The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.230

v3.c20.230

The young king had been educated under the supervision of his grandfather in the straitest paths of virtue, and his guardians and tutors, trembling under the old despot’s eye, had subjected him to the most rigid discipline. As a natural consequence of this injudicious restraint the youth, on finding himself absolute master of his actions, plunged at once into a whirlpool of debauchery. The unrestrained indulgence of his appetites was his sole occupation, and to the duties of his station he gave not a thought. The Arabic saying, ‘Men follow the faith of their masters’ found ample confirmation during his brief reign, and as in the reign of Charles II in England the reaction from the harsh rule of the precisians and the evil example of the king produced a general outburst of licentiousness, so in that of Kaiqubād at Delhi the reaction from the austere and gloomy rule of Balban and the example of the young voluptuary inaugurated among the younger generation an orgy of debauchery. The minister, Khatīr-ud-dīn, abandoned in despair the task of awakening his young master to a sense of duty and the ambitious Nizām-ud-dīn was enabled to gather into his own hands the threads of all public business and, by entirely relieving Kaiqubād of its tedium, to render himself indispensable. His influence was first exhibited in the course followed with Kaikhusrav, whose superior hereditary claim was represented as a menace to Kaiqubād. The prince was summoned to Delhi and, under an order obtained from Kaiqubād when he was drunk, was put to death at Rohtak. Nizām-ud-dīn then obtained, by means of a false accusation, an order degrading the minister, who was paraded through the streets on an ass, as though he had been a common malefactor. This treatment of the first minister of the kingdom and the execution, at Nizām-ud-dīn’s instigation, of Shāhak, governor of Multān, and Tūzakī, governor of Baran, alarmed and disgusted the nobles of Balban’s court, and caused them gradually to withdraw from participation in public business, and the power of Nizām-ud-dīn, the object of whose ambition could not be mistaken, became absolute. All who endeavoured to warn the king of what all but he could see were delivered to Nizām-ud-dīn to be dealt with as sedition-mongers.