Paper Details

Razia Sultan’s reign as the first female ruler of the Delhi Sultanate marks a significant moment in the political history of medieval India, raising important questions about gender, power, and patriarchy within a male-dominated political system. This paper examines Razia Sultan’s rule through the lens of political patriarchy, focusing on how gender shaped authority, resistance, and historical memory in the Delhi Sultanate. The study begins by analyzing the patriarchal political structure of the Sultanate, where sovereignty was closely associated with masculinity, military leadership, and elite consensus, leaving little institutional space for female authority (Majumdar, 1951; Habibullah, 1963). It then explores Razia Sultan’s strategies to assert legitimacy, including her public exercise of power, administrative reforms, and engagement with military and court politics, as well as the intense resistance she faced from the Turkish nobility, which was often justified through gendered and moral arguments rather than purely political concerns (Satish Chandra, 2005; Jackson, 1999). The paper further examines how contemporary chroniclers and later historians interpreted her reign through gendered narratives that emphasized transgression and failure, thereby obscuring the structural constraints under which she governed (Brijbhushan, 1990; Gabbay, 2011). Drawing on both classical historical works and recent journal-based scholarship, the study reassesses Razia Sultan’s legacy, arguing that her short reign should be understood not as an anomaly but as a critical case that exposes the limitations of patriarchal governance in medieval India (S. Haeri, 2020; Khan, 2023). By situating Razia Sultan within the broader political and historiographical context of the Delhi Sultanate, this paper highlights the intersection of gender and power and underscores the importance of gender-sensitive analysis in medieval political history. Razia Sultan’s rule, though brief, offers enduring insights into the challenges of female sovereignty and the ways historical narratives are shaped by patriarchal assumptions (Singh, 2019; Taher, 2017).

Political Patriarchy, Noble resistance, Gendered authority, Social norms, Female Authority