the governor declared independence in 1394.
• Jaunpur: the governor took charge there in 1394 and became independent soon after.
• Malwa: the governor stopped paying tribute after 1392 and took royal signs in 1401.

Delhi’s authority now barely reached beyond the capital’s neighbourhood.

19. What happened in Timur's sack of Delhi?

Timur crossed the Indus in September 1398. He met the Delhi army outside the city on 17 December 1398. Sultan Mahmud Shah Tughluq fled.

Delhi was then plundered for several days. Many people were killed, and wealth was carried off. It was one of the richest cities of its time.

Historians see this as the real death blow to Tughlaq power. A Tughlaq ruler stayed on the throne for a while, but in name only.

20. How did Khizr Khan end the line?

Timur is believed to have left Khizr Khan as his deputy. Khizr Khan had been governor of Multan. At first he held only Multan, Dipalpur and parts of Sindh.

He then moved on Delhi. He entered the city in 1414 and founded the Sayyid dynasty.

He did not take a royal title. He called himself Rayat-i-Ala, and coins still carried Tughlaq names.

21. How do exams test this?

Exams like to test the sources for the reign. NDA and NA (II) 2017 asked which travelogue throws light on Muhammad bin Tughluq’s reign. The answer is Ibn Battuta’s Rihla. The trap options all describe the later Mughal age. CDS I 2026 asked who wrote the Rihla. The answer is again Ibn Battuta.

22. Which traps should you avoid?

• Founder: Ghiyasuddin Tughluq founded the dynasty in 1320. Muhammad was his son.
• Death: Ghiyasuddin’s death in 1325 is disputed, not proven murder.
• Capital: Daulatabad was the old Devagiri. The move was in 1327.
• Token currency: the coins were brass and copper. They failed because they could be forged.
• Bahmani: it rose in 1347, in Muhammad’s own reign.
• Timur: 1398 is the sack of Delhi. It is not the end date of the dynasty. Khizr Khan took Delhi in 1414.