KHIZE KHAX 171 bered four rulers, consisted mainly in a perpetual strug- gle to retain some sort of control of the small territory still attached to the kingdom of Delhi. How small this was will be realized when it is stated that almost yearly campaigns were undertaken to extort the annual trib- ute from the Hindu raja of Katehr (Rohilkhand, north- east of Delhi), from Mewat on the south, and from Etawa in the Doab. We read of frequent rebellions in the northwest at Sirhind and Jalandhar, generally headed by Jasrath, a Gakkar leader of the Murree hills; of revolts at Koil (Aligarh), Badaun, Etawa; of pur- suits of rebels into the mountains of Rupar near Simla on the north; of invasions and intrigues by the Timurid governor of Kabul, and by the rulers of Malwa and of Jaunpur. " Khizr's seven years' tenure of power," writes Mr. Thomas in his Chronicles of the Pathan Kings, " pre- sents but few incidents of mark; there is a seeming Oriental want of energy to sustain an accomplished triumph, an air of ease which so often stole over the senses of a successful owner of a palace in Delhi; and so his vizir and deputy, Taj-al-mulk, went forth to coerce or persuade, as occasion might dictate, the vari- ous independent chiefs, whether Moslem or Hindu, whose states now encircled the reduced boundaries of the old Pathan kingdom. There were of course the ordinary concessions to expediency, so well understood in the East, submission for the moment in the presence of a superior force, insincere professions of allegiance, temporizing payments of tribute, or desertion of fields
