THE SULTANATE OF DELHI
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PREFACE TO THE FOURTH AND FIFTH EDITIONS
The book has been subjected to a careful revision and the mistakes and printing errors of the last edition have been corrected. The opportunity has been taken to add a few significant facts rela ting to the cultural intercourse between India and the Arab World.
July 1, 1966
A. L. SRIVASTAVA
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
In this edition the book has been thoroughy revised and two new chapters, viz., Hindu Rule in Afghanistan and Causes of the Defeat of the Hindus in Early Medieval Age, based on a study of original contemporary sources, have been added. Mghanistan was a part of India and was lost to it in 870 A.D. It has been shown in the Chapter on the causes of our defeat that India offered the greatest resistance known to History to the Arab and Turkish invaders from about the middle of the 7th century A.D. to about the end of the 12th century. Some of the author's conclusions might appear novel and even surprising. They are, however, based on a very close study of contemporary material in Arabic and Persian. It is hoped that in this new garb the SULTANATE OF DELHI will have as good a reception from the scholars as well as students and the general reading public as was accorded to it carlier.
Agra College,
Agra.
May 22, 1959.
A. L. SRIVASTAVA
The welcome accorded to this book by students and teachers in our colleges and universities has encouraged the author to bring out its second edition. The first edition was exhausted within a year and a half of its publication and the present edition should have been in the hands of the reader before the end of 1952, but circumstances beyond the control of the author delayed its publica- tion for about eight months.
In this edition the book has been carefully revised. Thanks to Mr. K. M. Munshi's enquiry, the riddle of Nasir-ud-din Khusrav Shah's origin, which baffled all previous writers, has been successfully solved by the author and is being given in this book for the first time. A few mistakes of dates and facts have been corrected and Chronology of the Delhi Sultans, genealogical tables of the ruling dynasties and some illustrations of the period have been added.
Since the publication of the first edition of this book which for the first time laid down in unambiguous words that the rulers of the Sultanate period were foreigners, one or two scholars have tried to show that that was not so. In the introduction to the second edition of the second volume of Elliot and Dowson's History of India as told by its own Historians, Professor Muhammad Habib has asserted that the Muslim rule was not foreign rule and the only argument advanced by him in support of his view is that the Muslim rulers of the period had no 'home government' outside India. He forgets that nearly all the rulers of the period recognised at least in theory the foreign Khalifa to be their sovereign, and the Sultanate as a mere dependency of the Caliphate. They sent cash and presents of enormous value to the Khalifa and large sums of money to be spent in Mecca, Medina and other places sacred to Islam. True, they had made India their home, but their aim was to convert it into an Islamic country. The personnel of their government was foreign; the religion and culture which they wanted to impose on India was foreign; their system of government and their way of life were foreign. They looked to Arabia and Central Asia for inspiration. They had little sympathy with the religion, culture, tradition and
way of life of the people of this country which they held in military occupation. They were unwilling to become Indians and genera- tions' sojourn in this country failed to Indianise them completely. Professor P. Hardy is of opinion that the government of the Sultans discharged socialistic functions because it interfered with the religion of the Hindus. This interference might have amounted to socialistic work in the eyes of Muslims, but to the Hindus who formed a vast majority of the population, it was nothing less than cultural and national destruction. The author regrets his inability to accept the views of the above scholars.
The present edition has been seen through the press by the author's son Daya Bhanu, without whose genuine help it would have been delayed for months.
Agra College,
Agra.
Sept. 20, 1953.
A. L. SRIVASTAVA
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