Qutb ud-Din Aibak

Qutb-ud-din Aybak was a ruler of Medieval India, the first Sultan of Delhi and founder of the Slave dynasty (also known as the Mamluk dynasty). He served as sultan for only four years, 1206-1210.

Early years

Qutb-ud-din was a Turk of the Aybak tribe and was born somewhere in Central Asia. When yet a child, he was captured and sold as a slave (mamluk). He was purchased by the chief Qazi of Nishapur, a town in the province of Khorasan in northeastern Iran. The Qazi treated him like one of his own sons, and Aibak received a good education, including training in archery and horsemanship. When his master died, his master's sons, who were jealous of Aibak, sold him to a slave merchant. Qutb-ud-din was purchased by Sultan Muhammad Ghori, ruler of Ghowr in central Afghanistan.

Career

Starting with his native Ghowr, a miniscule Afghan principality, Muhammad Ghori managed, by dint of murauding excursions of surpassing barbarity, to establish control over most of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkestan, and northern India. He however seems to have had no notion of establishing an administration or creating a state, plunder being his principal motivation.

Qutb-ud-din rose through the ranks to become Muhammad's most trusted general; his greatest military successes occurred while he was still a subordinate of Muhammad. Qutb-ud-din was responsible for most of Muhammad's conquests in northern India. He was left in increasingly independent charge of the Indian campaigns and the exaction of levies from the areas in India that were under Muhammad's hegemony, as Muhammad concentrated on Central Asia after 1192.

Not content with the massacres that were normative in Afghan / Turkic invasions of non-muslim areas, Qutb-ud-din caused his armies to rape thousands of hapless women. Prithviraj Chauhan's sister Chakkori Devi was one of those who suffered such a fate, after her husband Chand Vardhan was killed at the second battle of Tarain. Chakkori committed suicide when she got a chance.

Founding of the Delhi Sultanate

Muhammad Ghori established no real state, plunder being his aim; he made no nomination or provision for his succession. Upon his death in 1206, Qutb-ud-din Aybak, after a brief power struggle, succeeded in establishing himself as ruler of Muhammad's empire in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India; Muhammad's Central Asian possessions had been captured by none other than the notorious Mongol warlord, Ghengis Khan.

The areas over which Qutb-ud-din established his rule were those over which he already exercised coercive power as Muhammad's local receiver-general of periodic exactions and levies. Therefore, although his formal tenure as ruler was only four years, Qutb-ud-din managed to establish a defined administrative system, something never contemplated by Muhammad. This was achieved despite his having to quell rebellions by nobles like Taj-ud-din Ildiz and Nasir-ud-din Qubachah. Qutb-ud-din ruled initially from Lahore and later moved the capital to Delhi; he is hence considered the first Muslim ruler of South Asia.

Qutb-ud-din Aybak initiated the construction of Delhi's earliest Muslim monuments, the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and the Qutub Minar. These was completed by his successor, Iltutmish. Aibak, so barbaric in dealings with the non-muslims, was otherwise known as "Lakh Baksh" or "giver of hundred thousands" because of his generosity. He was thus a pious Muslim, praised by contemporary muslim clerics. He also patronized Nizami and Fakh-i-Mudabbir, both of whom dedicated their works to Aibak.

Death and succession

Qutb-ud-din died accidentally in 1210. While he was playing a game on horseback, his horse fell and Qutb-ud-din was impaled on the pommel of his saddle. He was buried near the Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore. Shams-ud-din Iltutmish, another ex-slave of Turkic ancestry who was married to Qutb-ud-din's daughter, succeeded him as sultan of Delhi.

Qutb-ud-din Aibak's tomb was destroyed during the Mongol attack on Lahore in 1241. In the early 1970's, during a particularly jingoistic phase in the history of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a new cenotaph was constructed over that site.

See also

• Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque