The Mongol Empire carried out several invasions of the Indian subcontinent from 1221 to 1327. Some of these invasions were punitive raids intended for plunder while others were carried out with the intention of occupying key city centres.
The Mongols suffered a series of defeats when the Delhi Sultanate undertook military campaigns against them in the mid-1300s.
This article will give details about the Mongol Invasions of India within the context of the IAS Exam.
Background of Mongol Invasions of India
The Mongol were a nomadic tribe that lived on the plains of Central Asia from the Ural Mountains to the Gobi Desert. They were a fractious tribe always at war with each other until a warlord, Temujin united them in 1206. Taking the name Genghis Khan. He set on a path of conquest in which he would forge an empire that would scratch from Korea in the east to the borders of Poland in the west at his height in 1237. To date, the Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous land empire in human history.
Genghis Khan made several incursions into the Indian subcontinent when he chased the Jalal al Din, the last ruler of the Khwarezmian Empire, all the way to the Indus river in 1221. The Khwarezmian Empire was destroyed by the Mongols the year before and Genghis Khan had ordered anyone member of the ruling family to be tracked down and killed.
In their pursuit of Jalal, the Mongols sacked several cities in the Punjab region but their incursions were limited towards the western banks of the Sindh river at the time.
Following Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, the Mongol empire fractured into a civil war between his sons. Large-scale invasions would decrease following this period which gave enough time for the Delhi Sultanate to shore up its defences.
Mongol wars against the Delhi Sultanate
After civil war broke out in the Mongol Empire in the 1260s, the Chagatai Khanate controlled Central Asia and its leader since the 1280s was Duwa Khan who was second in command of Kaidu Khan. Duwa was active in Afghanistan and attempted to extend Mongol rule into India.
A count of the Mongol commanders named in the sources as participating in the various invasions might give a better indication of the numbers involved, as these commanders probably led tumens, units nominally of 10,000 men. These invasions were led by either various descendants of Genghis Khan or by Mongol divisional commanders; the size of such armies was always between 10,000-30,000 cavalry as per modern estimates
The Chagatai Khanate invaded Punjab in 1292, but their advance guard under Ulghu was defeated and taken prisoner by the founder of the Khilji Dynasty, Jalaluddin. Chagatai armies were beaten by the Delhi Sultanate several times in 1296–1297.
The most significant defeat occurred during the battle of Kili in 1299. Fought between the Chagatai army led by Qutlug and Delhi sultanate army led by Alauddin Khilji. The incursion by the Chagatai was a major invasion when the previous ones were plundering raids. But this would not be the last of the Mongol invasion of India. Subsequent invasions in 1305 and 1306 would be defeated by Alauddin.
In that same year the Mongol Khan, Duwa, died and in the dispute over his succession, this spate of Mongol raids into India ended. Taking advantage of this situation, Alauddin’s general Malik Tughluq regularly raided the Mongol territories located in present-day Afghanistan.
The next major Mongol invasion took place after the Khiljis had been replaced by the Tughlaq dynasty in the Sultanate. In 1327 the Chagatai Mongols under Tarmashirin. Tarmashirin laid siege to Delhi and he only lifted it when he was paid a huge ransom by the Tughlaqs. No major invasions would take place following Tamashirin’s siege of Delhi.
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Later Mongol Invasions of India
The Chagatai Khanate had split by 1338 and an ambitious Turk-Mongol chieftain named Timur had brought Central Asia and the regions beyond under his control. Timur also reinforced the Islamic faith over the Chagatai Khanate and gave primacy to the laws of the Shari’ah over Genghis Khan’s shamanist laws. He invaded India in 1398 to wage war and plunder the wealth of the country.
Timur’s empire broke up and his descendants failed to hold on to Central Asia, which split up into numerous principalities. The descendants of the Mongol Chughtais and the descendants of Timur’s empire lived side by side, occasionally fighting and occasionally inter-marrying.
A product of such a union was Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. His mother belonged to the family of the Mongol Khans of modern-day Uzbekistan.
When Babur occupied Kabul and began invading the Indian subcontinent, he was called a Mughal like all the earlier invaders from the Chagatai Khanate. Even the invasion of Timur had been considered a Mongol invasion since they had ruled over Central Asia for so long and had given their name to its people.
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