Afghán King of Delhi. Three great waves of invasion from Central Asia had created a large Muhammadan population in Northern India. First came the Tárkís, represented by the house of Ghazní; then the Afghans (commonly so called), represented by the house of Ghor; next the Mughals, having failed to conquer the Punjáb, took service in great numbers with the Sultáns of Delhi. Under the Slave Kings the Mughal mercenaries had become so powerful as to require to be massacred (1286). About 1292, three thousand Mughals, having been converted from their old Tartar rites to Islám, received a suburb of Delhi, still called Mughalpur, for their residence.
Other Mughals followed. After various plots by them, Alá-ud-dín slaughtered 15,000 of the settlers, and sold their families as slaves (1311 a.d.). The unlimited supply of soldiers which he could thus draw upon from the Túrkí, Afghán, and Mughal settlers in Northern India and from countries beyond, enabled him to send armies farther south than any of his predecessors. But in his later years the Hindus revolted in Gujarát; the Rájputs reconquered Chitor; and many of the Muhammadan garrisons were driven out of the Deccan. On the capture of Chitor in 1303, the Rájput garrison had preferred death to submission. The peasantry still chant an early Hindi ballad, telling how the queen and thirteen thousand women threw themselves on a funeral pile, while the men rushed upon the swords of the besiegers. A remnant cut their way to the Arávalli hills; and the Rájput independence, although in abeyance during Alá-ud-dín's reign, was never crushed, Having imprisoned his sons, and given himself up to paroxysms of rage and intemperance, Alá-ud-dín died in 1315, helped to the grave, it is said, by poison given by his favourite general, Káfur.
A Renegade Hindu Emperor, 1316-1320.—During the four remaining years of the house of Khiljí, the actual power passed to Khusrú Khán, a low-caste renegade Hindu, who imitated the military successes and vices of his patron, the General Káfur, and in the end murdered him. Khusrú became all in all to the new Emperor, the debauchee Mubárik; then slew him, and seized the throne. While outwardly professing Islám, Khusrú desecrated the Kurán by using it as a seat, and
