The Empress Raziya, 1236-39. Mughal 1244-88. Rajput revolts. His daughter Raziyá was the only lady who ever occupied the Muhammadan throne of Delhi (1236-39 A.D.). Learned in the Kurán, industrious in public business, firm and energetic in every crisis, she bears in history the masculine name of the Sultán Raziyá. But the favour which she showed to her master of the horse, an Abyssinian slave, offended her Afghán generals; and after a troubled reign of three and a half years, she was deposed and put to death.1 Mughal irruptions and Hindu revolts soon began to underirruptions, mine the Slave dynasty. The Mughals are said to have burst through Tibet into North Eastern Bengal in 1245; and during the next forty-four years, repeatedly swept down the Afghán passes into the Punjab (1244-88). The wild Indian tribes, such as the Ghakkars and the hillmen of Mewát, ravaged the Muhammadan lowlands almost up to the capital. Rájput revolts foreshadowed that inextinguishable vitality of the Hindu military races, which was to harass, from first to last, the Mughal Empire, and to outlive it. Under the Slave kings, even the north of India was only half subdued to the Muhammadan sway. The Hindus rose again and again in Málwá, Rájputána, Bundelkhand, and along the Ganges and the Jumna, to opposite Delhi itself. The last but one of the Slave line, Balban (1265-87 A.D.), had not only to fight the Mughals, the wild Indian tribes, and the Rájput clans; he was also compelled to watch his own viceroys. Having in his youth entered into a compact for mutual support and advancement with forty of his Túrkí fellow-slaves in the palace, he had, when he came to the throne, to break the powerful confederacy thus formed. Some of his provincial governors he publicly scourged; others were beaten to death in his presence; and a general, who failed to reduce the rebel Muhammadan Viceroy of Bengal, was hanged. Balban himself moved down to the delta, and crushed the Bengal revolt with a merciless skill. His severity against Hindu rebels knew no bounds. He nearly exterminated the Jadún Rájputs of Mewát, on the south of Delhi, putting 100,000 persons to the sword. He Balban, 1265-87 His cruelties to the Hindus. 1 Thomas' Chronicles of the Pathán Kings, pp. 104-108; Firishta, vol. i. pp. 217-222; Sir Henry Elliot, vols. ii. and iii. 2 This invasion of Bengal is discredited by the latest and most critical historian; Edward Thomas' Pathán Kings of Delhi, p. 121, note (ed. 1871). On the other side, see Firishta, vol. i. p. 231, but cf. Col. Brigg's footnote; and the Tabakát-i-Násiri in Sir H. Elliot's vol. ii. pp. 264, 344 ; 'In March 1245, the infidels of Changiz Khán came to the gates of Lakhnauti' (Gaur). 3 Thomas' Pathán Kings, 131. then cut down the forests which formed their retreats, and opened up the country to tillage. The miseries caused by the the Mughal hordes in Central Asia drove a crowd of princes and poets to seek shelter at the Indian court. Balban boasted His fifteen that no fewer than fifteen once independent sovereigns had royal penfed on his bounty, and he called the streets of Delhi by the names of their late kingdoms, such as Bághdad, Kharizm, and Ghor. He died in 1287 A.D.1 His successor was poisoned, and the Slave dynasty ended in 1290.2 sioners. din's In that year Jalál-ud-dín, a ruler of Khiljí, succeeded to House of Khilji, the Delhi throne, and founded a line which lasted for thirty 1290-1320. years (1290-1320 A.D.). The Khiljí dynasty extended the Muhammadan power into Southern India. Alá-ud-dín, the nephew and successor of the founder, when Governor of Karra,3 near Allahábád, pierced through the Vindhyá ranges with his cavalry, and plundered the Buddhist temple city of Bhilsa, 300 miles off. After trying his powers against the Alá-udrebellious Hindu princes of Bundelkhand and Málwá, he Southern conceived the idea of a grand raid into the Deccan. With a raids, band of only 8000 horse, he rode into the heart of Southern 1294. India. On the way he gave himself out as flying from his uncle's court, to seek service with the Hindu King of Rájámahendri. The generous Rájput princes abstained from attacking a refugee in his flight, and Alá-ud-dín surprised the great city of Deogiri, the modern Daulatábád, at that time the capital of the Hindu kingdom of Maharashtra. Having suddenly galloped into its streets, he announced himself as only the advance guard of the whole imperial army, levied an immense booty, and carried it back 700 miles to the seat of his Governorship on the banks of the Ganges. He then lured the Sultán Jalálud-dín, his uncle, to Karra, in order to divide the spoil; and murdered the old man in the act of clasping his hand (1295 A.D.).4 Alá-ud Alá-ud-din scattered his spoils in gifts or charity, and pro- Reign of claimed himself Sultán (1295-1315 A.D.).5 The twenty years din, 1295of his reign established the Muhammadan sway in Southern 1315. 1 Materials for the reign of Balban (Ghiyás-ud-din Balban): Sir Henry Elliot's Indian Historians, vol. iii. pp. 38, 97, 546, 593 (1871); Firishta, vol. i. pp. 247-272 (1829). 2 Mr. E. Thomas' Pathán Kings, pp. 138-142. 3 Forty miles north-west of Allahábád, once the capital of an important fief, now a ruined town. See Imperial Gazetteer, vol. v. p. 279. Thomas' Pathán Kings, p. 144. 3 Materials for the reign of Alá-ud-dín Khilji: Sir Henry Elliot's Indian Historians, vol. iii. (1871); Firishta, vol. i. pp. 321-382 (1829). din's re Alá-ud- India. He reconquered Guzerat from the Hindus in 1297; conquest of captured Rintimbur,1 after a difficult siege, from the Jaipur N. India, Rájputs in 1300; took the fort of Chittor, and partially sub1295-1303. jected the Sesodia Rájputs (1303); and having thus reduced His conquest of Southern India, 1303-15 the Hindus on the north of the Vindhyás, prepared for the conquest of the Deccan. But before starting on this great expedition, he had to meet five Mughal inroads from the north. In 1295, he defeated a Mughal invasion under the walls of his capital, Delhi; in 1304-5, he encountered four others, sending all prisoners to Delhi, where the chiefs were trampled by elephants, and the common soldiery slaughtered in cold blood. He crushed with equal severity several rebellions which took place among his own family during the same period; first putting out the eyes of his insurgent nephews, and then beheading them (1299-1300). His affairs in Northern India being thus settled, he undertook the conquest of the South. In 1303, he had sent his eunuch slave, Malik Káfur, with an army through Bengal, to attack Warangal, the capital of the Hindu kingdom of Telingána. In 1306, Káfur marched victoriously through Málwá and Khandesh into the Marhattá country, where he captured Deogiri, and persuaded the Hindu king Rám Deo to return with him to do homage at Delhi. While the Sultán Alá-ud-dín His gene was conquering the Rájputs in Márwár, his slave general, Káfur, made expeditions through the Karnatic and Maháráshtra, as far south as Adam's Bridge, at the extremity of India, where he built a mosque. ral, Málik Káfur. Extent of the Muhammadan power in India, 1306. The Muhammadan Sultán of India was no longer merely an Afghán king of Delhi. Three great waves of invasion from Central Asia had created a large Muhammadan population in Northern India. First came the Túrkís, represented by the house of Ghazní; then the Afgháns (commonly so called), represented by the house of Ghor; finally the Mughals, having failed to conquer the Punjab, took service in great numbers with the Sultáns of Delhi. Under the Slave Kings the Mughal mercenaries had become so powerful as to require to be massacred (1286). About 1292, three thousand Mughals, madan having been converted from their old Tartar rites to Muhampopulation in India, madanism, received a suburb of Delhi, still called Mughalpur, 1286-1311. for their residence. Others followed. After various plots, Alá Muham ud-din slaughtered 15,000 of the settlers, and sold their families as slaves (1311 A.D.). The unlimited supply of soldiers which he could thus draw upon from the Túrkí, Afghán, and Mughal 1 See article RINTIMBUR, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. viii. p. 60. mercen aries, 1286 revolts. races in Northern India and the countries beyond, enabled Mughal him to send armies farther south than any of his predecessors. But in his later years, the Hindus revolted in Guzerat; 1311. the Rajputs reconquered Chittor; and many of the Muhammadan garrisons were driven out of the Deccan. On the capture of Chittor in 1303, the garrison had preferred death to Hindu submission. The peasantry still chant an early Hindi ballad, telling how the queen and thirteen thousand women threw themselves on a funeral pile, while the men rushed upon the swords of the besiegers. A remnant cut their way to the Aravalli Hills; and the Rájput independence, although in abeyance during Alá-ud-dín's reign, was never crushed. Having imprisoned his sons, and given himself up to paroxysms of rage and intemperance, Alá-ud-dín died in 1315, helped to the grave, it is said, by poison given by his favourite general, Káfur. Hindu During the four remaining years of the house of Khilji, the Arenegade actual power passed to Khusrú Khán, a low-caste renegade Emperor, Hindu, who imitated the military successes and vices of his 1316-20. patron, Káfur, and personally superintended his murder.1 Khusrú became all in all to the debauched Emperor Mubárik; then slew him, and seized the throne. While outwardly professing Islám, Khusrú desecrated the Kurán by using it as a seat, and degraded the pulpits of the mosques into pedestals for Hindu idols. In 1320 he was slain, and the Khilji dynasty disappeared.2 1320-1414. The leader of the rebellion was Ghiyás-ud-din Tughlak, who had started life as a Túrkí slave, and risen to the frontier Governorship of the Punjab. He founded the Tughlak House of dynasty, which lingered on for ninety-six years (1320-1414), Tughlak, although submerged by the invasion of Timúr (Tamerlane) in 1398. Ghiyás-ud-dín (1320-24 A.D.) removed the capital from Delhi to a spot about 4 miles farther east, and called it Tughlakábád. mad His son and successor, Muhammad Tughlak (1324-51), Muhamwas an accomplished scholar, a skilful captain, and a severely Tughlak, abstinent man. But his ferocity of temper, perhaps inherited 1324-51. from the tribes of the steppes, rendered him merciless as a judge and careless of human suffering. The least opposition drove him 1 Thomas' Pathán Kings, pp. 178-179. 2 Idem, pp. 184-185. 3 Materials for his reign: Sir Henry Elliot's Indian Historians, vols. i. iii. v. vi. vii.; Firishta, vol. i. pp. 408-443 (ed. 1829); Elphinstone's narrative of this reign is an admirable specimen of his spirited style of work, pp. 403-410 (ed. 1866). Muhaminto outbursts of insane fury. He wasted the treasures accumumad lated by Alá-ud-din in buying off the Mughal hordes, who again Tughlak's mad exand again swept down on the Punjab. On the other hand, in peditions, fits of ambition, he raised an army for the invasion of Persia, 1324-51. and sent out an expedition of 100,000 men against China. His cruelties. The first force broke up for want of pay, and plundered his own dominions; the second perished almost to a man in the Himálayan passes. He planned great conquests into Southern India, and dragged the whole inhabitants of Delhi to Deogiri, to which he gave the name of Daulatábád, 800 miles off. Twice he allowed the miserable suppliants to return to Delhi; twice he compelled them on pain of death to quit it. One of these forced migrations took place amid the horrors of a famine; the citizens perished by thousands, and in the end, the king had to give up the attempt. Having drained his His forced treasury, he issued a forced currency of copper coins, by currency. which he tried to make the king's brass equal to other men's silver. During the same century, the Mughal conqueror of China, Kublai Khán, had expanded the use of paper notes, early devised by the Chinese; and Kai Khátú had introduced a bad imitation of it into Persia. Tughlak's forced currency quickly brought its own ruin. Foreign merchants refused the worthless brass tokens, trade came to a stand, and the king had to take payment of his taxes in his own depreciated coinage. Revolt of the Provinces, He flays his nephew. Meanwhile, the Provinces began to throw off the Delhi yoke. Muhammad Tughlak had succeeded in 1324 to the greatest empire which had, up to that time, acknowledged a Muhammadan Sultán in India. But his bigoted zeal for Islám forbade him to trust either Hindu princes or Hindu officers; and he thus found himself compelled to fill every high post with foreign Muhammadan adventurers, who had no interest in the stability of his rule. The annals of the period present a long series of outbreaks, one part of the Empire throwing off its allegiance as soon as another had been brought back to subjection. His own nephew rebelled in Málwá, and being caught, was flayed alive (1338). The Punjab governor revolted (1339), was crushed, and put to death. The Musalmán Viceroys of Lower Bengal and of the Coromandel coast set up for themselves (about 1340), and could not be subdued. The Hindu kingdoms of Karnáta and Telingána recovered their independence (1344), and expelled the Musalmán 1 Thomas' Pathan Kings, p. 243. See the whole monograph entitled 'Muhammad Bin Tughlak's Forced Currency,' pp. 239-261. |