from PART I - THE IMPACT OF THE STEPPE PEOPLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
The emergence of an independent Muslim state in India
Following Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad’s assassination in 602/1206 the Muslim conquests in the Indo-Gangetic plain went their own way. While the Ghūrid heartlands, Ghūr and Fīrūzkūh, were contested among the various princes of his dynasty, further east the beneficiaries were the Turkish slave (ghulām; banda) commanders to whom the sultan had largely delegated authority. Two of them – Tāj al-Dīn Yildiz in Ghazna and Quṭb al-Dīn Aybak in Lahore – were quick to establish their de facto autonomy. Aybak was acknowledged by the Khalaj rulers who succeeded Muḥammad b. Bakhtiyār at Lakhnawti in Bengal, and thus became the paramount ruler in Muslim India. But Aybak, who contested Ghazna with Yildiz, in turn recognised the overlordship of Muʿizz al-Dīn’s nephew and successor, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Maḥmūd; numismatic evidence suggests that he bore no higher title than malik. After Aybak’s death in 607/1210f., his heir Ārām Shāh was soon defeated and killed by Aybak’s slave and governor in Budaon, Iltutmish, who had been set up at Delhi. Aybak’s territories were now disputed among Iltutmish, Yildiz and another former Ghūrid slave lieutenant, Nāṣir al-Dīn Qubacha, who held Multān and Uchch in Sind.
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