Razia Sultan Ruled Delhi From 1236 to 1240, Led Her Own Army Into the Punjab and Struck Coins in Her Own Name

Razia Sultan took the throne of Delhi in November 1236 and kept it for close to four years, the only woman to hold it in her own right. Early in her reign she broke a coalition of rebel nobles camped outside the city. Minhaj-i-Siraj records that after that settlement the governors from Lakhnauti, in Bengal, to Diwal, on the Sindh coast, obeyed her. She led an army into the Punjab in person, and coins were struck in her name. A later woman who ruled in her own name, Ahilyabai Holkar, governed Malwa from 1767 to 1795.

Nearly everything we know about her rule comes from Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani, a scholar who worked for her. In 635 AH (1237 to 1238) she put him in charge of a college in Delhi and gave him the judgeship of Gwalior. He later wrote a history of the Muslim dynasties down to 658 AH (1259 CE) and dedicated it to Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud, a son of Iltutmish who reigned after her. So he is a court voice twice over: a witness with a post under her, writing for a king of her father’s house. The claims below carry his name, or someone else’s.

The decree her father wrote

Iltutmish saw in his eldest daughter the signs of a ruler, Minhaj says. Back from his conquest of Gwalior, the sultan told his secretary, Taj-ul-Mulk Mahmud, to write a decree naming her heir. Officials with access to the court objected that he had grown sons who qualified for the throne. In the Elliot and Dowson translation, Iltutmish replies that his sons are devoted to the pleasures of youth and that there is “no one more competent to guide the State than my daughter.” Minhaj adds that events proved him right.

Minhaj gives the exchange without saying who told him of it, and he spent those years in Gwalior, returning to Delhi only in 635 AH. The decree did not take effect. After Iltutmish died in 1236 the throne went to his son Rukn-ud-Din Firuz, and Edward Thomas, the numismatist who catalogued her coins in 1871, wrote that the appointment was “evaded.” Minhaj, writing for Iltutmish’s line, describes Rukn-ud-Din as a spendthrift who rode an elephant through the bazaar scattering gold. He also says Rukn-ud-Din’s mother, Shah Turkan, plotted to have Razia killed.

November 1236: the city turns on the queen mother

Minhaj dates the crisis to Rabi al-awwal 634 AH, which Elliot and Dowson give as November 1236. Rukn-ud-Din was away from the capital. Razia and Shah Turkan had come to open hostility, and the people of Delhi rose, attacked the royal castle and seized the queen mother. When Rukn-ud-Din reached the city, the Turkish nobles and the slave troops of the royal household joined Razia, swore allegiance and seated her on the throne. She sent troops after Rukn-ud-Din. Minhaj gives his seizure, imprisonment and death as all falling on Sunday, 18 Rabi al-awwal, and puts his reign at six months and twenty-six days. Raverty comments in a note that a death on the same day makes it very likely he was killed.

Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveller, heard a different story in Delhi about a century later. In his version Razia put on the robe of a wronged person, spoke to the people from a terrace on a Friday, and the crowd seized Rukn-ud-Din in the mosque. The editors of the Hakluyt Society edition call this “a romantic addition,” because Rukn-ud-Din was on campaign and was taken by her troops after she was already sultan.

A coalition at the gates, and how she split it

The vizier, Nizam-ul-Mulk Junaidi, refused to acknowledge her. Four governors joined him: Ala-ud-Din Jani, Saif-ud-Din Kuji, Izz-ud-Din Kabir Khan Ayaz and Izz-ud-Din Salari. They gathered before Delhi’s gate and fought her for a considerable time. The governor of Awadh set out to help her, was captured on the way and died.

Razia left the city, pitched her tent on the bank of the Jumna and held several engagements with the rebels. The end came by negotiation. Salari and Kabir Khan Ayaz secretly went over to her one night, on the understanding that Jani, Kuji and Junaidi would be summoned and imprisoned. The three fled. Kuji and his brother were caught and later killed in prison, Jani was killed at a village near Payal, and Junaidi died in the Sirmur hills.

She then made the old vizier’s deputy her vizier, gave command of the army to Saif-ud-Din Aibak Bahtu with the title Kutlugh Khan, and gave Lahore to Kabir Khan Ayaz. Minhaj says the kingdom was pacified and that from Lakhnauti to Diwal the governors showed obedience. Tughril Tughan Khan, who held Lakhnauti, sent envoys with gifts, and she answered with a canopy of state and standards. This is Minhaj’s summary of her position, written by a man in her service.

Coins in her name

The coins add a second kind of evidence. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge holds three small coins called jitals, catalogued under Jalal-ud-Din Raziya, 1236 to 1240. They weigh between 3.46 and 3.68 grams. They carry no mint name, and the museum assigns them to Delhi or Lahore.

The Sarmaya Arts Foundation holds a silver tanka of the same years, 10.92 grams. Its catalogue says that early in her reign she struck coins in her father’s name and styled herself only as the supporter of the Leader of the Faithful, recognising Caliph al-Mustansir as the highest spiritual authority. Thomas lists a silver coin dated 635 AH from Lakhnauti, and notes that the name of the caliph in Baghdad stands in the place of honour on her coins. He points out that they give her title as Sultan in the masculine form while the rest of the legend uses feminine ones. The translator Raverty records an inscription said to be on her first coins that calls her the daughter of Shams-ud-Din Iltutmish.

Frances Pritchett’s page at Columbia University, quoting C. J. Brown’s 1922 catalogue, describes a scarce silver tanka with a horseman on one face, and around him the Nagari words Sri Hamirah, glossed there as “the Amir.” The Arabic legend on the other face names her as Sultan. Her name appears as Raziyyat in Raverty’s Minhaj, Radiya in the Ibn Battuta translation and Raziya on museum labels. As Elliot and Dowson note, Minhaj calls her Sultan and Badshah, never Sultana. Three centuries later, Sher Shah Suri’s mints struck the silver rupee, which our piece on his roads and coinage covers.

Out of seclusion

Minhaj says she had been veiled from public view as a girl. At some point in her reign, he writes, she laid aside women’s dress, put on a tunic and a man’s head covering and appeared among the people. When she rode an elephant, everyone could see her. Raverty notes that this came just before the end of her reign and that the change amounted to a tunic and a head covering.

Ibn Battuta reports her riding out like the men, with bow and quiver, without veiling her face. She also took the field. When Kabir Khan Ayaz, the governor of Lahore, rebelled, Minhaj says she led an army into the Punjab. According to Raverty’s note, Kabir Khan withdrew toward the Indus and submitted when her troops crossed the Ravi. She took Lahore from him and gave him Multan, and Minhaj records that she then returned to the capital.

The master of the horse and the Turkish amirs

The trouble that ended her reign began with a promotion. Jamal-ud-Din Yaqut, an Abyssinian, was her Lord of the Stables, and Minhaj says he rose in favour. The Turkish amirs and maliks grew envious, and Minhaj writes in another entry that nobles of several origins were withdrawing from her court.

Later writers made more of it. Thomas, in 1871, called it a lapse of judgement in her private life. Raverty writes in his notes to the translation that Minhaj, who lived at her court, suggests nothing improper between them, and that the insinuations come from later writers. Ibn Battuta says she was suspected of relations with a slave, one of the Abyssinians. Peter Jackson, as summarised by AramcoWorld, reads her promotion of Yaqut as an attempt to build a power base beyond the Turkish slave elite, one the amirs would not accept.

Tabarhindah and Kaithal

In Ramadan 637 AH, the spring of 1240, Razia left Delhi with her army to put down a revolt by Ikhtiyar-ud-Din Altunia, governor of Tabarhindah (modern Bathinda), whom some amirs of her court were secretly backing. At Tabarhindah, Minhaj says, the Turkish amirs rose against her, killed Yaqut and held her prisoner in the fort. In Delhi they enthroned her brother Mu’izz-ud-Din Bahram Shah.

Altunia then married his prisoner. Raverty’s notes record that a later work, the Tazkarat-ul-Muluk, says she married him against her will, and give his own reading that Altunia changed sides because the other rebels had taken power in Delhi and left him out. Together they marched on Delhi, and Bahram Shah’s army defeated them. Minhaj writes that when they reached Kaithal the troops with them all deserted, and that Razia and Altunia fell into the hands of Hindus, who killed them. He gives the date as Tuesday, 25 Rabi al-awwal 638 AH, though his entry for Altunia names the month Rabi al-akhir. Haryana Tourism gives 14 October 1240, EBSCO’s entry 13 October, and AramcoWorld 25 December.

Minhaj states her reign as three years, six months and six days, while his own dates for her accession and death span a little more than four years. Ibn Battuta says four. He also names her younger brother Nasir-ud-Din as the king she fought and has a farmer kill her for the jewelled tunic under her man’s clothes; his editors note that his informant left out the reigns of Bahram Shah, who defeated her, and of Masud Shah.

Three places claim her grave

Delhi, Kaithal and Tonk in Rajasthan all claim her burial, AramcoWorld reports. The Delhi claim is the oldest in writing. Ibn Battuta says her grave lay on the bank of the Jumna about a farsakh from the city, was built over with a dome after her body was exhumed and reburied, and was still visited by pilgrims for blessing. The tomb now shown is in Bulbuli Khana, in the lanes of Old Delhi, and World History Encyclopedia says her body was later moved to a tomb near Turkman Gate. The Archaeological Survey of India slab outside says she is “said to be” buried there, according to Mayank Austen Soofi of The Delhi Walla. A second grave beside hers is unidentified.

At Kaithal, Haryana Tourism says the original grave existed on the spot where she was killed and that the present brick structure was built in the late 16th century.