The Successors of Firuz Shah, Son of Rajab
The immediate successor of Firuz was his grandson, Tughluq Shah, who assumed the title of Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq Shah II. He soon fell a victim to a conspiracy of some officers and nobles on the 19th February, A.D. 1389. The nobles at Delhi then acclaimed his cousin, Abu Baqr, as the Sultan. At the same time the partisans of Firuz’s son, Nasir-ud-din Muhammad, proclaimed him king at Samana on the 24th April, 1389. Abu Baqr was forced to surrender to his rivals, and was deposed, in December, 1390. Largely owing to the strain of his struggle against various difficulties, the health of Nasir-ud-din Muhammad declined and he died in January, 1394. Then came the brief reign of his son, Humayun, who died on the 8th March following. The next and the last ruler of the Tughluq dynasty was Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, the youngest son of Muhammad. His rival, Nusrat Shah, a son of Fath Khan, the eldest son of Firuz, made an attempt to gain the throne at the instigation of some nobles, but it proved futile and he was treacherously put to death.
All the successors of Firuz were weaklings and utterly incompetent to save the Delhi Sultanate from disruptions the symptoms of which had already appeared. They were mere puppets in the hands of some unscrupulous nobles, whose selfish intrigues largely fomented the civil wars among the rival claimants to the throne of Delhi. These told heavily upon the prestige and resources of the State, with the result that its authority began to be defied almost everywhere by the Muslim governors and Hindu chiefs. The eunuch Malik Sarvar, who had persuaded Nasir-ud-din Mahmud to bestow upon him the title of Malik-ush-Sharq, or Lord of the East, founded the independent kingdom of Jaunpur; the Khokars revolted in the north; the provinces of Gujarat, Malwa, and Khandesh became independent States; Muslim principalities were established in Biyana and Kalpi and a Hindu principality in Gwalior; the chief of Mewat transferred his nominal allegiance from one prince to another at his own sweet will; and the Hindus of the Doab were almost constantly in revolt.
Invasion of Timur
Such was the distracted and chaotic condition of the kingdom of Delhi when Amir Timur, one of the most terrible military leaders known to history, invaded India. Amir Timur, son of Amir Turghay, chief of the Gurkan branch of the Barlas Turks, was born at Kesh in Transoxiana in A.D., 1336. He ascended the throne of Samarqand in 1369 and then launched on a career of aggressive conquests in Persia, Afghanistan and Mesopotamia. The wealth of India naturally excited the temptation to invade this land, for which the disintegration of the Delhi kingdom afforded him a suitable opportunity. He used his championship of the faith as a pretext to win the support of the nobles and warriors, who were not in favour of his meditated invasion of this distant land.
Early in 1398 Pir Muhammad, a grandson of Timur, besieged Multan and captured it after six months. Timur left Samarqand in April, 1398, at the head of a large army, and having crossed the Indus, the Jhelum and the Ravi in September, appeared before Talamba, situated about seventy miles to the north-east of Multan, on the 13th October of the same year. He sacked Talamba and massacred or enslaved its inhabitants. After capturing several places on his way and massacring many of their inhabitants, he advanced to the outskirts of Delhi by the end of the first week of December, and butchered there about 100,000 adult male captives in cold blood. Sultan Mahmud and Mallu Iqbal endeavored to oppose him there on the 17th December with a large army consisting of 10,000 cavalry, 40,000 infantry and 120 elephants, clad in armour. But they were hopelessly defeated and took to their heels, Mallu fleeing to Baran and Mahumd to Gujarat.
On the next day Timur entered the city of Delhi, which was given up to pillage and rapine for several days. Many of the inhabitants of this unfortunate city were either brutally massacred by the ferocious Turki soldiers or made captives, and the artisans among them were sent to Samarqand to build there the famous Friday Mosque which Timur himself had designed. Thus a tragic fate overtook the capital city of the Sultans of Delhi. Timur had no desire to stay in India. After halting at Delhi for fifteen days, he returned through Firuzabad (Ist January, 1399), stormed Meerut (9th January), on the way and advancing further north defeated two Hindu armies in the neighbourhood of Hardwar in January. Marching along the Siwalik Hills, be captured Kangra (16th January) and sacked Jammu, the inhabitants of those places being slaughtered in large numbers.
He appointed Khizr Khan Sayyid to the government of Multan, Lahore and Dipalpur, and recrossed the Indus on the 19th March, “after inflicting on India more misery than had ever before been inflicted by any conqueror in single invasion”.
Nature also proved cruel to the people of Delhi at this critical time and added to their miseries caused by the ravages of bloody wars and devastations. ” At this time,” writes Badauni, “such a famine and pestilence fell upon Delhi that the city was utterly ruined and those of the inhabitants who were left died, while for two months not a bird moved a wing in Delhi.” Timur, in short, completed the dissolution of the Tughluq kingdom, the vitality of which had already been sapped by internal cankers. Bengal had long been independent; Khwaja Jahan had been ruling over an independent kingdom comprising Kanauj, Oudh, Kara, Dalmau, Sandila, Bahraich, Bihar and Jaunpur; in Gujarat, Muzaffar Shah owed no allegiance to anybody; in Malwa, Dilawar Khan exercised royal authority; the Punjab and Upper Sind were held by Khizr Khan as Timur’s viceroy; and Ghalib Khan had established his power in Samana, Shams Khan Auhadi in Bayana, and Muhammad Khan in Kalpi and Mahoba. To make confusion worse confounded, the decay of political authority in Delhi emboldened the unscrupulous nobles and adventurers to indulge more and more in base intrigues. Some of them helped Nusrat Shah, who had been so long lurking in the Doab, to take possession of Delhi in 1399 but he was defeated and expelled from that city by Mallu Iqbal. On returning to Delhi in 1401, Mallu Iqbal extended an invitation to Sultan Mahmud, who had found shelter at Dhar after experiencing many bitter humiliations in Gujarat, to return to Delhi. He thought that the ” prestige of the fugitive Mahmud Shah would be useful to him”. Sultan Mahmud returned to Delhi only to remain a puppet in the hands of Mallu lqbal till the latter’s death in a fight with Khizr Khan, the governor of Multan, Dipalpur and Upper Sind, on the 12th November, 1405. Being a weak king, Mahmud could not make proper use of his restored position. He died at Kaithal in February, 1413, after a nominal sovereignty of about twenty years, and with him the dynasty founded by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq came to an ignominious end.