A subcontinent of many states
Medieval India was never a single country. For most of these centuries the subcontinent was split among regional kingdoms that fought, allied and traded with one another. Historians often describe the picture as a contrast: powerful dynasties in the south that built temples and sent ships overseas, and a succession of Muslim-ruled states in the north centered on Delhi. This article gives an outline of both, and what follows is necessarily simplified.
The Cholas in the south
The Chola dynasty ruled much of southern India from a base in the Kaveri river valley in present-day Tamil Nadu. Their power had earlier phases, but the main period of strength is usually placed from the 9th to the 13th century, with the high point under the rulers Rajaraja I (who reigned around 985 to 1014) and his son Rajendra I.
The Cholas are noted for several things.
- Temples. The Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur, completed around 1010, is the most famous example. Its tall stone tower dominates the town. Temples were more than places of worship: they owned land, employed many people, and acted as banks, schools and centers of local life.
- Bronzes. Chola workshops cast graceful metal images of Hindu deities, using a lost-wax method, and these are admired in museums today.
- Sea power. The Chola navy and merchants were active across the Bay of Bengal. Around 1025, Rajendra I sent a naval expedition toward Southeast Asia, usually linked to the kingdom of Srivijaya. Historians debate its aims, which may have been to secure trade routes as much as to conquer territory.
- Local government. Inscriptions on temple walls record village assemblies and their rules, giving unusual detail on local administration.
The Chola state declined in the 13th century as neighboring powers, such as the Pandyas, grew stronger.
Other powers before the sultans
In the north and west, regional dynasties, often grouped under the label Rajput, held fortified kingdoms. Bengal and the east had their own rulers. Raids from Afghanistan and Central Asia began in the late 10th and 11th centuries, including expeditions led by Mahmud of Ghazni that targeted wealthy temples. A later and more lasting conquest came with the Ghurids, whose generals took Delhi in the late 12th century.
The Delhi Sultanate
The Delhi Sultanate is traditionally dated from 1206, when a former Ghurid general, Qutb ud-Din Aibak, established his own rule in northern India. Over the next three centuries, five main dynasties held the throne: the Mamluk (sometimes called Slave), Khalji, Tughluq, Sayyid and Lodi.
Some of its notable moments:
- Under the Khalji ruler Alauddin Khalji, around the turn of the 14th century, the sultanate expanded to the south and turned back several Mongol attacks. The Mongol conquests had swept across Central Asia, and Mongol armies raided northwest India more than once.
- The Tughluq ruler Muhammad bin Tughluq, who reigned in the 14th century, tried bold experiments, including moving the capital for a time to Daulatabad in the Deccan and issuing token coinage. Many of these schemes ran into trouble, and historians continue to debate how much of the failure was bad planning and how much was bad luck.
- In 1398 the Central Asian conqueror Timur sacked Delhi, an event that weakened the sultanate badly.
- The sultanate ended in 1526, when Babur defeated the last Lodi ruler at Panipat and founded the Mughal dynasty.
Delhi’s rulers left buildings that mix Persian, Central Asian and Indian traditions, including the Qutb Minar complex. The sultanate’s government used Persian as a language of administration and attracted scholars and soldiers from across the Islamic world. This was part of the broader Islamic influence on architecture, art and learning that reached from Spain to India.
The Deccan and Vijayanagara
As Delhi’s grip loosened, regional states appeared. In the south, the Vijayanagara kingdom was founded around 1336 and became a large Hindu-ruled state that resisted northern expansion for generations. In the Deccan, the Bahmani sultanate broke away from Delhi in the mid-14th century. The two powers fought repeatedly, but also traded and borrowed from each other.
Trade and contact
India sat in the middle of Indian Ocean trade. Spices, cotton cloth, gems and steel moved west to Arabia and East Africa, and goods came back in return, including horses, which India needed for warfare and imported in large numbers. Pepper from the Malabar coast was a major item in the spice trade that supplied European kitchens through Middle Eastern middlemen. Indian ideas also traveled: the numerals that became known in Europe as Arabic numerals originated in India and reached Europe through Arabic-speaking scholars.
Caution on the details
Many dates and rulers’ policies are known from court chronicles, which often flattered the patron. Estimates of army sizes or tax revenues should be treated as rough at best. Scholars today also debate how far to describe the era in religious terms, since rulers on all sides made alliances across religious lines when it suited them.