The language of administration under the Delhi Sultans was:

Persian was the language of administration under the Delhi Sultans.

About Persian in the Delhi Sultanate:

• NCERT notes that the Delhi Sultans made Persian the language of administration.
• All government records, orders (farmans), correspondence, revenue accounts and court proceedings were written in Persian.
• Persian was also the language of the court and of high culture, used by poets, historians and scholars.

Why Persian:

• The Turkish rulers who founded the Sultanate had been strongly influenced by Persian culture in Central Asia and Afghanistan.
• The Ghaznavid court, for example, had been a great centre of Persian literature.
• Persian had become the language of government and literature in much of the eastern Islamic world.
• Arabic remained the language of religion (the Quran) and of religious scholarship.
• Turkish was spoken by many of the rulers and nobles, but it was not used for administration.

Persian literature in India:

• Many important histories were written in Persian, such as the works of Minhaj-us-Siraj, Barani and Afif.
• Amir Khusrau was the greatest Persian poet of the Sultanate period.
• Many Sanskrit works were translated into Persian.

Growth of new languages:

• The interaction between Persian and local languages (especially the dialects of Hindi around Delhi) led to the development of a new language, Hindavi or Rekhta, which later developed into Urdu.
• "Urdu" comes from the Turkish word "ordu", meaning "camp" or "army".
• Urdu developed fully in the later centuries.

Under the Mughals:

Persian continued to be the language of administration; Akbar made it the language of revenue records at all levels.

Under the British:

Persian continued to be used in courts until 1837, when it was replaced by English and local languages.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Arabic was the language of religion.
• ✗Turkish was the mother tongue of many rulers.
• ✗Urdu developed later.