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Abstract This chapter discusses the institutional precedents and legacies of the Delhi Sultanate. The Ghurid conquest of northern India between 1192 and 1204 is sometimes identified as the chronological beginning of the Delhi Sultanate. Yet, the Afghan Ghurids represented none of the major streams of Islam; nor were they at home in the Persian language. From the 1190s on, their military commanders in India were mainly Turkish military slaves (bandagan-i khass) whose governing traditions more closely resembled coparcenary traditions rather than the Ghaznavid paradigm of absolutist monarchical rule idealized in eleventh- and twelfth-century Persian literature. Long after military slavery had died, its legacy of service culture endured in the idea of bandagi as a form of honorable service. The chapter then looks at the reigns of Shams al-Din Iltutmish, Ghiyath al-Din Balban, Jalal al-Din Khalaji, and Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq. It considers elite slaves and déraciné personnel, as well as the concepts of lordship, community, and territory that developed under the Sultanate. The territorial and social expansion of the Sultanate and the Muslim community placed stress on old formulations regarding lordship and territory, and these underwent considerable shifts in the fifteenth century. By the Afghan era in the later fifteenth century, the déraciné bandagan were no longer the epitome of loyalty; they had given way to the brother (biradar) and the ally-retainer (naukar), people who were of free and honorable status, but whose loyalty to their master was as commendable as that of a slave.