Sack of Delhi

Sack of Delhi, attack on Delhi in December 1398 by the Turkic-Mongol warrior Timur, the ruler of Central Asia. His assault, which was the culmination of a rampage across northern India, destroyed the city and further weakened the Delhi sultanate.

A devout Muslim, Timur alleged that his coreligionist Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud of Delhi, whose realm was beset by both internal strife and conflict with neighboring states, was being too lenient toward his Hindu subjects. On this pretext he marched into the Indian subcontinent in late summer 1398, his tribal steppe horsemen plundering and massacring as they advanced, murdering the entire population of several cities in their path. By the time Timur approached Delhi, his army was so encumbered with loot and captured slaves that military efficiency was imperiled. Timur’s solution was to order his followers to kill all of the enslaved people, who numbered perhaps 100,000.

Thus prepared, the invaders faced Mahmud’s army outside the walls of Delhi. The sultan had a force of war elephants, creatures with which the steppe warriors were unfamiliar. Timur had his men dig elaborate field fortifications—a system of trenches and ramparts—to block the charge of the pachyderms and give his nervous followers a sense of security.

The course of the battle is hard to piece together from the historical record. Incendiary devices played a part, including catapults that hurled pots of inflammable liquid. By one account, Timur had camels loaded with kindling that was set on fire, releasing them to spread panic among the Indian elephants, who then trampled the sultan’s soldiers. The charge of Timur’s horsemen was decisive, reportedly scattering the Indian soldiers “as hungry lions scatter a flock of sheep.”

Victorious in the field, Timur, who came to be known as the “World Eater,” unleashed his warriors upon Delhi in an orgy of destruction. Yet Timur—who stated that the aim of his invasion was to convert non-Muslims “to the true faith of Islam and [to] purify the land itself from the filth, infidelity, and polytheism”—was convinced that his army would not be able to maintain control over India, and so he withdrew to Samarkand, first enslaving Delhi’s artisans and taking them with him. The impoverished Delhi sultanate would endure until 1526, but it would never recover its former strength.

Losses: No reliable figures, although some sources give the Indian death toll as 1,000,000.