The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c19.5

c19.5

Among the 'fighters' who supplied the executive and military personnel, military rank naturally determined social position. This rank seems to have been graded into *khan*, *malik*, *amir*, *sipahsalar*, and *sar-i-khail*. In the form these titles are mentioned in the chronicle they appear to be a reproduction of the Turkish tribal arrangement in which the family and not the individual was the unit of society. In the first quarter of the century when tribal loyalties were still fresh the extension of this heirarchical organisation to India may perhaps be assumed. But as non-Turks, mostly Iranians, increased the number of the fighter class, this order of society would inevitably undergo a process of transformation. The Turk had nothing comparable to the *mawali* system of the Arab by which each tribe preserved its separate entity when the *Ajami*, in large numbers, entered the fold of Islam and threatened to disrupt the tribal basis of society. In India non-Turkish slaves were attached to families and acquired their traditions but the free-born converts and immigrant Muslims could not be given a place at the end of the social ladder.