Indologist Dr. Percival Spear, in his major work on the history of India (Penguin) begins his account of the emergence of the Mughals, giving a prelude to the momentous era, thus:

“The observer of the Indian scene in the early years of the sixteenth century might well have supposed that politically and socially the country was in decline. Conflict, confusion, uncertainty were to be found nearly everywhere except in the extreme south. But the country was controlled by members of an alien religion, yet these were hopelessly divided amongst themselves. The long reign of Hindu states had been broken at the end of the 12th century by the foreign rule of Muslim Turks. Though alien and at first ferocious, these people were at least united. For two centuries the Delhi Sultanate controlled the north and at times the central provinces of the country. The rule was essentially military, and their regime something of an armed camp, but they were open to cultural influences, they employed Hindus largely in all the services, they built fine. They settled in the country, their capital city of Delhi in the mid-fourteenth century was, on the testimony of the much-traveled Ibnu Batuta, one of the leading cities of the contemporary world....