History of the Khaljis, A.D. 1290–1320 c1.s1: Origin of the Khaljīs
History of the Khaljis, A.D. 1290–1320 c1.s1
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Origin of the Khaljīs
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The resentment of the public was due to the belief that the Khaljīs were a race different from that of the Turks. But in reality it was not so. Ziyauddīn Baranī writes that when Kaiqubād fell seriously ill and there was no hope his recovery, the officers of Balban assemled together and decided to enthrone a young son of Mu'izzuddīn, and carry on the administration through a council of regents "lest the sovereignty should be lost to the Turks."[Footnote marker: 39?] The historian also writes that because Jalāluddīn "belonged to a different race (اصل) " he did not have any confidence in the Turks, nor did the Turks put their trust in the Khaljīs. After Jalāluddīn had left Delhi, established his headquarter at Bahārpur, defeated the Turks under Aitmar Kachhan and Aitmar Surkhāh and captured the young son of Mu'izzuddīn, a large number of Turkish nobles (از اصل تركان) went over to him and the Khaljīs gained numerical superiority. On the day of the death of Mu'izuddīn the government of the country "passed from the family of the Turks (در خاندان تركان) to that of the Khaljīs (در اصل خلجيان). Nobles, soldiers and merchants all alike were amazed, and they wondered at the way the Khaljīs had seated themselves on the throne in place of the Turks and the kingship passed from the Turkish race to another race.⁴¹
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³⁹ *Baranī* p. 171.,
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⁴⁰ *Ibid.* p. 173.
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⁴¹ *Ibid* pp. 175-76, شريف و لشكرى و بازارى......حيران ماندندى و ايشان را عجب مينمود كه خلجيان چگونه بجائ تركان بر تخت نشستند و بادشاهی از اصل تركان دراصل ديگر رود –
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The above statements of Baranī bear out two facts. Firstly, that there were two parties at Delhi, one under Aitmar Kachhan and Aitmar Surkhāh, and the other under Jalāluddin Khaljī. Either of them wanted to gain ascendency at the court, and to rule in the name of the young son of Mu‘izuddin, who was lying on his death bed. Naturally, each party distrusted the other, and tried to out manoeuver each other's plans. Secondly, that the Khaljīs were of a different race from the Turks. Beyond this Baranī does not say anything. He does not point out the race to which the Khaljīs belonged.
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But later historians have tried to elucidate the point. Niẓāmuddīn Aḥmad is perhaps the first among them. According to him the Khaljīs were the descendants of Qulij Khan, a son-in-law of Changīz Khan. Qulij was not on good terms with his wife but dared not break away openly from her father, the Mongol emperor. At last he found a welcome opportunity to overthrow his allegiance to Changīz, when with his family and followers numbering about 30,000 men, he migrated to the dales of Ghaur and Jurjistān. There he remained undisturbed, and his people came to be known as Qāljī from Qalij or Qulij; but later on, on account of constant use, the word changed into Khaljī. When the rulers of Ghaur conquered India, the Khaljīs followed in their train in large numbers and took service under the sultans of Hindustān. Among these Khaljīs were the ancestors of Sultan Jalāluddīn of Delhi and Sultan Maḥmūd of Malwa. Niẓāmuddīn further adds that according to the author of the Saljūqnāmah the Khaljīs were descended from Turk, son of Japhet, son of Noah.⁴²
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⁴² *Tab. Akb.* p. 116.
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But Niẓāmuddīn’s conclusion is hardly worth credence, because in an earlier context he writes that the Khaljīs fought in the Khvarizm Shahi armies, and, therefore, their existence before Changīz Khan's times cannot be doubted. The hypothesis finds support from Ferishtah who says that the Khaljīs are often mentioned in the histories of Ghaznā, and it is certain that they existed anterior to the time of Changīz Khan. But, perhaps, to reconcile himself to Niẓāmuddīn's statement he adds that it is likely that Qalij Khan may himself have been of the tribe of the Khaljīs, and Jalāluddīn of Delhi and Maḥmūd of Malwa may have descended directly from him.⁴³ Badaonī, on the other hand, vehemently criticises the Qalij Khānī ancestry saying that this theory "has no real authority" . . . "and as a matter of fact there is no connection whatever between Qalij and Khalj."⁴⁴ Both Ferishtah and Badaonī think the second statement of Niẓāmuddīn, which mentions Turk, son of Japhet, as the progenitor of the Khaljī race, as the more reasonable. Hājīuddabīr writing about the Khaljīs of Malwa says that they were descendants of Qalij Khan, son of Afrāsiyāb, who was son-in-law of Changīz Khan;⁴⁵ but he does not say anything about the ancestry of Jalāluddīn of Delhi.
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⁴³ Ferishtah p. 88.
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⁴⁴ Badaoni, Ranking vol. I, p. 230.
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⁴⁵ *Zafarul Vālī* p. 197.
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Baranī's indefiniteness on this issue appears inexplicable. His father and uncle had been in the service of Delhi sultans for a considerable time. He himself was an intimate friend of many an influential government servant. Besides this he had consulted many contemporary and earlier works. He was thus in a position to possess accurate information with regard to the origin of the Khaljīs. Therefore, he either deliberately avoided to throw light on this point, or thought it to be a matter of little consequence, or was perhaps unable to ascertain the truth. Anyhow the fact is that he was not conversant with ethnological studies, because he displays a similar vagueness about the origin of the Tughlaqs. But his statements do bear out that the Khaljīs were not welcomed by a certain section of the nobles, because they came of a race different from that of the Turks. Later historians like Nizāmuddīn, Badaonī and Ferishtah do not advance the position any further. Their statements are based only on legends and not on any definite conclusions of historical research.
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A critical study of the subject, however, conclusively points to the Turkish origin of the Khaljīs. Khalj is the name given to the land lying on either side of river Helmand in Afghanistan, and the inhabitants of that region were known as Khaljīs. Various nomadic tribes had settled in Khalj from very remote times and under such circumstances it is impossible to assert with absolute certainty that the Khaljīs belonged to a particular tribe or race. Ibn Haukal, an Arab geographer of the 10th century A.D.,⁴⁶ ascribes Turkish origin to the Khaljīs. According to him they were settled from the old in the regions between Hindustan and Sijistan, and that "they are rich in cattle and their habits, customs and dress are like those of the Turks."⁴⁷ Many other writers like Istakhrī, the author of Hudūd-ul-'Ālam and Dīvān-i-Lughātul Turk also think that the Khaljīs were Turks, who from long past resided in Khalj in Afghanistan.⁴⁸ Besides these there is the authority of Fakhruddīn, the author of Tārīkh-i-Fakhruddīn Mubārak Shāhī who finished his work in 1206 about a century and a half before Barani's Tarīkh was completed. Fakhruddīn gives a list of sixty-four Turkish tribes in which he includes Turk, Ghuz, Khaljī, Tatar, Ughuz, and Qai etc.⁴⁹ He gives valuable information on Turkish tribes which shows that he had intimate knowledge about them. Minhāj Sirāj, the author of the *Tabqāt-i-Nāṣirī* says that the Khaljīs served in the army of the Khvarizm Shahi emperors of Transoxiana and took part in various wars of Ghaur and Ghazna.⁵⁰ According to Raverty also Khaljīs were not a "hypothetical" tribe as Elliot is inclined to think,⁵¹ but were a Turkish tribe who having inhabited in Afghanistan for a very long time had been so much assimilated with the people of the locality that they were considered more as Afghans than as Turks.⁵² Barthold, one of the greatest modern authorities on Central Asia, also thinks the Khaljīs to be a Turkish tribe, who, as early as the fourth century A.D., had settled in the southern Afghanistan.⁵³
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⁴⁶ Ibn Haukal wrote between 902 and 968 A.D.
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⁴⁷ Ibn Haukal: *Kitāb Moujamul Buldān*, Arabic Text, Vol. II p. 419. *J.A.S.B.* 1852 p. 368. *J.A.S.B.* 1853 p. 152.
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⁴⁸ Also see proceedings Indian History Congress 1938, pp. 297-303.
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⁴⁹ *Tarīkh-i-Fakhruddīn*, edited by Sir Denison Ross, London, p. 47.
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⁵⁰ *Tab. Nas.* Raverty, Vol. I, pp. 539-41, and footnotes.
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⁵¹ *Elliot* Vol. VIII p. xviii.
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⁵² *Tab. Nas.* Raverty, Vol. I pp. li and footnotes on pp. 539-41.
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⁵³ *Encyclopaedia of Islam*, p. 875.
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Thus it can safely be concluded that the Khaljīs were Turks, but having been long in residence in Afghanistan had assimilated the habits and customs of that country. Some of them came to India as soldiers in the armies of the conquerors from Ghazna and Ghaur and many more arrived as refugees during Mongol upheaval in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Here they were regarded to be different from the Ilbārī Turks who belonged, so to say, to the blue blood. The sovereignty of Delhi had been the monopoly of the Ilbārī Turks for about a century, and a change of dyansty appeared to the people of Delhi a violent break from the conditions to which they had now adjusted themselves. In other words it is in the conservatism of the populace that we should find an explanation of the surprise at the accession of the Khaljīs, and not in the racial differences between the Khaljīs and the Ilbārīs. Both belonged to the same stock.⁵⁴
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⁵⁴ Ferishtah clarifies the position when he says:— بادشاهى از تركى که غلامان سلاطین غور بودند بسله خلجیان انتقال یافت —
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*Importance of the Khaljī Revolution.*
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The Khaljī Revolution was fraught with far reaching consequences. It not only heralded the advent of a new dynasty; it ushered in an era of ceaseless conquests, of unique experiments in statecraft, and of incomparable literary outburst. In the veins of the Khaljīs did not flow the royal blood. They belonged to the proletariat and their accession to power delivered a death-blow to the pseudo-belief that the sovereignty was a monopoly of the privileged. The Khaljī revolt is essentially a revolt of the Indian Muslims against the Turkish hegemony, of those who looked to Delhi, against those who sought inspiration from Ghaur and Ghazna. The revolution resulted in the supercession of a commoner's government over that of the blue-blood's and shocked to their marrow many a high-browed Turk to whom other Musalmans, Indian-born or otherwise, were made of a stuff inferior to their own.
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A change of dynasty was not a new thing to the Indian people. The frequent and quite unexpected dynastic revolutions had killed in them all sentiments of goodwill for any house or dynasty; and even if they developed loyalty for some particular house they were never reluctant to transfer it to another, if circumstances so required. Thus the supercession of Khaljīs over the Ilbarīs was not of much consequence to the people at large.
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Neither inheritance, nor election, nor even intrigue had secured the throne to Jalaluddin. It was by a *coup de main* that the throne had passed from the Ilbārīs to the Khaljīs, and it was through sheer force that they maintained it. Neither the support of the people, nor of the nobility, nor even of the clergy was sought. Whatever the Khaljīs did or undid for the country, they at least showed to the Muslim world that the state could not only exist but vigorously function without any religious support,—an unprecedented phenomenon indeed.
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What is of striking importance during the regime of the Khaljīs (and especially of 'Alāūddīn) is a continuous series of unprecedented conquests in the annals of Indo-Muslim history. For the first time the Khaljīs carried Muslim arms into the remotest corners of the country. Constitutionally the Khaljīs were empire builders, for they brought to knees independent kings at home and kept an eye on defence against external aggression. Had it not been for 'Alāūddīn's prompt and stern measures India would have passed into the hands of the Mughals two centuries earlier than it actually did.
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Some of the reforms of 'Alāūddīn, again, are unique experiments in medieval times. They succeeded quite well what if their success was short lived. But the force that was the mainstay of the Khaljīs proved a canker in their body-politic and a contemporary saint was tempted to declare that "the empire of 'Alāūddīn (the greatest of the Khaljīs) had no stable foundations."