368 empires and dynasties: Asia and the Pacific Mongol fleets The expense of maintaining a strong defensive force against potential Mongol invasions, however, eventually undermined the Kamakura shogunate After defeating the Kamakura clan in 1338, the Kyoto-based Ashikaga, or Muromachi, shoguns ruled Japan from 1336 to 1467 There was a further decentralization of authority, but the Ashikaga era is especially noteworthy for cultural developments that represented a fusion of the imperial court traditions with samurai culture The Ashikaga era ended with a century of civil wars from 1467 to 1568 among rival samurai armies loyal to regional warlords who were consolidating their power India Gupta imperial rule over northern India ended around 550 as a result of the century-long drain on public resources to defend India’s northwestern frontier against repeated attempts at invasion by eastern Hun seminomads There was a brief renewal of centralized authority under Harsa (r 606–47), a military leader of the early seventh century Harsa claimed that he had restored the Gupta realm Harsa’s was a military rather than a civilian administration, however After his death India once again lapsed into a group of regional states dominated by martial kings or chiefs At the turn of the second millennium northern India faced a new onslaught from the northwest by Muslim invaders, most of whom were Turks from central Asia The new invaders, like numbers of seminomads before them, entered India via the northwestern passageways Between 1010 and 1525 India was ruled by a series of Muslim dynasties After 1206 the Muslim fortified city of Delhi and its suburbs became the new capital, and the rulers were known collectively as the Delhi sultans The initial Muslim invasion was led by Mahmud of Ghazni (r 997–1030), a warrior based near the present-day city of Kabul in Afghanistan Mahmud, who was the first Muslim ruler to take the title of sultan, raided India 17 times between 1001 and 1025 His heirs continued to have a presence in the city of Lahore from 1010 to 1156 and in the Punjab region until 1186 Between 1175 and 1205 the Ghurids of northern Persia extended their authority into northwestern India Finally, in 1206 the Ghurid warrior Qutb-ud-Din Aybak (r 1206–10) took Delhi Aybak’s successors, collectively known as the Slave Dynasty, also known as the Mamluk Dynasty, reigned from 1206 to 1290 The Khilji Turks ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1290 to 1320, followed by the Tughlaq Turks (1320–1413), the Sayyid Turks (1414–51), and the Lodhi Afghan rulers (1451–1526) In 1526 Zahir-ud-Dom Muhammad (known as Babur), an Afghan heir of the Mongols (r 1526–30), defeated the Lodhi armies and initiated the Mughal Dynasty (1556–1707) The Delhi era of Muslim rule in India is characterized by some scholars as a succession of Turkish dynasties that ruled from their walled fortresses over their largely Hindu subject populations in northern India, from whom they exacted taxes in return for offering them protection Despite this seeming separation between ruler and ruled, Muslims and Hindus began a productive intercultural dialogue typical of the earlier eras of cultural integration, except that the Muslim rulers allowed Hindus greater opportunity to retain their cultural traditions as long as they submitted to Islamic sovereignty Alongside these developments in northern India, southern India was ruled by a series of Hindu dynasties from roughly 600, in part the result of the resettlement of refugees from the north The Pallava, Chola, and Pandyan kingdoms were based in the multiple river system valleys and fertile plains of India’s southeastern Coromandel Coast The Chera monarchs ruled over the southwestern Malabar Coast Among these dynasties, the Cholas consolidated their control over their rivals in the 10th and 11th centuries They sent successful military missions to annex the neighboring region of present-day Sri Lanka as well as raiding parties against Bengal to the north and the Srivijaya Empire, which at that time controlled the straits of Melaka These straits were a vital maritime passageway between China and India In the 14th century the Vijayanagara Hindu monarchy (ca 1323–1565), which constructed a lavish court and ritual complex on the southern Deccan plateau of Karnataka, annexed the entire southern region The Vijayanagara rulers incorporated the existing regional warrior elite (nayaka) or assigned members of the royal military as delegated provincial governors Similarly to the contemporary Delhi Sultanate system, the Vijayanagara commanders governed from regional military garrisons, in contrast to the previous age, when royal troops were clustered exclusively around the royal court The nayaka partnered with local elite and strategic temples to control the surrounding rural communities Sri Lanka Anuradhapura was the early center of the Sri Lanka agricultural and Theravada Buddhist community It remained the capital city of the island from ancient times until 1000, when invading Tamil Chola armies from southern India plundered the city and established a new capital at Polonnaruwa to the southeast Sri Lanka forces retained Polonnaruwa as their capital when they retook the island in 1070 The state that was based in the new capital reached its height in the reign of Parakramabahu I (r 1153–86), as Sri Lanka prospered as a center of the trade network surrounding the Indian Ocean and as the international center of Theravada Buddhist scholarship But by 1200 this realm had fragmented, in part because the Tam-