BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 88 of 142

Correct — A, Balban. 'Zillillah' is the booklet's spelling of Zill-Allah, 'the Shadow of God', and in Indian history the title belongs first to Ghiyas-ud-din Balban, ninth sultan of the Mamluk (Slave) dynasty, crowned in the Qutb Minar complex on 18 February 1266 and dead on 13 January 1287. His formal styles were Zil-i-Ilahi, Shadow of God, and Niyabat-i-Khuda, vice-regency of God — the sultan holds the throne as God's deputy on earth, not as the first among the Turkish nobility who put him there. That distinction was the whole point. Balban had himself been one of the Turkan-i-Chihalgani, the Forty Shamsi slave-nobles who made and unmade sultans through the twenty chaotic years after Iltutmish's death, and he had run the state as naib to Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud from 1246 before taking the throne himself. A man who had seen four of Iltutmish's descendants enthroned and murdered needed a source of authority the Forty could not vote on, so he built one out of divine sanction and enforced it as court ritual: sijda, prostration before the sultan, and paibos, the kissing of his feet — both Iranian usages, both offensive to the orthodox on the ground that such reverence is owed to God alone. He claimed descent from Afrasiyab, the legendary Turanian king of the Shahnama, banished wine and laughter from the court, and, in Barani's account, 'never conversed with persons of low origin or occupation'. The title and the ceremonial were one programme, and Balban is where it starts.

• (b)Iltutmish — The strongest wrong answer, because Iltutmish (r. 1211–1236) also needed a theory of legitimacy — but he took the opposite route, deriving it from the Caliph rather than directly from God. In 1228 the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir sent robes of honour recognising his authority in India, and the deed of investiture reached Delhi on 18 February 1229. His titles from it were Nasir Amir al-Mu'minin, Auxiliary of the Commander of the Faithful, and Yamin Khalifat Allah, Right Hand of God's Deputy — a deputy of the deputy, not a shadow of God.
• (c)Akbar — The word 'first' is what defeats this option rather than the fact. Mughal court theology under Akbar (r. 1556–1605) does rest on divinely illumined kingship — Abul Fazl builds it on farr-i izadi, the divine light descending on the just ruler, and Akbar's Mahzar of 1579 made him the final arbiter in disputed religious questions. But Akbar reigned nearly three centuries after Balban's coronation in 1266, so whatever vocabulary his court used, it cannot be the first use.
• (d)Alauddin Khilji — Alauddin Khalji (r. 1296 – 4 January 1316) ran in the other direction: he detached policy from religious sanction altogether, told the qazi that he issued orders for the good of the state without consulting what the Shariat permitted, and reached for a secular imperial model instead, styling himself Sikandar-i-Sani, the Second Alexander. His famous measures — market control, the dagh-o-chehra branding and description of horses and troopers — are administrative, not sacral.

Every Delhi sultan faced the same structural problem and each answered it differently, which is why 'who first used this title' is a real question and not trivia. The sultan was a Turkish military commander, usually of slave origin, ruling a largely non-Muslim population through a nobility of other slave commanders who considered themselves his equals. He therefore needed an account of why his commands bound them. Three answers were tried. The caliphal answer, taken by Iltutmish, made the sultan the lieutenant of the Abbasid Caliph, and so grounded his authority outside India altogether. The divine answer, Balban's, cut out the intermediary: the sultan is Zill-Allah, the Shadow of God on earth, and Niyabat-i-Khuda, God's vice-regent, which makes obedience to him a religious duty and disobedience a sin. The imperial-secular answer, Alauddin Khalji's, dispensed with sanction and rested on force, surveillance and administrative reach. Balban expressed his in ceremony because ceremony is what a court sees daily — the sombre wine-free assembly, the prostration, the refusal to be seen laughing, the sultan sitting unapproachable at its centre. Barani, whose father and grandfather served under Balban, reports that 'no sovereign had ever before exhibited such pomp and grandeur in Dehli'.

The discriminator here is the single word 'first'. Two of the four options genuinely belong to the vocabulary of divine kingship — Balban and Akbar — and a candidate who knows only that 'Shadow of God' sounds Mughal will pick Akbar. Chronology settles it without any further knowledge: 1266 comes before 1556. The other two options can be eliminated on positive grounds rather than by guessing, and that is the useful drill. Iltutmish's legitimacy is caliphal and dated — 1229, the deed of investiture — and his signature title is Nasir Amir al-Mu'minin. Alauddin's is imperial and Greek — Sikandar-i-Sani. Neither claims to be a shadow of anything. It is also worth knowing what Balban's claim did not do: it did not abolish the caliphal fiction. Gold coinage struck at the Delhi mint in his reign, dated AH 677 (1278–79), still cites the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustasim — who had been dead since the Mongols sacked Baghdad in February 1258. The Shadow of God went on invoking a caliph who no longer existed, which tells you how much of this was theatre for a specific audience.

• Balban reigned 18 February 1266 to 13 January 1287, crowned in the Qutb Minar complex; his listed titles are Zil-i-Ilahi (Shadow of God), Niyabat-i-Khuda (Vice-regency of God) and Khuda-i-Vandgar.
• He was himself one of the Turkan-i-Chihalgani, the Forty, and served as naib (deputy) to Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud from 1246 before taking the throne — about forty years of effective power against twenty-one as sultan.
• He introduced the Iranian court usages of sijda (prostration) and paibos (kissing the sovereign's feet), and is credited with introducing the Persian new-year festival Nowruz to India.
• Iltutmish's rival theory was caliphal: the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir's embassy reached Delhi with a deed of investiture on 18 February 1229, conferring Nasir Amir al-Mu'minin and Yamin Khalifat Allah. He is the only ruler of India to have received the Caliph's recognition.
• Balban's gold coinage from the Delhi mint dated AH 677 (1278–79) still names the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustasim, killed in the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 — the divine-shadow claim did not displace the caliphal formula on the coins.

• Reading 'Shadow of God' as Mughal. Akbar's court did work with divinely illumined kingship, but Balban's coronation is 1266 and Akbar's accession 1556 — on a question that says 'first', three centuries decide it.
• Confusing Zil-i-Ilahi with Din-i-Ilahi. The first is Balban's title, the Shadow of God; the second is Akbar's syncretic order of discipleship, proclaimed in 1582. UPSC has offered both in the same option set.
• Attributing sijda and paibos to the Mughals, or Nowruz to Firuz Shah Tughlaq. Firuz kept Nauroz as a public festival a century later — keeping a festival is not introducing it.

BPSC asks the Sultanate as one term and four names, so the mark turns on a single attribution you either hold or do not — and on this re-examination of January 2025 it did not even supply the more familiar spelling, printing 'Zillillah' where most textbooks print Zil-i-Ilahi. UPSC has asked the identical fact in the identical shape (1997), but its modern habit is to bury the same knowledge inside a statement set or an assertion-reason pair about why Balban centralised.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Iranian court practices of sijda (prostration) and paibos (kissing the sovereign's feet) were introduced in India by

  • (a)Qutb-ud-din Aibak
  • (b)Iltutmish
  • (c)Balban
  • (d)Muhammad bin Tughlaq

  Answer(c) Balban — both were part of the ceremonial through which he enforced his claim to be Zil-i-Ilahi, the Shadow of God, and both were resented by the orthodox as reverence owed only to God.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Sultan of Delhi received a deed of investiture from the Abbasid Caliph and used the title Nasir Amir al-Mu'minin?

  • (a)Qutb-ud-din Aibak
  • (b)Iltutmish
  • (c)Balban
  • (d)Alauddin Khilji

  Answer(b) Iltutmish — the Caliph al-Mustansir's embassy reached Delhi with the deed on 18 February 1229; he is the only ruler of India to have received the Caliph's formal recognition.