The Lodi dynasty, 1451–1526

The Lodis (لودي, Lodī) were the first Afghan dynasty to rule Delhi. Three sultans reigned for 75 years: Bahlul (1451–1489), his son Sikandar (1489–1517) and Sikandar's son Ibrahim (1517–1526). [5] [3] [1] Many of their followers came down from Roh, the Afghan hill country. [2] The dynasty ended on 20 April 1526 at Panipat, where Babur's army killed Ibrahim in half a day. [1] The wider story of the tribes is in Pashtun history.

A Sirhind chief under the Sayyid sultans

Bahlul belonged to the Lodi tribe and to its Sahu-khail branch (Shahu Khel). Abbas Sarwani, who wrote the history of Sher Shah by order of Akbar, calls him "Sultan Bahlol, of the family of Sahu-khail, of the tribe of Lodi Afghan". [2] Nimatullah's Makhzan-i Afghani, finished in 1612, says Bahlul was the nephew of Islam Khan Lodi, a noble of the Sayyid sultans Mubarak Shah and Khizr Khan who held Sirhind in fief, and that his grandfather and father were merchants who visited Hind. [5] In the Afghan genealogy the Lodi and the Ghilzai descend from the sons of Bibi Matu (Origins of the Pashtuns); whether the Lodis were Ghilzai at all is argued in The Ghilzai.

The Sayyid sultans had little left to rule. In 1440 Muhammad Shah sent Bahlul against Mahmud Khalji of Malwa, and in 1441 gave him Dipalpur and Lahore. [4] Bahlul then "called together the Afghans from all parts around, and enlisted them", and besieged Delhi without success. [4] By Nimatullah's count the Lodis held Sirhind, Lahore, Samana, Sannam and Hisar as far as Panipat, while Sultan Alau-d din ruled "only in the city of Dehli and a few of the neighbouring villages". [5]

The throne came to him by invitation. Alau-d din's court turned on his vizier Hamid Khan, who fled to Delhi, took it and "invited Malik Bahlol to assume the sovereignty". [4] The Tarikh-i Daudi has Bahlul hurry from Sirhind and say to Hamid Khan: "I am a mere soldier, and cannot manage even my own country. You should be king." [3] Nimatullah tells how the Afghans did it. Bahlul brought men from Roh (روه) to Hamid Khan's feasts and let them behave like fools, licking the scent bottles and eating the flowers, until the vizier stopped watching them. At a later feast Qutb Khan Lodi laid a chain before Hamid Khan and told him to retire from public life. [5] That is the Afghan telling. Nimatullah dates the accession to 17 Rabi I 855 (19 April 1451); Ahmad Yadgar says 27 Muharram, and Firishta a year earlier. [5] Alau-d din wrote that he would "content myself with the single district of Badaun". [4]

The Afghans of Roh

Abbas Sarwani places the call for kinsmen in the middle of a siege. Sultan Mahmud of Jaunpur was besieging Delhi while Bahlul was at Dipalpur, and Bahlul spoke to his nobles. [2]

"The countries of Hind are broad and rich, and their kings are of Indian extraction. In my own land I have many kinsmen renowned for their valour and strength, who are pressed for a livelihood. Were they here they would be relieved from the contempt of poverty, and I could grasp Hind and destroy my enemies." [2]

His chiefs advised him to write to the tribes of Roh: "the name indeed of sovereignty shall remain with me, but whatever countries we may conquer shall be shared between us as brothers." [2] The Afghans came, in Abbas's words, "like ants and locusts", and broke the Jaunpur army. [2] Kalu Khan, chief of the Mahmud-khail, was wounded and refused the money Bahlul sent him: "I did not come here to sell my wounds." [2] Those who stayed received jagirs, and Bahlul ordered his nobles to bring him every Afghan arriving from Roh; afterwards they came "every day, every month, and every year". [2] Among them were the grandfather and father of Sher Shah, whose rise is told in Sher Shah Suri. [2]

Abdullah, who wrote the Tarikh-i Daudi after 1605, describes a king who never sat on a throne, in company or in public audience, but on a carpet. [3] Bahlul called his nobles "Masnad-i Ali" in his letters, shared whatever he won among his troops, and when a noble was angry went to his house, ungirded his sword and laid it before him. [3] Abdullah also tells of Mulla Fazin, who read the khutba in Bahlul's first week and complained that these rulers had a barbarous language: they called a mother "mur", a soldier "tur" and a man "wur". [3] Bahlul put his handkerchief to his mouth and said: "Mulla Fazin, hold, enough! for we are all servants of God." [3] Mur is the Pashto mor (مور), mother.

Near the end of his life Bahlul divided the realm among his sons. Firishta, as quoted by Elliot, gives Jaunpur to Barbak, Karra and Manikpur to Alam Khan, and Delhi and the Doab to Nizam Shah, "known afterwards by the name of Sikandar". [5]

The war with Jaunpur

The Sharqi sultans of Jaunpur ruled the east and were the Lodis' rivals. In 855 AH, by Nimatullah's date, Mahmud Sharqi came to Delhi at the call of Alau-d din's nobles. [5] His commander Fath Khan Hirawi advanced with elephants, and Qutb Khan Lodi, an unrivalled archer, disabled the leading one with a single shot and called to Darya Khan Lodi, who had gone over to the Sharqi side, that his mother and sisters were in the fort. [5] Darya Khan left the field and Fath Khan was taken. [5]

The war went on through truces and broken oaths. Qutb Khan was captured at Shamsabad and held seven years at Jaunpur. [5] Mahmud died, his son Muhammad Shah was killed, and Husain Shah took the throne with the help of his mother Bibi Raji. [5] Husain marched on Delhi with a large army and 1,000 elephants, and again and again the chiefs made a peace that left both kings within their boundaries. [5] In the end Bahlul beat him on the river Rahab, entered Jaunpur and seated his son Barbak Shah on its throne, while Husain went to Bihar. [5] Babur, summarising the same history in 1526, wrote that Bahlul and his son "got possession of the capital Jinpur and the capital Dihli, and brought both under one government"; Annette Beveridge's bracket gives 881 AH (1476). [1]

Bahlul fell sick on the road to Delhi and died in 894 AH near Malawi, in the territory of Sakit, after a reign of 38 years, eight months and eight days. [5]

Sikandar and the founding of Agra

Bahlul's chosen heir was Nizam Khan, whose mother was a goldsmith's daughter. Isa Khan objected, saying that "monkeys make but bad carpenters". [3] The nobles nevertheless raised Nizam Khan to the throne near Jalali on Friday 7 Shaban 894, in the eighteenth year of his age, as Sultan Sikandar Ghazi. [3] His brother Barbak Shah marched from Jaunpur against him in the first year. Sikandar beat him, besieged him at Badaun, and then took him back to Jaunpur and seated him on the throne again, with Sikandar's own governors and men of trust beside him. [3]

The Tarikh-i Daudi praises Sikandar as just and devout. He paid a preacher, a reader and a sweeper to every mosque he founded, and each jagirdar kept all the revenue of his fief except rent-free grants. [3] Applicants for service were asked their ancestry and given an appointment to match, without anyone inspecting their horse and arms. [3] Under his orders a medical work was translated as the Tibb-i Sikandari. [3] The nobles stayed powerful: "innumerable Afghan chiefs attached themselves to him". [3]

He also built a city. In March 1501 Sikandar took Dhulpur and moved on to Bayana, which Nimatullah calls the seat of the empire. [5] In 1504 he took the fort of Mandrail, had its temples pulled down and mosques built, and "butchered many people" in the country round. [5] He had long meant to found a town on the Jumna as his residence and army headquarters, to keep the rebels of that quarter in awe. [5] In 1505 (911 AH) he travelled down the river by boat from Mathura and asked his boatman Mulla Khan which of two mounds was better. The man answered "That which is Agra", meaning the one ahead, and the Sultan said the city would be called Agra. [5] On 3 Safar 911 (July 1505) an earthquake threw down lofty buildings there. [5] The Tarikh-i Daudi says the Sultan generally lived at Agra, and that nobles, shaikhs and scholars came from Arabia, Persia, Hind and Bukhara to settle there. [3] S. M. Ikram writes that Sikandar moved his capital from Delhi to Sikandara, a suburb of Agra. [7]

The Muslim chroniclers report his religious policy with approval. According to Abdullah he "entirely ruined the shrines of Mathura", turned their chief places of worship into caravanserais and colleges, gave the stone images to butchers as meat-weights and forbade the Hindus of Mathura to shave or perform their ablutions. [3] He stopped the annual procession of the spear of Salar Masud and forbade women to visit tombs. [3] The same book tells how, before his accession, he wanted to kill the Hindu crowd at the Thanesar tank, and how the head of the scholars, Mian Abdullah of Ajodhan, told him: "whoever enters the presence of a tyrant must beforehand prepare himself for death". [3] Ikram records that Muslim historians accused Sikandar of bigotry, and that in his reign many Hindus began to learn Persian. [7]

Ibrahim and the Afghan nobles

Sikandar died in November 1517; Babur's translator gives Sunday 7 Dhu'l-qada 923 (21 November). [1] Ahmad Yadgar puts Ibrahim's coronation on the 7th of Dhu'l-hijja, which Elliot's editor takes to be an error for Dhu'l-qada. [6] The nobles gave Ibrahim's brother Jalal Khan the kingdom of Jaunpur as Jalal-ud-din. Four months later Azam Humayun Lodi and the Khan-khanan Farmuli told Ibrahim that two sovereigns could never rule together. [6] Ibrahim recalled his brother, who refused, crowned himself, struck coin and marched on Agra with 30,000 horse. [6] He accepted terms, gave up the royal insignia and was refused the estates he asked for. Jalal fled to Gwalior and Malwa, and the Gonds who caught him sent him to Ibrahim, who had him sent on to Hansi and killed on the road. [6]

Elliot's note, quoting Firishta, says Ibrahim declared that kings should have "no relations or clansmen", and made the Afghan chiefs, who had sat in his father's presence, stand with their hands crossed. [6] Ahmad Yadgar describes what followed. Azam Humayun, who was besieging a fort with 30,000 horse, was summoned to Delhi, stripped of his horses and elephants and killed in prison. [6] His son Fath Khan joined the son of Darya Khan Lohani in Bihar, whom Yadgar calls Shahbaz Khan and Nimatullah Bahadur Khan, and the rebel took the title Sultan Muhammad. [6] [5]

Daulat Khan Lodi governed Lahore. Yadgar reports that his youngest son Dilawar Khan was shown nobles hung from the walls of Delhi, ran back to his father in six days and told him the Sultan would put him to death too. [6] Daulat Khan chose to go over to another sovereign. [6] The accounts of the invitation differ. In Yadgar it is carried by Dilawar Khan, who tells Babur at Kabul that Ibrahim had put twenty-three nobles to death. [6] In Nimatullah, Daulat Khan joins Ghazi Khan Lodi and the other lords of the Punjab and writes through Alam Khan Lodi. [5] Beveridge calls Alam Khan Sikandar's brother, "now desiring to supersede his nephew", and Babur says only that Alam Khan, "after taking leave of me (in Kabul, 931 AH)", went to Lahore. [1] According to Nimatullah, Alam Khan's 40,000 horse surprised Ibrahim's camp outside Delhi by night, and at sunrise Ibrahim attacked Alam Khan, guarded by 300 horse, and put him to flight. [5] Babur says Alam Khan reached him "on foot, ruined, stripped bare". [1]

Panipat, 20 April 1526

Babur set out from Kabul on Friday 1 Safar 932 (17 November 1525). [1] On the road to Sialkot it was "in everyone's mouth" that Ghazi Khan had collected 30,000 to 40,000 men and that Daulat Khan, "old as he was, had girt two swords to his waist". [1] At the mouth of Milwat (Malot) on 10 January 1526 Daulat Khan, Ali Khan and Ismail Khan were put in the charge of Kitta Beg, and Daulat Khan died when the party reached Sultanpur. [1] Ibrahim's army Babur put at about 100,000, with about 1,000 elephants; he counted his own, with traders and servants, at 12,000. [1] Of Ibrahim he wrote that he was "an unproved brave" who "provided nothing for his military operations". [1]

Babur reached Panipat on Thursday 12 April. Seven hundred carts, joined by ropes of raw hide with five or six mantelets between each pair, made a line behind which the matchlockmen stood. The town lay on one flank, ditch and branches covered the other, and gaps every arrow-flight let 100 to 200 horsemen out. [1] For seven or eight days small parties shot arrows into Ibrahim's camp, and a night attack by 4,000 or 5,000 men achieved nothing because they lost one another in the dark. Ibrahim did not move. [1]

On Friday 8 Rajab, which Beveridge dates 20 April, the news came at first light that the Afghans were advancing. In Babur's account Ibrahim's army "moved swiftly, straight for us, without a check, until he saw the dark mass of our men", then halted, "observing our formation and array", as though asking "To stand or not? To advance or not?" [1] Babur's flanking parties wheeled round and shot into the Afghan rear while the carts held the front and Ustad Ali-quli fired his guns from the centre. [1]

"In one half-day, that armed mass was laid upon the earth. Five or six thousand men were killed in one place close to Ibrahim. Our estimate of the other dead, lying all over the field, was 15 to 16,000, but it came to be known, later in Agra from the statements of Hindistanis, that 40 or 50,000 may have died in that battle." [1]

Tahir Tibri found Ibrahim's body in a heap of dead and brought the head to Babur at the Afternoon Prayer. [1] Ahmad Yadgar says that Mahmud Khan urged Ibrahim to leave the field, and that Ibrahim answered "it is a disgrace for kings to fly from the field of battle" and rode into the fight with 5,000 men. [6] Yadgar gives the Mughal army as 24,000 and Ibrahim's as 50,000 with 2,000 elephants, and dates the battle to 4 Rajab; Elliot's editor says the Tarikh-i Daudi names the 8th and the Makhzan the 7th, which he reads as 20 or 21 April; Ikram gives 21 April. [6] [7]

Babur toured Delhi on 25 April and visited the tombs of Bahlul and Sikandar. [1] On Friday 27 April the khutba was read in his name there, and he reached Agra on 4 May. [1] His later account of the country he had won says that from Bhira to Bihar it was "in the power of the Afghans". [1] Sher Shah, whose grandfather had come to India under Bahlul, named among the wishes his death left unfulfilled a tomb for Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat, with a tomb of the Chaghatai sultans he had killed opposite it. [5]