Razia Sultan

Razia, daughter of the sultan Iltutmish, ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1236 to 1240. She was the first Muslim woman to reign anywhere in the Indian subcontinent and the only woman ever to sit on the throne of Delhi. Raised to power by the people of the capital rather than by the great nobles, she tried to rule in her own right, and the Turkic officers who resented this brought her down within four years.

Her father, Shamsuddin Iltutmish, was a Turkic former slave who had risen to become sultan of Delhi; her mother, Turkan Khatun, was a daughter of Iltutmish's predecessor, Qutb ud-Din Aibak. Razia was his eldest daughter and probably his first child, born perhaps around 1205, though the date is uncertain. After Iltutmish's chosen heir, his son Nasiruddin Mahmud, died in 1229, the sultan left Razia in charge of Delhi while he campaigned against Gwalior in 1231–1232. According to the historian Minhaj, he was so pleased with her conduct that he named her his heir, saying she was abler than his sons. Some historians doubt this story, since Minhaj is its only near-contemporary source and was not in Delhi at the time.

When Iltutmish died, the nobles crowned his son Ruknuddin Firuz, who left government to his mother, Shah Turkan. Their cruelty provoked revolts, and Turkic officers at court murdered several leading non-Turkic officials. While Ruknuddin was away fighting rebels, Shah Turkan plotted to kill Razia. Razia appealed to the crowd at Friday prayers, a mob seized Shah Turkan, and nobles and soldiers placed Razia on the throne. Ruknuddin was captured and probably executed on 19 November 1236.

Several powerful governors and the chief minister, Nizamul Mulk Junaidi, refused to accept her. Razia led her army out of Delhi, won two of the rebels over to her side, and the remaining leaders were caught, killed or driven into the hills. She soon had the nominal loyalty of governors from Bengal to Sindh. Her reign saw an unsuccessful attempt to subdue the Rajput fortress of Ranthambore, the recovery of Gwalior in 1238, and the suppression of an armed attack by Qarmatian sectarians on the main mosque of Delhi in March 1237. She politely declined a proposed alliance against the Mongols.

Razia increasingly acted for herself. By 1237–1238 she was striking coins in her own name alone. She abandoned seclusion behind a screen and appeared in public in a man's cloak and cap, riding an elephant through the streets like earlier sultans. She also promoted non-Turkic men, notably the Abyssinian Jamaluddin Yaqut, whom she made master of the stables, a choice that angered the Turkic nobility. Later chroniclers blamed her downfall on her closeness to Yaqut.

In 1239 she put down a rebellion by the governor of Lahore. But while she was away, the courtier Ikhtiyaruddin Aitigin and the governor of Tabarhinda, Ikhtiyaruddin Altunia, plotted against her. In April 1240 she marched on Altunia, but her own troops mutinied, killed Yaqut and took her prisoner. The nobles in Delhi enthroned her half-brother Muizuddin Bahram. Left without reward, Altunia changed sides and married Razia in September 1240, and the two raised an army to retake Delhi. Bahram defeated them in October 1240; fleeing towards Kaithal, Razia and Altunia were killed, probably by their captors, although one later account blames bandits.

A tomb in Old Delhi, near Turkman Gate, is traditionally hers, and the traveller Ibn Battuta found it a place of pilgrimage in the fourteenth century. A ruin at Kaithal is also claimed as her original grave. Her story has inspired several films in India, among them Kamal Amrohi's Razia Sultan of 1983.

Our 1200 map shows northern India in the early years of the sultanate her father ruled; our 1279 map shows the Delhi Sultanate a generation after her reign, with the Mongol Empire beyond its north-western frontier.