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In A D 1192 the battle of Tarain saw the defeat of the Rajput armies of Rai Pithora, the Prithvi Raj of bardic lore, by the invading forces of Muizzuddin Ghuri. In the next year Qutb-ud-din Aibak the Mamluke general of Muizzuddin occupied Delhi. A little later Muhammud bin Bakhtiyar Khalji, another Ghuride commander swept through eastern India. On the sudden and violent death of Muizzuddin in A D 1206 he was succeeded by Qurt-ud-din Aibak and the ties with Ghazni were severed. A Sultanate kingdom in India had become a reality. This set in motion the process of assimilation of Islamic and indigenous ideas which was increasingly manifested in art, architecture and culture in succeeding centuries.

Though Qutb-ud-din ruled only till A D 1210, an independent Islamic state had been established by him and for more than six centuries thereafter increasingly Indianised Muslim dynasties ruled in Hindustan. It is the resultant cultural background of this period in architecture and the arts which forms the subject of the present Introduction. It was inevitable that a fusion of the Islamic outlook in art and architecture and the existing Hindu achievements in the same cultural field should take place increasingly, halted at times by the bigotry of some of the rulers but never brought to in irrevocable parting of ways.