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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Write brief essay on The “Corps of Forty” and its relations with the Sultans

  • UPSC 2004
  • The Thirteenth Century

The Turkan-i-Chahalgani, remembered in later chronicles as the "Corps of Forty," was the single most consequential institution of the early Delhi Sultanate's noble politics — a body created to entrench royal authority that ended up, within a generation, threatening to eclipse it. Its trajectory from loyal instrument to kingmaking faction to Balban's deliberate victim traces…

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What the full answer covers

  • Origins Under Iltutmish
  • An Exclusive and Self-Regarding Elite
  • Kingmakers in the Post-Iltutmish Decade
  • Balban's Systematic Destruction of the Corps

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