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The Mamlūk institution in early Muslim India*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Peter Jackson
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When Muslim forces under the Ghurid sultan, Mu'izz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām, made their first major breakthrough into Hindūstān in the 1190s, they brought with them two institutions that had long since taken root in the Islamic world. One was the iqṭā' or assignment of land or its revenue, in some cases in return for military service (sometimes misrepresented as “fief” on the Western European model). The other was the mamlūk, or military slave. Mamlūk status, it should be stressed, bore none of the degrading connotations associated with other types of slavery: mamlūks – generally Turks from the Eurasian steppelands – were highly prized by their masters, receiving both instruction in the Islamic faith and a rigorous training in the martial arts, and were not employed in any menial capacity. The mamlūk institution, whose origins go back to the first century of Islam, came into vogue from the first half of the third/ninth century, as the ‘Abbasid Caliphs built up a corps of Turkish mamlūk guards and their example was followed, with the disintegration of their empire, by the various autonomous dynasties that sprang up in the provinces. Turkish slave officers themselves went on to found dynasties, as in the case of the Tulunids and the Ikhshidids in Egypt and the Ghaznawids in the eastern Iranian world. The institution surely entered upon its heyday in the seventh/thirteenth century, with the military coup of 648/1250 in Cairo: a group of mamlūk officers overthrew the last Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and inaugurated a regime in which slave status was the essential qualification for high military and administrative office.

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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 122 , Issue 2 , April 1990 , pp. 340 - 358
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Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1990

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References

1 See Cahen, Cl., “L'évolution de l'iqṭa' du ixe au xiiie siècle. Contribution à une histoire comparée des sociétés médiévales”, Annales: économies sociétés, civilisations, viii (1953), pp. 25–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in his Les peuples musulmans dans l'histoire médiévale (Damascus, 1977), pp. 231–69; Lambton, A. K. S., “Reflections on the iqṭā”, in Makdisi, George (ed.), Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb (Leiden, 1965), pp. 358–76Google Scholar, repr. in her Theory and Practice in Medieval Persian Government (London, 1980); Bosworth, C. E., “Barbarian incursions: the coming of the Turks into the Islamic world”, in Richards, D. S. (ed.), Islamic Civilisation 950–1150 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 14–15Google Scholar, repr. in his The Medieval History of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia (London, 1977).

2 Ayalon, David, “Preliminary remarks on the Mamlūk military institution in Islam”, in Parry, V. J. and Yapp, M. E. (eds), War, Technology and Society in the Middle East (Oxford, 1975), pp. 44–58Google Scholar, repr. in his The Mamlūk Military Society (London, 1979); Crone, Patricia, Slaves on Horses: the Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pipes, Daniel, Slave Soldiers and Islam: the Genesis of a Military System (New Haven and London, 1981)Google Scholar; Bosworth, , “Barbarian incursions”, pp. 4–10Google Scholar.

3 Minhāj al-Dīn Abū-'Umar 'Uthmān b. Sirāj al-Dīn Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, ed. Ḥabībī, 'Abd al-Hayy, 2nd ed. (Kabul, 1342–3 sh./1963–1964, 2 vols), i, p. 410Google Scholar, tr. Raverty, H. G., Ṭabaḳāt-i-Nāṣirī: a General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia (London, 1872–1881, 2 vols with continuous pagination), p. 497Google Scholar.

4 See Irwin, Robert, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: the Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250–1382 (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

5 Nigam, S. B. P., Nobility under the Sultans of Delhi (New Delhi, 1968)Google Scholar.

6 Aḥmad, Muḥammad 'Azīz, Political History and Institutions of the Early Turkish Empire of Delhi (1206–1290 a.d.) (Lahore, 1949)Google Scholar.

7 Juzjānī, ii, pp. 25–7, 36 (tr. pp. 754–6, 780): in the very old B.L. MS Add. 26, 189, the third letter is clearly qāf, and at fo. 186V the name is spelled QBQLQ; cf. also India Office MS I.O. 3745, fo. 280v. For the two words, see SirClauson, Gerard, An Etymological Dictionary of Prethirteenth-century Turkish (Oxford, 1972), pp. 580–1Google Scholar, 621. A number of Turkish names encountered among Egyptian mamlūks are listed in Sauvaget, Jean, “Noms et surnoms de Mamelouks”, JA, CCXXXVIII (1950), pp. 31–58Google Scholar; see also von Le Coq, A., “Türkische Namen und Titel in Indien”, in Aus Indiens Kultur: Festgabe für Richard von Garbe…zu seinem 70. Geburtstag (Erlangen, 1927), pp. 1–7Google Scholar.

8 For example, Prasad, Ishwari, A History of the Qaraunah Turks in India (Allāhābād, 1936), pp. 5–6Google Scholar, identified a Malik Jawna in the reign of 'Alā' al-Dīn Khaljī with the future sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq, who bore that title prior to his father's accession in 720/1320. Yet Baranī, Diyā' al-Dīn, Ta'rīkh-i Fīrūzshāhī, ed. Khán, Saiyid Aḥmad (Calcutta, 1860–1862), p. 336Google Scholar, lists the first Jawna among the nobles who backed ‘Alā’ al-Dīn's treacherous coup against his uncle and who survived only a few years thereafter; cf. also p. 248, where the reference to “the former Malik Jawna” makes it clear that this is an honorific. Ghulam Husain Yazdani, too, seriously believed that the Nuṣrat Khān of an inscription dated 669/1271 was the Nusrat Khan of the early years of Khalji, 'Alā' al-Dīn: “Inscription of Sultan Balban from Bayana, Bharatpur State”, Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1937–1938), pp. 5–6Google Scholar. But we are in fact clearly told that Malik Nuṣrat Jalīsarī received this title on 'Alā' al-Dīn's accession in 695/1296: Baranī, p. 242. In ARIE (1972–3), p. 14, Yazdani's suggestion is refuted, but Nuṣrat Khān is wrongly equated with Balaban's cousin Shīr Khān.

9 Baranī, p. 40.

10 Evidenced in the numerous articles on the Egyptian mamlūks in Ayalon, , The Mamlūk Military Society, and in his other collection, Studies on the Mamlūks of Egypt (1250–1517) (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

11 Fakhr-i Mudabbir, Shajara (or Baḥr) al-ansāb, partial ed. Ross, E. Denison, Ta'rikh [sic] -i Fakhru'd-Din Mubáraksháh (London, 1927), pp. 37Google Scholar, 49–50; Jūzjānī, i, p. 410 (tr. p. 497).

12 Rabie, H., “The training of the Mamlūk Fāris”, in Parry, and Yapp, , pp. 153–63Google Scholar.

13 Bosworth, C. E., “Ghaznevid military organisation”, Der Islam, XXXVI (1960), pp. 40–50Google Scholar; idem, The Ghaznavids, 2nd ed. (Beirut, 1973), pp. 101–6.

14 Jūzjānī, i, p. 373 (tr. p. 398), alleges that on Mu'izz al-Dīn's death in 602/1206 his slaves Tāj al-Dīn Yildiz and Quṭb al-Dīn Aybeg had requested manumission from the new sultan of Ghūr, his nephew Ghiyāth al-Dīn Maḥmūd. According to the same author, i, p. 444 (tr. p. 605), Iltutmish had been freed (before this!) by Aybeg on the express orders of Mu'izz al-Dīn. Baranī, p. 25, specifies that Balaban had been freed (āzād shuda): Khāliq Aḥmad Niẓamī, in Ḥabīb, Muḥammad and Nizāmī, K. A. (eds), The Delhi Sultanat (a.d. 1206–1526) (Delhi, 1970. A Comprehensive History of India, v), p. 281Google Scholar, is therefore incorrect in stating that there is no reference to his manumission.

15 Hardy, P., Historians of Medieval India (London, 1960)Google Scholar, especially chapter 2; idem, “Baranī”, EI 2; cf. also idem, “Didactic historical writing in Indian Islam: Ziyā al-Dīn Baranī's treatment of the reign of Sultan Muḥammad Tughluq (1324–1351)”, in Friedmann, Yohanan (ed.), Islam in Asia, i. South Asia (Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 38–59Google Scholar.

16 Were it not for an 'Alīgarh inscription of 652/1254, we should not even know his personal name (Balaban) and other honorifics: RCEA, XI (1941–1942), pp. 258–9Google Scholar (no. 4394). Nigam, pp. 41, 198–9, 203, follows the incorrect readings of the Nassau Lees ed. of Juzjanī and hence confuses Qutlugh Khān with Qilich Khān, a free-born noble who was the son of 'Alā' al-Dīn Jānī. For the same error, see also Niẓāmī, in Ḥabīb and Niẓāmī, pp. 262, 271–2; at pp. 262, 265, he calls him “Ḥusām al-Dīn” by confusion with yet a third person.

17 Jūzjānī, i, pp. 468, 489 (tr. pp. 661, 702). He had at one time been wakīl-i dar to Iltutmish, according to Baranī, p. 39. The same author, p. 113, tells us that one Shams-i Mu'īn composed volumes (mujalladāt) in commemoration of Quṭb al-Dīn; apparently none of this work has survived.

18 Minorsky, Vladimir, “The Turkish dialect of the Khalaj”, BSOS, X (1940), pp. 417–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in his The Turks, Iran and the Caucasus in the Middle Ages (London, 1978); C. E. Bosworth, “Khaladj. I. History”, EI 2.

19 Jūzjānī, ii, p. 46 (tr. Raverty, p. 798).

20 Ibid., ii, p. 80 (tr. pp. 852–3). Baranī, pp. 57, 58.

21 Ibid., p. 27.

22 Hambly, Gavin, “Who were the Chihilgānī, the Forty Slaves of Sultan Shams al-Dīn Iltutmish of Delhi?”, Iran, X (1972), pp. 57–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Bakhshī, Niẓām al-Dīn Aḥmad, Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī, i, ed. De, B. (Calcutta, 1927), p. 78Google Scholar, and tr. idem (Calcutta, 1927), p. 93; Firishta, , Gulshan-i Ibrāhīmī, lithograph, ed. (Bombay, 1247/1831–1832, 2 vols), i, p. 130Google Scholar. Possibly these authors were also influenced by ‘Iṣāmī's story that Iltutmish was offered forty slaves by a trader: he bought them all except Balaban, the future sultan: Futūḥ al-salāṭīn, ed. Usha, A. S. (Madras, 1948), p. 122Google Scholar, tr. A. Mahdi Husain ('Alīgaṛh, 1967–77, 3 vols with continuous pagination), p. 238. In a similar tale transmitted by Ibn Baṭṭūta, however, the number of slaves the sultan was offered is a hundred: Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār, ed. and tr. Defrémery, Ch. and Sanguinetti, B. R. (Paris, 1853–1858, 4 vols), iii, pp. 171–2Google Scholar, tr. Gibb, H. A. R., The travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa a.d. 1325–1354 (Cambridge, 1958–1971, 3 vols so far with continuous pagination), pp. 633–4Google Scholar.

24 SirHaig, Wolseley, in The Cambridge History of India, iii. Turks and Afghans (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 61–2Google Scholar. Habibullah, A. B. M., The foundation of Muslim rule in India, 2nd ed. (Allāhābād, 1961), p. 346Google Scholar. Niẓāmī, K. A., Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in India during the Thirteenth Century ('Alīgaṛh, 1961), p. 127, n. 7Google Scholar, and in Ḥabīb and Nizamī, pp. 232–4.

25 Ayalon, , “Studies on the structure of the Mamlūk army-II”, BSOAS, XV (1953), pp. 469–70Google Scholar, repr. in his Studies on the Mamlūks of Egypt.

26 ‘Iṣāmī, p. 130 (tr. Husain, p. 248; though at n. 1 Husain wrongly lists the Turks in question as the sultan's brother Ghiyāth al-Dīn and the rebel amīrs Sālārī, Jānī, Kabīr Khān and “Kirjī” [i.e. Kūchī], none of whom except Kabīr Khān was a mamlūk).

27 Jūzjānī, ii, pp. 49, 51 (tr. Raverty, pp. 802, 805). Raverty (p. 802, n. 2) was surely wrong to identify this obscure episode with the mutiny at Tarā'in (see below).

28 Ibid., i, p. 456 (tr. Raverty, pp. 634–5). Habibullah (p. 116) describes the victims ambiguously as the sultan's “personal attendants”: this term applies more to the perpetrators.

29 Jūzjānī, i, pp. 462–3, and ii, p. 23 (tr. Raverty, pp. 649–50, 750–1).

30 Ibid., i, p. 469, and ii, p p. 27, 42 (tr. p p. 662, 757, 787).

31 Ibid., i, p. 489 (tr. p. 702; and see Raverty's comments at n. 3 ibid.).

32 Ibid., i, p. 456 (tr. pp. 634, 636).

33 Ibid, ii, p. 36 (tr. 778–9): he was purchased outside the walls of Mandōr. The title is küshlü[k] (“strong”, “powerful”): Doerfer, Gerhard, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (Wiesbaden, 1963–1975, 4 vols), iii, p. 639Google Scholar (no. 1676).

34 Jūzjānī, ii, pp. 48, 51 (tr. Raverty, pp. 801–2, 806): the meaning of khāṣadār was established by Hodivala, S. H., Studies in Indo-Muslim history (Bombay, 1939–1957, 2 vols), ii, pp. 67–8Google Scholar.

35 Jūzjānī, , ii, p. 46, khidmat-i dargāh-i khāṣṣ mīkard (tr. pp. 797–8)Google Scholar. This mission, during which he was purchased by Ikhtiyār al-Mulk Abū-Bakr Ḥabash, is doubtless identical with the embassy from India mentioned by an Egyptian chronicler s.a. 629: al-Dawādārī, Ibn, Kanz al-durar, vii, ed. 'Āshur, Sa'īd, Der Bericht über die Ayyubiden (Freiburg, 1391/1972Google Scholar. Deutsches archäologisches Institut, Kairo: Quellen zur Geschichte des islamischen Ägyptens, lg), p. 305. The precise form of his title is obscure, but it seems to be identical with that borne by a Khwarazmian amīr earlier in the century: Juwaynī, , Ta'rīkh-i Jahān-gushā, ed. Qazwīnī, Mīrzā Muḥammad (Leiden and London, 1912–1937, 3 vols. Gibb Memorial Series, xvi), i, p. 80Google Scholar, tr. Boyle, J. A., The History of the World-conqueror (Manchester, 1958, 2 vols with continuous pagination), p. 103Google Scholar (though Boyle, n. 19 ibid., erroneously equates Keshli with Küshlü, as Barthold had done).

36 Jūzjānī, ii, p. 34, with the reading khāṣadār, which is found also in the B.L. MS Add. 26,189, fo. 207v (cf. tr. pp. 766–7, based on the alternative jāmadār, “keeper of the wardrobe”).

37 Ayalon, , “Studies on the structure of the Mamlūk army – I”, BSOAS, XV (1953), pp. 208–10Google Scholar. For an earlier parallel, from the reign of the Ghaznawid Mas'ūd I, see Bosworth, , “Ghaznevid military organisation”, pp. 44–5Google Scholar.

38 'Isāmī, p. 134 (tr. Husain, p. 253). See also Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, iii, p. 167 (tr. Gibb, p. 631), who adds that he was a slave of hers. At one point Jūzjānī specifies that the mutineers were the Shamsī slaves: ii, p. 21, mulūk-u umarā-yi turk ki bandagān-i Shamsī būdand (tr. Raverty, , p. 748Google Scholar, is misleading); but see below and n. 42.

39 Jūzjānī, i, p. 471 (tr. pp. 668–9). Sihrindī, Yaḥyā b. Aḥmad, Ta'rīkh-i Mubārakshāhī, ed. Hosain, S. M. Hidayat (Calcutta, 1931), p. 34Google Scholar.

40 Jūzjānī, i, p. 490, and ii, p. 29 (tr. p p. 703, 760).

41 As certainly occurred in Mamlūk Egypt: Ayalon, , “Studies on the structure of the Mamlūk army-I”, pp. 217–20Google Scholar.

42 Jūzjānī, ii, p. 23 (tr. p. 750).

43 Ibid., ii, p. 164 (tr. p. 1133).

44 Ibid., i, p. 468, and ii, pp. 20, 36–7 (tr. pp. 661–2, 747, 780). Habibullah (p. 124) was surely right to see some kind of coalition behind these arrangements.

45 Jūzjānī, ii, p. 53 (tr. p. 809); earlier, i, p. 469 (tr. p. 664), the date of this promotion is given as 640/1242.

46 Ibid., ii, p. 60 (tr. pp. 820–1). For Keshli Khān, see also ii, p. 46 (tr. p. 798). *Teniz Khān's appointment and his support for Balaban are also mentioned at ii, p. 29 (tr. p. 759). His title is uncertain. Raverty rendered it as “Tīz Khān”, and Ḥabībī's edition reads TR, but in the B.L. MS Add. 26,189, fo. 206r-v, the “tooth” between T and Z has no diacritical points: for teniz/dengiz (“sea”, “ocean”), see Doerfer, iii, pp. 205–7 (no. 1192); Clauson, p. 527. That Aytegin-i mūī-yi darāz was Balaban's own slave emerges from Baranī, p. 83.

47 Jūzjānī, i, pp. 484–5, and ii, pp. 37–8, 46 (tr. pp. 689–90, 781, 783–4, 798). Habibullah, pp. 134–5.

48 Habibullah, p. 126, was quite wrong to see the government during Balaban's eclipse in 650–2/1252–4 as a “non-Turkish administration” attempting to “overshadow” the Turkish element; see also pp. 132, 195. So too Saran, P., “Politics and personalities in the reign of Nasir al-Din Mahmud”, Studies in Medieval Indian History (Delhi, 1952), p. 228Google Scholar, assumed that Balaban's enemy, the Indian-born Rayhān (see below), was opposed by “the Turks”. Niẓāmī, , Some Aspects, p. 141Google Scholar, speaks of “the non-Turkish group”; and in Ḥabīb and Niẓāmī, p. 262, he alleges, amazingly, that Rayhān “had no following among the Turkish officers and the public”.

49 Jūzjānī, i, pp. 486–7, and ii, pp. 63–4 (tr. pp. 693–4, 826–7). Quṭb al-Dīn's reappointment as nā'ib is not mentioned here, but he held the office in 653/1255 at the time of Balaban's return to power: ibid., i, p. 489 (tr. p. 702).

50 Ibid., ii, p. 66 (tr. p. 829), for the only details we are given of his origins. The fact that he was a eunuch strongly suggests that he too was a slave and cannot really be ascribed, therefore, to an emerging Indo-Muslim aristocracy as he has been in the past.

51 Nigam, pp. 37–8.

52 Jūzjānī, i, p. 489 (tr. p. 702), for Quṭb al-Dīn, whose iqṭā of Mīrat was conferred on Balaban's brother Keshli Khān; ii, p. 46 (tr. pp. 798–9); i, p. 490, and ii, p. 70 (tr. pp. 703, 836), for Rayhān.

53 Ayalon, D., “L'esclavage du Mamelouk”, Israel Oriental Notes and Studies, i (1951), pp. 29–31, 34–7Google Scholar, repr. in his The Mamlūk Military Society.

54 Jūzjānī, ii, p. 38 (tr. p. 783).

56 Ibid., ii, p. 73 (tr. p. 841).

56 Ibid., i, pp. 488–9, and ii, pp. 66–7 (tr. pp. 699–700, 830–1). We learn more of his flight to the Mongols, and his return, from chroniclers writing in Mongol Iran, beginning with Waṣṣāf, Tajziyat al-amṣār wa-tazjiyat al-a'ṣār, lithograph, ed. (Bombay, 1269/1853), p. 310Google Scholar, whence the account given in Rashīd al-Dīn's history of India is derived; see Jahn, Karl, “Zum Problem der mongolischen Eroberungen in Indien (13.–14. Jahrhundert)”, in Akten des XXIV. internationalen Orientalisten-Kongresses München…1957 (Wiesbaden, 1959), p. 618Google Scholar.

57 Jūzjānī, ii, p. 44 (tr. pp. 792–3).

58 Ibid., i, p. 494, and ii, pp. 38–40, 71–6 (tr. pp. 711, 784–6, 837–44). Qutlugh Khān, concerning whose ultimate fate Jūzjānī says nothing, is alleged by Iranian authors to have sought refuge with the Mongols also: Waṣṣāf, p. 310. Tāj al-Dīn, “son of Qutlugh Khān-i Shamsī”, is later found in Balaban's service (Baranī, pp. 24, 83), but this must have been an earlier Qutlugh Khān, probably the one who is known from an Abōhar inscription to have died in 635/1237–8: ARIE (1970–1971), pp. 18–19, 119 (no. 4)Google Scholar.

59 For the effects of the Mongol civil war on relations with Delhi, see Jackson, Peter, “The dissolution of the Mongol empire”, CAJ, XXII (1978), pp. 239–41Google Scholar.

60 Baranī, pp. 47–8.

61 Ibid., p. 50, az ḥimāyat-i Balabanī bar ṣadr-i ḥayāt mānda būdand.

62 Ibid., p. 65: the date given is 4 or 5 years after Balaban's accession (p. 64).

63 Ibid., p. 50; at p. 37 they are called Balaban's khwājatāshān, i.e. slaves of the same master.

64 Ibid., pp. 65, 83. Pace Hambly, (p. 61)Google Scholar, he is mentioned by Jūzjānī, but only in the list of Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd's maliks and amīrs, where he is called Temür Khān Sonqur-i 'Ajamī, malik of Kuhrām: i, p. 476 (tr. p. 673).

65 RCEA, xii (1943), pp. 206–7 (no. 4711)Google Scholar. For Aybeg's biography (down to 658/1260), see Jūzjānī, ii, pp. 40–2 (tr. pp. 788–91).

66 Mīrzā, M. Wahīd, The Life and Works of Amir Khusrau (Calcutta, 1935), pp. 29–31, 36–7Google Scholar; for his slave status, see Baranī, pp. 36, 114–15.

67 E.g. by Niẓāmī, , Some Aspects, p. 143Google Scholar.

68 Baranī, p. 40. The correct spelling of the former name is uncertain: the B.L. MS of Baranī, r. 2,039, fo. 15r, reads BQBQ, but elsewhere the diacritical points are obscured.

69 For Toghril's slave origins, see Dihlawī, Amīr Ḥasan, Fawā'id al-fu'ād, ed. Malik, Muḥammad Laṭīf (Lahore, 1386/1966), p. 343Google Scholar; also Baranī, pp. 81, 83; 'Iṣāmī, p. 165 (tr. Husain, p. 292). His revolt is discussed by Habibullah, pp. 172–5. The campaign involving his overthrow ended with Balaban's return to Delhi on 5 Shawwāl 680/17 Jan. 1282, according to the fatḥ-nāma in Khusraw, Amīr, Rasā'il al-i jāz (Lucknow, 1876, 5 vols in 2), v, p. 13Google Scholar.

70 Baranī, pp. 83–4. A different version is given in Sihrindī, pp. 40–1, where Amīn Khān is said to have been given the iqtā' of Lakhnawtī on the death of Tatar Khān, with Toghril as his nā'ib: the two later fell out and Amīn Khān was forced to flee.

71 Baranī, pp. 24, 61, 81, 88. The name is usually transliterated as “Bektars”, but shows clearly in B.L. MS Or. 2,039, fos. 32r, 47r, as BYKBRS; for the same form in contemporary Egypt, see al-Ṣafadī, , al- Wāfī bi' l-wafayāt, ed. 'Amāra, Alī and Sublet, Jacqueline, Das biographische Lexikon des Ṣalāḥaddīn Ḫalīl b. Aibak aṣ-Ṣafadī, x (Wiesbaden, 1980. Bibliotheca Islamica, 6j), pp. 187–8 (BKBRS)Google Scholar. Aḥmad, 'Azīz, “The early Turkish nucleus in India”, Turcica, ix (1977), p. 101Google Scholar, is wrong to see sulṭānī in the reign of Iltutmish as the style of free-born immigrants: the suffix, as pointed out by Niẓāmī, in Ḥabīb and Niẓāmī (p. 224), always denotes a slave of the reigning sultan.

72 Baranī, pp. 36, 118–19. His full name is given by Amīr Khusraw: Mīrzā, , The Life and Works, p. 72Google Scholar. For the meaning of mawlāzāda, see Hodivala, i, p. 342.

73 As Keshli Khān's son inherited his father's office (see next note). For the system in Mamlūk Egypt and Syria, see Ayalon, , “Studies on the structure of the Mamlūk army – I”, pp. 456–8Google Scholar; more briefly in his “Awlād al-nās”, El 2.

74 His brother Keshli Khān seems to have been a loyal adherent during the reign of Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd and shared his temporary eclipse in 651–2/1253–4, and after his death in 657/1259 his office of amīr ḥājib was conferred on his son 'Alā' al-Dīn Muḥammad: Jūzjānī, i, p. 495 (tr. p. 713); Barani, pp. 36–7, 113–14. Muḥammad in turn served Balaban well during the latter's own reign, though later it seems he aroused the sultan's jealousy. He was entitled Malik Chhajjū: Amīr Khusraw, cited in Mīrzā, p. 38; cf. also Baranī, p. 181. As Balaban's sons came of age, they too were given positions of trust: the elder, Muḥammad, received the iqṭa' of Kōl at an early date (Baranī, p. 66), and later Sind; the younger, Maḥmūd, entitled Bughra Khān, was allotted the iqtā's of Sunām and Sāmāna (ibid., p. 80), and later Bengal c. 681/1283 after the suppression of Toghril's revolt (ibid., p. 92). It is significant that, as Baranī points out (p. 82), both were tested by holding for a time an important command on the Mongol frontier. When Muḥammad fell in battle with the Mongols (683/1285), his son Kaykhusraw succeeded him at Multān (ibid., p. 110).

75 Firishta, i, p. 131.

76 Baranī, pp. 133–4.

77 Ibid., pp. 131–2.

78 Ibid., p. 134; and see also pp. 132, 133, for the khaylkhānas.

79 As suggested, for instance, by Niẓamī, in Ḥabīb and Niẓamī, pp. 285–6.

80 Baranī, pp. 170–1. For the role of the two Aytemürs in the events of 689/1290, see Habibullah, pp. 194–6.

81 Firishta, i, p. 153, pādishāhī az turkān ki ghulāmān-i salāṭīn-i Ghūr būdand bi-silsila-yi khaljiyya intiqāl yāft.

82 Baranī, pp. 181, 183; more details are given by Sihrindī, p. 63. For Malik Chhajjū, see above, n. 74.

83 Baranī, pp. 187, 224.

84 Ibid., pp. 173, 175–7; cf. also p. 181.

85 Ibid., pp. 210–11. The episode is elucidated by Hodivala, i, pp. 267–8; and see also Digby, Simon, “Qalandars and related groups”, in Friedmann, , Islam in Asia, i, pp. 67–8Google Scholar.

86 Malik Qiran-i 'Alā'ī, the son of Haybat Khān (above, p. 353): Baranī, p. 41.

87 Ibid., p. 48.

88 On the Khaljī era, see the brief remarks in P. Hardy, “Ghulām: iii. India”, El 2, and Aḥmad, 'Azīz, “The early Turkish nucleus”, p. 106Google Scholar.

89 The Indian historical tradition varies considerably regarding Ghiyāth al-Dīn's antecedents. There is an ambiguous reference in Khusraw, Amīr, Tughluq-nāma, ed. Farīdābādī, Sayyid Hāshimī (Awrangābād, 1352/1933), p. 136Google Scholar, to him as “freed” (āzāda). The earliest Indian author to give an unequivocal statement of Ghiyāth al-Dīn's slave origins is Firishta (i, pp. 230–1): Husain, A. Mahdi, Tughluq Dynasty (Calcutta, 1963), pp. 16–18Google Scholar. But contemporary Egyptian sources testify that Ghiyāth al-Dīn had been a mamlūk: al-Mufaḍḍal b. Abi'l-Faḍā'il, al-Nahj al-sadīd, ed. and tr. Samira Kortantamer, Ägypten und Syrien zwischen 1317 und 1341 (Freiburg i. Br., 1973. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 23), text p. 27, tr. p. 104, citing the shaykh Tāj al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Dillī; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi'l-wafayāt, ed. Dedering, Sven, Das biographische Lexikon, iii (Damascus, 1953. Bibliotheca Islamica, 6c), p. 172Google Scholar. For the date of Ghiyāth al-Dīn's death and his son Muḥammad's accession (usually taken to be 725/1325), see Jackson, review elsewhere in this volume (pp. 171–2) of Shokoohy, M. (ed.), Corpus inscriptionum Iranicarum, pt. IV, XLVII. Haryana, I (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

90 Baranī, p. 314. The Egyptian encyclopaedist al-'Umarī, however, was told (approximately two decades earlier) that Turkish slaves were still in plentiful supply: Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, ed. and tr. Spies, Otto, Ibn Faḍlallāh al 'Omarī's Bericht über Indien in seinem Werke… (Leipzig, 1943. Sammlung orientalischer Arbeiten, xiv), text p. 27, tr. p. 53Google Scholar.

91 Ibn Baṭṭūṭṭa, iii, p. 211 (tr. Gibb, p. 654).

92 Spies, , Ibn Faḍlallāh al-'Omarīs Bericht über Indien, text p. 13, tr. p. 38Google Scholar.

93 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, iii, p. 439 (tr. p. 763).

94 Ibid., iii, p. 231 (tr. p. 665).

95 Ibid., iii, pp. 94, 107 (tr. pp. 593, 600). The printed text adopts the reading mamālīk (hence Gibb's translation, “inspector-general of the mamluks”); but see the alternative reading mamālik suggested in the French editors' note at pp. 458–9: Sartīz was clearly the muster-master ('āriḍ-i mamālik).

96 On him see Hodivala, i, pp. 300–1. That he was a Turk is evident from his personal name (qiran, “he who slaughters”): Sauvaget, , “Noms et surnoms”, p. 54 (no. 182)Google Scholar.

97 'Afīf, Shams-i Sirāj, Ta'rīkh-i Fīrūzshāhī, ed. Husain, Maulavi Viláyat (Calcutta, 1888–1891), p. 270Google Scholar, chihil hazār banda har rūz dar nawbat-i suwārī wa-khāna ḥāḍir mībūdand.

98 See Habibullah, pp. 151–2, on Ranthanbōr, and pp. 155–6 on Amrōha, which, as he points out, first appears as an iqṭā' early in Balaban's reign. For the Mēwāt, see Jūzjānī, ii, pp. 78–82 (tr. pp. 850–6), and Baranī, pp. 55–7.

99 Ibid., p. 57.

100 Jūzjānī, ii, p. 26 (tr. p. 755).

101 Niẓāmī, , Some Aspects, pp. 148–9Google Scholar, citing, among other testimony, the encomium by Baranī (pp. 119–20) on the generosity of the khāns and maliks, most of them Turks. For an example, see Jūzjānī, ii, p. 5 (tr. p. 724), on the pious foundations of Kezlik Khān (d. 629/1231–2).

102 Ibid., ii, p. 36, 'ulamā' wa-ṣulaḥā' wa-ahl-i khayr wa-zuhhād-ra mu'taqid būd (translation mine; cf. , Raverty's tr., pp. 775–6)Google Scholar.