Nasiruddin Qabacha (r. 1205-28) was a former slave-lieutenant of Mu’izz al-Din Ghuri (d. 1206) who was stationed at Uch (present-day Uch Sharif in Punjab, Pakistan). After the death of Mu'zz al-Din, Qabacha created and extended a Uch-based polity that linked Multan to Khambat to Aden. Qabacha's long rule at Uch provided the pivot for the re-alignment of Central Asian intellectual class during the Mongol campaigns. Famously, Qabacha was able to hold off the Mongol assault on Multan in 1224 CE. However, soon thereafter, Qabacha lost Uch, and his life, to Iltutmish (another Ghurid commander). Iltutmish established Delhi as the central nave of north Indian Turkic power-- relegating Qabacha and Uch to footnotes in history. My presentation will re-frame the Ghurid legacy in South Asia by focusing on Qabacha's gathering of intellectuals to his court in Uch in 1220s. These jurists, historians, and poets gathered at Madrasa-i Firuzi established by Qabacha. They went on to create some of the seminal historical and literary texts of Delhi's muslim rulers. I will focus on Muhammad ’Awfi’s Jawāmi al-Hikāyāt wa-Lawāmi ul-Rivāyat (completed in 1231), Ali Kufi's Chachnama (completed in 1226) and Minhāj Surāj al-Juzjāni’s Tabaqāt-i Nāseri (completed ca. 1260). The afterlife of these Ghurid texts lies in the shaping of Persian literary history and Muslim political thought in South Asia. The circulation and citation of these texts helped shape the contours of political rule into the seventeenth century. To understand the role played by Qabacha (and by extension Ghurid rulers) in the longer history of Muslim rule in north India, we need to revisit these pivotal texts, and the significance of Uch as a material and textual space in South Asia.