The Woman Who Ruled Delhi: Razia Sultan’s Impossible Throne

The courtiers would not meet her eyes. In the great hall of the Delhi Sultanate, where power had always been a masculine preserve, where turbaned nobles had for generations bent their knees only to male rulers, the air hung thick with resentment. Razia Sultan—Raziyyat-Ud-Dunya Wa Ud-Din, “Beloved of the World and Faith”—sat upon the throne her father had intended for her, and every man in that chamber considered it an abomination.

She had discarded the veil. She wore the tunic and turban of a sultan, not the flowing robes of a noblewoman confined to the zenana. When she spoke, her voice carried the authority of absolute monarchy, yet to the Turkish nobles who formed the backbone of the sultanate’s military aristocracy, every word was an affront to the natural order they believed governed the universe. A woman ruling over men? A woman commanding armies, dispensing justice, holding court? It was, to them, against the very laws of nature and faith.

But Razia Sultan had not asked for their approval. She had claimed what was rightfully hers, what her father Sultan Iltutmish had recognized in her that he had not found in his sons—the capacity to rule. And for a brief, extraordinary moment in the thirteenth century, in the northern reaches of the Indian subcontinent, a woman held absolute power in one of the most patriarchal societies the medieval world had known.

This is the story of how she rose, how she ruled, and how the very foundation upon which she built her reign—her gender—became the instrument of her destruction.

The World Before

The Delhi Sultanate in the early thirteenth century was an entity forged in violence and sustained by military might. When Razia Sultan came to power, the sultanate was still a relatively young institution, established only decades earlier when Turkish warriors had carved an Islamic kingdom out of northern India. It was a frontier state, surrounded by Hindu kingdoms that remembered their lost territories, populated by a predominantly non-Muslim population, and governed by a military aristocracy that prized martial valor above all else.

The sultanate was part of a larger Islamic world that stretched from Spain to Central Asia, yet it stood at the very edge of this world, constantly facing the challenge of legitimacy. How could Turkish warriors, speaking Persian at court and ruling over Hindi-speaking populations, claim the mantle of Islamic kingship? How could they maintain their identity as ghazis—warriors of the faith—while administering a vast territory where Muslims were a small minority?

The answer lay in a delicate balance. The sultans of Delhi drew their legitimacy from multiple sources: from their role as defenders and propagators of Islam, from their nominal allegiance to the Abbasid caliphate (though by this time the caliphs were powerless figureheads), from their military prowess, and from their ability to maintain order and dispense justice according to Islamic law. But above all, their power rested on the loyalty of the Turkish nobility, the slave-soldiers and their descendants who formed an exclusive military caste.

This was a world of rigid hierarchies. The Turkish nobles, many of whom had themselves been slaves before rising to positions of power, jealously guarded their privileges. They owed allegiance to a sultan, but they expected that sultan to be one of their own—a warrior who had proven himself in battle, who understood the bonds of military brotherhood, who could lead them to victory and reward them with the spoils of conquest. The very idea that this sultan could be a woman contradicted everything they believed about power, authority, and the proper ordering of society.

Yet the Delhi Sultanate was also a world of remarkable fluidity. Men of slave origin could rise to become sultans. Dynasties could change overnight through palace coups. The rules of succession were uncertain, determined more by force of arms than by any fixed principle of heredity. In this unstable political environment, competence mattered. A ruler who could not maintain order, who could not manage the factious nobility, who could not defend the realm against external enemies, would not last long regardless of their bloodline.

It was into this paradoxical world—rigid in its social hierarchies yet fluid in its political arrangements, bound by tradition yet shaped by constant upheaval—that Razia Sultan emerged as a claimant to power. She represented both a radical break with tradition and a logical extension of the sultanate’s own pragmatic principles. If capability, not birth, determined who should rule, why should gender matter? But in thirteenth-century Delhi, gender mattered enormously. And that tension would define every moment of Razia’s reign.

The northern Indian landscape over which the Delhi Sultanate claimed dominion was one of extraordinary diversity. Ancient cities like Delhi itself sat alongside newer settlements. Trade routes connected the sultanate to Central Asia, Persia, and beyond, bringing not just goods but ideas, artistic styles, and religious influences. Hindu temples still dominated much of the countryside, their towers rising above villages where life continued much as it had for centuries, barely touched by the Muslim rulers in the distant capital.

In the cities, particularly in Delhi, a new Indo-Islamic culture was beginning to take shape. Persian was the language of administration and high culture, but it coexisted with local languages. Sufi saints were establishing khanqahs—spiritual centers—that attracted both Muslim and Hindu followers. Architecture was beginning to blend Islamic forms with Indian techniques and aesthetics. The sultanate was not simply imposing a foreign culture on India; it was becoming Indian, even as India was being transformed by its presence.

But this cultural synthesis had not yet extended to gender relations. In this sphere, the sultanate remained deeply conservative, adhering to interpretations of Islamic law and Turkish cultural traditions that relegated women to subordinate roles. Women of the nobility lived in strict seclusion. They could be powerful behind the scenes—advising their husbands, managing households that were themselves centers of political intrigue—but they were not expected to exercise power directly or publicly.

The Players

Sultan Shamsuddin Iltutmish was an extraordinary figure in his own right, and understanding him is essential to understanding how his daughter could even conceive of claiming the throne. He had himself been a slave, purchased in a market in Central Asia and brought to India in the service of Qutb al-Din Aibak, the founder of the Mamluk dynasty. Through military skill and political acumen, Iltutmish had risen to become sultan himself, ruling from 1211 to 1236 and consolidating the still-fragile Delhi Sultanate.

Iltutmish was a pragmatist. He recognized that the survival of the sultanate depended on effective governance, not on adherence to tradition for its own sake. When he looked at his children, he saw in his sons all the vices of privileged youth—arrogance, incompetence, addiction to pleasure—and in his daughter Razia, he saw something different. Historical accounts suggest that he recognized in her the qualities of leadership that his sons lacked.

But recognizing these qualities and acting upon that recognition were two different matters. The sources are not entirely clear on when or how definitively Iltutmish designated Razia as his successor. What is clear is that he gave her responsibilities unusual for a woman of her status. He entrusted her with governance during his absences, allowing her to hold court, to administer justice, to make decisions that affected the realm. This was not merely symbolic; it was practical training in the art of kingship.

Razia herself emerges from the historical sources as a figure of remarkable determination and capability. Born into a world that told her at every turn that her gender disqualified her from power, she nevertheless believed she had the right and the ability to rule. She must have possessed not just intelligence and administrative skill, but also extraordinary courage and will. To claim the throne of Delhi as a woman in the thirteenth century was to invite opposition, hostility, and danger. She did it anyway.

The exact details of her personality are difficult to discern from the sources, which are often hostile or, at best, bemused by her very existence. But her actions speak clearly. She refused to rule from behind a veil or through male intermediaries. She insisted on appearing in public as sultans did, wearing male attire, riding horses, holding open court. These were not mere symbolic gestures; they were assertions of her right to exercise power directly, as male rulers did.

The Turkish nobles who formed the military aristocracy of the Delhi Sultanate were collectively known as the “Forty,” or Chihalgani. These were the commanders of the sultanate’s forces, the governors of provinces, the men whose loyalty—or lack thereof—determined whether a sultan could rule effectively. They were proud, often quarrelsome, jealous of their privileges, and deeply invested in the existing social order that had allowed them to rise from slavery to positions of immense power.

Among these nobles, opinion regarding Razia was far from unanimous, but the predominant sentiment was clear: a woman should not rule. Some opposed her out of sincere religious conviction, believing that Islamic law prohibited female sovereignty. Others opposed her for more practical reasons—they feared that her gender would make the sultanate appear weak to external enemies, or they worried that foreign rulers would refuse to recognize her authority. Still others opposed her simply because they saw an opportunity to advance their own interests; a crisis of succession meant political opportunities for ambitious men.

But the nobility was not monolithic. Razia must have had supporters, at least initially, or she would never have been able to claim the throne at all. Some nobles may have remained loyal to her father’s wishes. Others may have genuinely believed that she was more capable than the alternatives. Still others may have calculated that they could manipulate or control a female ruler more easily than a strong male sultan. If this last group existed, they would be sorely disappointed.

Another crucial player in this drama, though the sources give us frustratingly little information about him, was Malik Jamal-ud-Din Yaqut, described as an Abyssinian slave who became one of Razia’s closest advisors and confidants. The relationship between Razia and Yaqut would become a focal point for her enemies, who alleged that it was inappropriate, even scandalous. Whether there was any truth to these allegations, or whether they were simply convenient slanders used to undermine her authority, remains unclear. What is clear is that in the deeply hierarchical and patriarchal society of the Delhi Sultanate, a woman ruler who trusted a former slave was committing multiple transgressions against established norms.

Rising Tension

Razia Sultan did not ascend directly to the throne upon her father’s death in 1236. Iltutmish had designated her as his successor, but the Turkish nobles had other ideas. They placed her brother, Rukn-ud-din Firuz, on the throne instead. Here was a man who fit their expectations—male, martially trained, connected by blood and military service to the warrior aristocracy.

But Rukn-ud-din proved to be everything Iltutmish had feared. Historical accounts describe him as incompetent and dissolute, more interested in pleasure than governance. Worse, from the nobles’ perspective, he allowed his mother, Shah Turkaan, to exercise power, and she proved to be both vindictive and politically inept. The nobles had rejected Razia because they did not want a woman to rule, but they found themselves ruled by a woman anyway—and one without Razia’s capabilities.

The reign of Rukn-ud-din and Shah Turkaan lasted less than a year. The exact sequence of events that led to their downfall is debated by historians, but the outcome is clear: Razia seized power, likely with the support of at least some faction of the nobility and with popular backing from the people of Delhi. She was proclaimed sultan—not sultana, but sultan, the masculine form of the title—in 1236.

This was the first great crisis of her reign. She had claimed the throne, but on what basis did she justify her rule? The sources suggest that she invoked her father’s wishes, her own demonstrated administrative capability during his lifetime, and the manifest failures of her brother. But more fundamentally, she seems to have argued that gender was irrelevant to the question of who could rule effectively. In a world that believed the opposite, this was a revolutionary claim.

Her assumption of male attire and the male title of sultan was more than symbolic. In medieval Islamic political theory, the ruler’s body was not separate from their political authority. A sultan’s public appearance, the way they dressed, the ceremonies they performed, were all part of how sovereignty was expressed and legitimized. By appearing in public dressed as male sultans did, by riding horses through the streets of Delhi, by sitting unveiled on the throne, Razia was asserting that she possessed the same authority as any male sultan.

The nobility’s response was complex. Some accepted her rule, perhaps believing that she was indeed more capable than the alternatives, or perhaps calculating that supporting her would bring them advantages. Others opposed her from the beginning, constantly plotting and maneuvering against her. Still others adopted a wait-and-see attitude, willing to accept her authority as long as she proved effective but ready to abandon her at the first sign of weakness.

The Challenge of Legitimacy

Every day of Razia’s reign was a battle to establish and maintain legitimacy. She could not simply be a competent administrator, though she was that. She could not simply dispense justice fairly, though sources suggest she did that as well. She had to constantly prove that a woman could do everything a male sultan could do, and she had to do this in a society that believed such a thing was impossible.

She held public audiences, something that was highly unusual for a woman of her status. She heard petitions, dispensed justice, made appointments, issued decrees—all the functions of sovereignty—and she did so openly, insisting that her subjects could approach her directly. This was a calculated strategy to build popular support. The common people, who cared more about effective governance than about the gender of their ruler, seem to have appreciated her accessibility and her commitment to justice.

But with the nobility, the struggle was more intense. They resented having to bow to a woman. They resented her appointments, especially when she elevated men of non-Turkish origin or low status—men like Yaqut—to positions of authority. These appointments were seen as attacks on the privileges of the Turkish military aristocracy. Every decision Razia made was scrutinized not just for its political or military merits, but for what it revealed about her “unfitness” to rule as a woman.

Her relationship with Yaqut became a particular focus of opposition. Whether the relationship was romantic, as her enemies alleged, or simply one of political trust, as her defenders claimed, is impossible to determine from the sources. But the allegations served a clear political purpose: they suggested that Razia was governed by inappropriate feminine emotions rather than by reason and political judgment. They played on deeply ingrained prejudices about women’s capacity for rational governance.

The First Rebellions

The exact chronology and details of the various rebellions against Razia are difficult to reconstruct with certainty, as the historical sources are often contradictory or vague. But what is clear is that her reign was marked by constant challenges to her authority, rebellions by governors in different provinces who refused to accept her rule, and conspiracies among the nobility in Delhi itself.

These rebellions were not necessarily about Razia’s competence as a ruler. Several sources suggest that she was actually quite capable—decisive in crisis, fair in judgment, attentive to the administration of her realm. But her gender made her vulnerable in ways that a male sultan would not have been. Each rebellion, even if unsuccessful, undermined her authority. Each time she had to put down a challenge to her rule, it demonstrated that significant portions of the nobility and the provincial governors did not accept her legitimacy.

The pattern was predictable and pernicious. A governor would rebel, claiming that rule by a woman was contrary to Islamic law or simply unacceptable. Razia would have to mobilize forces to suppress the rebellion. She would succeed, because the central army was still more powerful than any single provincial governor could muster. The rebel would be punished or killed. And then, after a period of time, another rebellion would break out elsewhere.

This constant cycle of rebellion and suppression drained the sultanate’s resources and distracted from other pressing concerns. The sultanate faced external threats—Hindu kingdoms that might try to reclaim lost territories, Mongol incursions from the north—but Razia had to spend much of her energy dealing with internal dissent. The irony was bitter: the very nobles who claimed to be concerned about the sultanate’s strength and legitimacy were themselves the greatest threat to both.

The Turning Point

The beginning of the end came in 1240, four years into Razia’s reign. The exact details are murky, obscured by centuries and by sources that are often hostile to Razia or simply confused. But the broad outlines are clear enough: a rebellion broke out, led by some of the most powerful Turkish nobles, and this time it succeeded.

One account suggests that the rebellion was sparked when Razia led a military expedition to suppress a revolt by the governor of Bhatinda, Malik Altunia. During this campaign, her enemies in Delhi, led by powerful nobles who had long resented her rule, seized the opportunity to move against her. Yaqut, her trusted advisor and possibly her closest ally, was killed—murdered by those who saw him as both a symbol of Razia’s inappropriate elevation of men of low status and as a rival for power.

Razia herself was captured. The sultan who had ridden through Delhi in full regalia, who had held court and dispensed justice, who had commanded armies and governed an empire, was now a prisoner. The nobles who had captured her faced a dilemma: what to do with a deposed female sultan? They could not simply allow her to retire quietly, as that might give her the opportunity to rally support and attempt to reclaim her throne. But executing her outright might turn her into a martyr and provoke a popular uprising.

Historical tradition holds that Razia was forced into a marriage with Malik Altunia, the very governor who had rebelled against her. The logic of this arrangement, if it indeed happened, is difficult to parse. Perhaps it was an attempt to neutralize her as a political threat by binding her to a powerful noble. Perhaps it was meant as a humiliation—the sultan who had refused to conform to feminine norms forced into the most traditional of female roles. Or perhaps Altunia himself had some genuine attraction to or respect for Razia, and saw in marriage a way to legitimize his own claim to power.

Whatever the motives, the marriage, if it occurred, did not lead to a peaceful retirement from politics. According to tradition, Razia and Altunia attempted to reclaim her throne. They raised an army and marched on Delhi. Here was the ultimate test of her authority: would the people and the army of Delhi support her restoration, or would they accept the rule of the nobles who had deposed her?

The Final Battle

The details of the final confrontation are sketchy. We know that forces loyal to Razia and Altunia met the army of the new sultan, her brother Muiz-ud-din Bahram, whom the nobles had placed on the throne in her stead. We know that Razia’s forces were defeated. Beyond that, the sources diverge, offering different accounts that are difficult to reconcile.

What is certain is that Razia Sultan died in 1240. She was perhaps in her thirties, having ruled for less than four years. The circumstances of her death are disputed. Some sources suggest she died in battle, fighting to the end. Others claim she was killed while fleeing after her defeat. Still others suggest she died of exhaustion and deprivation, abandoned after her army’s defeat. The truth is lost to history.

But the manner of her death, in some ways, matters less than the fact of it. Razia Sultan, the only Muslim woman to rule Delhi, the first Muslim female ruler of the Indian subcontinent, was dead. Her reign, which had challenged fundamental assumptions about gender, power, and authority in medieval Islamic society, was over.

Aftermath

In the immediate aftermath of Razia’s death, the nobles who had opposed her moved quickly to consolidate their power and to ensure that nothing like her reign would happen again. Her brother Bahram, whom they had placed on the throne, proved to be a weak ruler, easily manipulated by the Turkish aristocracy. He would reign for only a few years before being deposed himself, demonstrating that the real power lay not with the sultan but with the military nobility.

The Delhi Sultanate would continue for another three centuries, passing through several dynasties. But never again would a woman sit on the throne of Delhi. Razia’s reign had been unique, and the failure of that reign was interpreted by subsequent generations as proof that she had been an aberration, a violation of natural and divine law that had rightly been corrected.

The historical sources that describe Razia’s reign and its aftermath were almost all written by men, often men who had served the very nobles who opposed her or who lived in societies that shared those nobles’ prejudices. These sources often acknowledge her administrative capability and her personal courage, but they almost always conclude that her rule was doomed from the start because of her gender. The underlying assumption is clear: whatever her individual merits, a woman simply could not rule successfully in a medieval Islamic state.

This interpretation became canonical. Later historians of the Delhi Sultanate, writing in Persian and later in other languages, would note Razia’s reign as a curious anomaly. Some would express admiration for her courage and capability. Others would use her story as a cautionary tale about what happens when natural hierarchies are disrupted. But all would agree that she was an exception, and that her failure proved the rule.

Yet this interpretation misses something crucial. Razia’s reign did not fail because she was incompetent or because a woman was inherently incapable of ruling. It failed because powerful men refused to accept her authority, because they rebelled constantly, because they valued their own prejudices and their control over the throne more than they valued effective governance or political stability. In other words, Razia’s reign failed not because of her weaknesses, but because of the weaknesses and limitations of the society she tried to rule.

Legacy

The story of Razia Sultan has echoed through the centuries since her death, but its meaning has shifted with each retelling. In the immediate aftermath, she was largely written out of the mainstream narrative of the Delhi Sultanate. Later sultans did not invoke her as a model or inspiration. The nobles who had opposed her had won not just the immediate political struggle but also the battle over how her reign would be remembered.

But she was not entirely forgotten. In the rich tradition of Persian and Urdu poetry and storytelling that flourished in subsequent centuries, Razia emerged as a romantic and tragic figure. She became the subject of folk tales, poems, and legends that emphasized her beauty, her love for Yaqut, her courage, and her tragic end. These stories often took considerable liberties with the historical facts, transforming Razia from a political figure into a romantic heroine.

This romantic tradition had complex implications. On one hand, it kept her memory alive in popular culture. Generations of people who knew little else about the Delhi Sultanate knew the story of Razia Sultan. On the other hand, this romantic framing often obscured the political significance of her reign. She became a tragic lover rather than a political revolutionary, a woman undone by passion rather than by the structural barriers of a patriarchal society.

In the modern era, Razia Sultan has been rediscovered as a figure of feminist inspiration. She has been the subject of numerous plays, films, television series, and books that emphasize her challenge to gender norms and her attempt to exercise power in her own right. Modern retellings often portray her as a proto-feminist, a woman ahead of her time who attempted to break free from the constraints that society placed on women.

This modern interpretation is not entirely anachronistic. Razia did challenge fundamental assumptions about gender and power. She did refuse to accept that her sex disqualified her from sovereignty. She did insist on exercising power directly rather than through male intermediaries. In these ways, she anticipates later feminist struggles for women’s political rights and equality.

Yet we must be careful not to read too much of modern feminism back into a medieval context. Razia was not trying to liberate all women or to fundamentally transform gender relations in the Delhi Sultanate. She was trying to rule effectively as an individual, to exercise the authority that she believed was rightfully hers. The broader implications of her reign—what it meant for women’s status more generally—were not necessarily her primary concern.

Still, the symbolic importance of her reign cannot be overstated. For a brief moment in thirteenth-century Delhi, it was demonstrated that a woman could rule, could command armies, could dispense justice, could do all the things that male sultans did. The fact that powerful men mobilized against her and eventually overthrew her does not negate this achievement. Indeed, the very ferocity of the opposition she faced is itself testimony to how threatening her successful exercise of power was to the established order.

What History Forgets

What often gets lost in both the romantic legends and the feminist reclamations of Razia Sultan is the sheer difficulty of what she attempted. We tend to focus on the drama of her rise and fall, on her relationship with Yaqut, on the battles and rebellions. But the day-to-day reality of her reign was perhaps even more remarkable than the dramatic moments.

Imagine what it meant to hold court as a woman in thirteenth-century Delhi, to sit on the throne while men who believed you had no right to be there bowed before you out of political necessity but seethed with resentment. Imagine having to calculate every decision not just for its political or military merits, but for how it would be interpreted through the lens of gender prejudice. Imagine knowing that any show of mercy might be interpreted as feminine weakness, but that any show of strength might be condemned as unwomanly harshness.

Imagine, too, the loneliness of her position. As a woman ruler in a male-dominated society, Razia must have been profoundly isolated. She could not participate in the homosocial bonding of the military aristocracy—the shared experiences of military campaigns, the camaraderie of the battlefield, the informal networks of loyalty and obligation that bound the Turkish nobles together. She was excluded by her gender from the very social structures that underpinned political power in the Delhi Sultanate.

This may help explain her apparent closeness to Yaqut. As a former slave of non-Turkish origin, he too was an outsider to the Turkish military aristocracy. He too had risen through merit rather than through the traditional channels of advancement. In a court full of people who resented her, Razia may have found in Yaqut someone she could genuinely trust, someone whose loyalty was to her personally rather than to the factious nobility.

What history also often forgets is that Razia’s reign was not simply a personal tragedy but a missed opportunity for the Delhi Sultanate. The nobles who opposed her so implacably believed they were defending the proper order of things, protecting the sultanate from the weakness and shame of being ruled by a woman. But in reality, their constant rebellions and their ultimate successful coup weakened the sultanate far more than Razia’s gender ever could have.

The sultans who followed Razia were, with few exceptions, weak and ineffective rulers, easily manipulated by the nobility. The sultanate entered a period of instability and decline that would last for decades. One cannot help but wonder what might have been if Razia had been allowed to rule without constant opposition, if her capabilities as an administrator and leader had been given the chance to fully develop and flourish.

But perhaps that is itself a romantic fantasy, no more grounded in historical reality than the legends of Razia and Yaqut as tragic lovers. The fact is that the Delhi Sultanate of the thirteenth century was not capable of accepting a woman’s rule. The social, cultural, and religious prejudices were too deeply entrenched. Razia’s attempt was brave and, in its way, visionary, but it was doomed from the start not because of who she was, but because of the society she tried to rule.

Yet even in failure, Razia Sultan’s reign matters. It matters because she tried. It matters because for four years, the reality of a woman ruling Delhi existed, challenging every assumption about what was possible or natural. It matters because her story has inspired countless women across the centuries since, women who have seen in her a model of courage and determination in the face of overwhelming opposition.

Razia Sultan was the first Muslim female ruler of the Indian subcontinent, and she was the only Muslim female ruler of Delhi. These facts are remarkable not because she succeeded in holding power for an extended period—she did not—but because in a world that insisted such a thing was impossible, she proved that it was not. She wore the crown, she gave the orders, she dispensed justice, she led armies. For however brief a time, she was sultan.

And that, perhaps, is the most important thing history should remember: not the tragedy of her fall, but the extraordinary defiance of her rise. In thirteenth-century Delhi, a woman ruled. That it ended badly does not make it any less remarkable that it happened at all.