The Invasion of India
In 1397 Timur-i-lang obtained
the intelligence that the Tughlaq Sultanate in India was on the decline. After
the destruction the Southern Alliance of Mir Hussain (whose grandfather, Amir Qazaghan
of Balkh was a great backer of Mohamed bin Tughlaq and Firoz Shah Tughlaq) and
the conquest of Balkh by Timur, the Tughlaqs lost the backing of the Southern
Alliance and the buffer provided by this alliance against the Central Asian
Khanates. As a consequence the Kokhars of the Salt Range under Raja Jasrat led
a massive rebellion against Mahmud Shah Tughlaq. In South India too, the
Tughlaq armies were repulsed by the Hindu revival, and the local Islamic
governors of Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmednagar broke free from Delhi. Turkic
chieftains in Bengal, Gujarat and Avadh also crowned themselves local Sultans.
The Rajput chief Rai Dalachandra liberated himself from the Tughlaqs and took
the forts of Bhatnair and Loni on the road from Multan to Delhi. Timur saw a
great opportunity of plundering India, and also that for a Jihad on the
polytheists. The Zafar Nama piously announces: “There arose in my heart the
desire to lead a jihad against the infidels, and to become a ghazi; for it had
reached my ears that the slayer of infidels is a ghazi, and if he is slain
instead while fighting the fire-worshipers he becomes a shahid. It was on this account that I formed this
resolution, but I was undetermined in my mind whether I should direct my jihad
against the infidels of China or against the idolaters and polytheists of
India. In this matter I sought an omen
from the Quran, and the verse I opened upon was this: O Prophet, make war upon
infidels and unbelievers and treat them with severity. The Quran emphasizes
that the highest dignity which man may attain is to wage war in person on the
enemies of the Faith. This why I, the great Timur-i-Lang was always concerned
about exterminating the worshipers of the fire and the sun, as much to acquire
merit as from the love of undying glory.”
He held a Quriltai in 1398 and
asked his grand Amirs to give their opinions on the plan to invade India. Some of
his Amirs said that in the past Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi the
descendent of the Turkish lord Subuqtegin conquered Hindustan with a mere
30,000 cavalry, and established his own naukers as rulers of Hind. He
slaughtered Hindus and carried off many thousand carts of gold, silver and
jewels from them, besides subjecting them to Jaziya. They posed the rhetoric
question: “is our Amir inferior to Sultan Mahmud?” And replied “Allah has made
our exalted Amir Timur-i-lang the lord of an even mightier army of Mongols and
Turks. He will become a ghazi and mujahid before Allah, we shall be attendants
on an Amir who is a ghazi, the army will be contented, the treasury rich and
well filled with the gold of Hindustan”. Then Shah Rukh, his youngest son spoke
“The conquest of India, it is said is a higher honor than bearing titles like
Kha’Khan, Caesar, Shahinshah, Sultan or Faghfur. So it would be a pity if we
were not to exterminate the Indians” Then Pir Mohamed, his grandson spoke “We
have to grab that land which is full of gold, jewels, and in it there are seventeen
mines of gold, silver, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, tin, iron, lead, copper and mercury.”
Timur, pleased by these words, stated “I have made up my mind to rid India of
the filth of the polytheistic Hindus who make offerings in fire called Yazad,
destroy their temples and idols, and become ghazis and mujahids before Allah.”
In January 1398 Timur sent a
raiding squadron under his grandson Pir Mohamed from Balkh to attack Multan
(Mulasthana) and sent another army under his other grandson Mirza Iskander to
assault Lahore. Pir forded the Sindhu and besieged Multan and bombarded it with
trebuchets and fire pots. After a protracted siege of six months he took the
city and looted it completely. In the mean time Iskander took Lahore and they
prepared the path for Timur. Timur took
his own course; first he decided to destroy the Kalasha Kafirs of Afghanistan.
The Kalasha were an ancient Indo-Iranian tribe, who represented the last
surviving group of the 3rd branch of the Indo-Iranian peoples. They were
inveterate pagans worshiping the old Indo-Iranian deities, completely
unaffected by Islam that had washed away the Indo-Aryan culture all around
them. Timur decided to strike them in the upper reaches of the Panjshir valley.
But he was prevented from entering the valley by the Kalasha Raja, who was
blocking the advance of Timur through a guerrilla attack from Siah Posh. He
sent a second force of 10,000 cavalry to take Siah Posh, but the Kalasha Raja
demolished it through a surprise sally. Furious over this Timur decided to
directly attack the Panjshir valley despite the heavy snow. He set up a system
of pulleys and lowered his troops into the valley via large baskets braving
severe cold and snow storms. Having entered the valley his spread mayhem amidst
the Kafirs. However, they fled to the mountains and continued to fight. Timur
dejected over the hold up, built fortifications to fend off the Kafirs and
marched on, exiting the valley at Khawak. Before leaving he carved an
inscription on the mountain defiles of Kator marking his invasion of the Kafir
land.
Proceeding south, Timur with a
force of 93,000 horsemen, crossed the Sindhu on Sept.24th 1398 and
made a broad sweep towards the rich town of Talamba, north of Multan. Having
sacked and obliterated the city, he merged with his grandsons’ tuemens at
Multan. Then the combined Timurid army marched rapidly towards the west bank of
Shutudri (Sutlej) river. Here Timur took on Raja Jasrat and having killed him
in a quick heavy cavalry charge, destroyed the Khokhar army. The survivors were
forcibly converted to Islam at the threat of immediate execution. Having
crossed the river he secured the Multan-Delhi road and started his march on
Delhi. The fort of Bhatnair stood on this road and offered formidable defense
against the invader. Timur promptly besieged the fort after sweeping through
the countryside and forced Rai Dalachandra into the defensive. On 10th
November 1398, he suddenly assaulted fort with giant fort-breaking ballistas
that hurled huge rocks over a ton on the fort walls. Prince Shah Rukh, Mazid al
Baghdadi and Jahan Maliq, Timur’s fierce generals, led the assault on the
Hindus. The Hindus retaliated with an
heavy rain fireworks from their ramparts, but the Timurids pushed on building
mines to break the ramparts. Finally, the fort ramparts were demolished and the
Timurid army rushed into the fort capturing Dalachandra and killing other
defenders after much desperate fighting at close quarters.
Timur then sacked the town of
Sirsuti (on the old Sarasvati) and destroyed it completely slaying numerous
Hindus. Then he quickly took the towns
of Aspandi, Kaithal, Samana and completely depopulated them. He states that
while destroying these places he noticed several fire-worshipers, similar to
the Parsis of Iran and exterminated them in the true spirit of a ghazi (most probably he meant Brahmins). On
5th December he sacked Panipat and took the wheat granaries there as
the Hindus fled in terror on hearing of his approach. On December 10th he
proceed to attack the Loni that stood the north-east of Delhi, the Hindu
defenders shaken by the loss of their chief failed to put an effective fight
and were trashed by the Timurid army. Timur seized about 100,000 Hindus after
the battle by encircling them in a crescent-like movement, even as held their
mass Mongols hunting expeditions on the steppe. He ordered his men to slaughter
each one of them right away. He proudly describes how a Mullah who had not even
killed a sparrow in the past now slew several Hindus with great enthusiasm. On
December 17th he reached the banks of the Yamuna, between Delhi and
Panipat and engaged the Tughlaq army commanded by Mallu Iqbal and Sultan Mahmud
Shah Tughlaq. Timur’s troops first fired bolts shaped like spiked tetrahedra on
the field in front of them and retreated behind this zone of spikes. The
Tughlaq army seeing the Timurids seeming to retreat, led a direct elephant
charge. But, this was immediately nullified as the elephants’s feet were spiked
by the tetrahedra. The Delhi cavalry was pressed into a charge on a short
notice and was engaged by the right wing of Timur’s army comprising of cavalry
archers. As the Delhi cavalry was being mowed down by the Central Asian
archers, the left wing of Timur’s army, comprising of the heavily armored
cavalry, encircled the right wing of the Tughlaq army, and cut it down. The
Tughlaq army faced complete encirclement: Mallu Iqbal was killed and he was
speared like a kebob and displayed to force the survivors to surrender. Mahmud
Tughlaq escaped just before the encirclement and fled to Gujarat, even as his
army lay “with heads and hands mixed with the trunks of the pachyderm”.
Timur triumphantly marched into
Delhi and the Ulema begged him to spare the lives of the Moslems. He asked them
to proclaim him the exalted sultan of Hindustan. The Hindus seeing that they
faced a brutal death revolted enmasse and were slaughtered with much fury in
the fierce fighting that broke out through the streets of Delhi. Four pyramids
of the heads of slaughtered Hindus were set up in the four corner of Delhi and
only the qualified craftsmen were bound and sent off in slave trains to
Samarqand. Any Moslems who failed to give Timur’s troops their supplies were
also forthwith roasted like Kebobs. Timur spent 15 days in Delhi solemnly
occupying the throne of Delhi declaring himself emperor of India. He summoned
120 elephants and made them bow their heads and kneel before him in obeisance
and trumpet in unison. He felt that it marked the submission of Hindustan
itself at the feet of the world conqueror.
He then sent off the elephants in long strings to the Herat, Tabriz,
Shiraz and Samarqand. The treasury was taken by Timur and in one stroke the
wealth that the Moslem rulers had robbed from Indians over two centuries,
comprising of incalculable amounts of gold, silver and gems. He then performed
his Islamic prayers in the old Jami Masjid, placed a cleric from Bokhara as its
Imam and had him read the Friday Namaz in his name. Finally on January 1, 1399
when the stench of the corpses made his stay impossible, he ordered his troops
to burn down Delhi, except for the Moslem quarters, and proceeded to attack
Meerut. In Meerut he demolished all the Hindu temples and captured the Hindu
inhabitants. The Hindus were then skinned alive or their throats were slit.
Timur triumphantly declared that he had observed his vow of waging Jihad and
then burnt the city down. He then obtained intelligence regarding the
flourishing Indian shrines in Haradwara and decided to destroy them and defile
the Ganga with blood of cows and “wearers of the thread”. To this end he fell
upon a large group of pilgrims, north
of Meerut, who were advancing for the Mela on Ganga and slaughtered several
thousands of them. As he advanced
towards the banks of the Ganga, when Hindus of all denominations, from
throughout the region, both men and women, decided to stop him at all costs.
200000 Indians assembled with whatever weapons they could gather and decided to
block the path to the Ganga and the temples of Haradwara. At Bhokar Heri near
Ganga the Hindu force took on the Timurid army in a frontal assault. Though
Timur was vastly outnumbered, his cavalry was much larger, as only a small
subset of the 200000 Hindus, namely the Rajput and Brahmin fighters had horses.
The battle raged on fiercely for 3 days with Timur’s general Suleyman Shah
leading the charge; despite heavy losses the Hindus, in resolute defense of
their holy sites kept their flag aloft, with most of the Rajputs falling in
battle. Timur seeing no major gains from this encounter, and also fearing
attacks on his heavy booty, decided to withdraw without reaching the Ganga
(Though he claims that he crossed it). He captured numerous cows and buffaloes
that he used as food in his advance.
He returned taking a northerly
route along the Siwaliks and attacked the fortress of Trisarta (modern Kangra)
that was under the control of the Raja Ratana Sena and Raja Brihata. The Hindu
defenders were beaten in an involved charge led by his heavily armored cavalry.
Brihata was slain first and the Hindu women in camp fell into the hand of the
Timurid army, much to his delight. He next killed Ratana Sena after a fierce
battle that was led by Pir Mohamed and Suleyman Shah and captured 50,000 Hindus
as slaves to be sent off to Samarqand and Bukhara. Then he engaged the Hindu
Raja of Jammu, Maaladeva again near Jammu and crushed his forces in the
encounter. He captured Maaladeva while he was fleeing near the upper Chenab and
had the great joy of making him eat beef and forsake Hinduism for Islam.
Sikander, the Sultan of Kashmir, humbly submitted to Timur and accepted his
suzerainty. He then appointed Khizr Khan Sayyid as viceroy in Delhi and a local
Moslem warlord as the governor of Multan. Rich in booty and slaves he
triumphantly returned to Samarqand.