Alauddin Khalji Rules Delhi
Alauddin Khalji, who ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1296 to 1316, turned a regional North Indian power into one that dominated most of the subcontinent. He is remembered for turning back repeated Mongol invasions, for extending Delhi's authority into Gujarat, Rajasthan, the Deccan and the far south, and for an unusually ambitious program of state control over markets and the military. The date of 1290 marks the rise of his Khalji dynasty rather than his own reign: that year Jalaluddin Khalji overthrew the last Mamluk (Slave dynasty) ruler and took the throne in Delhi, and Alauddin was his nephew and son-in-law.
The Delhi Sultanate had been established in the early thirteenth century by Turkic rulers, and by the 1290s it faced two problems: a restless nobility and pressure from the Mongols, who ruled much of Central Asia and raided the Punjab and beyond. Jalaluddin's Khalji dynasty drew support from groups that older elites had regarded as outsiders. Alauddin served as a provincial governor and in about 1296 led a daring raid on the Yadava kingdom of Devagiri in the Deccan, returning with enormous plunder. Soon afterward he had his uncle murdered and seized the throne, a deed later chroniclers condemned.
As sultan, Alauddin faced a series of Mongol assaults, some of them large, especially around 1299 to 1306. Delhi's defenders, including the commander Zafar Khan, resisted them, and the sultan reinforced fortifications and enlarged the standing army. To pay for it, he introduced measures recorded by the chronicler Ziauddin Barani: fixed prices for grain, cloth and other goods, state-supervised markets, and tighter collection of land revenue. Historians debate how fully these controls worked and how long they lasted, but they clearly aimed to let him maintain a large army on modest pay.
His armies also expanded the sultanate's reach. Gujarat was conquered early in his reign, and the great fortresses of Ranthambore and Chittor fell after sieges. His general Malik Kafur led expeditions into the south, reaching regions such as Warangal, Dwarasamudra and the Pandya country, where kingdoms were forced to pay tribute rather than being fully absorbed. Accounts of these campaigns, written by court-connected authors, may exaggerate some details.
Alauddin's later years were troubled by illness and court intrigue, and after his death in 1316 the dynasty quickly collapsed; within a few years the Tughlaqs held power. Even so, his reign showed how a centralized sultanate could mobilize resources and defeat the Mongols, and it shaped administrative ideas that later Indian rulers inherited.