What were the major technological changes introduced during the Sultanate period? How did those technological changes influence the Indian society?

Military and building technology

• The true arch, dome, vault, and lime mortar, seen from the Qutb complex to the Alai Darwaza (early fourteenth century), made large congregational mosques and tombs possible in stone and brick.
• Soldiers used the composite bow, heavy cavalry, and, by the later Sultanate, more gunpowder weapons, which shifted power toward states that could pay horsemen.
• Paper, already known in the Islamic world, spread in chanceries and madrasas, which thickened records, law, and Persian prose.

Production and everyday technique

• The spinning wheel (charkha) and a wider use of the Persian wheel (saqia) in parts of the north raised yarn output and well irrigation where they took hold.
• Sericulture, paper, and new urban crafts sat in karkhanas tied to the court, while the silver tanka of Iltutmish gave a stabler coin for long-distance pay.
• Canal repair and new cuts under rulers such as Firuz Shah Tughlaq around the Yamuna–Ghaghar belt showed state interest in irrigation, even if the village still used the older plough.
• Food and garden plants associated with Central Asian and Persian courts entered elite kitchens and some fields, which slowly changed taste in towns.

Influence on society

• New towns, markets, and qasbas grew around forts, mosques, and mints, so a larger urban artisan and service class lived by cash and court demand.
• Persian as the language of command created a clerical elite and a cultural mix in music, dress, and food that later Mughal culture would thicken.
• Building workshops gathered masons, calligraphers, and stone-cutters across religious lines, which made a shared craft world even when temples and mosques differed in form.
• Cavalry and iqta finance pressed the countryside for surplus, so peasants met the new state as tax more often than as new machines.
• Sufi hospices and madrasas used paper and urban rent, which spread Islam and literacy in towns without erasing caste in the village.

Limits

• The Sultanate did not industrialise India; the heavy plough, monsoon rice, and jati crafts remained the social base.
• Gunpowder’s full military revolution is clearer in the sixteenth century, so the Sultanate is a beginning, not the last word.

Way forward for the answer

• Name arch, paper, wheel, tanka, and canal as techniques, then show town, tax, and culture as social effects, or the second half of the question stays vague.