The sultans of Delhi come from relatively humble origins. They were slaves who rose to become generals in the armies of the Afghan ruler Muizz al-Din Ghuri. Their transformation into rulers of a kingdom of great political influence in North India was a slow and discontinuous process that occurred through the thirteenth century. For the better part of that century, there were many centers of social and political power in the early Delhi Sultanate. There were military commanders with contending political ambitions, as well as urban elites with contrasting social constituencies, religious ideologies, and personal commitments. Such people did not always support authoritarian interventions seeking to create a monolithic state. So, for decades, the sultanate seemed to disappear from political reckoning, and its resurrections were more in the nature of reincarnations. It made its periodic reappearances in bodily forms different from those of its precursors. Ultimately, the Delhi Sultanate survived not just because of the political and military acumen of its rulers and military agents, but because of the ideological investment of a variety of Muslim emigres that saw the Delhi Sultanate as a sanctuary for Muslims during the period of Mongol holocaust.