The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.127

v3.c20.127

This was the greatest disaster which had yet befallen the Muslim arms in India. Armies had been defeated, but Ikhtiyār-ud-dīn's force had been all but annihilated, and it would have been well for him to have perished with it, for he could not show his face in the streets of Lakhnāwatī without encountering the gibes and reproaches of the wives and families of those whom he had led to their death, and early in 1206 he took to his bed and died, of grief and mortification, as some authorities assert, but he was in fact murdered by 'Alī Mardān, a leading member of the Khaljī tribe.