Historians of the Delhi Sultanate, during the 7th/13th and 8th/14th centuries, interwove themes of justice (cadl) and punishment (siyāsa) to legitimate Muslim political authority. Justice was portrayed as a key component of kingship and the foundation on which conceptions of Muslim rule were built. Punishment was equally central to representations of Muslim authority established in the Indian subcontinent under the imperial rubric of the sultans of Delhi. In the historiography of the period, justice and punishment were depicted as flowing from two distinct and ideally complementary structures of political power. One structure drew its legitimacy from ideas of pre-Islamic Persian kingship formalized in a set of rules, known as ḍavābiṭ. These rules afforded the sultan a wide range of discretion in executing the prerogatives of his high office. A second structure was built upon Islamic constructions of authority defined by sharīca, and codified in a restricted body of legal principles monitored by the culamāɔ, who were viewed as its ultimate arbitrators. These dichotomous sources of political legitimacy that perpetuated distinct legal categories blurred the dividing line between perfect justice and excessive punishment.

To address this issue, historians of the Delhi Sultanate devoted particular attention to questions of political legitimacy on the occasions of punishment, particularly in the fashion of the most absolute form of punishment, the death penalty.