4 THE KHILJEES PREVAIL AT DELHI.
CHAP.
I
This Alptegin afterwards assumed the independent govern-
ment of the country about the mountains of Sooleeman to
General. the Indus, making Ghuznee his citadel. This he held
for fourteen years, up to the time of his death, and thence
founded the house of Ghuznee. His death occurred in
the year 976. Alptegin had "a slave named Sebektegin,
whom he purchased from a merchant who brought him
from Toorkistan, and whom by degrees he had raised to so
much power and trust that, at his death, he was the
effective head of his government, and in the end became his
successor." He also married a daughter of his benefactor.
In the action that Sebektegin had with Jeipal, Raja of
Lahore, at Laghman, at the mouth of the valley which
extends from Peshawur to Cabool, he conquered, and
made great slaughter among the enemy, as well as took
possession of the country up to the Indus, leaving an
officer, with 10,000 horse, as his governor of Peshawur.
On this occasion the Affghans and Khiljees of Laghman
- not only tendered their allegiance but furnished useful
recruits to the country.
These Khiljees, who are said to be of Tartar origin and
to have come from a larger settlement about the source of
the Jaxartes, had settled even then, during the tenth cen-
tury, in that portion of the Affghan country between
Sistan and India for some time, and had been closely
connected with the Affghans. I enter into this detail
merely to show that in 1288, when Kaikobad, the last of
the Mahommedan slave-kings of Delhi, was assassinated, in
the competition for the throne between the Tartar chiefs
and those of the old kingdom of Ghuznee, "the Khiljees
seem, from the ability of their chief or some advantage of
their own, to have been at the head of the latter class;
they prevailed over the Tartars, and Jelal-ood-Deen Khiljee
