No More Learning

Balban attacked him so vigorously in
one of his strongholds that he lost heart, and retired by night to
another fortress, further to the south. The Muslims, after pillaging
the deserted fort, followed him through defiles described as almost
impracticable, and on February 14, 1248, captured his second strong-
hold, with his wives and children, many other prisoners, cattle and
horses in great numbers, and much other plunder. Balban rejoined
Mahmūd, now encamped at Kara, and on April 8 the army set out
for Delhi. At Kanauj Mahmūd was met by his brother, Jalāl-ud.
din, who was now appointed to the more important fiefs of Sambhal
and Budaun. He warned Mahmūd against the ambition of Balban,
whom he accused of secretly aiming at the throne, but the warning
was unheeded, and after Mahmūd's return to Delhi Jalāl-ud-din,
fearing that his confidence had been betrayed, fled from Budaun
and joined the Mughuls in Turkistān.
In 1249 Balban was employed in chastising the turbulent people
of Mewāt, the district to the south of Delhi, and in an unsuccessful
attempt to recover Ranthambhor, which had been restored by the
Hindus since it had been dismantled by Raziyya's troops, and was
now held by Nāhar Deo. He returned to Delhi on May 18, and
August 2, the king married his daughter and he became almost
supreme in the state. Mahmūd appointed him lieutenant of the
kingdom and his place as lord chamberlain was taken by his brother,
Saif-ud-din Aibak, Kashli Khān. In the early months of 1250
Balban was again engaged in restoring order in the Doāb.
In this year the north-western provinces of the kingdom were
thrown into confusion by a complicated dispute between the great
fief-holders. Kishlū Khān of Nāgaur demanded that the fiefs of
Multān and Uch should be bestowed upon him and though there
was some difficulty in ousting Ikhtiyār-ud-din Kuraiz, who had
expelled the Qarlughs from the province, his request was granted
1 The name of this raja is uncertain. It appears to have been either Dhalki
or Dhulki, of Mahalki.
on
5-2


## p. 68 (#108) #############################################

68
[CH.
THE SLAVE KINGS
on condition of his relinquishing Nāgaur and his other fiefs to
Kuraiz. Ignoring this condition he marched from Nāgaur, expelled
Kuraiz from Multān and Uch and occupied those places. Hasan
the Qarlugh immediately attacked him at Multān and although he
was slain his followers concealed his death and persuaded Kishlū
Khān to surrender the city. Sher Khān Sunqar then marched
from his headquarters at Bhātindi, expelled the Qarlughs, and
replaced his lieutenant Kuraiz in Multān. The situation was anoni-
alous and complicated. The governor appointed by royal authority
had surrendered the city to a foreign enemy, and Sunqar held it
by right of conquest from that enemy, and Kuraiz, his deputy,
strengthened his claim by capturing, in December, from a force of
Mughul marauders a large number of prisoners, whom he sent as
a peace-offering to Delhi. Kishlũ Khān, on the other hand, had
defied the royal authority by failing to surrender Nāgaur, whither
he had again retired after his discomfiture at Multān, and early in
1251 Mahmúd marched to Nāgaur to enforce the fulfilment of this
condition. After much prevarication Kishlū Khān submitted, and
retired to Uch, still heli by one of his retainers, and Kashli Khān,
Balban's brother, was installed in Nāgaur, but meanwhile Sundar
had marched to Uch and was besieging the fortress. Kishlū Khān,
who was related to Sundar, incautiously placed himself in his power
while attempting to effect a composition and was imprisoned, com-
pelled to issue orders for the surrender of Uch, and sent to Delhi.
Balban, who was related to both Sunqar and Kishlū Khān, adjusted
the quarrel by appointing the latter to Budaun.
In November Balban led an expedition against Chāhad the
Achārya, rajı of Chanderi and Narwar and the most powerful
Hindu chieftain in Mālwa. He is said to have been able to place
in the field 5000 horse and 200,000 foot, but he was defeated and
his capital was taken, though no permanent settlement was made
in Mālwa, and the army returned to Delhi on April 24, 1252, with
much booty and many captives,
During Balban's absence those who were jealous of his great
power, including Mahmūd's mother and Raihān, a eunuch
verted from Hinduism, who had already shown some aptitude for
factious intrigue, poisoned the king's mind against him, and found
many sympathisers and supporters among the Forty, who resented
the excessive predominance of one of their number. Balban's con-
donation of the offences of his disobedient cousin, Sunqar, furnished
a text for the exhortations of the intriguers, who succeeded in
persuading Mahmūd that it was necessary to vindicate his authority
con-


## p. 69 (#109) #############################################

III ]
DISGRACE OF BALBAN
69
by punishing Sunqar, and in the winter of 1252-53 Balban was com-
pelled to accompany his master on a punitive expedition and to
submit to the daily increasing arrogance of his enemies. At the
Sutlej the conspirators attempted his assassination, but fortune,
or his own vigilance, befriended him, and having failed in their
attempt they persuaded Mahmūd to banish him to his fief of Hānsī,
hoping that an overt act of disobedience would furnish a pretext
for his destruction, but they were disappointed, for Balban obeyed
the order in dignified silence. The expedition had been merely
an excuse for his humiliation, and the army retired to Delhi im-
mediately after his dismissal.
The rancour of the vindictive eunuch was not yet sated, and
he persuaded the king to
to transfer the fallen minister from
Hānsi to Nāgaur, and so confidently anticipated resistance that he
sent the royal army, in June, 1253, to enforce obedience, but again he
was disappointed, for Balban retired without a murmur to his new
fief. Hānsī was bestowed nominally upon an infant son of the king
by a wiſe other than the daughter of Balban, but was occupied by
a partisan of Raihān as the child's deputy.
Kashli Khan shared his brother's disgrace, and was deprived of
his office and sent to the fief of Kara, all real power at court was
usurped by the eunuch, and even the leading members of the Forty
were fain to content themselves with minor offices. Sunqar, dis-
mayed by his patron's sudden fall, had fled to Turkistān, leaving
his three fiefs, Bhātinda, Multān and Uch, in the hands of deputies
whose surrender enabled the king to bestow them on Arsalān Khān
Sanjar Chast, one of the Forty who was then hostile to Balban.
Balban displayed, meanwhile, an equivocal activity. He invaded
the Hindu state of Būndī, attacked and defeated Nāhar Deo of
Ranthambhor, and returned to Nāgaur with much booty, prepared,
apparently, either to take credit for his exploits or to devote his
spoils to the improvement of his own military strength, as circum-
stances should dictate. Mahmud, under the guidance of Raihān,
led a successful expedition against the Hindus of Katehr and
returned to Delhi on May 16, 1254. Five months later he learnt
that his fugitive brother Jalāl-ud-din and Balban's cousin Sunqar
had returned from Turkistān and joined forces in the neighbourhood
of Lahore with the object of establishing themselves in the Punjab
under the protection of the Mughuls.
Meanwhile the rule of Raihān at Delhi was daily becoming
more intolerable, and the Turkish nobles whose jealousy of Balban
had associated them with the eunuch felt keenly, as his insolence


## p. 70 (#110) #############################################

70
[ CH.
THE SLAVE KINGS
increased, the disgrace of their subservience to him. He maintained
a gang of ruffians to molest those who were not well affected towards
him and the historian Minhāj-ud-din complains that for a period
of six months or more he dared not leave his house to attend the
Friday prayers for fear of these bullies. Nearly all the great nobles
of the kingdom sent messages to Balban imploring him to return
to the capital and resume his former position. A confederacy was
formed, and Balban from Nāgaur, Arsalān Khān Sanjar of Bhātinda,
Bat Khān Aibak of Sunām, and Jalāl-ud-din and Sunqar from
Lahore assembled their troops at Bhātinda. In October the king
and Raihān marched from Delhi to meet them, and an indecisive
affair of outposts, which threw the royal camp into confusion, was
fought near Sunām. After celebrating, the 'Id-ul-Fitr (November 14)
at this place Mahmúd retired, a weck later, to Hānsi, and the con-
federates advanced to Guhrām and Kaithal. They were loth to
attack the king and endeavoured to attain their object by means
of intrigue and secret negotiations. Jalāl-ud-din expected that his
brother would be deposed and that he would be raised to the throne,
but Balban, who seems to have entertained a genuine affection for
his weak and pliant son-in-law, was not prepared to gratify this
ambition. The Turkish nobles in the king's camp favoured, almost
unanimously, the cause of the confederates, and on December 5,
while the army was retreating from Hānsī towards Jind, the eunuch
was dismissed from his high office and invested with the fief of
Budaun. On December 15 Bat Khān Aibak was sent to thank
Mahmūd for this act and to request an audience for the conſederate
nobles, but the imminent reconciliation was nearly frustrated by
the malice of the eunuch, who arranged to have the emissary
assassinated. The design was fortunately discovered and Raibān
was at once dismissed to Budaun, and on December 30 Balban and
his associates were received by the king. Balban at once resumed
his former place at the head of affairs and on January 20, 1255,
returned with Mahmūd to Delhi. Jalāl-ud-din was rewarded for
his services to the confederacy and consoled for the disappointment
of his ambition by his brother's formal recognition of his indepen-
dence in Lahore.
After Balban's return another ramification of the conspiracy
against him came to light. Qutlugh Khān of Bayāna, one of his
leading opponents, now outwardly reconciled, had secretly married
the king's mother, who had formerly exercised much influence over
her son and had been Raihān's chief ally. Mahmūd's eyes were
opened to the network of intrigue by which he had been surrounded,


## p. 71 (#111) #############################################

INI
BALBAN'S RETURN TO POWER
91
and Qutlugh and his wife were dismissed to Oudh, in order that
they might be as far as possible from the court. Raihān was
transferred, at the same time, from Budaun to Bahrāich, a less
important fief, but it was discovered a few months later that he was
in dangerous proximity to Qutlugh Khān, and Sanjar Chast was
sent to remove him from Bahrāich. He was arrested and imprisoned
by Qutlugh Khān but in August made his escape, attacked Bahrāich
with a small force, defeated and captured the eunuch, and put him
to death.
Early in 1256 Mahmūd and Balban marched to punish Qutlugh
Khān, who advanced to Budaun and defeated a detachment sent
against him. As the main body of the army approached he retired
and contrived to elude Balban's pursuit and on May 1 the army
returned to Delhi. After its return Qutlugh attempted to conquer
his old fief, Kara-Mānikpur, but was defeated by Sanjar Chast and
endeavoured to retrcat into the Punjab in order to seek service at
Lahore under Jalāl-ud-din. He followed the line of the Himālaya
and marched to Santaurgarh", where he gained the support of
Ranpāl, raja of Sirmūr, but on January 8, 1257, Balban marched
from Delhi and Qutlugh fled. Balban continued his advance, driving
both Qutlugh and the raja before him and, after plundering Sirmūrº,
returned to Delhi on May 15.
Kishlú Khān had been reinstated in Multān and Uch during
Raihān's ascendency and had since thrown off his allegiance to
Delhi and acknowledged the suzerainty of the Mughul Hulāgū,
whose camp he visited and with whom he left a grandson as a
hostage for his fidelity. When the army returned from Sirmūr to
Delhi he was in the neighbourhood of the Beās and marched north-
eastwards until he was joined by Qutlugh Khān, when their
combined forces marched southwards towards Sāmāna. Balban
marched from Delhi to meet them and came into contact with
them in the neighbourhood of Kaithal. A faction of discontented
ecclesiastics had written from Delhi, urging the rebels to advance
fearlessly and seize the capital, but the intrigue was discovered and
at Balban's instance the traitors were expelled from the city. The
rebels followed, however, the advice of their partisans, eluded
Balban, and, after a forced march, encamped on June 21 before
Delhi, hoping to find the city in friendly hands, but were disappointed
to learn that the loyal nobles were exerting themselves to assemble
1 In the hills below Mussoorie, lat. 30° 24' N. long. 78° 2' E.
2 The ancient capital of the state of Sirmūr, ‘now a mere hamlet surrounded
by extensive ruins, in the Kiārda Dūn. ' Nāhan, the modern capital, was not
founded until 1621.


## p. 72 (#112) #############################################

72
(CH.
THE SLAVE KINGS
troops and repair the defences, and that the governor of Bayāna was
approaching the city with his contingent. Balban remained for two
days in ignorance of the rebels' march to Delhi but they knew that
he might at any moment cut off their retreat, and many disaffected
officers who had joined them now deserted them and made their
peace with the king, and on June 22 Kishlū Khān and Qutlugh Khân
fled towards the Siwāliks, whence the former, with the two or three
hundred followers who still remained to him, made his way to Uch.
In December an army of Mughuls under the Nūyin Sălin in-
vaded the Punjab and was joined by Kishlú Khān. They dismantled
the defences of Multān and it was feared that they were about to
cross the Sutlej. On January 9, 1258, the king summoned all the
great fief-holders, with their contingents, to aid him in repelling the
invaders, but the Mughuls, whether alarmed by this demonstration
or sated with plunder, retired to Khurāsān. Their retreat was
fortunate, for the condition of the kingdom was so disordered that
the army could not safely have advanced against a foreign foe. Two
fief-holders, Sanjar of Oudh and Mas'ūd Jāni of Kara, had disobeyed
the royal summons, the Hindus of the Doāb and the Meos of Mewāt,
to the south of the capital, were in revolt and the latter had carried
off a large number of Balban's camels, without which the army could
hardly have taken the field. For four months the troops were
occupied in restoring order in the Doāb and in June marched to
Kara against the two recalcitrant fief-holders. The latter fled, but
received a promise of pardon on tendering their submission, and
after the return of the army to Delhi appeared at court and were
pardoned. Shortly afterwards Sanjar received the fief of Kara and
Masóūd Jāni was promised the government of Bengal, from which
province Balban Yüzbaki, the governor, had for some time remitted
no tribute, but the latter, on hearing that he was to be superseded,
secured his position by remitting all arrears. He died in 1259, but
the promise to Masóūd Jāni was never fulfilled.
Early in 1259 the disorders in the Doāb necessitated another
expedition, and after the punishment of the rebels the principal fiefs
in the province, as well as those of Gwalior and Bayāna, were best-
owed upon Sunqar.
In 1260 the Meos cxpiated by a terrible punishment a long
series of crimes. For some years past they had infested the roads
in the neighbourhood of the capital and depopulated the villages
of the Bayāna district, and had extended their depredations east-
wards nearly as far as the base of the Himālaya. Their impudent


## p. 73 (#113) #############################################

INI ]
DEATH OF MAHMUD
73
robbery of the transport camels on the eve of a projected campaign
had aroused Bilban's personal resentment, and on January 29 he
left Delhi and in a single forced march reached the heart of Mewāt
and took the Meos completely by surprise. For twenty days the
work of slaughter and pillage continued, and the ferocity of the
soldiery was stimulated by the reward of one silver tanga for every
head and two for every living prisoner. On March 9 the army re-
turned to the capital with the chieftain who had stolen the camels,
other leading men of the tribe to the number of 250, 142 horses,
and 2,100,000 silver tangas. Two days later the prisoners were
publicly massacred. Some were trampled to death by elephants,
others were cut to pieces, and more than a hundred were flayed
alive by the scavengers of the city. Later in the year those who
had saved themselves by flight returned to their homes and ventured
on reprisals by infesting the highways and slaughtering wayfarers.
Balban, having ascertained from spies the haunts and movements of
the bandits, surprised them as before by a forced march, surrounded
them, and put to the sword 12,000 men, women and children.
A most gratifying mission from the Mughuls now arrived at
Delhi. Nāsir-ud-din Muhammad, son of Hasan the Qarlugh, had
been negotiating a marriage between his daughter and Balban's
son, and had sent Balban's agent to Hulāgū's court at Tabriz,
where he was received with great honour. On his return to Delhi
he was accompanied by a Mughul officer of high rank from the
north-western fruntier of India, who was authorised to promise, in
Hulāgū's name, that depredations in India should cease.
The contemporary chronicle closes here, and there is a hiatus
in the history of Muhammadan India, which later historians are
unable to fill, from the middle of the year 1260 to the beginning of
1266. In attempting to explain the abrupt ending of the Tabaqát.
i-Nāsiri some say that the author was poisoned by the order of
Balban, whose displeasure he had incurred, others that he was
thrown into prison and starved to death, but these tales rest on no
authority and are probably pure conjecture.
The next historical fact of which we are aware is that Mahmud
Shāh ſell sick in 1265 and died on February 18, 12661. He is said
to have designated his father-in-law as his successor but, as no
male heir of the house of Iltutmish survived, the accession of the
powerful regent followed as a matter of course, and he ascended
the throne under the title of Ghiyās-ud-din Balban.
1 One authority alone says that he fell sick in 1264 and died on March 1,
1265, but the text is not satisfactory.


## p. 74 (#114) #############################################

CHAPTER IV
GHIYĀS-UD-DIN BALBAN, MUʻIZZ-UD-DIN KAIQUBAD,
AND SHAMS-UD-DIN KAYUMARS
The Forty could ill brook the elevation of one of their own
number to the throne. The disorders of the late reign had been
largely due to revolts against Balban's supremacy, and the jealousy
of one noble had reſt the Punjab from the kingdom, but in the
absence of an heir of the line of Iltutmish the recognition of Balban's
sovereignty was the only alternative to anarchy. Balban, on the
other hand, was resolved on founding a dynasty and, as a necessary
step to that end, on destroying the confederacy whose strength lay
in the weakness of the crown.
His first, and probably his most unpopular reform, was the
establishment of a rigid ceremonial at his court, which differed
entirely from that of his mcek and unassuming predecessor. His
maxim was that the freedom which came naturally and easily to
one born to a throne could not be safely used by a monarch who
had acquired one, and was surrounded by courtiers who had formerly
been his equals ; but his policy ministered to his pride, for though
his original position among the royal slaves had been extremely
humble he claimed descent from Afrāsiyāb of Tūrān, and pretended,
on this ground, to an innate right to sovereignty. His court was
an austere assembly where jest and laughter were unknown, whence
wine and gaming, to which he had formerly been addicted, were
banished, partly because they were forbidden by the Islamic law
but chiefly because they promoted good ſellowship and familiarity,
and where no detail of punctilious ceremony was ever relaxed. He
atoned for former laxity by a rigid observance of all the ceremonial
ordinances of his faith, and at meals his favourite companions were
theologians and his favourite topic the dogmas of Islam. His justice
knew no respect of persons, if we except a prejudice against the
Forty. Malik Baqbaq, a great noble who maintained from the
revenues of his fief of Budaun 4000 horse, caused one of his servants
to be beaten so unmerciſully that he died under the lash. When
Balban next visited Budaun the man's widow demanded justice,
and Malik Baqbaq was flogged to death and the news-writer who
had suppressed the circumstance was hanged over the city gate.
Haibat Khān, who held the great fief of Oudh, slew a man in a fit
of drunken rage, and when the victim's relations appealed to Balban


## p. 75 (#115) #############################################

CH, IV )
BALBAN'S SEVERITY
75
>
he caused Haibat Khān to be flogged with five hundred stripes and
then delivered him to the widow, saying, “This murderer was my
slave, he is now yours. Do you stab him as he stabbed your
husband. ' Haibat Khān found intercessors who induced the woman
to stay her hand, and purchased his freedom for 20,000 tangas, but
was so overcome with shame that to the day of his death he never
left his house. Balban more than once announced that he would
treat his own sons in like manner in similar circumstances. An
officer who was defeated by rebels was hanged over the gate of the
city which was the seat of his government. This was not a proper
punishment for incapacity or ill fortune, but the officer was, like
Baqbaq and Haibat Khān, one of the Forty. Balban was occasion-
ally, as will be seen from the chronicle of his reign, capricious as
well as cruel in his punishments. A virtue eulogised by Muslim
historians was his capacity for weeping at sermons, but he could
remain unmoved by the sight of cruel executions.
The informers or news-writers formed a branch of the public
service to which he devoted special attention and were an important
feature of Muslim rule in India, as of all despotic rule over large
areas in which extensive delegation of authority is necessary. They
were appointed by the king and were independent of local governors,
the affairs of whose provinces it was their duty to report and on
whose actions they were, in some sort, spies. Their position was
extremely delicate and Balban took great pains in selecting and
exercised great caution in promoting them,
His ambition of emulating Mahmūd of Ghazni and Sultān Sanjar
the Saljūq was restrained by the ever present menace of a Mughul
invasion. To the courtiers who urged him to conquer Gujarāt and
recover Mālwa and other provinces lost to the kingdom he replied
that he had the will to do far more than this but had no intention
of exposing Delhi to the fate of Baghdād. His energies found a
vent in the hunting field, where his strenuous expeditions, in which
he was accompanied by large bodies of horse and foot, were com-
mended by the Mughul Hulāgū as useful military exercises. Balban
was much gratified by this commendation and complacently ob-
served that those whose business it was to rule men knew how to
appreciate in others the qualities of a ruler.
The record of his reign is chronologically less exact than that
of preceding reigns, for our principal authority is Ziyā-ud-din
Barani, an interesting and discursive but unmethodical writer with
no taste for chronology. He seldom troubles to assign a date to an
event and never troubles to see that it is correct.


## p. 76 (#116) #############################################

76
( ch.
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
era
One of the first to recognise that the accession of Balban had
inaugurated a new was Arsalān Tātār Khān, now governor of
Bengal, who had latterly withheld from Mahmūd material recogni-
tion of his sovereignty, but at once sent Balban a gift of sixty-
three elephants.
The Meos had recovered from their severe chastisement and
infested the jungle which had been permitted to grow unchecked
round Delhi. They plundered travellers on the roads, entered the
city by night, and rubbed the inhabitants in their houses, and even
by day robbed and stripped water-carriers and women drawing
water from the large reservoirs just within the city walls, so that
it became necessary to shut the gates on the western side of the
city immediately after the hour of afternoon prayer. During the
year following his accession Balban was occupied in exterminating
the robbers. The jungle was cleared, the Meos lurking in it were
put to death, a fort was built to command the approaches to the
city from the west, and police posts were established on all sides.
A recrudescence of turbulence among the Hindus of the Doāb,
who had entirely closed the roads between Bengal and Delhi,
necessitated measures of repression and precaution, and all impor-
tant towns and villages in this region were granted as fiefs to
powerful nobles, who cleared the jungles which harboured gangs
of brigands, slew large numbers of Hindus and enslaved their
wives and children. Balban himself remained for many months in
the districts of Patiyālī, Kampil, Bhojpur, and Jalāli, extirpated
all highway robbers, built forts at those places, garrisoned them
with Afghāns, who received lands in their vicinity for their main-
tenance, and by these measures secured the tranquillity of the
roads between Delhi and Bengal for a century.
While he was thus engaged he learnt that the Hindus of Katehr
had risen and were overrunning and plundering that province in
such force that the governors of Budaun and Amroha were unable
to take the field against them. He hastily returned to Delhi,
assembled his best troops and, having misled his enemy by an-
nouncing his intention of hunting, made a forced march and
appeared in Katehr sixty hours after he had left the capital. The
rebels in arms, taken completely by surprise, fled, and Balban
terribly avenged his outraged authority. All males over the age of
eight were put to death, the women were carried off into slavery,
and in every village through which the army passed huge heaps of
corpses were left, the stench of which poisoned the air as far as
the Ganges. The region was plundered and almost depopulated,


## p. 77 (#117) #############################################

IV ]
RECOVERY OF THE PUNJAB
77
and those of the inhabitants who were spared were so cowed that for
thirty years order reigned in the province and the districts of Budaun,
Amroha, Sambhal, and Gunnaur had peace.
In 1268-69 Balban led his army into the Salt Range with the
object, primarily, of preparing for the re-establishment of the royal
authority in the Punjab, and, secondarily of obtaining a supply of
horses for his army. His operations were successful ; the Hindus
were defeated and plundered and so many horses were taken that
the price of a horse in his camp fell to thirty or forty tangas.
In the course of this campaign a grave abuse inseparable from
the lax feudal system of India and constantly recurring in the history
of Islamic kingdoms in that country was first brought to Balban's
notice. Iltutmish had provided for the king's personal troops by
grants of land in fee, on condition of service. Most of the actual
grantees were now dead and the survivors were unfit for service, but
the immunity which they had enjoyed under the feeble Mahmud
encouraged them to advance the impudent claim that their fiefs had
been granted unconditionally and in perpetuity. It appeared likely
that an inquiry would arouse discontent and disaffection and even
Balban was obliged to leave the question at rest for the time, but in
1270, in the course of an expedition during which he restored the
city of Lahore and re-established a provincial government in the
upper Punjab the quality of the contingent supplied by the grantees
necessitated the investigation of the matter, and he discovered, on
his return to Delhi, that there was a general tendency on the part of
the actual holders of the lands to evade their personal liability for
service and that many of the able-bodied, as well as those who were
too young or too old to take the field, sent as substitutes useless and
unwarlike slaves. The grants were resumed and the grantees were
compensated beyond their deserts by the allotment of subsistence
allowances, not only to themselves but to their descendants, but this
did not satisfy them and they carried their grievance to the aged
Fakhr-ud-din, Kolwal of Delhi, who worked on Balban's feelings by
the irrelevant argument that old age was no crime and that if it were
he, the Kotwal, was one of the chief offenders. The emotional king
failed to detect the fallacy and, after weeping bitterly, rescinded the
reasonable orders which he had issued and wasted the resources of
the state by confirming the grants unconditionally.
Balban's intention of founding a dynasty and his attitude towards
the Forty were no secret, and his own cousin, Sher Khān Sunqar,
the most distinguished servant of the kingdom, who now held the


## p. 78 (#118) #############################################

78
[CH.
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
fiefs of Bhātinda, Bhatnair, Sāmāna, and Sunām, had avoided Delhi
since his accession. Sunqar's courage and abilities, no less than his
mistrust, rendered him an object of suspicion to his cousin, now
about sixty-five years of age, and his sudden death at this time is
attributed to poison which Balban caused to be administered to him.
His fiefs of Sāmāna and Sunām were bestowed upon Tātār Khān of
Bengal, one of the Forty, but less formidable than Sunqar, and
Tughril was appointed to Bengal in his place.
Balban soon discovered that in attempting to protect the interests
of his posterity he had endangered the peace of his kingdom. Sunqar
had been dreaded by the Mughuls and by the Khokars and other
turbulent Hindu tribes, and his death revived the courage of both
foreign and domestic enemies. Owing to the renewed activity of the
Mughuls the king transferred his elder son, Muhammad Khān,
entitled Qā'ān Malik, from his fief of Koil to the government of
Multān. This prince was the hope of his line. He was gentle and
courageous, able and learned, a diligent student and a munificent
patron of letters. The poets Amir Khusrav and Amir Hasan began
their literary careers as members of his household, and he invited the
famous Sa'di of Shīrāz to visit him at Multān, and was disappointed
of the honour of entertaining him only by reason of the poet's
extreme age. His table and intimate circle were adorned by the
presence of the learned and the wise, and though wine was in use it
was drunk for the purpose of stimulating, not of drowning, the
intellect. No obscenity or ribald conversation was heard in that
society, nor did cheerfulness and merriment ever transgress the
bounds of decorum. Eastern historians and poets are wont to asso-
ciate the names of princes with fulsome and almost blasphemous
adulation, but in all that has been written of Muhammad Khān
affection, as well as admiration, may be traced. In him were centred
all the hopes of the stern old king ; for him the Forty were doomed,
and for him the blood of near kinsmen was shed. The relations
between father and son were of the most affectionate character, and
Muhammad Khān used to travel every year from Multān to visit
Balban, to enjoy his society, and to profit by his counsels. Before
his departure he was formally designated heir-apparent and was
invested with some of the insignia of royalty.
The character of Balban's second son Mahmud, entitled Bughrā
Khān, was a complete contrast to that of his brother. He was
slothful, addicted to wine and sensual pleasures, and devoid of
generous ambition. His father, though well aware of his faults and


## p. 79 (#119) #############################################

IV ]
REBELLION IN BENGAL
79
the weakness of his character, regarded him with natural tenderness
and attempted to arouse in him a sense of responsibility by bestowing
on him the fief of Sāmāna. Bughrā Khān, who dreaded his father's
critical scrutiny and found the restraint of his society irksome, was
well content to leave the capital ; but for the general advice which
had been deemed sufficient for Muhammad Khān, Balban substi-
tuted, in the case of his younger son, minute and detailed instructions,
accompanied by special warnings against self-indulgence and in-
temperance and a threat of dismissal in case of misconduct.
About the year 1279 the Mughuls again began to appear in
north-western India, and in one of their incursions even crossed the
Sutlej, but though they harried the upper Punjab Delhi had little to
apprehend from them, for domestic enemies had now been crushed,
and a force of seventeen or eighteen thousand horse composed of the
contingents of Muhammad Khān from Multān, Bughrā Khān from
Sāmāna, and Malik Bektars from Delhi so severely defeated them as
to deter them from again crossing the Sutlej.
In the same year Balban learnt with indignation that Tughril
was in rebellion in Bengal. The allegiance of the governors of this
distant and wealthy province to the reigning king had usually
depended on circumstances. A strong ruler was gratified by fre-
quent, though seldom regular remittances of tribute, one less strong
might expect the compliment of an occasional gift, but with any
indication of the king's inability to maintain his authority nearer
home remittances ceased entirely. Lakhnāwati had thus earned at
Delhi the nickname of Balghākpur, 'the city of rebellion. ' Tughril
was encouraged by Balban's advancing age and by a recrudescence
of Mughul activity on the north-western frontier, to withhold
tribute, and Balban ordered Malik Aitigin the Longhaired, entitled
Amin Khān, to march against him from Oudh. Amin Khān was
defeated, many from his army joined Tughril, and those who at-
tempted to save themselves by flight were plundered by the Hindus.
Balban, whom the first news of the rebellion had thrown into such
paroxysms of rage that few durst approach him, was now nearly
beside himself, and caused Amin Khān to be hanged over the gate
of the city of Ajodhya. In the following year an army under Malik
Targhi shared the fate of its predecessor, and Tughril was again
reinforced by deserters. Balban now gnawed his own flesh in his
fury, and when his first outburst of rage was spent prepared to
take the field in person. Fleets of boats were collected on the
Jumna and the Ganges, and Balban, accompanied by his second


## p. 80 (#120) #############################################

80
[CH.
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
son, Bughrā Khān, set out from Delhi and marched through the
Doāb. In Oudh he mustered his forces, which numbered, including
sutlers and camp-followers, 200,000, and, although the rainy season
had begun he crossed the Gogra and invaded Bengal. Here he was
often compelled by the state of the weather and the roads to halt
for ten or twelve days at a time, and when he reached Lakhnāwati
he found it almost deserted, for Tughril, on hearing of his approach,
had fled with his army and most of the inhabitants to Jājnagarl in
eastern Bengal. After a short halt Balban continued his march
until he reached Sonārgāon, on the Meghna, near Dacca, where he
compelled the raja, Bhoj, to undertake to use his utmost endeavours
to discover Tughril and to prevent his escape by land or water. He
dismayed his army by solemnly swearing that he would not rest
nor return to Delhi, nor even hear the name of Delhi mentioned,
until he should have seized Tughril, even though he had to pursue
him on the sea. His troops, who had not yet even discovered the
place of Tughril's retreat, wrote letters, in the deepest dejection,
bidding farewell to their families at Delhi, and the search for
Tughril began. One day a patrol under Sher Andāz of Koil and
Muqaddir encountered some grain merchants who had been abroad
on business.
When two had been beheaded to loosen the tongues
of the rest, Sher Andāz learned that he was within a mile of Tughril,
who was encamped with his army beside a reservoir. After sending
word to Bektars, commanding the advanced guard, he rode cautiously
on, found the rebel army enjoying a day's halt after the fashion of
undisciplined troops and, fearing lest an incautious movement should
give the alarm, formed the desperate resolution of attacking the
enemy with his party of thirty or forty horsemen. As they galloped
into the camp with swords drawn, shouting aloud for Tughril, the
rebels were too astonished to reckon their numbers or to attempt
resistance and they rode straight for his tent. Amid a scene of the
wildest confusion he fled, and, mounting a barebacked horse,
endeavoured to escape, but was recognised and pursued. Malik
Muqaddir brought him down with a well aimed arrow and was
thenceforward known as Tughril-Kush, 'the Slayer of Tughril? .
Bektars then arrived on the scene and, receiving Tughril's head
from Muqaddir, sent it to Balban with news of the success which
had been gained. Balban summoned the adventurous officers to
1 Not to be confounded with Jājpur in Orissa, also called Jājnagar by the
Muslims.
2 From the printed text of Barani it would appear that Muqaddir and
Tughril. Kush were distinct persons, but this text is confused and corrupt, and in
the list of Balban's nobles which precedes the account of his reign Malik Muqaddir
is entitled Tughril Kush.


## p. 81 (#121) #############################################

iv)
SUPPRESSION OF THE REBELLION
81
his presence and after severely reproving their rashness generously
rewarded their success. The army passed at once from despair to
elation ; their master's vow was fulfilled and the remainder of their
task was a labour of love. The rebel's demoralised force was sur.
rounded and nearly the whole of it was captured. The army then
set out on its return march to Lakhnāwati where Balban proposed
to glut his revenge. On either side of the principal bazar, a street
more than two miles in length, a row of stakes was set up and the
family and the adherents of Tughril were impaled upon them.
None of the beholders had ever seen a spectacle so terrible and
many swooned with terror and disgust. Such was the fate of
Tughril's own followers, but those who had deserted from the two
armies sent against him and had joined his standard were reserved
for what was designed to be a yet more appalling spectacle at the
capital.
Before leaving Bengal Balban appointed Bughrā Khān to the
government of the province and after repeating the advice which
he had given him on appointing him to Sāmāna added a brief and
impressive warning. ‘Mahmūd,' he said, after the punishment of
the rebels, 'didst thou see ? ' The prince was silent and the question
was repeated. Still there was no answer. 'Mahmud,' repeated
Balban, 'didst thou see the punishment inflicted in the great
bazar? ' 'Yes,' at length replied the trembling prince, 'I saw it. '
'Well,' said Balban, 'take it to heart, and whilst thou art at
Lakhnāwati remember, that Bengal can never safely rebel against
Delhi. ' He then proceeded, with strange inconsistency, to advise
his son, if he should ever find himself in arms against Delhi, to flee
i some spot where he might baffle pursuit and remain in hiding
until the storm should have passed.
The only cloud overshadowing the rejoicings which marked
Balban's triumphant return to Delhi was the impending fate of his
wretched captives, most of whom had wives and families in the city.
These repaired in their grief to the gāzi of the army, a pious and
gentle man, and besought him to intercede for the lives of those
dear to them. He gained the royal presence and, after a harangue
on the blessedness of mercy which reduced Balban to tears, applied
his arguments to the fate of the doomed men. His efforts were
successful; the double row of stakes which had been set up from
the Budaun gate of the city to Tilpat was removed, and the prisoners
were divided into four classes. The common herd received a free
pardon, those of slightly greater importance were banished for a
time, those who had held respectable positions at Delhi suffered a
C, H, I. III.
6


## p. 82 (#122) #############################################

82
(CH.
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
term of imprisonment, and the principal officers were mounted on
buffaloes and exposed to the jeers and taunts of the mob. This act
of mercy blotted out the remembrance of the atrocity perpetrated
at distant Lakhnāwati and from all parts of the kingdom con-
gratulations poured in.
Balban, now eighty years of age, was at the height of his
prosperity and glory when he received a blow which darkened the
brief remainder of his days. The Mughuls, under Tamar Khān,
invaded the province of Multān in great force and Muhammad
Khān attacked and defeated them, but was surprised by an ambush
and slain on March 9, 1285. The historian Barani gives an affecting
account of the behaviour of the aged king in his affiction. He
would in no way compromise his dignity, and gave audiences and
transacted business with his usual stern and grave demeanour,
though the weight of the blow which had fallen on him was manifest
to all ; but at night, and in the privacy of his chamber, he rent his
clothes, cast dust upon his head, and mourned for his son as David
mourned for Absalom. The dead prince was henceforward always
known as Shahid, 'the Martyr,' and his youthful son Kaikhusrav
was sent from Delhi with a large staff and a numerous force to take
his father's place as warden of the marches.
Bughrā Khān, whom Balban now designated as his heir, was
summoned from Bengal in order that his presence at the capital
might avert the evils of a disputed succession, but the worthless
prince had always chafed under the restraints of his father's austere
court and declined, even for the sake of a throne, to endure exist-
ence under the cloud of gloom which now overhung it. Leaving
the city on the pretext of a hunting excursion, he returned without
permission to Bengal, but before he reached Lakhnāwati his father
was on his deathbed. Balban summoned a few trusted counsellors
and disinherited his unworthy son, designating as his heir Kai-
khusrav, the son of the Martyr Prince. When he had issued these
injunctions the old king breathed his last.
His counsellors disregarded his last wishes, and enthroned
Kaiqubād, a youth of seventeen or. eighteen, son of Bughrā Khān.
The historian Barani says that for a reason which could not be
mentioned without disclosing the secrets of the harem they had
been on bad terms with the Martyr, and feared to raise his son to
the throne. These expressions may indicate a former lapse from
yirtue on the part of the otherwise blameless prince, or a suspicion
that Kaikhusrav was not the son of his putative father, but their
import cannot be accurately determined.


## p. 83 (#123) #############################################

v]
DEATH OF BALBAN
83
Nizām-ud-din, nephew and son-in-law of the aged Kotwal Fakhr-
ud-din, acquired on Kaiqubād's accession in 1287 a prominent
position at the capital, and the son of Balban's brother Kashli Khān,
who bore his father's title but was more generally known as Malik
Chhajjū, received the important fief of Sāmāna. Bughrā Khān
tamely acquiesced in his supersession by his son, but assumed in
Bengal the royal title of Nāsir-ud-din Mahmud Bughrā Shāh.
The young king had been educated under the supervision of his
grandfather in the straitest paths of virtue, and his guardians and
tutors, trembling under the old despot's eye, had subjected him to
the most rigid discipline. As a natural consequence of this in-
judicious restraint the youth, on finding himself absolute master of
his actions, plunged at once into a whirlpool of debauchery. The
unrestrained indulgence of his appetites was his sole occupation,
and to the duties of his station he gave not a thought. The Arabic
saying, "Men follow the faith of their masters' found ample con-
firmation during his brief reign, and as in the reign of Charles II in
England the reaction from the harsh rule of the precisians and the
evil example of the king produced a general outburst of licentious-
ness, so in that of Kaiqubād at Delhi the reaction from the austere
and gloomy rule of Balban and the example of the young voluptuary
inaugurated among the younger generation an orgy of debauchery.
The minister, Khatīr-ud-din, abandoned in despair the task of
awakening his young master to a sense of duty and the ambitious
Nizām-ud-din was enabled to gather into his own hands the threads
of all public business and, by entirely relieving Kaiqubād of its
tedium, to render himself indispensable. His influence was first
exhibited in the course followed with Kaikhusrav, whose superior
hereditary claim was represented as a menace to Kaiqubād. The
prince was summoned to Delhi and, under an order obtained from
Kaiqubād when he was drunk, was put to death at Rohtak. Nizām-
ud-din then obtained, by means of a false accusation, an order
degrading the minister, who was paraded through the streets on an
ass, as though he had been a common malefactor. This treatment
of the first minister of the kingdom and the execution, at Nizām-
ud-din's instigation, of Shāhak, governor of Multān, and Tūzaki,
governor of Baran, alarmed and disgusted the nobles of Balban's
court, and caused them gradually to withdraw from participation
in public business, and the power of Nizām-ud-din, the object of
whose ambition could not be mistaken, became absolute. All who
endeavoured to warn the king of what all but he could see were
delivered to Nizām-ud-dīn to be dealt with as sedition-mongers.
6-2


## p. 84 (#124) #############################################

84
[ CH
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
The aged Kotwal attempted to restrain his nephew, but he had
already gone so far that he could not safely recede. Even the
slothful and self-indulgent Bughrā sent letters to his son warning
him of the inevitable consequences of his debauchery and neglect
of business, and, more guardedly, in view of Nizām-ud-dīn's control
of the correspondence, of the danger of permitting a subject to usurp
his authority. A proposed meeting between father and son, on the
frontiers of their kingdoms, was postponed by an irruption of the
Mughuls under Tamar Khān of Ghazni, who overran the Punjab,
plundered Lahore, and advanced nearly as far as Sāmāna. Amid
the general demoralisation of the court and the capital Balban's
army still remained as a monument of his reign, and a force of
30,000 horse under the command of Malik Muhammad Baqbaq,
entitled, perhaps for his services on this occasion, Khān Jahān, was
sent against the invaders, who were overtaken in the neighbourhood
of Lahore and utterly defeated. Most of their army were slain, but
more than a thousand prisoners were carried back to the capital.
The description of these savages by the poet Amir Khusrav, who
had been a prisoner in their hands for a short time after the battle
in which his early patron, the Martyr Prince, was slain, is certainly
coloured by animosity, but is probably as true as most caricatures,
‘Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored
a hole in a brazen vessel, and their stench was more horrible than
their colour. Their heads were set on their bodies as if they had no
necks, and their cheeks resembled leathern bottles, full of wrinkles
and knots. Their noses extended from cheek to cheek and their
mouths from cheekbone to cheekbone. Their nostrils resembled
rotten graves, and from them the hair descended as far as the lips.
Their moustaches were of extravagant length, but the beards about,
their chins were very scanty. Their chests, in colour half black,
half white, were covered with lice which looked like sesame growing
on a bad soil. Their whole bodies, indeed, were covered with these
insects, and their skins were as rough-grained as shagreen leather,
fit only to be converted into shoes. They devoured dogs and pigs
with their nasty teeth. . . Their origin is derived from dogs, but they
have larger bones. The king marvelled at their beastly countenances
and said that God had created them out of hell fire. '
Numbers of these prisoners were decapitated and others were
crushed under the feet of elephants, and 'spears without number
bore their heads aloft, and appeared denser than a forest of
bamboos. ' A few were preserved and kept in confinement. These


## p. 85 (#125) #############################################

IV)
MEETING BETWEEN FATHER AND SON
85
were sent from city to city for exhibition, and, as the poet again
observes, 'sometimes they had respite and sometimes punishment'.
It was after this irruption of the Mughuls that Nizām-ud-din
persuaded Kaiqubād to put to death the 'New Muslims. ' These
were Mughuls who had been captured in former campaigns and
forcibly converted, or who had voluntarily embraced Islam and
entered the royal service, in which some had attained to high rank.
They were, for many years after this time, a source of anxiety, for
it was believed that they, like the 'New Christians' of Spain and
Portugal, were not sincere in their change of faith, and they fell
under the suspicion of treasonable correspondence with their un-
converted brethren. The accusations against them were vague, and
were not substantiated by any trial or enquiry, but they were
proscribed and put to death, and those who had been on friendly
terms with them and had permitted them to intermarry with their
families were imprisoned.
Meanwhile Bughrā had advanced with his army to the frontier
of his kingdom and was encamped on the bank of the Gogra! His
intentions were undoubtedly hostile. He had acquiesced in his
son's elevation to the throne, but the latter's subsequent conduct
and the prospect of the extinction of his house, had aroused even
his resentment. Kaiqubād, on learning that his father had reached
the Gogra, marched from Delhi in the middle of March, 1288, to
Ajodhya, where he was joined by his cousin Chhajjū from Kara.
The armies were encamped on the opposite bank of the Gogra,
and the situation was critical, but Bughrā hesitated to attack his
son's superior force and contented himself with threatening
messages, but when they were answered in the same strain changed
his tone and suggested a meeting. This was arranged, but it was
stipulated that Bughrā should acknowledge the superior majesty
of Delhi by visiting his son. He consented, and crossed the river.
Kaiqubād was to have received his father seated on his throne,
but as Bughrā approached his natural feelings overcame him, and
he descended from the throne and paid to him the homage due
from a son to his father, and their meeting moved the spectators
to tears. A friendly contention regarding precedence lasted long
and was concluded by the father taking the son by the hand, seating
him on the throne, and standing before him. He then embraced
his son and returned to his own camp. Kaiqubād celebrated
1 The account of the ineeting between Kaiqubād and his father given by Amir
Khusrav has been generally preferred to that given by Barani. Amir Khusray
was an eye witness and Barani writes only from hearsay.


## p. 86 (#126) #############################################

86
[ CH.
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
the reconciliation, in characteristic fashion, with a drinking bout
at which he and his courtiers got drunk. He exchanged compli-
mentary presents with his father and three more meetings took
place between them. Bughrā took his son to task for putting to
death Kaikhusrav and so many of the old nobles and advised him
to substitute a council of four for a single adviser. At the last
meeting he whispered in his son's ear, as he embraced him, a caution
against Nizām-ud-din and advised him to put him to death. The
two parted with tokens of affection and returned to their capitals.
‘Alas! cried Bughrā, 'I have seen the last of my son and the last
of Delhi. ' His counsels induced Kaiqubād to make a faint effort to
reform his ways, but before he reached Delhi he had returned like
a dog to his vomit and a washed sow to her wallowing in the mire.
The rejoicings with which his hardly expected return was celebrated
were the occasion of general licence, in describing which the aged
and toothless Barani, writing more than half a century later, is
beguiled into rhapsodical and unseemly reminiscences of his own
misspent youth.
In the midst of his debauchery Kaiqubād bore in mind his
father's warning and one day summoned up courage to inform
Nizām-ud-din abruptly that he was transferred to Multān and must
leave Delhi at once. He so delayed his departure on various pre-
texts that the king concluded that he intended to defy his authority,
and, caused him to be poisoned. Baranī, who condemns the minister's
unscrupulous ambition, praises him for his judicious selection of
subordinates, and justly observes that but for his unremitting
attention to public business the authority of Kaiqubād could not
have been maintained for a day. His sudden removal dislocated
the machinery of the administration and the king, incapable of
personal attention to business, summoned
the most
powerful and capable noble in the kingdom, Malik Jalāl-ud-din
Firūz Khalji, who, since the transfer of Chhajjū to Kara, had held
the important fief of Sāmāna, transferred him to Baran, and
appointed him to the command of the army. His advancement
gave great offence to the Turkish nobles and to the people of the
capital, who affected to despise his tribe and feared both his power
and his ambition. Almost immediately after he had taken possession
of his new fief incontinence and intemperance did their work on
Kaiqubād, who was struck down with paralysis and lay, a help-
less wreck, in the palace which he had built at Kilokhrī, while
Firūz marched with a large force from Baran to the suburbs of
Delhi.
to Delhi


## p. 87 (#127) #############################################

IV )
DEATH OF KAIQUBAD
87
The Turkish nobles and officers, headed by Aitamar Kachhan
and Aitamar Surkha, were in a dilemma. Fīrūz, though his designs
were apparent, had not declared against Kaiqubād and had done
nothing which his official position, which required him to keep the
peace, would not justify, and they were debarred by the king's
physical condition from the usual expedient of carrying him into
the field and so arming themselves with his authority. They there.
fore, although Kaiqubād still lived, carried his three year old son
into the city and enthroned him under the title of Shams-ud-din
Kayumars.
Kaiqubād lay unheeded in his palace at Kilokhri while the two
parties contended for the mastery. Neither wished to be the first
to appeal to arms, and Kachhan visited Firūz to invite him to
discuss the situation with the Turkish nobles in the city, but Firūz
having ascertained that the invitation was a snare, and that pre-
parations had been made to murder him and his Khaljī officers,
caused Kachhan to be dragged from his horse and slain. The sons
of Fīrūz then dashed into Delhi, carried off Kayūmars, and defeated
a force sent in pursuit of them, slaying Surkha, its leader, and
capturing the sons of Fakhr-ud-din, the Kotwāl. The success of
the unpopular party so incensed the people that they rose and
streamed out of the city gates, with the intention of attacking
Firūz in his camp, but the Kotwal, who was a man of peace, and
trembled for the fate of his captive sons, quelled the disturbance
and dispersed the mob. Fīrūz was now master of the situation, and
most of the Turkish nobles, who had lost their leaders, openly
joined him, and the rest, with the populace of Delhi, maintained
an attitude of sullen aloofness. Meanwhile the wretched Kaiqubād
was an unconscionable time a-dying, and, with the approval of
Firüz, an officer whose father had been executed by the sick man's
orders was dispatched to his chamber to hasten his end. The
ruffian rolled his victim in the bedding on which he lay, kicked
him on the head, and threw his body into the Jumna'. At the same
time Chhajjū, whose near relationship to Kaiqubād might have
encouraged him to assert a claim to the throne, was dismissed to
his fief of Kara, and on June 13, 1290, Firūz was enthroned in the
palace of Kilokhri as Jalāl-ud-din Fīrūz Shāh.
The early Muhammadan kingdom of Delhi was not a homo-
geneous political entity. The great fiefs, of which the principal
were, on the east, Mandāwar, Amroha, Sambhal, Budaun, Baran
1 According to a less authentic account Kaiqubād died of hunger and thirst in
a prison into which Firūz had thrown him.


## p. 88 (#128) #############################################

88
[CH.
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
(Bulandshahr), Koil and Oudh ; on the southeast Kara-Mānikpur ;
on the south Bayāna and Gwalior ; on the west Nāgaur, recently
abandoned ; and on the north-west and north, Hānsī, Multān, Uch,
Lahore, Sāmāna, Sunām, Guhrām, Bhātinda and Sirhind, were
nuclei of Muhammadan influence, the holders of which discharged
some of the functions of provincial governors, but the trans-
Gangetic fiefs of Mandāwar, Amroha, Sambhal, and Budaun were
mere outposts of dominion against the territory of Katehr, where
the independence of the Hindus was only occasionally disturbed
by punitive expeditions which usually engaged the sovereign with
the greater part of his available 'military strength ; and similarly
the fiefs to the south, south-west, and west were outposts against
Rājput chieftains who might have been strong enough, had union
been possible to them, to expel the foreigners. Gwalior had been
taken by Aibak, but lost during the reign of his son and with
difficulty recovered by Iltutmish; the fortress of Ranthambhor
had been dismantled and abandoned by Raziyya and occupied and
restored by the Rājputs; and Nāgaur, at one time held by Balban
as his fief, was also in their hands. On the north-west Lahore, Uch
and Multān were exposed to the constant inroads of the Mughuls
of Ghaznī, and the ties which bound them to Delhi were now
relaxed. The fieſs or districts in the heart of the kingdom were
interspersed with tracts of country in the hands of powerful Hindu
chieftains or confederacies. Immediately to the south of Delhi
Mewāt, which included part of the modern districts of Muttra and
Gurgāon, most of Alwar, and part of the Bharatpur State, had
never been permanently conquered, and the depredations of its
inhabitants, the Meos, extended at times to the walls of Delhi and
beyond the Jumna into the Doāb. The rich fiefs of the latter
region supported strong Muslim garrisons but the disaffection of
the Hindu inhabitants was, for long after the period of which we
are writing, a menace to domestic peace, and the ferocious punish-
ment inflicted on them by Muhammad Tughluq exasperated with-
out taming them. After his time Etawah became a stronghold of
Rājput chieftains who gathered round themselves the most turbu-
lent elements in the indigenous population, were frequently in
revolt, and seldom recognised the authority of Delhi otherwise than
by a precarious tribute.
The rhapsodies of Muslim historians in their accounts of the
suppression of a rising or the capture of a fortress, of towns and
villages burnt, of whole districts laid waste, of temples destroyed
and idols overthrown, of hecatombs of 'misbelievers sent to hell,


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ry. ]
MUSLIM GOVERNMENT
89
or 'dispatched to their own place,' and of thousands of women and
children enslaved might delude us into the belief that the early
Muslim occupation of northern India was one prolonged holy war
waged for the extirpation of idolatry and the propagation of Islam,
had we not proof that this cannot have been the case. Mahmud
the Iconoclast maintained a large corps of Hindu horse ; his son
Masóūd prohibited his Muslim officers from offending the religious
susceptibilities of their Hindu comrades, employed the Hindu Tilak
for the suppression of the rebellion of the Muslim Ahmad Niyāltigin,
approved of Tilak's mutilation of Muslims, and made him the equal
of his Muslim nobles ; Mu'izz-ud-din Muhammad allied himself with
the Hindu raja of Jammu against the Muslim Khusrav Malik of
Lahore, and employed Hindu legends on his coinage ; all Muslim
rulers in India, from Mahmūd downwards, accepted, when it suited
them to do so, the allegiance of Hindu rulers and landholders, and
confirmed them, as vassals, in the possession of their hereditary
lands ; and one of the pretexts for Tīmūr's invasions of India at
the end of the fourteenth century was the toleration of Hinduism.
Neither the numbers nor the interest of the foreigners admitted
of any other course. Their force consisted in garrisons scattered
throughout the land among the indigenous agricultural population
vastly superior in numbers to themselves and not unwarlike. On
this population they relied not only for the means of support but
also, to a great extent, for the subordinate machinery of govern-
ment ; for there can be no doubt that practically all minor posts
connected with the assessment and collection of the land revenue
and with accounts of public and state finance generally, were filled,
as they were many generations later, by Hindus. Among those
who met Balban at each stage on his triumphal return from the
suppression of Tughril's rebellion were rāis, chaudharis and mu-
qaddams. The first two classes were certainly Hindu landholders
and officials of some importance, and in the third we recognise
a humbler class of Hindu revenue officials which in many parts
of India retains its Arabic designation to this day. The Hindu
husbandman is not curious in respect of high affairs of state, and
cares little by whom he is governed so long as he is reasonably
well treated. He is more attached to his patrimony than to any
system of government, and while he is permitted to retain enough
of the kindly fruits of the earth to satisfy his frugal needs, concerns
himself little with the religion of his rulers; but oppression or such
extortion as deprives him of the necessaries of life may convert
him into a rebel or a robber, and there was at that time no lack of


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90
(CH. IV
THE HOUSE OF BALBAN
warlike leaders and communities of his own faith ready to welcome
him in either character. Rebellion and overt disaffection were re-
pressed with ruthless severity, and were doubtless made occasions
of proselytism, but the sin was rebellion, not religious error, and
there is no reason to believe that the position of the Hindu culti-
vator was worse under a Muslim than under a Hindu landlord.
The disaffected were those of the upper and recently dominant
class of large landholders and petty chieftains.
It was certainly possible for Hindus to obtain justice, even
against Muslims, for Baranī tells us that the Multānīs and money-
lenders of Delhi, the former term being evidently employed much
as the local designation Mārwāri is used to-day, were first enriched
by the profusion and improvidence of the nobles of Balban's court,
who not only borrowed largely but were defrauded by dependants
who borrowed in their names. As the usurers could not have been
enriched by lending money which they could not recover it is
evident that even the grandees of the court were not permitted to
plunder the Hindus indiscriminately, nor to withhold from them
their just dues.
That there was in other respects some sympathetic intercourse
between Muslims and Hindus we may infer from Hindi nicknames
by which some of the nobles were beginning to be known. One of
the two Aitamars was known as Kachhan, and Balban's nephew
'Abdullāh as Chhajjū.
On the whole it may be assumed that the rule of the Slave Kings
over their Hindu subjects, though disfigured by some intolerance
and by gross cruelty towards the disaffected, was as just and humane
as that of the Norman Kings in England and far more tolerant than
that of Philip II in Spain and the Netherlands.


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CHAPTER V
THE KHALJI DYNASTY AND THE FIRST CONQUEST
OF THE DECCAN
and swore
The repugnance of the populace to Firüz was due to the belief
that his tribe, the Khaljīs, were Afghāns, a people who were regarded
as barbarous. They were, in fact, a Turkish tribe but they had long
been settled in the Garmsīr, or hot region, of Afghānistān, where
they had probably acquired some Afghān manners and customs, and
the Turkish nobles, most of whom must now have belonged to the
second generation domiciled in India, refused to acknowledge them
as Turks! It was owing to this hostility of the people that Fīrūz
.
elected to be enthroned in Kaiqubād's unfinished villa at Kilokhri
rather than at Delhi, and for some time after his elevation to the
throne he dared not enter the streets of his capital. The more
prominent citizens waited on him as a matter of course,
allegiance to him, and the people in general repaired to Kilokhri on
the days appointed for public audiences, but they were impelled less
by sentiments of loyalty than by curiosity to see how the barbarian
would support his new dignity, and were compelled reluctantly to
admit that he carried it well, but their disaffection did not at once
abate, and Fīrūz completed the buildings and gardens left unfinished
by Kaiqubād, named Kilokhri Shahr-i-Nau, or the New City, and
ordered his courtiers to build themselves houses in the neighbourhood
of his palace. The order was unpopular, but there was a large class
whose livelihood depended on the court, and villas and shops rose
round the palace of Kilokhri.
The court of Firūz differed widely from that of the Slave Kings.
Balban had undermined, if he had not destroyed, the power of the
Forty and the character of the Turkish nobles was changed. They
were now represented largely by men born in the country, in many
instances, probably, of Indian mothers, and though, as their hostility
to Firūz proves, they retained their pride of race, they lost for ever
their exclusive privileges, which were invaded by Khaljīs and by
1 The late Major Raverty, an authority from whom it is seldom safe to differ,
protested vigorously against the common error of classing the Khaljīs as Afghāns or
Pathāns, but the people of Delhi certainly fell into the error which he condemns.
He also inveighs, with much acrimony and less reason, against the plausible
identification of the Khaljīs with the Ghilzais, a tribe which claims a Turkish origin
and occupies the region originally colonized by the Khaljis. If the Ghilzais be not
Khaljis it is difficult to say what has become of the latter.


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92
[CH.
THE KHALJIS
a
all whom it was the king's pleasure to promote. The change was
inevitable. It would have been impossible for a small number of
native courtiers to have maintained for ever a claim based on
remote foreign ancestry, and Firūz, though he did not exclude the
Turks from office, completed very thoroughly the work which Balban
had begun. The fief of Kara-Mānikpur was considered an ample
provision for Chhajjū, the sole survivor of the former royal family,
and Fīrūz had his own relations to consider. His eldest son, Mahmūd,
was entitled Khān Khānān, his second Arkali Khān, and his third
Qadr Khān; his brother was entitled Yaghrush Khān and was
appointed to the command of the army, and his two nephews,
‘Alā-ud-din and Almās Beg, received important posts, the latter
being entitled Ulugh Khān. Another relation, the blunt and out-
spoken Malik Ahmad Chap, held the unsuitable post of Master of
the Ceremonies.
The popular prejudice against Firūz was soon discovered to be
groundless. Save for an occasional outburst of wrath no milder
monarch ever sat upon the throne of Delhi. His treatment of
Kaiqubād belied his boast that he had never shed the blood of a
Muslim, but throughout his reign he displayed the most impolitic
tenderness towards rebels and other criminals. His mildness and
his conduct when he first ventured into Balban's Red Palace in the
city gained him the adherence of many of those who had opposed
him as a barbarian. He declined to ride into the courtyard, but
dismounted at the gate, and before entering the throne room wept
bitterly in the antechamber for Balban and his offspring and
lamented his own unworthiness of the throne and his guilt in aspiring
to it. The few old nobles of Balban's court and the ecclesiastics of
the city were moved to tears and praised his sensibility, but the
soldiers and those of his own faction murmured that such self-
abasement was unkingly, and Malik Ahmad Chap openly remons-
trated with him.
In the second year of the reign Chhajjú assumed the royal title
at Kara and was joined by Hātim Khān, who held the neighbouring
fief of Oudh. The rebels advanced towards Delhi, where they were
confident of the support of a numerous faction not yet reconciled
to the rule of the Khaljī, but Fīrūz marched to meet them, and
his advanced guard under his son Arkali Khān encountered them
near Budaun and defeated and dispersed them. Two days after
the battle Chhajju was surrendered by a Hindu with whom he had
taken refuge, and he and the other captives were sent, with yokes
on their necks and gyves on their wrists, to Budaun. Fīrīz seated


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93
v]
LENITY OF FIROZ
upon a cane stool, received them in public audience and when he
saw their bonds wept in pity. He caused them to be loosed and
tended and entertained them at a wine party. As they hung their
heads with shame he cheered them and foolishly praised them for
their loyalty to the heir of their old master. The indignant courtiers,
headed, as usual, by Ahmad Chap, protested against this encourage-
ment of rebellion and demanded that he should consider what his,
and their, fate would have been had the rebels been victorious,
and the old man, who seems to have entered upon his dotage
when he seized the throne, could find no better reply than that he
dared not, for the sake of a transitory kingdom, imperil his soul by
slaying fellow-Muslims.
Arkali Khān's victory was rewarded with the fief of Multān,
and Chhajjū was delivered into the custody of his conqueror, who
was known to be opposed to his father's mild policy. The fief of
Kara was bestowed upon 'Alā-ud-din, who lent a willing ear to the
counsels of Chhajjū's principal adherents, whom he took into his
service. Domestic griefs helped to warp his loyalty, for his wife,
the daughter of Fīrūz, and her mother, who perhaps suspected the
trend of his ambition, were shrews who not only embittered his
private life, but constantly intrigued against him at court. 'Alā.
ud-din's original intention seems to have been to escape their
malignity by leaving his uncle's dominions and establishing a
principality in some distant part of India, but the course of events
suggested to him a design yet more treasonable.