South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c10.3

c10.3

*The Khiljis.*—The uncle monarch Jalau-d-din and his ambitious nephew Alau-d-din both alike belonged to the new dynasty of the Khiljis, which held away over Delhi and Hindustan during the last decade of the thirteenth and the first score of years of the following century. These were a people who were Turks; but having been long settled in Afghanistan, first round Herat and then further eastward, they became so assimilated to the populations of the locality that they were taken to be more Afghans than Turks. After the rule of Ghiyasu-d-din Balban, whose masterful rule left no man of dominant ability or position in the state, the feeble and dissolute character of his successor made orderly administration impossible. In the course of the struggle for power, a man of military ability with a distant governorship certainly came up, and this was Jalalu-d-din Feroz, the leader of the Khiljis, whose genius for war gave him a considerable following. The dissolute youth who nominally occupied the throne was literally ‘kicked out of existence.’ Jalalu-d-din Feroz succeeded to the throne in A.D. 1290. In the early distribution of the offices, which usually followed a new succession, the names of his three sons figure prominently as also his two nephews Alau-d-din and Almas Beg. For about a year Alau-d-din was at Court, but the rebellion, in Karra and Oudh, of Chajju, a nephew of Ghiyasu-d-din Balban gave the opportunity for the preferment of Alau-d-din. Alau-d-din was appointed Governor of Karra first of all, to which was later added Allahabad. In his new government he was joined by a number of the rebels whom Jalalu-d-din with great, perhaps unwise, clemency pardoned. Alau-d-din’s government became thereafter the head-quarters of intrigue against the good monarch, his uncle. Any access of gratitude was made impossible by the constant irritation that he had from the conduct of his proud wife. He had, therefore, formed his plans for conducting an expedition against the Dekhan without the knowledge of his uncle.