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Chapter 7 – Disintegration – Provincial Dynasties – 1388–1451 A.D.

The long and prosperous reign of Firoz Shah had assuaged the troubles of the people, but it had not strengthened the authority of the crown. Firoz was loved, and perhaps respected, but certainly not feared. A generation had grown up who knew nothing of the inexorable despotism of a Balban, an Ala-ad-din, or a Mohammad Taghlak, and the dread of the sovereign was like a forgotten dream. The people did not rebel, because they were contented and had nothing to gain by revolution. The success of the reign was due to the personal character of the Sultan and his prudent vizir: there was nothing to warrant the expectation that similar tranquillity would follow the accession of a new ruler. On the contrary, there were elements of the Sultan’s own creating that made for disintegration.

The system of depending upon a powerful body of slaves for civil and military service led to far-reaching consequences. Many of these slaves were converted – or nominally converted – Hindus, and to some of these renegades were assigned the great fiefs of the empire.

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However sincere their loyalty to Firoz, their master, they were bound by no such ties to his successors, and their influence tended to encourage that Hindu independence which had been fostered by the Sultan’s mild rule. The intermarriage of the royal family and other dignitaries with Hindus could produce no real amalgamation between peoples effectually sundered alike by race, religion, and social custom. The Hindus paid tribute when compelled, but their free tribes and aristocratic chiefs were always eager to shake off the yoke of the foreigners, and in the years following the death of Firoz one of the most notable features of the disturbed period was the large part played in politics by Hindu leaders, whether slaves converted to the court religion, or rajas who had asserted their independence, but were not above plotting insurrection with their renegade fellow countrymen. Thus, on the one hand, we see the great provinces held in fief by successful courtiers and slaves, often renegade Hindus, whose power tended to become hereditary and to develop independent dynasties; on the other, a universal revival of the old Hindu chiefships and of the independence of the hill tribes.

A strong ruler might possibly have stemmed the tide which was engulfing the power of Delhi, but even he must have bent and broken before the storm which burst upon India ten years after the death of Firoz. In those ten years there was no king of even moderate capacity. Fath Khan, the hope of his father, was dead; the next son, Zafar, was also gone. The old Sultan’s

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grandson, Taghlak II, was young and foolish, addicted to wine and dissipation, and the amirs and palace slaves rose and killed him before he had lolled on the throne five months. Another grandson, Abu Bekr, was opposed by his uncle Mohammad, the prince whom the slaves had expelled from his regency under Firoz, and who had since established some sort of authority from Samana to Nagarkot in the Panjab, and after several unsuccessful efforts secured Delhi in 1390. His four years’ reign was vexed by a series of rebellions; the Hindu chiefs were everywhere in revolt, the great feudatories under no control; and the persecution and banishment of the foreign slaves (whose nationality was tested by a Hindi shibboleth) did nothing to mitigate their disruptive influence. Mohammad’s son Humaymi, proudly entitled “Alexander” (Sikandar Shah), died after a reign of six weeks, and though his brother Mahmud occupied the throne for eighteen years (1394–1412), that throne was for some time set up at Kanauj, and even when at Old Delhi, his cousin Nasrat Shah, son of Fath Khan, held a rival court at the new capital of Firozabad close by; thus there were two kings at Delhi, and both were mere puppets in the hands of ambitious amirs.

Such was the chaotic state of the kingdom of Delhi when Timur descended upon it with his ninety-two regiments of a thousand horse each. The great conqueror, whose career has become familiar through the pages of Gibbon and the drama of Marlowe, had already overrun all Persia and Mesopotamia as far as the frontier

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of the Ottoman empire in Asia Minor on the west, and had occupied Afghanistan on the east, before the wealth of India drew him to the invariable road of Central Asian invaders. When he laid the project before his council of war there was strenuous dissuasion. Five great rivers to cross, dense jungles, fierce warriors led by terrible rajas couched in forest fastnesses like wild beasts in their lairs, and mailed elephants with deadly armed tusks – these, said the chiefs, were obstacles enough. But others recalled the example of Mahmud the Idol-breaker with far inferior forces, and Timur’s sons urged the surpassing riches of India and the pre-eminence of such a possession, while the men of religion dwelt on the duty of the Holy War against the infidels. The objectors still insisted that, even if successful, their hardy race would surely degenerate and their descendants grow soft and effeminate even as the natives of Hindustan – a prediction verified two centuries later – but Timur was not to be put off. “My object,” he wrote or caused to be written in his memoirs, “my object in the invasion of Hindustan is to lead a campaign against the infidels, to convert them to the true faith according to the command of Mohammed (on whom and his family be the blessing and peace of God), to purify the land from the defilement of misbelief and polytheism, and to overthrow the temples and idols, whereby we shall be champions and soldiers of the faith before God.” His will prevailed over the doubting men of war, and the venture was resolved upon.

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The Bala Hissar Gate, Kabul.

From Roskoschny’s Afghanistan.

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An advanced force under his grandson Pir Mohammad, who held Kabul, descended upon the Indus at the close of 1397, and besieged Multan. Timur himself, confirmed in his resolution by his forerunner’s report of the distracted state of the country, left Samarkand in March, 1398, struggled through ice and snow, descended appalling precipices in pursuit of the infidel tribes, and crossed the Indus at Attok, where Jalal-ad-din had swum the river when escaping from Timur’s ancestor, Chingiz Khan. There he threw a pontoon across the Chinab, and, joined by his grandson, who had now taken Multan, pressed steadily eastward. Fearful stories of the plundering and massacring of the people preceded him, and the inhabitants of Dipalpur fled to the protection of the Rajput fortress of Bhatnir; but all in vain, for Timur stormed it and slew ten thousand Hindus in an hour. Sirsuti was found deserted, Fathabad was empty; everyone had hurried panic-stricken into the jungle. In December the invading host stood encamped on the plain of Panipat, the battlefield of Delhi, but there was no man to oppose them. A week later Timur was before the capital.

On December 17th, 1398, the decisive battle was fought. Timur crossed the Jumna and carefully surveyed the ground. He took unusual precautions to allay the terrors of his troopers, who were extravagantly nervous about the invincible elephants of the enemy. He issued calthrops to the troops to throw before these alarming beasts, and defended the camp with a strong abatis of brushwood and trees, behind

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which he placed the women, stores, and cattle, as well as “the good and learned men of the army” who, on being consulted where they would wish to be stationed during the battle, modestly expressed a wish to be “placed with the ladies.” The immense number of Hindu prisoners, reckoned at one hundred thousand, could not safely be left in the camp, and Timur ordered them all to be slain in cold blood. Then taking an augury from the Koran, and scouting the warnings of the astrologers, he set out his forces for battle.

The Indian army under Ikbal Khan and the Sultan Mahmud did not refuse the challenge. They mustered ten thousand horse and forty thousand foot, with 125 elephants in mail, with poisoned blades fastened to their tusks and howdahs fitted with hand-grenades and fireworks to frighten the horses. The battle was ordered on each side in the usual manner: vaward, rearward, centre, right and left wings. Timur rode to a neighbouring knoll and reconnoitred them as they approached, then bowed himself on the earth and prayed to God for victory. He mounted in full assurance that his prayer was heard. Completing his arrangements, he strengthened his vaward and right wing, and the signal for the battle was given by the roll of drums. A well-concealed flanking movement took the Indian advance-guard in the rear and scattered them. The right wing under Pir Mohammad drove in the Indian left by a steady discharge of arrows, and followed it up with the sword. The left, equally successful, pursued the enemy’s right as far as the gates of Delhi.

Timur Lang. Tamerlane the Great.

From a rare MS. in the possession of Mr. Karl W. Hiersemann, Leipzig.

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The Indian centre still held out under Ikbal and the Sultan, but Timur sent orders to pick off the mahauts and wound the riderless elephants. The Indian soldiers, says the conqueror, “showed no lack of courage, but bore themselves manfully in the fight;” they were outnumbered and outgeneralled, however, and finally took to flight. The Sultan and Ikbal Khan escaped with difficulty to the city, trampling their own men under the elephants in the crush, and that night they fled to the mountains, basely leaving their wives and children behind. The victory was complete, and Timur, pitching his camp by the tomb of Firoz, gave thanks to God with tears.

The leading men came out and surrendered the city on the following day, and in deference to the pleading of the ulama and other wise and pious Moslems the conqueror accepted a ransom for the lives of the people. There was to be no sack and no massacre. Unfortunately the collection of the ransom led to brawls on the 26th, and Timur’s humane intentions were frustrated. It was no doubt difficult to restrain a great army of Turks, who had been accustomed for years to slaughter and pillage wherever they went. For three days the unhappy city was turned into a shambles. “All my army, no longer under control, rushed to the city and thought of nothing but killing, plundering, and making prisoners.” Every man got from twenty to a hundred captives, many of whom Timur sent to Samarkand to teach the famous handicrafts of India to his own people. There were immense spoils of rubies, diamonds,

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pearls, gold and silver ornaments and vessels, silks and brocades. Only the quarter inhabited by the sayyids and ulama – the heads of the Moslem religion – escaped the general sack. Siri, Jahanpanah, and Old Delhi had been completely gutted. “Although I was wishful to spare them, I could not succeed, for it was the will of God that this calamity should fall upon the city.”

Indrapat, or OldDelhi

After a fortnight of state functions, feasts, and levees, it occurred to Timur that he had come to Hindustan to wage a Holy War upon the infidels, and that he ought to be stirring (Jan. 1, 1399). After entering the fort of Firozabad on the Jumna, and praying in its mosque, he took Mirat by storm, massacred the men, took the women and children prisoners, and razed the town to the earth. He then pushed north to Hardwar, where he had heard of the image of the sacred cow from whose mouth the Ganges was supposed to flow and whither the Hindus went in pilgrimage to the mysterious source of the holy river. Such superstition roused the zealot’s passion, and the wretched Indians were

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made to pay dearly for the legend. Crossing the Ganges, after a veritable orgy of slaughter, the soldier of the faith prostrated himself in gratitude to God, and felt that he had accomplished his mission in Hindustan. He had come, he said, for two purposes: to war with infidels for the sake of the rewards of the next world, and to seize this world’s riches, since “plunder in war for the faith is as lawful to Moslems as their mother’s milk, and the consumption of that which is lawful is a means of grace.” Lacs of infidels had been despatched “to the fires of hell,” and the zealous warriors of Islam were laden with spoils. Enough had been done, and it was time to turn homewards and see what was going on at the other end of Asia. Fighting his way through the Siwalik hills, beneath Mussooree, driving the heathen into the Himalaya valleys, plundering and burning villages as he proceeded, seizing Nagarkot and Jammu, and detaching a force to take Lahore, Timur and his invincible host marched beneath the Himalayas of India, and, after a final rhinoceros hunt, disappeared up the Afghan valleys. In March the fearful visitation was over.

When the Scourge of God had departed, men came out of their hiding-places like the hare when the hunter has passed. Fortunately, in his haste to return to Samarkand, Timur had been able to harry but a small part of India; but wherever his army had trampled, from the Indus to the Ganges, over the whole of the Panjab, desolation and famine were left behind. Thenceforward, until the days of the Moghul empire, Delhi never regained

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her old ascendency. For a time Ikbal Khan, the vizir, held the capital, drove out Nasrat Shah, and made vigorous efforts to put down the growing hostility of the Hindu chiefs, who were now independent at Etawa, Gwalior, and many other strongholds. Sultan Mahmud found Delhi insupportable with all the power in the vizir’s hands, and set up a separate court at Kanauj, until the death of Ikbal in a battle with Khizr Khan, the viceroy of Multan, in November, 1405, set him free and enabled him to return to the capital and rule a kingdom which had shrunk to little more than the Doab and Rohtak. The next six or seven years were spent in a struggle between the great feudatories, in which the dissolute and incompetent Sultan played a sorry part, and when Mahmud died in 1412 there was no king left at Delhi. The government was conducted by the Lodi amir Daulat Khan, but he made no assumption of royal dignity.

Nor did his successor assume the title of king. Khizr Khan, the founder of the dynasty of Sayyids, who claimed descent from the family of the Arabian Prophet, had prudently cast in his lot with Timur when the “noble Tartarian” invaded India; and on taking the command at Delhi, in May, 1414, he made no pretension to be more than Timur’s deputy. There is no evidence, however, that this allegiance was anything more than a politic fiction, whilst the coinage issued by Khizr bore the names of Firoz and other defunct kings of the late dynasty as guarantees of its authenticity. The history of the Sayyid dynasty, which numbered

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four rulers, consisted mainly in a perpetual struggle to retain some sort of control of the small territory still attached to the kingdom of Delhi. How, small this was will be realized when it is stated that almost yearly campaigns were undertaken to extort the annual tribute from the Hindu raja of Katehr (Rohilkhand, northeast of Delhi), from Mewat on the south, and from Etawa in the Doab. We read of frequent rebellions in the northwest at Sirhind and Jalandhar, generally headed by Jasrath, a Gakkar leader of the Murree hills; of revolts at Koil (Aligarh), Badaun, Etawa; of pursuits of rebels into the mountains of Rupar near Simla on the north; of invasions and intrigues by the Timurid governor of Kabul, and by the rulers of Malwa and of Jaunpur.

“Khizr’s seven years’ tenure of power,” writes Mr. Thomas in his Chronicles of the Pathan Kings, “presents but few incidents of mark; there is a seeming Oriental want of energy to sustain an accomplished triumph, an air of ease which so often stole over the senses of a successful owner of a palace in Delhi; and so his vizir and deputy, Taj-al-mulk, went forth to coerce or persuade, as occasion might dictate, the various independent chiefs, whether Moslem or Hindu, whose states now encircled the reduced boundaries of the old Pathan kingdom. There were of course the ordinary concessions to expediency, so well understood in the East, submission for the moment in the presence of a superior force, insincere professions of allegiance, temporizing payments of tribute, or desertion of fields

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and strongholds easily regained; but there was clearly no advance in public security or in the supremacy of the central government. The inevitable law of nature had, no doubt, been asserting itself anew in the ready recovery of the free Hindu tribes as against the effete dominancy of the domesticated Moslems; but this process had been in continuous action from the day when the thin wedge of Mohammedanism first thrust itself amid the overwhelming population of India, whose almost Chinese attachment to ancient ideas would have resisted far more persuasive arguments than the sharpest edge of a scimitar or the most eloquent exhortations of the latest inspired preacher of Islam. Added to this normally antagonistic element there had intervened in higher quarters an amalgamative process of intermarriage with Hindu females and an admission of Hindu converts upon very easy terms to all the honours of Mohammedan nobility; so that any prestige the conquering race might once have claimed was altogether subdued if not degraded by these inconsistent concessions; and it required something more revolutionary than the accession of a local sayyid to perpetuate a new dynasty.” The murder of Khizr’s successor, Mubarak Shah, by his vizir, followed by the despatch of that minister whilst he was attempting to assassinate the next Sultan, led to worse anarchy and paved the way for the accession, in 1451, of the Afghan Buhlol Lodi and a new line, whose rule for a time restored somewhat of the faded splendour of Delhi.

The rest of India was split up into numerous independent

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states, whose annals are for the most part unwritten or unworthy of record. Petty rulers, like Ahmad Khan of Mewat, held the land to within a dozen miles of Delhi to the south; and Darya Khan, the Lodi, matched him in his government of Sambhal on the north. There were independent chiefs in the Doab and at Biana, Hindu rajas at Kampila and Patiala and other places which had formerly owned the sovereignty of Delhi. Out of the ruck of small principalities, Hindu and Moslem, some half-dozen great dynasties stand prominently forth in Bengal, Oudh, Malwa, Gujarat, and the Deccan.

The governors of Bengal had long before attained independence and assumed the style and authority of kings; and since the days of Mohammad Taghlak there had been scarcely an attempt at interference from Delhi, beyond the futile and half-hearted campaigns of the pacific Firoz. Within its own borders, however, Bengal was often divided against itself. Rival kings ruled Eastern and Western Bengal from the two cities of Sonargaon (near Dhaka) and Satgaon (close to Hugli), until, after a long struggle, they were united to Lakhnauti under Ilyas Shah in 1352, and the provincial capital was fixed at Panduah, to which Firoz gave his own name. Firozabad remained the capital of the whole province till 1446, when the seat of government was removed again to Lakhnauti, which now received the name of Gaur, and later the epithet of Jannatabad or “Paradise-town.” Very little is recorded of the annals of the numerous rulers of Bengal who governed the

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province, together with part of Bihar, and latterly Jajnagar, Orissa, Tipara, Kamrup, and Chittagong, from the days of Mohammad Ghori (1202) to the conquest by Akbar in 1576.

Golden Mosque at Gaur

Some were Khaljis, some were Turks; a Hindu established a brief dynasty which was converted to Islam; and at the close of the fifteenth century a series of Abyssinian kings, derived from the African body-guard imported by the eunuch Sultan

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Barbak, held the throne; the latest kings were Afghans. Provincial as these sovereigns were, they maintained great state and luxury, and the remains of their architecture bear witness to the standard of taste which they upheld.

For the splendour of their architecture, however, the “Kings of the East,” or Sharki Maliks of Jaunpur, stand supreme in the period before the Mogul empire. Upon the decline of the Delhi kingdom, the eunuch Samar, who became Khwaja-i-Jahan and vizir under the last Sultans of the house of Taghlak, was sent in 1394 into “Hindustan” – the land of the Hindus, a term used specifically to denote the country about Benares and Oudh, where the Hindus were still practically independent – and took up his residence at Jaunpur, the new city founded on the Gumti opposite Zafarabad by his late master Firoz. He soon “got the fiefs of Kanauj, Karra, Oudh, Sandila, Dalamau, Bahraich, Bihar, and Tirhut into his own possession, and put down many of the infidels, and restored the forts which they had destroyed. The Almighty blessed the arms of Islam with power and victory. The raja of Jajnagar and the King of Lakhnauti now began to send to Khwaja-i-Jahan the [tributary] elephants which they had formerly sent to Delhi.” Thus began the dynasty of the “Kings of the East,” which subsisted in conspicuous power for nearly a century. Their dominions stretched along the plain from Kanauj to Bihar, and from the Ganges to the Himalaya Tarai, and occupied most of the country corresponding roughly with the

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later kingdom of Oudh between the dominions of Delhi and Bengal.

Minar of Firoz II at Gaur (1488)

Jaunpur, the town of Jauna (Mohammad Taghlak),

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supplanting the many-templed Hindu city of Ratagarh (afterwards named by the Moslems Zafarabad, “triumph-town”), was the first Mohammedan stronghold planted in the very midst of the most Hindu part of Northern India. Mahmud of Ghazni had never reached this point, but legend records the triumphant march of his nephew, the youthful and heroic Salar .Mas’ud, who ravaged the land to the very gates of Benares and threw down the temples of Ratagarh. He met his death in battle with the Hindus, and dwells for ever in the reverent memory of the Moslems, who for centuries visited his grave at Bahraich, where the martyr prince is said to have appeared to the aged Sultan Firoz and warned him of his approaching end. On the site of the temple where Ramachandra slew the giant demon Kavalavira, still the scene of Hindu worship, Firoz built the fort which developed into the populous capital of the Sharki kings. Sarwar’s successors, descended from his adopted sons, the children of Karanfal, a slave water-bearer of Firoz’s court, not only maintained the integrity of their dominions and resisted the attacks of Ikbal Khan and the Delhi troops, but made Jaunpur a seat of learning, a refuge for men of letters in those days of confusion and strife, and an example of noble building.

Ibrahim Shah, who reigned from 1401 to 1440, was the most distinguished figure among the six “Kings of the East.” He not only repelled the military and the diplomatic advances of Mahmud, the Sultan of Delhi, but even invaded the capital in 1413, during the confusion

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which ensued upon Mahmud’s death, retiring, however, when Khizr Khan appeared upon the scene. The Sayyids tried conclusions with Ibrahim in 1427, but after a well-fought battle beside the Jumna, peace was ratified by the marriage of Bibi, the daughter of Mubarak Shah, to the crown prince of Jaunpur.

Fort of Jaunpur, east gate.

An invasion by the King of Malwa in 1435 was rewarded by the capture of Kalpi, which had been a bone of contention between the three kingdoms of Delhi, Jaunpur, and Malwa; but thenceforward to his death Ibrahim reigned in peace, an energetic and benevolent prince, beloved of his people, a zealous Moslem, and an enlightened patron of art and learning The beautiful Atala mosque built in 1408 is his chief monument. Its

Carved Screen in the Sidi Sayid Mosque, Ahmadabad

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characteristic feature, a lofty inner gateway of simple grandeur, recalling the propylon of Egyptian temples, supplied the place of a minaret, and concealed from the quadrangle the too dominating outline of the great dome which covered the house of prayer.

Atala Devi Mosque at Jaunpur

The graceful two-storied colonnades, five aisles deep, round the spacious quadrangle, which is broken by minor domes and gateways, the fine ashlar masonry of its plain buttressed exterior, the exquisite and rich, yet never intricate, floral ornament .surrounding its doors and windows and prayer-niche, its geometrical trellis screens and panelled ceilings, are typical of a pure style of Saracenic art, with scarcely a trace of Indian influence. Even in such a land of precious stones of architecture, the Atala Masjid remains a gem of the first water.

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Ibrahim’s successor, Mahmud, whose eighteen years’ reign was from time to time disturbed by the necessity or temptation to take part in the struggle then centred round the decayed power of Delhi, which he besieged in 1452, also left a monument in the mosque of the Lal Darwazah, or Ruby Gate, so called from the vermilion entrance to the palace of his wife, Bibi Raji, who built the adjacent mosque; and their son Husain completed the magnificent Jami’ Masjid, or cathedral mosque, which Mahmud had begun, and of which the foundation had been laid as far back as the last years of Ibrahim. This glorious building, the sister and the rival of the Atala mosque of his grandfather, is a worthy memorial to a king whose ambition, urged by a high-spirited wife, another princess of Delhi, soared to the possession of the throne of Mohammad Taghlak, and whose campaigns extended his frontier till they embraced Etawa, Sambhal, and Badaun, made the raja of Gwalior his vassal, and spread the terror of his arms over Orissa. The new Afghan King of Delhi, Buhlol, was too strong for him in the end, and a fatal battle near Kanauj in 1477 deprived Husain of all his possessions. He was allowed to dwell for some years at the city which he and his ancestors had embellished, and then fled to Bihar, whilst his supplanter, the son of Buhlol, laid low his beautiful capital, demolished the stately palaces, destroyed the royal tombs, and was with difficulty dissuaded from razing even the mosques to the ground. The kingdom of Delhi once more touched the frontier of Bengal.

Tomb of Mohammad Ghaus at Gwalior

This mausoleum is dedicated to a saint whose memory was especially venerated in the reign of Babar and of Akbar. It is built of yellow sand-Stone surmounted by a dome once glazed with blue tiles, and the entire structure is a noble specimen of early Moghul architecture.

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At the time when the new state of Jaunpur was about beginning to wedge itself between Delhi and Bengal, two other powerful kingdoms broke away from the central power and set up local dynasties in Malwa and Gujarat. One of Firoz Shah’s great vassals, Dilawar Khan, a descendant of the Ghori kings who held the fief of Dhar among the spurs of the Vindhya range, made himself independent in 1401 during the confusion that followed Timur’s invasion, and soon extended his authority over the greater part of the ancient Hindu kingdom of Malwa, which had resisted the encroachments of the Moslems up to the time of Balban, but had since been a province more or less subject to the kings of Delhi. The old capital, Ujjain, had been a famous seat of Indian learning, but the new dynasty deserted it for a new city which Hushang, the son of Dilawar, built at Mandu on a. small plateau among the Vindhya slopes. The situation of Malwa, hedged in by enemies, Delhi and Jaunpur on the north and the rising power of Gujarat on the west, involved the new state in frequent wars, and its kings in turn attacked one or other of their neighbours. The murder of Dilawar’s grandson, Mohammad, in 1435 by his vizir, Mahmud the Khalji, set the assassin on the throne, and Mahmud raised the kingdom of Malwa to its greatest strength. Though his siege of Delhi was unsuccessful, his campaigns against Jaunpur, the Rajputs, and the Deccan resulted in the acquisition of Kalpi on the Jumna, Ajmir and Rantambhor in Rajputana, and Elichpur south of the Satpura range. His perpetual conflicts

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with the rana of Chitor, however, ended in a crushing defeat in 1440, the memory of which is still revived by the lofty Pillar of Victory which Rana Kumbho set up at his capital. After this, Rajput influence gradually became supreme in Malwa; Rana Sanga defeated the second Mahmud as effectually as Rana Kumbha had humbled the first; and Medini Rao, the lord of Chanderi, managed the kingdom as chief minister of the nominal sovereign up to the time when the invasion of India by Babar, involving the defeat of the Rajputs and the death of Medini Rao, gave to Bahadur Shah of Gujarat the opportunity to take possession of Malwa in 1531.

An extremely inaccessible position, beyond the great desert and the hills connecting the Vindhyas with the Aravali range, long preserved Gujarat from the Mohammedan yoke. Only by sea was it easily approached, and to the sea it owed its peculiar advantages, its favouring climate and fertile soil, as well as the wealth which poured in from the great commercial emporiums of Cambay, Diu, and Surat. The greater part of the Indian trade with Persia, Arabia, and the Red Sea passed through its harbours, besides a busy coasting trade. “The benefit of this trade,” as Erskine truly says, “overflowed upon the country, which became a garden, and enriched the treasury of the prince. The noble mosques, colleges, palaces, and tombs, the remains of which still adorn Ahmadabad and its other cities to this day, while they excite the admiration of the traveller, prove both the wealth and the taste of the

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founders.” Not till the reign of Ala-ad-din at the close of the thirteenth century did it become a Moslem province, and a century later it again became independent under a dynasty of Moslem kings. Their rise resembled the birth of the Malwa state. Mohammad ibn Firoz in 1391 granted the fief of Gujarat to Zafar Khan, the son of a converted Rajput, and five years later the fief-holder assumed the royal canopy. He soon enlarged his dominions, at first but a strip between hills and sea, by the annexation of Idar to the north and Diu in Kathiawar, plundered Jhalor, and even took possession of Malwa for a short space in 1407, setting his brother on the throne in the place of Hushang, the son of Dilawar. His successor, Ahmad I, founded the fortress of Ahmadnagar, and also Ahmadabad, which has ever since been the chief city of Gujarat, and recovered Bombay and Salsette from the Deccan kings. Mahmud I not only carried on the traditional wars of his dynasty with Malwa on the east and Khandesh on the south, but kept a large fleet to subdue the pirates of the islands.

Nor were Asiatic pirates the only disturbers of his coast. The first of the three great waves of European invasion was already beating on the shores of Gujarat. Vasco da Gama had reached the Malabar ports in 1498, and the effects of the new influence were soon felt farther north. The Portuguese had no more intention at first of founding an Eastern empire than had the later Dutch and English companies. The hostility of the Moslem traders compelled them to protect their agents, and a commercial policy was necessarily supported by

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military power. The position of invaders was forced upon the Portuguese, as it later was upon the English. The collision was brought about by the spirited action of the last Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. Kansuh al-Ghuri, realizing the imminent jeopardy of the great Indian trade which supplied so much of the wealth of Egypt, resolved to drive the Portuguese from the Arabian Sea. His appeal and threats to the Pope had no effect, and there remained only the resort to arms.

Two Minars At Ahmadabad.

The Mamluks had long maintained a fleet in the Red Sea, and Admiral Husain was dispatched in 1508 to Gujarat with a well-equipped war squadron, manned with sailors who had often fought with Christian fleets in the Mediterranean. He was joined by the fleet of Gujarat, commanded by the governor of Diu, in spite of the efforts of the Portuguese captain, Lourenço de Almeida, to prevent their union; and the combined fleet was in every respect superior to the flotilla of Christian merchantmen which boldly sailed out of the port of Chaul to the attack. The Portuguese were defeated in a running fight which lasted two days, and the young captain, son of the famous viceroy, was killed. His ship was surrounded on every side; his leg was broken by a cannon-ball at the commencement of the action; nevertheless he

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had himself placed upon a chair at the foot of the mainmast, and gave his orders as coolly as ever. Shortly afterwards, a second cannon-ball struck him in the breast, and the young hero, who was not yet twenty-one, expired, in the words of Camoens, without knowing what the word surrender meant. He was avenged a few months later when, on February 2, 1509, his father, the viceroy Francisco de Almeida, utterly defeated the combined fleet of Egypt and Gujarat off Diu. In the following year the King of Gujarat offered Albuquerque, the conqueror of Goa, the port of Diu, and a Portuguese factory was there established in 1513, though the celebrated fortress of the Christian invaders was not built till 1535.

Though unable to withstand the Portuguese – or perhaps not unwilling to see his powerful deputy at Diu humiliated – Bahadur was one of the most brilliant figures among the warrior kings of Gujarat. The Raj-puts of the hills and the kings of the Deccan owned his superiority, and in 1531 he annexed Malwa. A Rajput rising and the advance of the Moguls under Humayun, the son of Babar, for a time destroyed his authority, as will presently be seen, but he recovered it bravely, only to fall at last, drowned in a scuffle with the Portuguese whom he had admitted to his coast. The account of the final absorption of Gujarat into the fabric of the Mogul empire in the year 1572 belongs to a later chapter.

Nothing has been said regarding the affairs of the Deccan since the reign of Mohammad Taghlak,

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after whose time no King of Delhi had ever held authority south of the Vindhyas. The rebellions which embittered the last years of that too ingenious sovereign had nowhere been more successful than in his favourite province of the south. The revolt of the “new amirs” in Sind, which hastened his end, was but a part of a larger movement, and its centre was in the Deccan. Here a brave and capable Afghan, Hasan Gangu, who had risen from menial service at Delhi to high command in the southern armies, placed himself at the head of the disaffected, and defeated the royal troops near Bidar. No attempt was made to suppress the revolt, for the king was too deeply engaged in endeavouring to restore order nearer home; and in 1347 Hasan Gangu became King of the Deccan. His dominions included almost all that the campaigns of Ala-ad-din and Mohammad Taghlak had won from the Hindu rajas of the great southern plateau. The valley of the Tapti was independent under the separate dynasty of the kings of Khandesh, an offshoot of Gujarat, who maintained their distinct though limited power at their new capital, Burhanpur, from 1370 to the conquest of Akbar in 1599. But the rest of the Deccan, from Elichpur in Berar down to the Krishna and Tungabhadra Rivers, and across from the Arabian Sea to Mahur, Ramgir, and Indore on the frontier of Warangal, was under the rule of the new dynasty of the Bahmanids, founded by Hasan Gangu. On the east’ the Hindu kingdom of Warangal barred his access to the Bay of Bengal; and on the south, beyond the Krishna, stretched the great

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empire of Vijayanagar, the last bulwark of Hindu power in the Deccan, which, gathering together the fragments scattered by the tumultuous assaults of Mohammad Taghlak, formed a mighty state, able to parry every onslaught of the Moslems for two centuries to come.

Hasan Gangu Zafar Khan fixed his capital at Kulbarga, near the Bhima, and gave it the name of “the fairest city,” Ahsanabad; and here his descendants ruled till 1526 over most of what is now called the Bombay Presidency and the Nizam’s Territory. On the north, beyond an occasional dispute with Gujarat, there was little trouble; but the kingdom of Warangal or Telingana, supported by the raja of Orissa, was a standing menace to the Moslem power, though Mohammad I reduced it to tributary submission, varied by intermittent hostilities. In 1422 Ahmad Shah I invaded Warangal, captured its prince, and shot him from a catapult on the walls into a flaming wood-pile which he had prepared below. The heavy loss he suffered on his march back did not discourage him, and three years later he extinguished the native dynasty and annexed their territory; but the fact that the Hindus of Warangal ventured to retaliate in 1461, and even marched as far as Bidar, shows that the annexation soon became little more than nominal.

The power of the Bahmanid dynasty must have been overwhelming to have reduced the empire of the Carnatic to even occasional subjection. The raja of Vijayanagar ruled not only what was afterwards known as

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the kingdom of Mysore, but the whole country between the Krishna (or rather its tributary, the Tungabhadra) and the Kaveri, stretching from coast to coast, from Mangalore on the west to Conjevaram on the east, and from Karnal on the north to Trichinopoli on the south. Yet this great Hindu empire was repeatedly forced to pay tribute to the Bahmanids, and never succeeded in winning a victory over them. Vijayanagar coveted the triangle of land between the upper course of the Krishna and the Tungabhadra Rivers, known as the Raichur Doab, with its fortresses of Mudkal and Raichur, and the campaigns of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries centred in this territory; but the Bahmanids steadily kept their grip on it, and never permanently lost a fortress or a mile of ground. In the earliest campaign the raja led thirty thousand horse, one hundred thousand foot, and three thousand elephants to the assault of Mudkal in the debatable land, and for a brief moment in 1366 triumphed in the capture of the fortress and the massacre of the Moslems. But Mohammad I, the son of Hasan Gangu, was soon on his track. Standing on the banks of the Krishna, he vowed that he would neither eat nor sleep till he had crossed in face of the enemy and avenged his slaughtered saints. He crossed, and the raja fled, abandoning his camp and seventy thousand men, women, and children, on whom the Sultan wreaked his vengeance without mercy. The Bahmanid kings had no bowels of compassion, and it is related of one of them that whenever the number of Hindus massacred at one time reached

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the number of twenty thousand, it was his habit to indulge in a feast.

Mohammad continued his march to Adoni, and even to the capital Vijayanagar itself, which he vainly besieged for a month. This campaign, in which he repeatedly vanquished the enemy, and laid the Carnatic waste, is said to have cost the lives of half a million Hindus, and it was only after ambassadors had urgently pleaded with him, that the Sultan consented to forego his custom of indiscriminate slaughter and pledged his successors, somewhat ineffectually, to the like clemency. Another campaign, waged by his son, Mujahid, in 1378, was undertaken for the possession of the strong fortress of Bankipur, south of Dharwar, and after several victories and hunting the raja from place to place, and after restoring the mosque on the seacoast which Kafur had founded nearly seventy years before, Mujahid led his army back to the Krishna with over sixty thousand prisoners, chiefly women. He was murdered on his way home by his uncle Davud, but the change of rulers made no difference in the superiority of the Moslem kingdom. Vijayanagar paid an annual tribute, or if it withheld it there was war and humiliation.

The most signal discomfitures of the Hindus occurred in the reign of Firoz, the son of Davud. On the first occasion, in 1398, Vijayanagar was the aggressor, the object being, as usual, the regaining of Mudkal and Raichur. Firishta tells a quaint story of how a grave kadi and his friends insinuated themselves into the not very fastidious favour of the nautch girls of

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the enemy’s camp, and disguised as dancing women contrived to get themselves smuggled into the presence of the raja’s son, whom they diverted with a sword-dance which ended in the plunging of their daggers into the prince’s breast.

Sultan Mahmud’s Tomb at Bijapur

This catastrophe, followed up by a night attack, caused the flight of the raja, and Vijayanagar had to pay a sum equivalent to £400,000 to get the enemy over the border. In 1406, as the annual tribute had not been rendered, Firoz again invaded the Carnatic. The war was provoked by the raja, who, hearing of a lovely but coy maiden in Mudkal, marched upon the fortress to secure her, but instead of succeeding in his amorous quest, not only found the maiden fled, but learnt that the army of Kulbarga was on his track.

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Firoz took Bankipur, which his predecessor had vainly coveted, and did not retire till the enemy had again suffered the loss of sixty thousand prisoners. Not only did the raja surrender the fortress; he even yielded a princess to the . Sultan’s harem – a humiliating degradation for a Hindu sovereign – together with immense treasure, and was actually obliged to admit his foe as a guest within the walls of the capital. An interesting feature of the Bahmanid wars was the adoption of the “Rumi” (Ottoman) custom of forming a laager of linked wagons to protect the camp. As we shall see, Babar employed this mode of defence with the addition of chained gun-carriages. Other campaigns followed in 1419, 1423, 1435, and 1443, accompanied by the usual Bahmanid victories and massacres, the destruction of temples and Brahman colleges and general devastation, and ending in the invariable submission and tribute of the Hindu state.

The unsuccessful siege of Devarakanda in the Telugu country in 1459 by the Bahmanid Humayun, an Oriental Nero, shows that the power of the dynasty was limited by Hindu chiefs to the east; but the conquests of Mohammad II between 1476 and 1481, when Rajamandari, Kandapali, and Kandavid were wrested from the raja of Orissa, while the Sultan’s arms triumphed over Masulipatan, and Belgaon was added on the west, raised the kingdom of Kulgarga to its greatest glory and extent. The pride was very shortly followed by the fall, but the blow did not come from rival empires. The kingdom broke up from internal causes. The succession of two

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young sons of Humayun under a regency weakened the royal authority, and though the wise administration of a great minister, Mahmud Gavan, and a decade of vigorous campaigns of aggression secured a vast extension of territory and an unprecedented degree of prosperity, yet the unjust execution of the minister, and the subsequent demoralization of king and state, led to the disruption of an empire that had outgrown its cohesion. A recent division into large provincial governments hastened the dissolution. During the reign of Mohammad’s youthful son, Mahmud Shah II, the various provinces shook off the parent’s yoke. Imad-al-mulk was crowned king in Berar in 1484; Yusuf Adil Shah proclaimed the independence of the newly created government of Bijapur in 1489; Nizam-al-mulk prepared the way for the separation of Junair. Thus the most important provinces in the north, west, and southwest were lost; and in 1512 Telingana, never very firmly held, followed the rest and declared its independence. Mahmud Shah, once a captive, next a refugee, died at Bidar, which had for some time superseded Kulbarga as the dynastic capital, in 1518, and with him the power of the Bahmanids came to an end, though three sons and a grandson mounted a nominal throne during the next eight years.

Their dominions were divided among the Adil Shahs of Bijapur (1489–1686), the Kutb Shahs of Golkonda (1512–1687), the Barid Shahs of Bidar (1492–c. 1609), the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar (1490–1595), and the Imad Shahs of Berar (1484–1572). Of these dynasties

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we shall hear again when we come to the Deccan wars of Aurangzib. It is now time to turn to a new invasion of India from the northwest, which gradually converted a country divided among numerous petty dynasties into a united and powerful empire, and founded the long line of the great Moghuls which endured to the days of the Mutiny.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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