Delhi Sultanate
▶ Explore on the mapThe Delhi Sultanate was a succession of five dynasties that ruled most of northern India from 1206 to 1526, with Delhi as their centre. It began when Qutb al-Din Aibak, a general of Muhammad of Ghor, took power after his master's death and founded the Mamluk, or slave, dynasty; he started the Qutb Minar and the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque. The Khalji and Tughlaq dynasties followed, and under Muhammad bin Tughlaq the sultanate briefly reached its greatest extent, moving his capital to Daulatabad in the Deccan in a famous and disastrous experiment; the traveller Ibn Battuta served as a judge in Delhi at that time. The Tughlaqs were weakened by the Black Death and by provincial governors breaking away, and Timur sacked Delhi in 1398, killing and deporting much of the population. The Sayyid and Lodi dynasties restored a reduced kingdom until Ibrahim Lodi was defeated and killed at the first battle of Panipat in 1526 by Babur, founder of the Mughal empire. Its coinage and land revenue system bound the northern plains to Delhi for three centuries, and the sultanate left tombs, mosques and stepwells that gave north India a distinct Indo-Islamic culture in architecture, music and cuisine. Five dynasties ruled in turn from the same capital.