The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c19.3

c19.3

But among the least effects of the Mongol eruption was a vast shake-up and mixing of the different races composing the Islamic peoples. In India, its resultant forces went, in no small measure, to the evolution of a homogeneous Muslim society. In the second generation from Muizzuddin, the Turk was isolated from his homeland and was compelled to fight with his back to the wall. Countless refugees poured from Khurasan and even Iraq and from beyond the Hindukush to swell his rank and the solidarity of Muslims fighting against a powerful infidel had to become a real and overriding sentiment. In this prolonged war-emergency, native converts and even non-Muslims proved indispensible; the former even found opportunities to learn the conqueror's ways and even to make a bid for political power. Despite Balban's rantings against 'low-born non-Turks' the employment, as his ariz, of Imadul Mulk Rawat,—of obvious Indian parentage—seems to have been unavoidable. More significant is Barani's reference to the Mongol converts who had settled in Delhi and had close family ties with leading Turkish nobles and held high position in Kaiqubad's court. Intermarriage with the natives and with the refugees imperceptibly but inevitably diluted the Turk's blood and also, though in a slower manner, his cultural ideas. The Khalji state, more broadbased than that of the Memelukes, was only a political expression of these social forces.