Delhi’s food is tied to several happenings from the city’s tumultuous past. In ‘From the King’s Table to Street Food’ Pushpesh Pant offers a delightful account of each of these periods, including that of the Sultanate.
Who is an ‘asli Dilliwala’—a true-blue Delhizen—and what is their cuisine? To answer this question, historian, food critic, and academic Pushpesh Pant takes readers on a culinary journey that spans empires, from the Sultanate to the Mughal Empire and the British Raj.
Although identified largely with Punjabi and Mughlai food—butter chicken and biryani—Delhi has now become a melting pot of cuisines ranging from Kashmiri, Bengali, and Bihari, to Andhra, Naga, and ‘Indian-Chinese’. In From the King’s Table to Street Food (2024), published by Speaking Tiger Books, Pant highlights the complex impact dynastic kingdoms have had on the food of a city. Additionally, he tracks the growth of Delhi’s eating-out culture, from roadside eateries to cuisines from around the world.
In the following excerpt from the chapter Enter the Sultans, Pant unravels how the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlak—from 1325 to 1351 CE—played a part in the creation of food traditions in Delhi, even engendering what we now call modern Indian cuisine.
The turbulence that marked the Sultans’ reigns in general was hardly congenial for pursuits of finer culture, especially of food. Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak’s reign was an exception. Regardless of his travails, the Sultan maintained a glittering court and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle.
Food cooked and served for the Tughlak Sultans is described in some detail by Ibn Battuta who visited Delhi during the reign of Muhammed bin Tughlak. He has listed a number of dishes, including the samosa, which appear to have travelled along the Silk Road, which passed through India.
The spread comprising thin round bread cakes; large slabs of sheep mutton, round dough cakes made with ghee and stuffed with almond paste and honey; meat cooked with onions and ginger; sambusak made of minced meat enriched with almonds, walnuts, pistachios, onions, and spices placed inside a piece of thin pastry; rice with chicken topping, assorted cakes and sweetmeats after meals, ended with paan. The main dishes were accompanied by a variety of pickles prepared with mangoes, ginger and peppers; jackfruit and barki, a yellow gourd with sweet pods and kernels; sweet oranges; wheat, chickpeas, lentils and rice.
Though the foreign traveller mingled with nobles and emirs and shared their rich repast, Ibn Battuta wasn’t blind to the plight of poor subjects. He has observed that common Indians subsisted ‘largely on a diet of millets that were pounded to prepare a thick porridge. Only the relatively rich could afford to add milk and sugar to make this gruel palatable.’ They had a breakfast of peas and moong dal cooked with rice and ghee.
Only the relatively rich could afford to add milk and sugar to make this gruel palatable.
Amir Khusrau mentions that Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak’s royal kitchen cooked for about 20,000 people daily and that the Imperial dastarkhan had a spread of hundreds of delicacies. More details are available in his famous epic poem Mathnavi dar Sifat-e-Dehli.
The royal feast included ‘sharbet, labgir, naan-e-tanuri, sambusak, pulao and halwa.’ Wine accompanied the meal that concluded with tambul. Other varieties of bread, naan-e-tunuk, a lighter bread, and naan-e- tanuri, bread baked in a tandoor, are mentioned. In addition, Khusrau mentions as delicacies, exotic dishes prepared with sparrow and quail, along with a variety of sherbets made from roses, pomegranates, oranges, mangoes and lemons.
Ibn Battuta was greatly impressed by the city he saw:
On the next day we arrived at the city of Dihli (Delhi), the metropolis of India, a vast and magnificent city, uniting beauty with strength. It is surrounded by a wall that has no equal in the world, and is the largest city in the entire Muslim Orient… Everywhere domes rose white to the sky, water sparkled in the sun and the streets were gay with the bustle and colour of metropolitan life. In spite of its tribulations Delhi had never before been so large and magnificent.
Delhi at this time stretched from Mehrauli and Lal Kot to Siri, near the village of Shahpur Jat. On the western extremity, lay the great tank built by Alauddin Khilji that was called Hauz Shamsi at the time of its construction. Plain, barren land stretched till Tughlakabad towards the east. There once existed a water body between Jahanpanah and Tughlakabad.
Khusrau mentions as delicacies, exotic dishes prepared with sparrow and quail, along with a variety of sherbets made from roses, pomegranates, oranges, mangoes and lemons.
Public kitchens continued to flourish during the reign of successive sultans at the langar khaana maintained by Sufi khaneqahs associated with different orders of mystic-saints. Among the most prominent Sufi orders were the Suhrawardi, the Ishaqia, who dressed in yellow robes, the Haideri, who wore heavy chains round their neck, and the Firdausi, the Qadri and the Naqshbandi. The Chishtia silsila was the dominant one.
Many of the khaneqahs served as serais, where travellers could stay for three nights without paying anything. Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, when he first came to the city with his mother from Badaun, stayed at Namak ki Serai before shifting to a more modest Rakabdar Serai. Not all serais were attached to khaneqahs or madrasas, some operated as inns on a commercial basis.
Stability returned to the affairs of state when Firoz Shah, Mohammed Tughlak’s nephew, succeeded him. Firoz was ambitious and commissioned the city of Firozabad that is known at present as Feroz Shah Kotla. He is also credited with building the first canal on the Yamuna River. To beautify the new city, he transported two Ashokan pillars and constructed a hunting lodge on the Ridge.
Firozabad remained closely connected with the earlier settlements at Tughlakabad and Siri. Peace prevailed during Firoz Shah’s reign and because of this, perhaps, it was not considered necessary to build thick protective walls. The Yamuna River served as a natural moat on Firozabad’s eastern slank.
Firozabad was the ‘New Delhi’ of the fourteenth century. When the palace had been completed, suburbs grew up around and outside the walls. Two cities coexisted: one at the Qutub/Mehrauli and the other at Firozabad, separated by a few miles. Firozabad wasn’t girdled by thick protective walls as no traces of fortifications have been discovered. The palatial apartments and mansions have been reduced to rubble.
Firoz Shah also built a madrasa, with a small beautiful mosque, at Hauz Khas. He liked the site very much and selected a suitable spot for his own mausoleum. Firoz Shah died in 1388, and with him departed the glory of the Tughlaks.
This is an excerpt from ‘From the King’s Table to Street Food: A Food History of Delhi’ published by Speaking Tiger Books (2024). Excerpted with permission from the author and Speaking Tiger Books.
Pushpesh Pant is an academic, food critic and historian. He studied History, International Relations, and Law in Nainital and Delhi. He retired from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) after a long teaching career spanning four decades. He has written over fifty books on cuisine, culture, religion, and foreign policy in English and Hindi. Pant is a regular contributor to English and Hindi newspapers and periodicals. He also anchors TV programmes and produces documentaries from time to time.
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