Delhi

Who holds it

Name

Qutb al-Din Aibak, commander, with a Ghurid garrison (see Qutb al-Din Aibak)

Title

Commander of the Ghurid army in Hind

Since

1193 (direct rule)

Born

not pinned

Confidence

medium

Wikipedia's Aibak and Muhammad of Ghor articles (after Nizami 1992 and Jackson 2003); the campaign board for the physical place.

Lord in 1200

Qutb al-Din Aibak, commander, with a Ghurid garrison (see Qutb al-Din Aibak)

How things stand that morning

A garrison city. Nothing in the sources we reached records the town's condition on 1 January 1200 beyond the building of the mosque and the tower and the coinage.

Council

A garrison commander and the officers of the iqta; a qazi and a muhtasib would be the usual officers, but no source we reached names them.

Communities

A Muslim garrison (Turkish, Ghurid, Afghan), Hindu merchants and artisans who stayed after 1192, Jain merchants; the figures are not known.

Walls and castle

Lal Kot (the Tomara walls, attributed to Anangapala) inside Qila Rai Pithora (the Chahamana enlargement). The Anangpur dam and the stepped Suraj Kund reservoir in the Aravalli rock are Tomara waterworks the conquest inherited. The Iron Pillar stands in the mosque court; Aibak built the mosque around it.

Trade and crafts

Grain and timber landed at Indraprastha on the Yamuna and carted up to the ridge; the road tolls; a mint (Delhi jitals); builders and stone-cutters from the Hindu craft guilds employed on the mosque.

Places of note

• Mehrauli: The suburb on the quarry ridge that supplies the garrison
• Indraprastha: The old riverside settlement on the Yamuna, Delhi's landing place
• Anangpur dam: Tomara masonry dam in the Aravalli spur
• Suraj Kund: Stepped reservoir cut into the Aravalli rock

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board says the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque is 'dated by its own inscription to 1198'. Wikipedia's page gives 1193 for the beginning and 1196 for the stone screen. We could not check the inscription.
• The campaign board entry delhi-qila-rai-pithora: 'billon jitals of the Dehli type circulate in the name of Muhammad bin Sam'; Wikipedia's Muhammad of Ghor article agrees (bull and horseman types with the sultan's name in Nagari).

Evidence: Wikipedia's Aibak and Muhammad of Ghor articles (after Nizami 1992 and Jackson 2003); the campaign board for the physical place.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Primary sources for Ghurids

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, Gregory Bar Hebraeus (Abu'l-Faraj) (about 1275 to 1286). A later compilation that for 1200 relies on Michael the Syrian and Ibn al-Athir, but adds the Jacobite church's own memory of the Jazira, Mosul, Melitene and the Artuqid and Zangid courts, and carries Michael's story past 1195: the Seljuk brothers' war in Rum, the Khwarazmian and Ghurid wars in the east, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah, and the caliph al-Nasir. Read online
• The Complete History, Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir (about 1200 to 1231, at Mosul). The widest Muslim narrative for the years 596 to 597 AH (1199 to 1201): al-Adil's entry into Cairo and his taking of the sultanate from his nephew al-Mansur Muhammad early in 1200, the quarrels of the Ayyubid princes at Damascus, Aleppo and Hama, the Nile failure and the great famine of Egypt, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah and the Jazira under Gokbori and the Artuqids, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, the Khwarazmshah Tekish's death in 1200 and Muhammad's accession, the Ghurid wars in Khurasan, the Eldiguzids and Georgia, the Almohads in the west, and the Seljuks of Rum in passing. Read online
• The History of the World Conqueror, Ata-Malik Juvayni (1252 to 1260). Written for the Mongols but with a long retrospective on the powers they destroyed. Read online
• The Life of Sultan Jalal al-Din Mankubirti, Shihab al-Din Muhammad al-Nasawi (about 1241, at Aleppo). A Khwarazmian secretary's life of the last Khwarazmshah. Read online
• The Nasirid Generations: a General History of the Muslim Dynasties, Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (1259 to 1260, at Delhi). The Ghurid court's own history, by a man born in 1193 whose family served the sultans of Ghur and Ghazna. Read online
• The Crown of Glorious Deeds, Hasan Nizami (Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Hasan Nizami of Nishapur) (begun about 1205 at Delhi, carried on to about 1217). The earliest history written in Muslim India and the only contemporary account of Qutb al-Din Aibak's campaigns. Read online
• The Nasirean Generations (a general history of the Muslim dynasties), Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (completed 1260 at Delhi). The fullest narrative of the Ghurid conquest of northern India. Read online
• The Tree of Genealogies, and the Manners of War and Bravery, Fakhr-i Mudabbir (Fakhr al-Din Muhammad ibn Mansur Mubarakshah) (the Shajara about 1206, dedicated to Qutb al-Din Aibak; the Adab al-harb in the 1220s for Iltutmish). The prose introduction to the Shajara, written within six years of 1200, praises Aibak and tells of his rise under Mu'izz al-Din of Ghur, his consecration at Lahore in 1206 and the Ghurid campaigns in Hindustan, with some notice of the Turkish peoples.

3 more in the sources library for Persia and the Eastern Islamic World.