South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2: The Disintegration of the Chola Empire—Its Causes
South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2
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The Disintegration of the Chola Empire—Its Causes
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During much of this period, as has already been more or less clearly indicated in the course of the above history of the Pāṇḍyas, the Chola empire had reached a high degree of disintegration. The principal cause of this was the weakness and ineptitude of the Chola emperor Rājarāja III, 1316-1346, and at the end of his reign the civil war between himself and another prince, probably a brother, Rājendra III. The Hoysala intervened to preserve for Rājarāja the Chola Empire, but succeeded only in securing to him the southern most part of the empire—the Chola country proper. This intervention from the north-west naturally provoked less friendly intervention from rising powers from the north, and did not effectually prevent aggression from the south. The history of the rising power of the Pāṇḍyas, as already indicated above, exhibits the results of Pāṇḍya intervention from the south.
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The Telugu Choḍas.—The northern power whose records state in clear terms an intervention in behalf of the Chola was that of the Telugu Choḍa chieftains of Nellore, known in inscriptions as Simhavikramapura or Vikramasimhapura. Under five generations of rulers these had gained possession of the northern districts of the Chola empire and even held possession of the town of Kāñchi, the head-quarters of the northern viceroyalty. Inscriptions of Manmasiddha and his brother Tammusiddha are available relating to early thirteenth century. The son of the former, Tikka by name, claims to have captured Kāñchi and defeated Sōmēśa at Champāpuri, (Śambuvarāyanallūr, near Tiruvallam) in the district of North Arcot, the country primarily of the Śambuvarāyans. His son Manmasiddha, who seems otherwise called Gaṇḍagopāla, which had become more or less a family title, was active in that region and having been dispossessed, sought and obtained the help of the contemporary Kākatīya ruler Gaṇapati. With his assistance, he fastened his hold on Kāñchī till the rival Chola Prince, Rājēndra Chola, rose to power and turned both Manmasiddha and Gaṇapati backwards perhaps as far as Nellore in the forties of the thirteenth century. He was followed by another ruler of that family usually known as Vijayagaṇḍagopāla, whose reign lasted from about A.D. 1250 to 1292. He was succeeded by a son of his Vīragaṇḍagopāla. These continued to be subordinate to the authority of the Cholas so long as the Chola power lasted, and afterwards perhaps to the Pāṇḍya, as we have already seen the great Pāṇḍya, Jaṭāvarman Sundara I, carried his arms successfully as far north as Nellore and performed there ‘the anointment of the victorious warrior.’
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*The Śambuvarāyans.*—The region immediately adjoining, that is the district of North Arcot, was under a family of hereditary chiefs generally known by the class title Śambuvarāyan (Sans. Champa) rulers, who figure for the first time as powerful feudatories in the reigns of Rājādhirāja and Kulottunga III. They rise into importance and are found fighting sometimes on the side of their liege lords, the Cholas, and occasionally against them also. In the disturbed period extending from the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century to the end of the Pāṇḍya ascendancy, they maintained the substance of real power though nominally subordinate to the Chola head-quarters, and later the Pāṇḍya. Except for figuring in the wars on the northern frontier, they do not appear to have played any very decisive part. They maintained their position intact along the Pālār. About the end of this period they rise into importance and we have inscriptions of Vīra Chola Śambuvarāyan, and Vīra Śambuvarāyan about the year A.D. 1314-15. In the period immediately following we find two rulers who assumed high titles indicating independence. Of these the first is Sakalaloka Chakravartin Veṇru Maṅkoṇḍa Śambuvarāyan, whose date of accession is A.D. 1322-23, followed by Sakalaloka Chakravartin Rājanārāyaṇa Śambuvarāyan, whose date of accession is A.D. 1337-8, and whose reign extended to A.D. 1356-57.¹ It was apparently this latter ruler that was overcome by prince Kumārakampana of Vijayanagar, who put an end to the independent power of the Śambuvarāyans in the North Arcot District with Virinchipuram and Kāñchī as their alternative capitals, and Paḍaivīḍu as their hill fortress. Along with these figure another class of minor chiefs who go by the designation Vāṇakkovaraiyar, the remnants perhaps of the Bāṇa dynasty.
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¹ Ep. Rep. 1904, Sec. 27. ,, 1911 ,, 65. ,, 1913 ,, 67.
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The Kākatīyas : Gaṇapati and Rudrāmbā.—During this period the Kākatīyas of Warangal made an effort at extending their territory southwards, and, on occasions, were in occupation of Kāñchī. The first Kākatīya intervention comes along with the advance of the Telugu-Choḍa chieftains to the south. It is king Gaṇapati of the dynasty that made this advance towards the south, and we have an inscription of his in the Viṣṇu temple at Kāñchīpuram.¹ This advance seems to have been at a time when the throne of Rājarāja III had passed on to Rājendra III, and Kopperunjinga dominated the whole of the northern division of the Chola empire. Kopperunjinga at any rate claims to have defeated the Kākatīyas, and we have already noted that Rājendra Chola, the successful rival of Rājarāja, also lays claim to conquests in the Telugu country reaching at least as far as Cuddapah and Nellore. During the last years of the reign of Gaṇapati, the great Pāṇḍya ruler, Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya I, marched northwards, and his victorious advance up to Nellore and his coronation there made the Kākatīyas withdraw into their own territories. Gaṇapati's successor Rudrāmba, who ruled from A.D. 1260 to 1291 succeeding her father Gaṇapati, had apparently enough to do to keep her own kingdom without thinking of extending her territory. There is, however, a statement in one of her inscriptions that one of her officers, Amba Dēva by name, destroyed the Kāḍava Rāya. The same chief is also said to have established at Nellore, Manma Gaṇḍagopala who was dispossessed of his kingdom. These are all the glimpses that we get of Kākatīya activity in the south during the long reign of Gaṇapati and that of his daughter, which together practically cover the century, from A.D. 1200 to 1291-2, soon after which Marco Polo visited the Coromandal Coast of India.
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¹ No. 2, Ep. Coll. of 1893. Another in the Ekāmranātha temple no. 26 of 1890 both of A.D. 1250.
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Marco Polo.—Marco Polo calls the province that he first touched after leaving Ceylon Ma'bar, the usual Musalman designation of the Coromandal Coast extending from Kulam (Quilon) to Nilawar (Nellore). Marco Polo sailed westward from his port of embarkation for a distance of about sixty miles till he came to the province of Ma'bar, which he says was styled ‘India the Greater.’ According to him it is the best of the Indies and is on the mainland. He refers to the coast wherein he landed as among the possessions of the Pāṇḍyas, and of whom at the time there were five brothers ruling. ‘Sonder Bandi Dēvar’ (Sundara Pāṇḍya Dēvar), was the crowned king. He undertook to give a detailed account of the five provinces of the kingdom ruled by these brothers, and forgot to fulfil his promise. But the province that he describes at some length is ‘the finest and noblest in the world’, and was the sphere of Sundara Pāṇḍya. He refers apparently to the fishery coast where pearl fishing was the principal industry. This must be borne in mind to understand his itinerary. The port he visited on this coast has much exercised the ingenuity of scholars, and from various considerations both Yule and Cordier would refer the port to Kaveripaṭam.¹ The lead is taken by all these authorities from the statement of the Muhammadan writer Wassaf that Fittan, Mali Fittan and Kabil constituted the famous ports of which Takhiud-din Abdur-Rahman was the Marzaban (Margrave).
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These three names are obviously Paṭṭaṇam, Mēlai Paṭṭaṇam, and Kāyal or Kāyal Paṭṭaṇam in the language of the locality. Kāyal, according to Marco Polo, was the premier port, whereto came all merchants from the east as well as the west, and from all over India, for purposes of trade. The other two stand in some geographical relation with this one. The words would stand, the port and the upper port, the term paṭṭinam meaning port. I believe the port on what is the island now is called Ramēśvara Paṭṭinam, sometimes also Paṭṭinam merely, but at the time of Marco Polo there was another great port on the inner side of the Gulf of Mannar, the ruins of which are now known as Periya Paṭṭaṇam. In the wars of Parākrama Bāhu in favour of one of the Pāṇḍyan princes, and against his brother, he is supposed to have taken on the mainland and in the peninsula, a village called Kundukāla and having fortified it with three circuits of walls and twelve gates, called it Parākrama-paṭṭaṇam, equi-distant from either sea. A little way to the south and on the coast lie the vast ruins of a city called Periya Paṭṭaṇam (large port or city) in the Ramnad Zamindari, already referred to above, where till recently people picked up coins and antiquities of sorts, and I am informed, a considerable portion of the ground plan of the city could still be traced at low water.
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Any one of these three places might do, and that is the place where one would expect a boat sailing from Ceylon to land, having regard in particular to the fact that the port of embarkation at the time seems to have been Puttalam (Bathelar) in Ceylon, the Bhattala of Ibn Batuta; and the distance would be perhaps about sixty miles, a little more or less. We are bound to look for Fitan in that locality as the Mali Fitan seems certainly to be Dēvi Paṭṭaṇam about ten miles north of the town of Ramnad, but on the northern side of the island of Ramēśvaram. A medieval map is said to mark Mali Fatan in or about the locality.¹ For the mere name Paṭṭaṇam there are any number along the coast, more than twenty along the Tanjore coast; of which, at the time to which we are referring, the very town of Topputturai, as it is known at present, was called Vīraśoḷan Paṭṭaṇam; not far was a Kuḷottuṅga-śoḷa-paṭṭaṇam set over against Tirutturaippūṇḍi. A little way to the north of it was Negapatam; Kaveripatam at the mouth of the Kaveri; Jayangoṇḍapaṭṭaṇam near the mouth of the Coleroon and so on. In the Palk Strait itself south of Topputtorai, there is Adirāmpaṭṭaṇam to begin with, the name may be a later one; there is Ammāpaṭṭaṇam, there is Sundara Pāṇḍyan Paṭṭaṇam itself, and any number of paṭṭaṇams like that.
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Battelar, which according to Marco Polo is the place where the ships collect before going on a pearl fishing expedition seems much rather to refer to a port on the continent than to one in Ceylon. We have a port in the peninsula near Maṇḍapam which goes by the name Vēdāḷai now, and it is just on the southern shore of the peninsula, and at the head of the Gulf of Mannar, a convenient starting point for the fisher-folk. There is a harbour to the east of it that is called Toṇitturai even now, apparently the place where boats assembled on their fishing expeditions for pearls.
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¹ Yule’s Marco Polo: New Edn. by H. Cordier II. 332-8. H. Cordier in his new work ‘New Light on Ser Marco Polo’ has an additional note on this on p. 112. Quoting from Chau Jua Kua a passage extracted in Ma Tuan-lin and the Sung-shi, he states the Chola capital was five li distant from the sea, though the latter have 5,000 in place of five. He adopts Yule’s suggestion that Kaveripaṭam, the ‘Paṭṭaṇam’ par excellence of the Coromandal Coast, and at one of the mouths of the Kaveri, was the then Chola capital. Kaveripaṭam is not mentioned in any of the large number of the inscriptions of the time known to me; nor have I come across any reference to it in the literature of the period. If ‘all figures connected with Chu-lien in Chinese accounts are inexplicably exaggerated,’ and if a ‘Paṭṭaṇam’ was the Chola capital, Gangaikonda-paṭṭaṇam, already referred to on p. 56 must be the city meant. There is a reference, in another Chinese authority (ibid p. 114) to Pa-tan where there was a stūpa. This undoubtedly refers to Negapatam, and would justify my conclusion that there were several ports referred to by this abbreviated designation.
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¹ See J.R.A. S.IV. (N.S.) p. 345 ff.
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After describing the prosperity of the country under the rule of the Pāṇḍya, and referring to the horse trade of the locality he proceeds to describe Mailapūr and St. Thomas' Mount, and apparently proceeds further northwards as he says ‘when you leave Ma'bar and go about a thousand miles in a northerly direction you come to the kingdom of Mutfili (or Mosul). This was formerly under the rule of a king, and since his death, some forty years before it had been under his queen, a lady of much discretion, who for the great love she bore to him never would marry another husband. And I can assure you during all that space of forty years she had administered her realm as well as ever her husband did, or better. And as she was a lover of justice, of equity, and of peace, she was more beloved by those of her kingdom than ever was lady or lord of theirs before.'¹ He then proceeds to describe the diamond mines and recounts the famous story and the fabulous ways in which diamonds were got. 'In this kingdom also are made', according to him, 'the best and most delicate buckrams, and those of the highest price; in sooth they look like tissue of spiders' web!! There is no king nor queen in the world but might be glad to wear them.'
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¹ Marco Polo Opus Cit., pp. 359-60.
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We have referred above to his description of the Port of Kāyal, and quoted his statement that 'Asciar' was the eldest of the five brothers. This we have already stated was the Pāṇḍya king Kulaśekhara who ruled from A.D. 1268 to 1312 almost. We have inscriptions of this monarch in the Chola capital Gaṅgai-koṇḍa-śolapuram, in the capital Madura itself, and in the Tinnevelly district as far south as Ālvār Tirunagari, so that the statement that he is the supreme monarch is quite correct, and the Sundara Pāṇḍya that Marco Polo refers to must be the predecessor of the name who died in A.D. 1292, or the prince brother or nephew in charge of the coast district of Ramnad and the neighbourhood which Marco Polo must have touched in the course of his voyage.
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The Coromandal Coast of Marco Polo.—From these various statements of Marco Polo we find that the Coromandal coast from the farthest south to the mouths of the Krishna, which were in some respects the limit of navigation, was ruled over by two dynasties of kings only; the Pāṇḍyas perhaps over the greater portion of the coast in the south, and the queen of the Kākatīyas in the north. At the time that Marco Polo was in this part of his voyage, queen Rudrāmba of the Kākatīyas must just have abdicated in favour of her grandson Pratāpa Rudra II, the last great king of the Kākatīya dynasty who came to the throne in A.D. 1291-2, and in whose reign Telingana, his kingdom, was reduced to subordination by the Muhammadans. The south was under a powerful king also, that is, Māravarman Kulaśēkhara I, who had a long reign of forty-four years, beginning with A.D. 1268 and reaching up to almost A.D. 1311. The territory of the former occupied the coast from almost the frontier of Ganjam up to the mouth of the northern Pennar and extended into the interior, north and south, across the middle of the present day Nizam's dominions. The region extending south from there to Cape Comorin and perhaps even farther west, was the territory of the Pāṇḍya, which at the time included the great bulk of the Chola kingdom. Its boundary was wide enough to include the district of Salem and part of Coimbatore extending south along the Western Ghats to the Cape. The northern frontier was uncertain. The conquests they made up to Nellore seem not to have been made permanently at all so that we might roughly demarcate the boundary between the Pāṇḍyas and the Hoysalas along a line drawn from Trichinopoly to Tiruvaṇṇāmalai and Villupuram along the road from Madura to Madras. On the other side of this line extended into the interior the territory of the Hoysalas, which under the greatest of their rulers Vīra Somēśvara, reached northwards as far as the frontiers of the Krishna, perhaps even a little beyond. The existence of a record of Somēśvara in Paṇḍharpur may, it is just possible, be held to indicate that his actual rule extended so far north.
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The Hoysala Empire in the Period.—About the time to which we have come the Hoysala empire had for near forty years remained divided into two kingdoms. Somēśvara had associated with himself, since A.D. 1254-5 his son Vīra Rāmanātha, who succeeded him in the southern division of the empire. His alternative capitals were Kaṇṇanūr near Śrīrangam, and Kundāṇi in the northern frontier of the Salem district; the territory above the ghats was ruled by his half-brother Vīra Narasimha III. Vīra Rāmanātha died about A.D. 1293, and a son by name Vīra Viśvanātha ruled only for three years, perhaps four. Vīra Narasimha died almost about the same time as Rāmanātha, and was succeeded by his son Vīra Ballāḷa III in whom, in the early years of the last decade of the thirteenth century, the Hoysala empire again united. He maintained the three capitals at the three strategic points of the empire, namely, Halebīḍ in the north or north-west, Kundāṇi in the middle keeping communication with the country below, and Kaṇṇaṇūr in the south, with Tiruvaṇṇamalai as an alternative. The country immediately north of the Hoysalas and west of the Kākatīyas on the southern side of the Vindhya mountains was under the dynasty of the Yādavas of Dēvagiri with their capital at Dēvagiri. This was the political division of the south when the Muhammadans made the first irruption into the Dekhan under Alau-d-din Khilji in A.D. 1296.
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The four kingdoms of the Peninsula.—India south of the Vindhyas in the last decade of the thirteenth century and the first of the fourteenth was thus divided into four well-marked kingdoms. The first was, as was stated above, the Yādava kingdom of Dēvagiri with its Capital at Dēvagiri (Deogir). It was ruled by the last great Yādava, Rāmacandra, who ascended the throne in A.D. 1271 and ruled till some time in A.D. 1309-10. The eastern half of the Dekhan and the Telingana coast was under Queen Rudrāmba of the Kākatīya dynasty with Capital at Warangal in the Nizam's Dominions. Sometime in A.D. 1291 she raised her grandson Pratāpa Rudra to the throne and retired. Pratāpa Rudra ruled from A.D. 1291 to A.D. 1328. The frontier of these two kingdoms came to almost a line drawn from Goa, or a little north, to the mouth of the northern Peṇṇār, somewhere to the east of Nellore. The whole country south of this was divided along a diagonal line say from Chidambaram or Cuddalore, along the main roads of traffic to Tiruvaṇṇamalai and Kundāṇi getting into the tableland a little way north of Hosur and from there to the Krishna, along eastern Mysore. The line proceeded further west along the mountains right down the Palghat gap to the sea. All north of the first line roughly belonged to the Hoysalas and all south to the Pāṇḍyas; the more open country along the coast right up to Nellore on the great Madura-Madras road, was a debatable frontier between these two powers. The last great ruler of the united Hoysala empire was Vīra Baḷḷāḷa III who succeeded his father Narasimha III in A.D. 1291-2 and ruled till his death in A.D. 1342. He was succeeded by a son Baḷḷāḷa IV, who perhaps ruled for three years more. All through this period the kingdom of the Pāṇḍyas in the south was held by a remarkably gifted ruler who gave the country peace and prosperity. This was Māravarman Kulaśekhara I, whose forty-fourth year we have records of. He ascended the throne in A.D. 1268 and ruled till sometime in A.D. 1311-2. The dissensions between his two sons brought in the Muhammadan intervention which took the form of the first Muhammadan invasion of the south.
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Muhammadans in the Pāṇḍya country.—It was not the Muhammadan invasions from the north that brought the Muhammadans into this country for the first time. Muhammadan intercourse with the west coast of India seems to have begun much earlier; and we have considerable evidence of pre-Mussalman trade of the Arabs and other people with it. Arab settlements, after the introduction of Muhammadanism, were made in several places on the coast whose principal object was merely trade, for which the Hindu states of the interior apparently gave all facilities. The piratical character of the West Coast appears to have made the coast of the Konkan except for the northern ports of Kambay and Broach, as far down as Bombay undesirable for these foreign traders, possibly along with the dangers of getting close to the shore in the monsoon weather. There was besides the peculiar custom of the land that vessels driven ashore by stress of weather became the property of the authorities of the port into which it happened to be driven.¹ The governments of the east coast on the contrary seem to have pursued a more enlightened policy as the charters to the oversea traders of the Kākatiya Gaṇapati and the Reḍḍi Chief Vēma indicate.
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Under these charters traders were not only relieved from this disability, but were also offered special advantages by way of excuse from all port dues excepting the customs duties (Kūpaśulka).² It is this that made the eastern ports such welcome places to foreign merchants from China and the east on the one side, and the western traders on the other. Hence the name Ma'bar (Arabic for passage) for the Coromandal coast. The same policy seems to have been adopted by the rulers of the Malabar coast also as far north as Canara. Hence at the time that we have come to, that is about A.D. 1290, there were a number of flourishing ports on the east coast, of which the principal ones were Moṭupalli in the Kākatiya dominions in the north near the mouth of the Krishna, and the well-sheltered port at the mouth of the Tamaraparani in the Gulf of Mannar in the south, called Kāyal, not far from the far famed Korkai (Kolkhoi of the classical geographers). Of a number of trade settlements, enjoying the special protection of the rulers, that probably were in existence in all these ports there was one in Kāyal which has come in for prominent mention. This was the agency established at Kāyal by an Arab chieftain who is described by the Muhammadan historians as Maliku-l-Islam Jamalu-d-din ruler of Kis, and later the farmer-general of Fars. Such an agency was required because of the vast trade in horses.
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According to Wassaff, about this time as many as 10,000 horses were imported into Kāyal and other ports of India of which 1,400 were to be of Jamalu-d-din's own breed. The average cost of each horse was 220 dinars of 'red gold'. The cost even of those that died on the way was paid by the Pāṇḍya king for whom they were imported. Jamalu-d-din's agent was a brother as it seems, Takiu-d-din Abdur-Rahman, son of Muhammadu-t-Thaibi described as Marzaban (Margrave). This agent had his head-quarters at Kāyal, and had the other ports of Fitan and Mali Fitan also under his control. This description means that he was the agent general for the import trade of the Arabs in this part of the country, as according to the same authority the trade of this region in those days was very great, both in volume and value. In the words of Wassaf, 'Ma'bar extends in length from Kulam to Nilawar (Nellore) nearly three hundred parasangs along the sea-coast, and in the language of that country the king is called Dewar, which signifies the lord of empire. The curiosities of Chin and Machin, and the products of Hind and Sind, laden on large ships (which they call junks)¹ sailing like mountains with the wings of winds on the surface of the water, always arrived there.
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The wealth of the islands of the Persian Gulf in particular and in part the beauty and adornments of other countries, from 'Irak and Khurasan as far as Rum and Europe, are derived from Ma'bar, which is so situated as to be the key of Hind.'² This description is supported in full by what Marco Polo has to say of the eastern ports both of Kāyal and of Moṭupalli. It was from one of these ports that an embassy went to China sometime about A.D. 1297 under Fakhru-d-din Ahamad bin-Ibrahim-ut-Thaibi. This ambassador was the son of Jamalu-d-din. He returned after a stay of four years in China and died on board when two days distant from Ma'bar about the end of A.H. 704 (A.D. 1305). ‘His tomb is in Ma'bar, near that of his uncle,’ the Marzaban, who died two years before. It seems likely there were other settlements of these Muhammadans even in the interior of the country. In the course of his description of the campaign of Malik Kafur in the Tamil country, Amir Khusru says ‘Thither (to Kandur) the Malik pursued the ‘yellow-faced Bir’, and at Kandur was joined by some Mussalmans who had been subjects of the Hindus, now no longer able to offer them protection. They were half Hindus, and were not strict in their religious observance, but, ‘as they could repeat the Kalima (the Confession of Faith of the Muhammadans), the Malik of Islam spared their lives.
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Though they were worthy of death, yet as they were Mussalmans, they were pardoned.’¹ This shows that at Kandur, which I have identified with Kaṇṇanūr, near Śrīrangam, there was a settlement of Muhammadans quite different from the northern Mussalmans, who came along with the invaders. Ibn Batuta’s statement that Vīra Baḷḷāḷa had a contingent of 20,000 Muhammadans in his army, though made up of slaves and prisoners of war, would seem quite probable as he had a number of Muhammadan settlements on the west coast under his government, among whom the leading one at Honawar owed allegiance to his Viceroy Hariyappa Oḍayar (Horaib), the Harihara I of Vijianagar history. It seems thus clear that the Muhammadans of South India have a history anterior to the invasions from the north.
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¹ Yule's Marco Polo : II. 386 and note 4 to the chapter. Ibn. Batutah : note below.
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² Ep. Rep. 1910, Secs. 45 and 61.
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¹ At Surat they excel in the art of ship-building. Their bottoms and sides are composed of planks let into one another, in the nature, as I apprehend, of what is called rabbet-work, so that the beams are impenetrable. They have also a peculiar way of preserving their ships' bottoms, by occasionally rubbing into them an oil they call wood-oil, which the planks imbibe. 'There would be no exaggeration in asserting that they (the natives) build incomparably the best ships in the world for duration, and that of any size, even to a thousand tons and upwards. It is not uncommon for one of them to last a century.' Grose, Voyage to the East Indies, vol. i, pp. 107-8 (A.D. 1750-64).
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² Elliot, iii. 32.
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¹ Elliot, iii. 90.
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Takiu-d-din Abdur Rahman, who is described as Wazir and Marzaban in Ma'bar and who died in A.D. 1303, was succeeded by his son Siraju-d-din and by his grandson Nizamu-d-din in succession in the same position as the principal farmers-general of the customs of the Pāṇḍyan coast. It must be remembered that these were Arabs by descent. The position of Wazir or Chief minister ascribed to these Arabs is not confirmed by any Indian evidence so far, though it is quite likely, from the important positions these occupied, that they exercised considerable influence in the councils of the Pāṇḍya rulers at the time. There is some confusion in Wassaf's account as copied by Rashidu-d-din, as he has introduced another Jamalu-d-din, his informant Shaik Jamalu-d-din. It is likely this was not the only family that was settled in official positions of importance in the courts. The probabilities are, on the contrary, that there were a larger number of these settlements in the various important ports of trade, and it is these that became the nuclei of various Muhammadan settlements of Arabic character in all the sea-port towns of this coast, as well as that of Malabar, giving rise to various communities of mixed descent. These had neither part nor lot with the Muhammadan invaders of the north who carried fire and sword through the country in the course of their first invasions of the south. These too stood on occasions to suffer quite as much as the other inhabitants of the country as we have an instance of such suffering on record in connection with Khusru Khan's invasion of this region.