Tughlaq

Origin

The etymology of the word Tughlaq is not certain. The 16th-century writer Firishta claims that it is an Indian corruption of the Turkic term Qutlugh, but this is doubtful. Literary, numismatic and epigraphic evidence makes it clear that Tughlaq was not an ancestral designation, but the personal name of the dynasty's founder Ghazi Malik. Historians use the designation Tughlaq to describe the entire dynasty as a matter of convenience, but to call it the Tughlaq dynasty is inaccurate, as none of the dynasty's kings used Tughlaq as a surname: only Ghiyath al-Din's son Muhammad bin Tughluq called himself the son of Tughlaq Shah ("bin Tughlaq").