|
|
g
The Khilzai and Toghlak dynasties
During the Khilzai and Toghlak dynasties (1288 to 1414), a space
of 126 years, Lahore shared little in the political history of the day.
The Moghals continued to ravage the surrounding country, and on one occasion
penetrated as far as Delhi itself, but were repulsed by Zafar Khan, the
gallant General of Sultan Ala-ud-din, 1208 A. D. At Lahore a number of
these Moghals settled outside the town, and the Moghalpura quarters, named
after them, continued long to be the wealthiest inhabited part of the
suburbs. The credit of putting an effectual stop to the excursions of
the Moghals is given to Ghazi Khan, the brave Viceroy of Lahore during
the reign of Ala-ud-din. In the year 1305 A.D., he pursued them into Cabul
and Ghazni, and ever after he levied heavy contributions from those cities,
which tended materially to restrain their incursions for many years subsequently.
Ghazi Khan, originally the son of a Turki slave of Ghias-ud-din Balban,
ascended the throne of India under the title of Ghias-ud-din Toghlak (1321
A.D.), a position which he owed entirely to the high political wisdom
and administrative genius which he had displayed as Viceroy of Lahore.
He was the founder of the Toghlak dynasty of kings, who ruled India from
1321 to 1414 A.D.
Invasion of Tymur
When Tymur crossed the Indus, on September 12th, 1308, A.D., Mobarak
Khan, governor of the Panjab, offered an ineffectual resistance, and the
Moghal army sailed down the Chenab. Before proceeding to Delhi, Tymur’s
army pillaged the Panjab and Multan. Lahore escaped the sword of the conqueror,
through the timely submission made to him by Malik Shekha Khokar, brother
of Nusrat Khokar, who had been formerly governor of the place on the part
of king Mahmud-Toghlak of Delhi. He remained in attendance on the Emperor
until the royal camp was fixed at Doab, between the Ganges and the Jamna,
after the conquest of Delhi. There he asked permission to return home,
ostensibly with the object of raising contributions and tribute for His
Majesty, promising to rejoin the camp on the river Beas. On reaching Lahore,
however, he forgot all his promises, and not only made no arrangements
for raising contributions from the townspeople, but, when a party of Tymur’s
followers, among whom was Maulana Abdulla, the king’s favorite counsellor,
passed through Lahore, on their way from Samarkand to join the Emperor,
he treated them with indifference. Incensed at this perfidious conduct
on the part of the Khokar chief, the Emperor sent Prince Pir Mahomed Jahangir,
his grandson, Prince Rustam and Amirs Suleman Shah and Jahan Shah, to
Lahore, to levy a contribution from the inhabitants, ravage the country,
and put Shekha in chains. These Princes and Omerahs, having come to Lahore
at the head of a detachment, levied a ransom from the inhabitants and
threw Shekha Khokar, his wife and children into confinement. “When
I returned from the hunt,” writes the Emperor in his autobiography,
“the princes and nobles whom I had sent to Lahore returned from
that place, bringing with them much wealth and property. I received them
with due honour, and the plunder which they had brought from Lahore, in
money, goods and horses, they presented to me, and I divided it among
the nobles in attendance at my Court.” The author of the Zafarnama
notices the event thus:--“Princes Pir Mahomed and Rustam, accompanied
by Amirs Jahan Shah and Suleman Shah, arrived from Lahore. They had put
to the sword many infidel Hindus, had gained a large booty and now offered
their spoil to the Emperor.” The conqueror left no garrison in the
Panjab, but returned to Turkistan, having appointed Syad Khizr Khan as
his viceroy of Lahore and retaining only a titular suzerainty over Hindustan.
The Syad dynasty
Khizr Khan Syad was another viceroy of Lahore, after Ghazi Khan Toghlak,
whom the important command he held in the Panjab, enabled to assume the
royal diadem at Delhi. On the death of Mahmud-Toghlak, in February 1412,
he marched from Lahore and expelling Dowlat Khan Afghan Lodi, who had
succeeded the late King, ascended the throne. To avert the jealousy of
the Omerahs, however, he resorted to the expedient of ruling the country
in the name of Tymur, and he was enabled to support his position by the
aid of the Lahore and Multan forces, which had been under his command.
During the dynasty of the Syads, 1412 to 1478, a space of 66 years, Lahore
was not prominent in the political affairs of the time.
Next |
|
