Person · Delhi Sultan · India
Alauddin Khilji
Also known as Alauddin Khilji, Alā al-Dīn Khaljī, Ala-ud-Din Khilji
Khilji Sultan of Delhi 1296 to 1316, who seized the throne by having his uncle and father-in-law Jalal-ud-Din Khilji murdered, launched the Delhi Sultanate's expansion into the Deccan and south India under Malik Kafur (campaigns against Devagiri 1296 and 1307, Warangal 1310, Dwarasamudra 1311, Madurai 1311), repelled four Mongol invasions, imposed Delhi's first centralised price controls on grain and cloth, and built the Siri Fort as his new capital and the Alai Darwaza entrance to the Quwwat-ul-Islam complex. His conquest of Chittorgarh in 1303 — in Rajput tradition linked to his desire for Rani Padmini — is one of the Rajput honour cycle's foundational episodes.
- Date
- 1266–1316
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Khilji
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His price-control system under Diwan-i-Riyasat Yaqub was the subcontinent's first substantial state intervention in daily markets, administered through separate state granaries, state-fixed prices for wheat, barley, rice, pulse, sugar, oil and cloth, and licenced dealers. The system held during his reign and collapsed within months of his death. Amir Khusrau was his court poet.
About the place
Placed at Delhi (Siri Fort, his new capital).
Connections (9)
- Ruled fromDelhi
Alauddin Khilji built the Siri Fort as his new capital at Delhi in 1303, moving from Mehrauli to the newer site where his court could be defended against the Mongol threat — Siri is said to take its name from the Mongol prisoners' heads buried in the walls. He also added the Alai Darwaza (1311) to the Quwwat-ul-Islam complex, the first substantial surviving Islamic entrance arch in India.
- SackedChittorgarh
Alauddin Khilji besieged and took Chittorgarh in 1303 after an eight-month siege, during which the first jauhar — mass self-immolation of Rajput women to escape capture — is documented, with sixteen thousand women said to have died inside the fort when the walls were breached. Rajput tradition from Jayasi's 1540 Padmavat onward attaches the siege to Alauddin's desire for Rani Padmavati, wife of Rawal Ratan Singh of Mewar.
- PursuedRānī Padmāvatī
Rajput tradition from the sixteenth century onward presents Alauddin Khilji's 1303 siege of Chittorgarh as motivated by his desire for Rani Padmavati, wife of Rawal Ratan Singh of Mewar. The literary tradition — Jayasi's 1540 Padmavat, the many later retellings — treats their encounter allegorically as the soul (Padmavati) resisting worldly desire (Alauddin). The contemporary chronicle by Amir Khusrau records the siege but does not mention Padmavati.
- Built byAlai Minar
Alauddin Khilji began the Alai Minar inside the Qutb complex around 1311, intending it to rise twice the height of the existing Qutb Minar beside it as the crown of his imperial building programme. Alauddin died in 1316 before the lower storey had been dressed, and no successor continued the project; the 25-metre rubble core is all that was ever built. It is the single clearest architectural evidence of Alauddin Khilji's imperial ambition and its abrupt interruption at his death.
- Built byAlai Darwaza
Alauddin Khilji built the Alai Darwaza in 1311 as the southern entrance to the Alai extension of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, with four gateways (only the southern one survived) each with a true arch and a dome on squinches — the first fully developed Indo-Islamic entrance in India. Red sandstone with white marble inlay, horseshoe arches, and a lotus-bud fringe on the arch soffit, the Alai Darwaza introduces the architectural vocabulary later Mughal gates would elaborate.
- Built bySīrī & Jahānpanāh
Alauddin Khilji built Siri Fort as his new capital at Delhi in 1303, moving the court from Mehrauli to the newer site where it could be defended against the Mongol threat — Siri is said to take its name from the Mongol prisoners' heads buried in the walls. Along with the Alai Darwaza (1311), the Hauz-i-Alai (now Hauz Khas) tank, the Siri congregational mosque and the Alai Minar, Siri Fort is the central monument of Alauddin's reign.
- Founded byHauz Khās
Alauddin Khilji dug the Hauz-i-Alai (later Hauz Khas) reservoir in 1304 to supply the new Siri Fort capital a kilometre to the east — a square tank of some 50 hectares holding monsoon catchment for the dry months. The tank was the subcontinent's largest Islamic reservoir of its period, and the Khilji-period water body around which Firoz Shah Tughlaq would later (1350s) build his madrasa, mosque and tomb complex along the water's edge.
- SackedWarangal Fort
Alauddin Khilji's general Malik Kafur sacked the Kakatiya capital at Warangal in 1310, taking the Koh-i-Noor among the plunder — the diamond's first well-attested historical appearance. The Kakatiya state submitted and paid tribute but was not immediately annexed, and the Kakatiya recovery under Prataparudra II held the Delhi army at Warangal in 1318 and 1321 before Muhammad bin Tughlaq's final 1323 reduction. The 1310 Warangal campaign was part of the systematic Khilji drive through the Deccan under Malik Kafur that reached Madurai by 1311.
- SackedDaulatabad
Alauddin Khilji sacked Devagiri (later renamed Daulatabad) in 1296 as a Khilji prince under his uncle Jalal-ud-Din, taking Yadava treasure that financed his coup against Jalal-ud-Din the following year. He returned to Devagiri in 1307 under his own reign, defeating Ramachandra Yadava who submitted and became a tributary. The 1296 and 1307 Devagiri campaigns opened the Deccan to Delhi Sultanate expansion that would culminate in Muhammad bin Tughlaq's 1327 transfer of the capital here.