Razia Sultana was the first Muslim woman to rule India and the only woman to take the throne of Delhi. She was talented, learned and brave, an excellent administrator and a great warrior, and the first and only woman ruler of the Mamluk Sultanate of Delhi. In Arabic she was called Radiya. She reigned for about four years, from 1236 to 1240.

She took the throne as her father's successor. Because of her ability and intelligence she was given the chance to rule even though she had two brothers.

At that time very few kingdoms in either the Muslim world or Christian Europe had women rulers, and it was highly unusual. Women were given power only when there was no legitimate male heir. With Razia the opposite happened: she became ruler even though two half-brothers were there as heirs.

Razia was born in 1205 to Sultan Shams al-Din Iltutmish. Iltutmish was a Turkic slave who had come to India as a slave from the valleys of Central Asia. He was bought by Qutb al-Din Aibak, the founder of the Mamluk slave dynasty. Put more plainly, the dynasty's rulers were not all descendants of their predecessors; many seized power by force of arms, Qutb al-Din Aibak among them. Razia's mother, Turkan Khatun, was Qutb al-Din Aibak's daughter, and it was through his wife that Iltutmish came to the throne of his father-in-law's kingdom. Under Iltutmish, Muslim rule in India became very strong.

He spread Islam in India and did away with caste discrimination, especially among the lower classes. Iltutmish groomed his eldest son, Nasiruddin Mahmud, as his successor, but Nasiruddin Mahmud died unexpectedly in 1229. Iltutmish had considered only Nasiruddin fit, as his other sons had gone astray.

In 1231 Iltutmish went on the Gwalior campaign and put Razia in charge of the administration of Delhi. She did the job so well that on his return Iltutmish decided to name her his successor, and told his minister Mushrif-i Mamlakat Tajul Mulk Mahmud Dabir to proclaim Razia as heir.

Many questioned why he named Razia when he had sons. Iltutmish gave everyone the same answer: Razia was more capable than his sons. After his death, however, the nobles unanimously installed Razia's half-brother Rukunuddin Firuz as the new king.

Rukunuddin was not capable of running the kingdom and left control of the administration to his mother, Shah Turkan. He set out for Kuhram to fight rebels, while in Delhi Shah Turkan kept plotting to trap Razia. One day Razia roused the people gathered for prayers against Shah Turkan, and the crowd attacked the royal palace and arrested her.

Hearing this, Rukunuddin set off back to Delhi, and Razia's forces captured him. He was executed on 19 November 1236, having held the throne for less than seven months. Razia Shah then took the throne as the first Muslim woman ruler of South Asia, with many leading figures of society on her side.

Within a short time Razia won people over with her skill and intelligence. From the start of her reign, however, she faced fierce opposition from nobles of Turkic descent. She had come to the throne with the support of the ordinary people of Delhi rather than the powerful provincial governors of Turkic origin, and she paid the Turks no heed at all.

Razia led an army out of the fortress city of Delhi to fight rebels. Her first military campaign against rebels was the attack on Ranthambore, whose Chahamana ruler had played an important part in securing its sovereignty after Iltutmish's death.

During her reign the Shias rose against the Sultanate, a revolt that was put down successfully thanks to Razia's tactical skill, and she survived by suppressing many other rebellions too. In April 1240 she was deposed by a group of nobles. She then married a rebel named Ikhtiyaruddin Altunia, simply as a strategy to regain the throne, but it did not succeed. In October that year Razia was defeated by her half-brother Muizuddin Bahram, and she was killed soon afterwards. Razia ruled for only three years, six months and six days.

Razia's tomb is in old Delhi. The 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta noted that her tomb had become a place of pilgrimage. Many people came to the single-domed tomb to seek blessings.

Source: Amader Shomoy. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.