122 EARLY MUHAMMADAN CONQUERORS.
army, levied an immense booty, and carried it back 700 miles
to the seat of his governorship on the banks of the Ganges.
He then lufed the Sultan Jalal-ud-dfn, his uncle, to Karra, in
order to divide the spoil, and murdered the old man in the act
of clasping his hand (1295 a.d.).
Reign of Ala-ud-din, 1295-1315. Ala-ud-dfn scattered
his spoils in gifts or charity like a devout Musalman, and pro-
claimed himself Sultan. The twenty years of his reign estab-
lished the Muhammadan sway in Southern India. He recon-
quered Gujarat from the Hindus in 1297; captured Rintimbur,
after a difficult siege, from the Jaipur Rajputs in 1300; took
the fort of Chitor, and partially subjected the Sesodia Rdjputs
(1303); and, having thus reduced the Hindus on the north of
the Vindhyas, prepared for the conquest of Southern India or
the Deccan. But before starting on this great expedition he
had to meet five Mughal inroads from Central Asia. In 1295,
he defeated a Mughal invasion under the walls of his capital,
Delhi; in 1304-5, he encountered four others, sending all his
prisoners to Delhi, where the Chiefs were trampled by elephants,
and the common soldiery slaughtered in cold blood. He
crushed with equal cruelty several rebellions which took place
among his own family during the same period — first putting
out the eyes of his insurgent nephews, and then beheading them
(1299-1300).
His Conquest of Southern India. — His affairs in Northern
India being thus settled, he undertook the conquest of the
south. In 1303, he had sent his eunuch slave, Malik Kafur,
with an army, through Bengal, to attack Warangal, the capital
of the south-eastern Hindu kingdom of Telingana. In 1306,
Kafur marched victoriously through MalwS and Khandesh into
the Marathd country, where he captured Deogiri, and persuaded
the Hindu king Rim Deo to return with him to do homage at
Delhi. Meanwhile the Sultan Ala-ud-din was conquering the
Rajputs in Marw&r. His slave general, Kafur, made expeditions
through Mah&rashtra and the Karnatik, as far south as Adam's
Bridge, at the extremity of India, where he built a mosque.
Extent of the Muhammadan Power in India, 1306. —
The Muhammadan Sultan of India was no longer merely an
Page:A Brief History of the Indian Peoples.djvu/126
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