South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c11.s1.36

c11.s1.36

The Sultan was so infatuated with him that he was able to prevail against the most influential among the nobles of the court. When ultimately he returned to Delhi he found himself in great power, and Mubarak trusted himself altogether in his hands. Introducing with the permission of the Sultan a body of three hundred men from his own country of Gujarat, he got possession of the palace in the night and succeeded in assassinating Mubarak Shah, and proclaimed himself emperor in his stead. The doings of this favourite are looked upon, at least by the Muhammadan historians, as a deliberate Hinduising movement with a view to putting an end to the power of the hereditary nobles among the Muhammadans and raising to their positions renegades and slaves with a view ultimately to bring about the restoration of Hindu monarchy, a movement we meet with again in the reign of Muhammad-bin-Tughlakh, perhaps in a much more pronounced form. This naturally created a party of the more orthodox Musalmans, who found a capable leader in Ghazi Malik, governor of Deobalpur. At the time when Khusru Khan overthrew Mubarak, the eldest son of this Ghazi Malik, Muhammad Fakhruddin Juna, who became afterwards Sultan Muhammad Tughlakh, was in Delhi. Khusru made him his ‘master of the horse,’ and treated him with respect and gave him robes of honour. This did not reconcile him to the rule of the base Khusru as the ‘storms of violence and cruelty reached to the skies. Copies of the holy scripture were used as seats, and idols were set up in the pulpit of mosques.’ . . . ‘It was Khusru’s design to increase the power and importance of the Parwaris and Hindus, and to make their party grow; he therefore opened the treasury and scattered money about . . . . calling himself Sultan Nasiru-d-din. The base born slave had his title repeated in the Kutba (public prayer) and impressed upon coins.’ There was such an ascendancy of the Hindus in the capital that both the Ghazi Malik and his friends found their position dangerous.