CHAPTER II. prisoned all the sons of Alá-ud-dín, except the infant; he ordered their eyes to be put out; he placed the infant upon the throne; he began to reign as regent. He was apparently supreme. He was deceived; a prince named Mubárak managed to save his eye-sight. One night the slaves of the palace crept into the chamber of Malik Káfúr and stabbed him to death. They released Mubárak from his dungeon; they made him regent in the room of Malik Káfúr.

Regency of
Mubarak.

Reign of Mubárak, 1316-1320.

For two months Mubárak was content to reign as regent in the name of his infant brother. This fact proves that the will of the deceased Sultan had been accepted by the nobles and ministers; it could not lightly be set aside. Mubárak, however, was eager to mount the throne. At the end of the two months he put out the eyes of the infant Sultan; he murdered all his other brothers. He was proclaimed Sultan; there was no one to oppose him. Khizr Khan was amongst the victims. Dewal Deví, the Hindú widow of Khizr Khan, was still very beautiful; Mubárak made her his wife.

Mubarak was an utter profligate. At the beginning of his reign he marched against the Mahratta Raja and defeated him; he took one rebel prince prisoner and ordered him to be flayed alive.56 On his return to Delhi he led a life of low debauchery; he drank wine and associated with courtesans before all his court. He disgusted his nobles; he was madly fond of a converted Hindú, who had adopted the Mussulman name of Khuzru Khan. He relaxed all the ordinances of his father;

56 The name of the prince was Harpál Deva. He was a son-in-law of Ramdeva.

he permitted the people to drink and entertain; to CHAPTER II. buy and to sell as they pleased.

bárak by

Meantime Khuzru Khan was made vizier; he was Murder of Musent with an army against the Tamil country. The Khuzru Khan. Mussulman historians charge this man with the vilest crimes, in the same way that they charged Malik Káfúr.57 He is said to have been a low caste Parwárí or Pariah. He is accused of having plotted with other Hindús, especially with men who had been the followers of Malik Káfúr. He kept many Pariah attendants in the palace; he schemed to upset the Mussulman rule. One night he and the other Pariahs put Mubárak to death; they filled the whole court with horrible disorder.58

Delhi.

The measures of this converted Hindú betray Hindú revolt at a strange conflict of ideas. At first he acted like a Mussulman. He opened the royal treasury, and bribed the body-guards. He was proclaimed Sultan under the name of Nasir-ud-dín; he ordered

57 Mussulman historians are painfully bitter respecting the intimacy between Alá-ud-din and Malik Káfúr, and that between Mubárak and Khuzru Khan.

58 The details of the murder of Mubarak might be passed over in silence, but the narrative of Barní (Elliot, vol. iii.) furnishes a graphic picture of the palace life at Delhi. Mubarak was so infatuated with Khuzru Khan, that he refused him nothing; he reviled any one who brought charges against him. Khuzru Khan obtained the keys of the postern gate of the palace, under pretence of admitting his friends to see him at night. One night there was an uproar. The palace was filled with Pariahs. The Sultan came out and asked what was the matter; Khuzru Khan replied that the horses had broken out of the royal stables. The uproar became greater than ever. The Sultan suspected treachery and ran off to the harem. Khuzru Khan rushed after him, caught him by his long hair, and twisted it round his hand. The Sultan threw him down, and got upon his chest, but still the murderer held on to the hair. Another assassin attacked the Sultan and ran him through with a spear. The Sultan was beheaded on the spot; his trunk was thrown out into the court-yard below. A horrible massacre followed. When morning dawned, the palace was in the hands of Pariahs and Hindús. The people heard what had happened; they saw the remains of Mubárak; they hastened to hide themselves in their houses, Meantime the royal harem was at the mercy of the Pariahs.

CHAPTER II. the Khutba to be read and money to be coined in his own name. He then did what any other Asiatic usurper would have done; he slaughtered every male of the house of Khilji. From this point, however, he seems to have acted more like a Hindú, or rather like a leader of Hindú revolt against the Mussulmans. He took the Rajpoot princess, Dewal Deví, who had been twice a widow, to be his wife. This marriage was contrary to Hindú usage; possibly it raised him in Hindú opinion. His Pariah followers set up idols in the mosques; they seated themselves on Korans; they committed the most revolting outrages in the haFor five months Delhi was at the mercy of Hindú rebels. At last Islam was avenged. Ghazi Beg Tughlak, the governor of the Punjab, marched an army against Delhi. Khuzru Khan was taken prisoner and put to death. Ghazi Beg became Sultan under the name of Ghiás-ud-din Tughlak.

Strange characteristics of the revolt.

rem.

The revolt of Khuzru Khan is a strange jumble. His conversion to Islam was probably a sham from the outset. He belonged to the lowest caste; he had no other way of raising his social position. He aspired to be a Sultan after the Mussulman fashion; he also aspired to marry the Rajpoot

59 The account of the Hindú revolt at Delhi is based upon the authority of Ferishta, translated by Briggs, and that of the Táríkh-i Fíroz Shahí, translated in Elliot's History. In the History of Guzerat by Ali Muhammad Khan, it is asserted that Khuzru Khan was a Rajpoot of the Parmár, or Pramasa tribe, one of the thirty-six royal races. Mr James Bird, the translator, asserts that Colonel Briggs has mistaken the name, and reads Parwárí, which is the appellation of a Hindú outcaste, instead of Parmár, which would indicate that Khuzru Khan was a high-caste Rajpoot. But the statement of Ferishta is confirmed by Barní in the Táríkh-i Fíroz Sháhí. Moreover the details of the outbreak refer to Pariahs rather than to Rajpoots. Had Khuzru Khan been a Rajpoot, it is not likely that he would have married Dewal Devi, who had been twice a widow.

princess, to found a Hindú dynasty, to restore the CHAPTER II. Hindú religion. The Mussulman historians say all this; there must have been much more that they do not say. Dewal Deví may have been concerned in the revolt. She had loved Khizr Khan; she could scarcely have loved Mubárak. Possibly she hated Mubárak, and invited Khuzru Khan to murder him. The Hindú revolt was a social reaction. It resembled the rebellion of 1857. For five months Delhi was in the hands of the rebels; for five months there was unbounded license. In the end Delhi was captured; the rebellion was stamped out; the governor of the Punjab was the saviour of India.60

Tughlak

at Tughlakabad.

The change of dynasty from the Khiljis to the Rise of the Tughlaks led to a change of capital. Neither dynasty: capital the new Sultan, nor his immediate successor, lived at Delhi; they probably regarded it as a Hindú volcano. They held their court at Tughlakabad, a strong fortress about an hour's ride from old Delhi. The ruins of Tughlakabad tell the history better than the Mussulman chroniclers. The fortifications are large masses of masonry ; besides the gates and bastions there are underground galleries. Rebellion might have been put down with ease; armed men could have been sent to any quarter. The streets and bazaars, the palaces

60 Hindú influences must have been for some time at work at Delhi. Alá-uddín and Mubarak had each married a Hindú wife; they had each made a favourite of a Hindú convert. Indeed, the Turks at this period seem to have sought for Hindú wives. The father of Fírúz Shah, whose reign will be described hereafter, wanted to marry the daughter of a Rajpoot noble. The Rajpoot refused to give his daughter to a Turk; he was reduced to such distress that his daughter sacrificed herself to remove his misery. She said :-"Send me to the Turk, and think that I have been carried away by the Moghuls." (Táríkh-i Fíroz Sháhí in Elliot's History of India, vol. iii.) Such a marriage marks a change in the relations between Turks and Rajpoots.

CHAPTER II. and gardens, may still be traced; but the city is without inhabitants of any kind.01

Ghiás-ud-din Tughlak reigns, 1320-1325.

Muhammad

Tughlak reigns, 1325-1350.

Financial pres

sure.

Ghiás-ud-dín Tughlak is only known as the saviour of Delhi. He built forts to keep out the Moghuls. He reduced the vassal kingdoms of Bengal, Maharashtra, and Telingana to their former allegiance. Apart from this he left no name in history. He reigned from 1320 to 1325; he was killed by the fall of a pavilion.

Muhammad Tughlak was the next Sultan of Delhi. His reign is an epoch. He had genius but no experience; he was learned and pious, but hard-hearted and cruel. He formed wild projects; he was kind to those who carried them out; he was merciless to those who thwarted him.

The financial pressure at this period was endangering the empire. A strong army was necessary to repel the invasions of the Moghuls; the revenue was not sufficient for the expenditure. Alá-ud-dín was in great straits, although he had filled his treasury with the spoils of the Dekhan. But he kept a strong hold upon the revenue officials; he brought down the price of grain until his soldiers could live on the lowest rates of pay. Muhammad Tughlak was in worse straits. The Moghuls invaded the Punjab, when the army was absent in the Dekhan; he was powerless to fight; he bribed them to return by presents of gold and jewels. The empire of Mussulman India had grown too large. The vassal kingdoms of the Dekhan

61 The ruins of Tughlakabad are very suggestive. The tomb of the Sultan is near the city; it is connected with it by a covered way. In 1866 the city was a solitude. A few agriculturists were growing grain amidst the desolation; a few native women were chattering and drawing water at an ancient well; a dirty herd of cattle was stabled in the tomb of Tughlak Shah.