A. D. 1316-24.

This

The constitution of Alâ-ud-dîn had now been worn out by intemperance and luxury, and the influence of Kâfûr over him was unbounded. able but unprincipled man now ventured to raise his eyes to the throne. With this view he sought to alienate the mind of the king from his children by representing them as plotting against his life; he also laboured to remove or destroy every man of rank or influence who he thought might stand in his way. He had succeeded in causing the queen and the two eldest princes to be cast into prison, and he had obtained an order to make away with Alp Khân, when, rebellions having broken out in Gûzerât and the Deckan, the tidings threw the king into such paroxysms of rage as brought him to the brink of the grave, and Kâfûr is said to have accelerated his end by poison (1316). Alâ-ud-din had reigned twenty-one years.

One of the acts of this monarch was the massacre of the Mogul converts. At various times bodies of these men had been induced to embrace the Mohammedan faith, and to enter the imperial service. At all times they have proved turbulent and insolent. Alâ-ud-din, aware of their character, suddenly discharged the whole of them from his service, but without any apparent cause. Driven to desperation at seeing themselves thus deprived of the means of living, some of them conspired to assassinate him. The plot, however, was discovered, and the king, without making any inquiry, ordered the whole of them (15,000, it is said), guilty and innocent alike, to be massacred and their families to be sold for slaves.

Kâfûr produced a real or fictitious will of the late monarch, appointing his infant son Omar to be king, with Kâfûr for his guardian; and he immediately caused the eyes of the two eldest princes to be put out, and sent assassins to murder Mobârik, the third son. But they were induced to spare his life, and, Kâfûr being shortly after put to death by a conspiracy of the royal guards, Mobârik ascended the throne without opposition. He proved a sensual, bloody tyrant, devoted to the lowest debaucheries, and placing the whole of his confidence in a converted Hindoo named Khûsrû Khân. This man, after effecting the conquest of Malabar, against which he had been sent, and bringing thence a large treasure, proceeded to destroy the nobles or drive them from court, and he filled the capital with Hindoo troops of his own caste. He then (1321) ventured on the deed he had long projected; he murdered his master and all the members of the royal family, and mounted the throne himself. But Ghazi Khân Tôghlak, the governor of the Punjab, refused to yield obedience to him, and, marching to Delhi with his disciplined troops, he put an end to his life and reign. As there was no surviving member of the house of Khilji, Tôghlak himself, with the general consent of the people, assumed the royal dignity.

The new monarch was the son of one of Bulbun's Turkish slaves by an Indian mother. His reign commenced without blame, and during its short period proved vigorous and beneficent.

8 "The army," says Ferishta, "now remained to be

bribed, who loved nothing better than a revolution; for they

had always, upon such an occasion, a donation of six months' pay, immediately divided from the treasury." Mill notices the similar conduct of the prætorian guards at Rome, as an instance of the similarity of military despotisms.

15

An expedition into the Deckan, led by the king's eldest son Jûna Khân, proved unsuccessful. He was unable to take the fort of Warangôl; disease broke out in his camp; some of his officers with their men deserted; he was pursued on his retreat to Deôgîri with great slaughter by the Hindoos, and he reached Delhi with only 3000 men. The next year he was more successful, for he took Warangôl and made the rajah a prisoner.

The king himself now proceeded in person to Bengal (1324), where Bakarra Khan, the son of Bulbun, still held the government, and the use of royal ornaments was conceded to him by the son of his father's former slave. As Tôghlak approached the capital on his return, he was received by his eldest son in a splendid wooden pavilion erected for the occasion. During the ceremonies, the building happened to give way, and the king and his second and favourite son were killed by the fall; the eidest son, chancing to be absent at the time, escaped. It is certainly possible that the casualty may have been accidental, but the probability is so strongly on the other side as, in our opinion, to amount almost to certainty.

Jûna, on mounting the throne, took the name of Shah Mohammed. He celebrated his accession with great magnificence, distributing gifts in the utmost profusion to his friends and to men of letters. He was himself the most learned and eloquent prince of his time; versed in languages, literature, and philosophy; regular, and even austere in his religious observances; abstinent from wine and from pleasure; brave and generous in the field and in the court. But all these noble qualities, which made him the subject of admiration, were rendered of no value by a perversity of mind bordering on insanity, and an utter disregard for human suffering in the pursuit of his wild schemes of ambition.

In the commencement of his reign, he completed the conquest of the Deckan. Seeing then no object for his ambition in India, he resolved to become the conqueror of Persia, and even of China. For the first he assembled a large army, which, after it had consumed his treasures, dispersed for want of pay, and plundered and wasted the country. In order to the invasion of China, a body of 100,000 horse were sent through the Himalaya mountains to prepare the way for the main army. This force, we are told, reached the frontiers of China, but found there awaiting it so large an army, that, fearing to encounter it, it turned and commenced its retreat. It endured even more than the calamities incident to such a course. It was fallen on by the mountaineers, slaughtered by the pursuing enemy, exhausted by want of provisions, drenched by tremendous rains, and entangled in impervious jungles. At the end of fifteen days hardly a man survived, and thus terminated the magnificent project of the conquest of China.

To recruit his shattered finances, Mohammed had now recourse to a novel expedient. He had heard of the paper money of China (to which country the invention is due), and he resolved to imitate it, for which purpose he issued copper tokens as representatives of particular sums of money. Mohammed was not aware that, for the success of a project of this kind, there must be confidence in the good faith and solvency of the government, and he found that, with all his power, he could not

But

force his tokens into general circulation. He did abundance of mischief, and caused considerable distress by the experiment, but his finances remained as embarrassed as ever. He then increased the taxes, and the husbandmen, driven to desperation, left their lands and fled to the woods. The infuriated monarch, resolved to have at least revenge, used then to order out his troops as if for a grand hunt, surround a tract of country with them, gradually narrow the circle, and finally slaughter all the peasants within it like beasts of game or prey. The natural consequence was famine and its attendant evils.

Rebellions followed. The revolts in the Punjab and in Malwa were easily crushed, but the governor of Bengal became and remained independent (1340). The Hindoo states of the Deckan mostly flung off the Mohammedan yoke. A rebellion in this country being headed by his own nephew, who when taken was flayed alive, the king marched thither in person, and he was so pleased with the site of Deogiri, that he resolved to make it his capital. Forthwith the whole of the inhabitants of Delhi were ordered to quit their homes and hasten to people this town, to which he gave the name of Douletabad. Twice, then, he permitted them to return to Delhi, and twice he forced them back to the Deckan, once in the very midst of a famine. This plan, too, after causing misery and death to thousands, proved an utter failure. Such are the caprices of despotism.

The number of Moguls in the service of the Indian monarchs had continually gone on increasing, and they now formed a large portion of the imperial army. A body of these troops quartered in Gûzerât having revolted, Mohammed marched against them. They retired into the Deckan, and seized on Douletabâd. The king came and besieged that town, and he had nearly reduced it, when news of disturbances in Gûzerât drew him thither, and he left the conduct of the siege to one of his Omrahs. But the Moguls defeated this general, and drove him into Malwa, and before Mohammed could march against them he fell sick and died (1351), after a reign of twenty-seven years.

It was during the reign of Shah Mohammed that the Moorish traveller Ibn Batuta visited India. Mohammed made him a judge with a most liberal salary, and afterwards sent him on an embassy to China.

On the death of Mohammed, the Moguls returned to the Deckan, and there established an independent kingdom. Their first king was one of their chiefs, named Ismael, an Afghân by birth, who shortly after resigned in favour of Zuffir Khân, one of his ablest officers. This man, whose original name was Hussun, was also an Afghân. He had been, it is said, the slave or servant of a Bramin astrologer at Delhi, and one day, as he was ploughing a piece of land which the Bramin had given him, he turned up a treasure; he told his master, who informed the king, by whom Hussun was made commander of one hundred horse. The Bramin predicted to him a brilliant career, stipulating to be his minister when he should be king of the Deckan. The prophecy, as we have seen, came to pass, and Zuffir kept his word with the Bramin. This monarch died (1357) after a reign of eleven years, during which he extended his dominion over the greater part of the Deckan.

The title by which he mounted the throne was Alâ-ud-din Hussun Gungoo Bahmanee, from which last his dynasty was denominated.

Shah Mohammed was succeeded by his nephew Firuz-ud-din. This monarch acknowledged the independence of the kingdoms of Bengal and the Deckan; he made excellent financial and legal regulations; he constructed a great number of public works, such as bridges, baths, inns, hospitals, mosks, tanks, etc. The most considerable of these was the canal, named after him, from the river Jumnah to the Gâgur, a portion of which has been restored in our own days, to the infinite advantage of the adjoining districts.

Firûz died in the year 1388; and in the six following years four princes of the house of Tôghlak successively occupied the throne. In the reign of the last of these princes, named Mahmûd, several of the provinces assumed independence; and, finally, a Mogul invasion, such as India had never yet witnessed, swept over and devasted the country. We have seen the hordes that roam the plains of Central Asia, united under Chingiz Khân, spread devastation and misery around almost to the bounds of the earth. A similar scourge now arose to afflict the world, in the person of Timûr (commonly called Tamerlane), who, though by birth a Turk and a Mussulman by religion, was able, through his superior talents, to combine Turks and Moguls, and run a career of conquest and spoliation nearly equal to that of Chingiz.

India, which had escaped the arms of the Mogul conqueror, was destined to be the prey of Timur. In the year 1398 this prince's grandson, Peer Mohammed, having reduced the Afghans of the mountains of Solimân, crossed the Indus, and laid siege to Multân. Timûr himself, then taking the same route with Alexander, along, as we may term it, the high-road to India, crossed the mountains of Hindoo Cush, and reached Câbul. Instead, however, of taking, like that conqueror, the direct line of the river Câbul, he moved southwards through the mountains (probably along the course of the Kurrum) into Bannu, crossed the Indus and the Jelûm, and marched down the banks of this river to the city of Tulumba. He levied a heavy contribution on this city, which then was sacked, and its inhabitants massacred by his soldiers-without his orders we are assured; for such was the fate of most cities that he took; the troops of this most severe and despotic of commanders, strangely on such occasions venturing to fling off the yoke of obedience, and never being punished for it!

Being joined by his grandson, from Multân, Timûr crossed the Garra, or Sutlej, and directed his march across the Sandy Desert, in nearly a straight line for Delhi, taking in his way Adjudin and Butner, the people of which last town were massacred by mistake, as usual. The Indian army was defeated under the walls of Delhi, the king sought refuge in Gûzerât, and Timûr was proclaimed emperor of India. The usual course of events took place in Delhi. Heavy contributions were levied for the monarch, his troops began to plunder, some resistance was offered, and this led to a general massacre and conflagration. During five days Timûr remained a tranquil spectator of all these atrocities, engaged in celebrating a feast in honour of his victory. When his troops were glutted with blood and plunder, he gave orders for the march,

A. D. 1412-1526.

and on the day preceding his departure in the stately mosk, erected by Shah Firûz on the banks of the Jumnah, "he offered up to the Divine Majesty the sincere and humble tribute of grateful praise.'

Laden with plunder, and dragging myriads of captives with him of all ranks, and of both sexes, he moved northwards to Meerut, where, as usual, there was a general massacre. He then crossed the Ganges, and marched to where that river leaves the mountains, near Hardwar, and then westwards, along the foot of the mountains as far as Jummoo, north of Lahore; he then turned to the south, and leaving India by the usual route, proceeded to make preparations for marching into Anterior Asia, to encounter the Ottoman suitan Bayazid. His visitation of India, which lasted about a year, had been like that of a destroying angel; he left behind him anarchy, famine, and pestilence.

Mahmûd returned to Delhi, but he could recover no authority. After his death (1412) the government was administered in an imperfect manner, in the name of Timûr, by Khizr Khân, the governor of the Punjâb. As Khizr was a Syud, or descendant of the Prophet, the dynasty of himself and his three successors is named that of the Syuds.

The limits of the empire, under these princes, were reduced almost to the capital; and Alâ-uddin, the last of them, was glad to resign the throne to Behlôl Khân Lôdi, the possessor of the Punjâb, and retire to Budâyun, a town about 100 miles east of Delhi (1450).

Behlôl belonged to the Afghân tribe of Lôdi. His grandfather, Ibrahim, was a wealthy merchant, who repaired to the court of Shah Firúz, by whom he was appointed governor of Multân. His sons rose to power and command; and his grandson made himself master of the Punjâb, when the feeble Syuds attempted to destroy the Lôdi family; and the last of them, as we have seen, was obliged to resign to him the throne of Delhi. During an active reign of thirty-nine years, Behlôl gave to the empire once more respectable limits. It now reached the Himalaya on the north, the Ganges and Benâres on the east.

Ferishta relates, that while Behlôl was yet a young man, and in a private station, his future dignity had been prophetically announced to him. As he was paying his respects one day to a renowned Dervish, the latter, while Behlôl was sitting before him, cried out, in a fit of enthusiasm, "Who will give me two thousand rupees for the empire of Delhi?" Behlól replied, that he had only sixteen hundred in the world, but that he would give them; and, sending for them, he presented them to the holy man, who, laying his hand on his head, saluted him king. Behlol, when ridiculed by his comrades for his folly, replied, that "if the thing came to pass, he had made a cheap purchase; if not, the blessing of a holy man could do him no harm." When he attained the empire, he divided his treasures among his friends, and lived with them on terms of the greatest familiarity. He very rarely could be induced to mount his throne, saying, that "it was enough for him that the world knew he was a king, without his making a vain parade of royalty." Though not learned, he patronised literature, and was liberal to men of letters.

17

Secunder Lôdi, the son and successor of Behlôl, was also a man of talent, and in general, just and liberal. It is, however, in his reign, that we first meet with religious bigotry exercised against the Hindoo religion; for it is remarkable, how tolerant the conduct of the Mohammedan rulers of India had been hitherto. Secunder destroyed the Hindoo temples, and forbade pilgrimages, and the practice of bathing on festivals in the sacred streams. A Bramin, in a dispute with a Moslem, who reproached him with idolatry, having replied, that "he considered the same God to be the object of all worship, and therefore held the Mohammedan and Hindoo religions to be equally good," the bigoted Moslem summoned him before the Câzi, or judge of the city. The king hearing of it, assembled the principal doctors of religion to consider the matter, and they decided that the Bramin should have the option of conversion or death. He refused to abandon his own more humane creed, and died a martyr to his faith. A pious Moslem ventured to remonstrate with Secunder, against his prohibition of pilgrimages. "Wretch," cried he, drawing his sword, "do you defend idolatry?" "No," replied he, "but I maintain that kings ought not to persecute their subjects." The monarch was appeased. When Secunder, on one occasion, was marching against one of his brothers, a Calender, or religious mendicant, prayed for his success. Pray for victory to him," replied he, "who will best promote the good of his subjects." Secunder died in 1509, having reigned nearly twenty years.

His son, Ibrahim, who succeeded, possessed none of his virtues, but courage. His pride was insufferable; one of his maxims was, that kings have no relations, all are alike his slaves. The Ômrahs, of the tribe of Lôdi, who used to have the privilege of sitting in the royal presence, were now obliged to stand by the throne, with their hands crossed before them. This conduct of the monarch naturally led to insurrections and rebellions. Ibrahim was at first successful in suppressing them, but at length (1524) Doulat Khan Lodi, governor of the Punjab, called to his aid Bâber, a prince of the house of Timûr, who now was ruling in Câbul; and Bâber, who had already, as the representative of Timûr, put forth claims to the empire of India, cheerfully obeyed the call. He defeated an army which opposed him, took Lahore and some other towns, and was on his way to Delhi, when commotions in Balkh recalled him to Câbul. Having composed them, he returned to India, and at Pânîput, on the road to Delhi (1526), he encountered the army of sultan Ibrahim, said to contain 100,000 men, with 1000 elephants. Bâber's force did not exceed 12,000 men, he resolved to act on the defensive. He linked his cannon together with ropes of twisted leather, with infantry behind, and breast works in front; he also protected his flanks with works. Ibrahim, likewise, fortified his position; but, instead of awaiting an attack, he attempted to storm the enemy's lines. The result was a repulse, then a defeat and total rout. The earth was covered with the bodies of the slain, among which lay that of sultan Ibrahim. With him terminated the rule of the Afghans in India, and the throne fell to the house of Timûr, the greatest and the last of the Mohammedan dynasties, which have ruled in that extensive region.

C

As

CHAPTER VI.

Sultan BABER-His Early Adventures-Conquest of India -His Character-HUMAYUN-His Flight from IndiaBirth of Akber-Humayun's Adventures-He recovers Câbul And India-His Death-Sheer Shâh-SelimMohammed.

BABER, the founder of the Mogul empire in India, was sixth in descent from Timûr. His father was Omar Sheykh Mirza, who was married to a Mogul princess of the family of Chingiz. In the division of his father's dominions, while Bokhara and Samarcand fell to one of his brothers, Balkh to another, and Câbul to a third, the portion of Bâber was the rich and fertile Ferghâna on the Upper Jaxartes. Baber was only twelve years old when (1494) the death of his father left him a throne and a war with two of his uncles. The deaths of these princes favoured him, and in the confusion which ensued, this monarch of fifteen years of age ventured to attempt the conquest of Samarcand, and though he failed more than once, he was finally successful (1497).

His ambition, however, was beyond his means; while he was engaged in Samarcand, one of his principal officers, named Tambol, revolted in Ferghana, and after a reign of only one hundred days, Baber was obliged to quit Samarcand, which immediately cast off its obedience. A severe fit of illness now brought him to the very point of death, and when he recovered, he found Ferghâna lost as well as Samarcand. Still he did not despair; with some slight aid from his Mogul uncle, he succeeded in recovering Ferghâna (1499), and while thus occupied, he received invitations to return to Samarcand, but ere he reached it, he learned that both it and Bokhara had been occupied by the Uzbegs, who now were rising into power 9. Meantime Tambol had recovered Ferghâna, and Bâber was now obliged to seek refuge in the rugged mountains to the south of that country. Hearing while there, that Shybânee, the Uzbeg Khân, was gone on an expedition, he resolved, though with only 240 followers, to make another attempt on Samarcand. He entered it by night, mastered the guards, and the citizens rose in his favour. The whole country now declared for him, and Shybânee was forced to retire to Bokhara. In vain Bâber tried to prevail on the neighbouring princes to unite for their common interests against the Uzbegs. He was forced to give them battle alone, and owing to the baseness of his Mogul troops, who quitted the field to plunder the baggage, he was totally defeated. He then shut himself up within the walls of Samarcand, whence, after having endured siege and famine during four months, he was obliged once more to seek his safety in flight.

Baber now spent nearly two years in poverty and distress. So low was he brought, that he had nearly determined to retire to China, and there pass the remainder of his days in obscurity. He succeeded, however, once more in recovering Ferghâna; but Tambol called in the Uzbegs, and Bâber, after maintaining an obstinate contest in the streets of the city, was forced to fly, and in his flight he was captured. He, however, regained his liberty, but the whole of the country beyond the Oxus being 9 The Uzbegs were Turks, with a mixture of Mongols. They still possess the country beyond the Oxus.

now in the hands of the Uzbegs, he took a last farewell of his favourite Ferghana, and proceeded to try his fortune in more southern regions. He entered Bactria with not more than between two and three hundred followers, most of them only armed with clubs, and two tents, of which the best was reserved for his mother. But the army there declared for him, and at the head of it he entered Câbul (1504), which submitted at once, and of which he never again lost possession. It may surprise those who look through the preceding sketch of Baber's exploits and adventures, to learn that he was not yet three-and-twenty years of age; but such is the real fact.

Contests with his old enemies the Uzbegs, with the mountain tribes of Afghanistân, and with his relations of the house of Timûr, occupied Baber for many years, and he ran risks at times equal to any he had encountered in his early days. length he turned his thoughts toward India, and became, as we have seen, the sovereign of that country.

At

After the battle of Pânîput, Delhi and Agra opened their gates to the conqueror. But the whole of the country to the east, in which various Afghân chiefs were more or less independent, remained yet to be subdued. The summer, too, came on so excessively hot that his troops were unable to endure it, and they clamoured to be led back to Câbul, and some were even preparing to return without leave. Båber then assembled his officers, and representing to them, that as India had been the great object of their labours, it would be a disgrace to abandon it now, he added, that he would remain, but that all who wished might return to Câbul. This firmness had the desired effect on the greater number, though some would not remain. Most of the Afghân chiefs, then, finding from this that Bâber's was not, like Timûr's, a mere transient invasion, but that he was resolved to remain in the country, now made their submission, and others were reduced by Bâber's son Humayun.

The Mussulmans having thus submitted, or been reduced, Bâber had now to take the field against the Hindoos. Sanga, rajah of Mêwâr, joined by other rajahs and by Mahmûd, a prince of the house of Lôdi, advanced with a large army to Sikri, within twenty miles of Agra. The advanced guard of Báber's army was driven back with great loss, but with the usual want of strategic skill characteristic of the Hindoos, the victors, instead of pushing on and completing the victory, retired, and suffered him to take up a position and fortify it. Unluckily for Bâber there just then happened to arrive in his camp a celebrated astrologer, who from the aspect of the planet Mars announced a total defeat to the royal army. The spirits of both officers and men were depressed by this untoward prediction, and desertion began to prevail. Bâber, though he despised it, saw its dangerous efficacy; he, therefore, to counteract it, had recourse to religion; he repented of his sins, forswore the use of wine, vowed to let his beard grow, and to remit taxes, and then assembling his officers, made a strong appeal to their sense of honour. They swore on the Koran to conquer or die: he then drew up his army in front of his camp, and galloped from right to left along the line, encouraging the soldiers. The Hindoos advanced to the attack, but were to