The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c8.46

c8.46

This success, however, did not, by any means, secure him the whole of the Punjab. Qubachah remained confined to Sind but it was some years before Iltutmish could annex the territories in the Chinab and Jhelum valleys. Ever since the Khokar rising the districts round the Salt Range had been practically in control of the insurgent tribes. Within three years of the occupation of Lahore, across the Indus came the gust of a storm that had burst in, and was now sweeping across, Central Asia. Issuing from the uplands of Tartary, the Mongols, under Temujin, whose imperial title the Persians pronounce as Chengiz Khan, literally rolled up the vast Khwarizmi empire, and with fire and sword, were now tearing up the great fabric of Islamic civilization in the east. While the Khwarizm Shah was driven to find shelter in the Caspian coast, his crown-prince Jalaluddin Mangbarni, persued relentlessly across Khurasan, could elude him only by crossing over into the Punjab, where Iltutmish was thereby robbed of his recently gained advantage. Mangbarni established himself in the upper Sind Sagar Doab and contracted a matrimonial alliance with the chief of the Salt Range¹. This gave him an excuse as well as help for widening his hold at the expense of Qubachah, with whom the hill chief was in perpetual hostility. Qubachah, in consequence, was practically driven out of the Sind Sagar Doab. Mangbarni's three years' sojourn in western Punjab also effected Iltutmish's hold on the Ravi and Chinab regions. The prince captured the fort of Basraur (Pasraur) in the Sialkot district and tried to support himself by plundering the riverine tracts² He even found it possible to advance upto Lahore whence he appealed to Delhi for shelter³.