for any man but a very strong one. Assuming male attire, "Sultan" Raziya went abroad unveiled, and discharged the duties of a sovereign; seated on the judgment seat in durbar, and mounted on an elephant in battle.* Being overthrown by a successful rebellion, she was deposed and imprisoned, after a reign of three years; but she captivated the captor, who soon made her his wife. Meanwhile her younger brother, Bahrám, had assumed the Sultanate at Delhi, and Raziya marching against him was defeated and put to flight along with her husband; they were caught in the act of escaping and murdered by some villagers, near Kaithal, in the month of October, 1240.† Next year Lahore was taken by the heathen Mughals, with terrible slaughter. A series of trouble ensued ; Bahrám, the new Sultan, soon learned of what cares he had relieved his ill-starred sister; the army which he raised for service against the Mughals besieged him in his palace. In May, 1242, the palace was stormed, and Bahram was slain.

His successor was Alá-ud-din, son of Sultan Rukn-ud-din, the son of Iltimsh; incompetent and apathetic as is but too common with princes born in the purple. The land was once more partitioned by Muslim satraps, and wasted by heathen incursions; these overran the Punjab under Mangu Khán, grandson of the mighty marauder Changhez, and father to the famous Khublai Khán, the conqueror of China. The Sultan marched against them and achieved a partial triumph; but this success, turning into evil courses the little intellect he had, led to the formation of a plot which ended in his destruction. Alá-uddin was killed, in June, 1246, and the Sultanate devolved on Násir-ud-din, another grandson of Iltimsh, his father having been the prince who subdued the Khiljis in Bengal dur

* It is believed that it was with reference to these masculine habits that she is spoken of as "Sultan" and "Padshah," like a male sovereign. + Her body was interred on the bank of the Jumna a league north of Delhi, and became a place of pilgrimage.

F

ing the reign of that Sultan. The new sovereign was a man of peaceful character and frugal habits, who would have probably failed to meet the difficulties of his position had he been left to his own resources. The Hindus were disaffected and rebellious; and the Mughals, who had by this time become possessed of Ghazni, kept the north-western parts of the empire in perpetual turmoil. But these perils were abated by the ability and energy of a great public servant who was rapidly rising into distinction, and for whom a still more glorious career was in the future. This was Ulagh Khán, of the ancient stock of the Turkish Khákáns of Albari, who had been sold by slave-dealers, with a number of other young Turkmáns, to Sultan Iltimsh who was, it will be remembered, their countryman, and prepared to give them employment and favour. This was in 1232, since when the Mamelukes had formed themselves into an association called "Shamsis," from the title of their royal master, Shams-ud-din. Under Sultana Raziya Ulagh had risen to be grand huntsman, and retained the post during the subsequent troubles. Obtaining the fiefs of Riwári and Hánsi, he was made chamberlain by Alá-ud-din, and the elevation of that futile Sultan must have been partly due to his intervention. He conducted a campaign against the Hindus, in the Duáb, or Gangetic plain, east of the capital, at the outset of the reign, where, according to the chronicle, he "fought much against the infidels," that is to say the people of the country. In 1245 he led the Sultan's army against the Mughals in the Punjab; and on his return took an open and conspicuous part in the revolution which placed Nasir-ud-din upon the Masnad of Delhi.

The rest of the Sultan's history is nothing more than the record of the minister's exploits; but it is to his credit that he was content with a subordinate situation, and preserved constant fidelity to his harmless sovereign. Whether it be called duty or prudence this course was one of almost unbroken

prosperity. Necessarily, the minister made enemies; and once at least his star appeared to wane. In the year 1252 he fell into disgrace; but after a struggle he prevailed and was restored to power; and it is noted by a contemporaneous writer that a drought of some duration ceasing on Ulagh Beg's return to Delhi, "it was no wonder that the citizens looked upon his return as a happy omen, and all were thankful to the Almighty."*

The next attempt of the minister's opponents was masked by a fresh rising of the Hindus, which they instigated in the Duáb; this was suppressed in 1255, and a similar attempt, having its base at Mount Abu in Rajputána, met with a like fortune in 1257. In the same year a dangerous conspiracy was discovered and frustrated in the metropolis itself. In 1259 a fresh incursion of the Mughals took place, by the route of Multan-which seems to have been one commonly adopted by them and so formidable did it seem, that poets were commissioned to produce patriotic songs "in order to stir up the feelings of the Muslims." Having once more expelled the northern foe, the minister was again called upon to meet a fresh combination between his Turkmán rivals and the Hindus of the Duab. The former were conciliated and invited to Court; and then the hand of the minister fell heavily upon the recalcitrant natives, whom the members of the opposition had made their instrument.

While these things were doing in Hindustan, Central Asia had been the scene of a new revolution. Huláku Khán, the chief of the Mughals of Transoxiana, and a grandson of the mighty Changhez Khán, took Baghdad in 1258, and put to death the last of the Abasside Khalifs. About this time the

* On a tower at Aligarh there used to be an inscription in which the Sultan recited the glories of his minister, dated in 1255. This interesting monument was unhappily destroyed in 1861 after standing six hundred years.

death of his brother Mangu, so long the leader of the southern horde, and perhaps some sense of the military superiority of the Indian minister, induced Huláku to think of withdrawing the Mughals from India and concentrating his power in Central Asia. Accordingly, not long after the last defeat of his deceased brother in the Punjab, he resolved to send a peaceful mission to the court of Delhi; and the minister there prepared to receive the Mughal envoys with all possible pomp and circumstance. By this time the residence of the Sultan had been removed from old Delhi to the suburb of Kilokhari, on the bank of the river Jumna; and it was there that the reception took place. Twenty lines of armed soldiers, horse and foot, guarded the approach to the palace, supported by ranks of caparisoned elephants; and it is characteristic of the stern policy of the minister that he caused the envoys to find the gate, which they reached through this warlike pageantry, decorated with the embalmed bodies of Hindu captivesslaughtered, perhaps, for the grim and ghastly purpose. were conducted to the durbar-room, where they found the simple old sovereign splendidly attended; and having delivered their message, they were solemnly conducted to their lodgings. On their departure the ruthless minister led a fresh expedition against the Hindus, whom he drove into the mountains, after killing twelve thousand of them-men, women, and children.

They

In all this policy the minister made use of the Sultan's name, making him and his sons "a show," as was said of him by a later historian. The explanation of his conduct is to be found in the incessant competition of the Shamsis-"The Forty," as they were called. As these, however, became less formidable, from increasing years and repeated failure, the great services and abilities of the minister grew more and more conspicious, until the quiet old Nasir-ud-din passed away, and Ulagh became Sultan, in 1266, just forty-four years after he had entered Delhi as a slave.

His early career deserves notice, both as showing the gradual alienation of the Hindus, and as throwing light upon the curious state of society, in which it was possible to keep up a certain degree of efficiency in the Muslim State. From Sabaktigin downwards the slave markets of Central Asia had continued to produce men of remarkable energy for the conquest of the rich lands of India. These, without actually becoming an organised corps of Janisaries, for which their numbers were insufficient, formed a reserve of soldiers and statesmen, strong enough to lead the armies of the state and furnish a sort of administration. It cannot be believed that the people, even when abstaining from rebellion, were in a state of happiness or wealth; but there must have been a certain amount of agriculture and finance to render possible the court-pageants, the public works, and the pay of the troops. And the system by which the more eminent of the Mameluke officers were enabled to become ministers and sultans favoured a survival of the fittest, by which the momentum of the foreign empire was maintained. Nasir-ud-din is the only instance of a hereditary Sultan who had a long reign; but under the rule of the Mamelukes, Hindustan was a powerful state for a century and a quarter.

Ulagh Beg-or Khán-was about sixty years old when he became Sultan, under the title of Ghayás-ud-din Balban, by which he his best known in history. He had still many years of active life before him; and his reign as Sultan was marked by the same characteristics as his ministerial career, accompanied with the additional splendour becoming to his new situation. Zia-ud-din Barni, who wrote nearly a hundred years later, is the chief authority for Balban's reign; and the fact of his not being quite contemporaneous frees him from the suspicion of flattery. His record was a labour of love, designed, avowedly, as a continuation of the Tabákát, to which, hitherto, we have been mainly indebted. Barni asserts