Iltutmish

Shams ud-Din Iltutmish (1192 - 30 April 1236) was the third sultan of the Mamluk Sultanate of Delhi and its effective founder. ¹ An Ilbari Turk bought by Qutb ud-Din Aibak, he was freed by his master and married to Aibak's daughter, becoming his son-in-law and effective successor after dethroning Aram Shah in 1211. ^{2 3} In his reign the sultanate stretched from Lahore and Bengal to Malwa, and in 1229 he received investiture from the Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir, the first Delhi sultan recognised by the caliph. ^{1 2}

Qutb ud-Din Aibak bought Iltutmish as a slave boy on seeing his promise, then drew him close, freed him and married him to his daughter. ² After Aibak's death the nobles installed his son Aram Shah, whom Iltutmish dethroned in 1211 to take the throne of Delhi. ³ In the following years he subdued his Ghurid rivals, secured the sultanate's frontiers, and extended it in campaigns between 1226 and 1234. ³ He avoided confrontation with the Mongols when Jalal al-Din Mangburni, fleeing Genghis Khan, sought refuge in India, and so preserved his sultanate from invasion. ²

In February 1229 Iltutmish received the ambassadors of the Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir, who brought him the robe of honour and the deed of investiture over India, deepening the legitimacy of his rule. ^{1 2} He founded the council of the Forty, the leading Mamluk officers, as the backbone of his administration and a guarantee of the state's unity. ² He issued the silver tanka coinage, completed the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and the Qutb Minar at Delhi begun by Aibak, and built a mosque at Ajmer. ^{2 3}

Among his famous decrees, anyone wronged was to wear coloured clothes after the Friday prayer so that the sultan could pick him out among the people and give him justice, and at his palace gate he set two marble lions with a chain ending in a bell in their necks, which a petitioner could ring to be heard. ² The English article describes him as a devout Muslim who did not miss his daily prayers even on military campaigns, who revered Sufi masters such as Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, Hamiduddin Nagauri, Jalaluddin Tabrizi and Bahauddin Zakariya, and who built khanqahs. ¹ The texts read name no legal school (madhhab) and no Sufi order for the sultan himself. ¹

Iltutmish chose his daughter Razia as his heir after she had proved her ability governing Delhi in his absence, despite the objection of some nobles to advancing a woman. ³ He died at Delhi on 30 April 1236 according to the English article, a date the Arabic article on his daughter Razia supports by dating his death to Wednesday 30 April 1236, while the Urdu article and the Wikidata item give 28 April of the same year. ^{1 4 3 5} Both days fall in Sha'ban 633 AH. ⁵ The Arabic article on Iltutmish himself errs in placing his death in 1229, an error flagged in that source's own record. ²