364 NORTH-IVESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH. great loss, finally succeeded in establishing his power over the northern part of the Ganges valley. The Delhi Rájá was taken prisoner and massacred in cold blood; and Muhammad returnedin triumph to Ghazni, leaving his viceroy, Kutab-ud-dín, to complete the conquest of the Hindu kingdoms. In 1193 A.D., the viceroy conquered Koil (Aligarh) and MEERUT, and fixed the seat of the Muhammadan empire at Delhi, where it remained, with few intermissions, till the British conquest. In the next year, Muhammad himself returned to India, and defeated Jai Chand, Rájá of Kanauj, in the ravines of Etawah District. This victory added Oudh to the Delhi Empire, and not only destroyed one of the great Indian monarchies, but extended the Muhammadan dominion into Behar, and opened up the way to Bengal. Muhammad followed up the advantage by taking the holy city of Benares, the metropolis of Hinduism, where he is said to have destroyed the suspiciously symmetrical number of 1000 temples. After the same battle, Kanauj had fallen; many of the Hindu towns were sacked, and the idols they contained broken; and Jai Chand himself, identified by his false teeth as he lay among the slain, perished as a Rajput ought. Thereupon the Ráhtors emigrated in a body to the desert of Rajputána, where they founded the kingdom of Márwár, and long kept alive the military spirit of the Hindu race. Muhammad Ghori died by violence, at the hands of Ghakkar tribesmen, in 1206, having completely subdued the whole of Northern India, from the Hinálayas to the Narbadá (Nerbudda), and from the Indus to the Bay of Bengal. His body was conveyed to Ghazní, where his nephew Mahmúd was proclaimed heir to his throne and accumulated treasures. But the kingdom at once broke up into several States. Kutab-ud-din, Muhammad's viceroy, practically succeeded to his Indian dominions, and became the founder of the Slave dynasty. The account of that line, and of the succeeding Ghilzai and Tughlak dynasties, belongs rather to the general history of India than to the restricted annals of the North-Western Provinces. The Muhammadan power thenceforth remained supreme in the Ganges valley, which it ruled for the most part from the capital of Delhi. Under the Tughlak princes (1321–1411), however, the empire became disintegrated; and besides the more distant principalities founded by Musalmán chiefs in Málwá and Gujarát, a separate kingdom arose at JAUNPUR, within the limits of the North-Western Provinces themselves. In 1394, Málik Sarwar Khwája, governor of Jaunpur for Muhammad Tughlak, assumed the independent title of Sultán - us-shark. The dynasty thus established maintained itself in power for 84 years, and constantly contested with the Delhi emperors the sovereignty of Kanauj and the other border Districts. Four years after the sccession, in 1398, the Mughal conqueror Timur invaded India. Crossing the
