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EARLY MUHAMMADAN CONQUERORS.


degraded the pulpits of the mosques into pedestals for Hindu idols. In 1320 he was slain by his revolted soldiery, and the Khiljí dynasty disappeared.

House of Tughlak, 1320-1414.—The leader of the rebellion was Ghiyás-ud-dín Tughlak, who had started life as a Túrkí slave, and risen to the frontier governorship of the Punjab. He founded the Tughlak dynasty, which lingered on for ninety-six years, although submerged for a time by the invasion of Timur (Tamerlane) in 1398. Ghiyás-ud-dín (1320-25 a.d.) removed the capital from Delhi to a spot about four miles farther east, and called it Tughlakábád.

Muhammad Tughlak, 1325-1351.—His son and successor, Muhammad Tughlak, was an accomplished scholar, a skilful general, and a man of severe abstinence. But his ferocity of temper, perhaps inherited from the tribes of the steppes of Central Asia, rendered him merciless as a judge, and careless of human suffering. The least opposition drove him into outbursts of insane fury. He wasted the treasures accumulated by Ala-ud-dín in buying off the Mughal hordes, who again and again swept through Afghanistan into the Punjab. On the other hand, in fits of ambition, he raised an army for the invasion of Persia, and is said to have sent out an expedition of 100,000 men against China. The force against Persia broke up for want of pay, and plundered his own dominions ; the army against China perished almost to a man in the Himalayan passes. He planned great conquests into Southern India, and dragged the whole inhabitants of Delhi to Deogiri, to which he gave the name of Daulatabad, 800 miles off in the far south. Twice he allowed the miserable suppliants to return to Delhi; twice he compelled them on pain of death to quit it. One of these forced migrations took place amid the horrors of a famine; the citizens perished by thousands, and in the end the king had to give up the attempt. Having drained his treasury, he issued a forced currency of copper coins, by which he tried to make the king's brass equal to other men's silver. During the same century, the Mughal conqueror of China, Kublai Khán, had extended the use of paper notes, early devised by the Chinese; and Kai Khátú had introduced a bad imitation of them into Persia.