Delhi Conquest of North India: A Visual History

Between 1192 and 1235 the armies of Muhammad of Ghor and his slave-generals conquered northern India from the Punjab to Bengal. After the second battle of Tarain in 1192 destroyed Prithviraj Chauhan's Rajput coalition, Qutb al-Din Aibak took Delhi and Ajmer, Bakhtiyar Khalji overran Bihar and Bengal (sacking Nalanda and Vikramashila), and after Muhammad's murder in 1206 Aibak and then Iltutmish (1211-1236) turned the conquests into the independent Delhi Sultanate, taking Ranthambore, Gwalior and Bengal, receiving investiture from the caliph and building the Qutb Minar. The wars established Muslim rule in North India that lasted, under successive dynasties, until 1857.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Ghurid and early Delhi Sultanate conquest of North India. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Territory under Delhi's control

Timeline of the Ghurid and early Delhi Sultanate conquest of North India

1. 1191
   First TarainGhurid defeat.
2. 1192
   Second TarainPrithviraj defeated.
3. 1193
   Delhi occupied
4. 1194
   Kanauj defeated at Chandawar
5. 1200
   Nalanda sacked
6. 1204
   Bakhtiyar takes Nadia
7. 1206
   Muhammad of Ghor killed; Aibak sultan
8. 1211
   Iltutmish takes Delhi
9. 1229
   Caliphal investiture
10. 1236
    Iltutmish dies

Tarain and Delhi

Muhammad of Ghor's first invasion was thrown back by Prithviraj III of Ajmer and Delhi at Tarain in 1191. He returned in 1192 with a larger army of horse archers who feigned retreat and shattered the Rajput host; Prithviraj was captured and killed. Aibak occupied Delhi in 1193 and Muhammad defeated Jayachandra of Kanauj on the Yamuna in 1194, opening the Ganges plain. Aibak took Ranthambore, Gwalior and Kalinjar and began the Quwwat al-Islam mosque and Qutb Minar from the spoils of Hindu and Jain temples.

Bakhtiyar Khalji in Bengal

Ikhtiyar al-Din Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji, a Turkish adventurer, raided Bihar in the 1190s, sacking the great Buddhist monasteries of Odantapuri and, around 1200, Nalanda, whose monks were killed and library burned. In 1204 he took Nadia in Bengal with a handful of horsemen, sending the elderly Sena king fleeing, and set up at Lakhnauti. His invasion of Tibet through Assam in 1206 was a disaster and he was murdered on his return.

Iltutmish

After Muhammad's assassination in 1206, Aibak ruled from Lahore until a polo accident killed him in 1210; his slave and son-in-law Iltutmish seized Delhi in 1211. He beat off the rival slave-kings of Ghazni and Sind, kept clear of Genghis Khan when the Khwarazmian prince fled to the Indus in 1221, reconquered Bengal in 1225 and Ranthambore and Gwalior in 1226-1232, and received robes of investiture from the Abbasid caliph in 1229. His daughter Razia briefly succeeded him. By his death in 1236 the sultanate stretched from the Indus to Bengal.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Ghurid dynasty (1148 to 1215)
• Delhi Sultanate (1206 to 1526)
• Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty (730 to 1036)
• Khwarazmian Empire (1077 to 1231)
• Mongol Empire (1206 to 1368)
• Ghaznavid Empire (977 to 1186)

8 surprising things about the Ghurid and early Delhi Sultanate conquest of North India

1. The Qutb Minar, begun by Aibak in 1199, is 73 metres tall and the tallest brick minaret in the world.
2. Bakhtiyar Khalji is said to have taken Nadia with 18 horsemen while the rest of his army caught up.
3. The destruction of Nalanda is often taken as the end of Buddhist scholarship in India; the Tibetan monk Dharmasvamin found a few monks teaching in the ruins in 1235.
4. Prithviraj Chauhan's defeat is remembered in the epic Prithviraj Raso, in which he shoots his captor blindfolded.
5. Aibak was called 'Lakh Baksh', giver of hundreds of thousands, for his generosity.
6. Iltutmish refused shelter to the Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din, keeping Genghis Khan out of India.
7. Razia Sultan, Iltutmish's daughter, was the only woman to rule the Delhi Sultanate (1236-1240).
8. The Quwwat al-Islam mosque was built with columns from 27 demolished Hindu and Jain temples, and encloses the rust-free iron pillar of the Guptas.

Sources

• Delhi Sultanate Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Ghurid campaigns in India Wikipedia
• Iltutmish Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (1999) Cambridge University Press

Back to all empires and wars