A Political, Social and Cultural History of Delhi Sultanate : New Horizo

Contents: Preface. Abbreviations. 1. Rise of Islam--an introduction. 2. Medieval India--a survey. 3. Ghazni and Ghori. 4. Establishment of Delhi Sultanate (1206-1236). 5. Advent of Islam as a social factor. 6. Strengthening of Central Monarchy (1236-1296) A.D. 7. Mongol threat (during thirteenth-fourteenth centuries). 8. The imperial thurst. 9. The military, the economy and administrative reform. 10. Tughluq dynasty. 11. Twilight of the Sultanate. 12. Decline and disintegration. 13. Pre-Mughal Architecture. 14. Education under Sultanate Rulers. 15. Economic and social life under Delhi Sultanate. 16. Administration of Sultanate. Bibliography. Index. "The Muslim Rule in India has been conveniently divided into two periods the Sultanate of Delhi (1206 to 1526) and the Mughal Empire (1526-1707). It continued upto 1857, though in the later stage only nominally. When the Sultanate was established, it carried with it the experience gained by the Arab Rule in Sindh and Ghaznavid Rule in Punjab of about two centuries. Meanwhile a well developed state craft had sprang up in Muslim countries during the seventh to the twelfth centuries. This was mainly due to the universality of Islamic Law. The Ghazni and Delhi Sultanates cannot be isolated from the rest of Muslim state particularly in the functioning of their institutions. There were parallel and sometimes identical institutions under the kingdoms of Ghazni and Delhi. The Sultanate of Delhi may not have possessed uninterrupted political continuity, its boundaries also constantly changed. As political entity, however, the Sultanate received sustenance from the evolution of institutions abroad and a home. The present work entitled "A Political, Social and Cultural History of Delhi Sultanate" is designed to throw the light on Political History of Delhi Sultanate i.e. since 1206 AD, apart from its social, cultural, Islamic aspects of the Sultanate based on the Muslim Power in the Indian Sub-Continent. The era from the sack of Delhi by the Central Asian Conqueror Temur in Tamerlane in 1398 down to down to Mughal Conquest in 1526 during which Sultanate was merely one of several competing Muslim Kingdom in the Northern Indian. The source materials for the Delhi Sultanate largely narrative informs and written in Persian, with the addition of descriptions of India by internal observers who wrote in Arabic-are markedly less satisfactory than, for instance either these available for the Mughal Empire that followed it those composed in contemporary Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria.