CHAPTER IV THE SLAVE KINGS THE TUKKS IN DELHI 1206-1290 A.D. IN 1206 India at length had a Mohammedan king of its own, ruling not from an outside capital, but in India itself. Mohammad Ghori's viceroy Aybek was the first of the thirty-four Moslem kings who ruled at Delhi from the beginning of the thirteenth century to the invasion of Babar in 1526. These thirty-four monarchs fall into five successive dynasties. First came the Slave Kings, all Turks, descended from Aybek the slave of Ghori, or from Aybek 's slaves. Next followed the Khaljis, probably Turks in origin, but essentially Afghans in association and character. The third was the Turkish house of Taghlak. The irruption of Timur, who burst into India in 1398, put an end to the dom- ination of the Taghlak princes, and broke up the king- dom of Delhi; but the dynasty of the Sayyids or " no- bles r - so called because, though natives of India, they claimed Arabian descent from the family of the Prophet Mohammed assumed authority at the capital. The fifth dynasty was that of the Afghan Lodis, who held 63
