The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.231

v3.c20.231

The aged *Kotwāl* attempted to restrain his nephew, but he had already gone so far that he could not safely recede. Even the slothful and self-indulgent Bughrā sent letters to his son warning him of the inevitable consequences of his debauchery and neglect of business, and, more guardedly, in view of Nizām-ud-dīn’s control of the correspondence, of the danger of permitting a subject to usurp his authority. A proposed meeting between father and son, on the frontiers of their kingdoms, was postponed by an irruption of the Mughuls under Tamar Khān of Ghaznī, who overran the Punjab, plundered Lahore, and advanced nearly as far as Sāmāna. Amid the general demoralisation of the court and the capital Balban’s army still remained as a monument of his reign, and a force of 30,000 horse under the command of Malik Muhammad Baqbaq, entitled, perhaps for his services on this occasion, Khān Jahān, was sent against the invaders, who were overtaken in the neighbourhood of Lahore and utterly defeated. Most of their army were slain, but more than a thousand prisoners were carried back to the capital. The description of these savages by the poet Amīr Khusrav, who had been a prisoner in their hands for a short time after the battle in which his early patron, the Martyr Prince, was slain, is certainly coloured by animosity, but is probably as true as most caricatures. ‘Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel, and their stench was more horrible than their colour. Their heads were set on their bodies as if they had no necks, and their cheeks resembled leathern bottles, full of wrinkles and knots. Their noses extended from cheek to cheek and their mouths from cheekbone to cheekbone. Their nostrils resembled rotten graves, and from them the hair descended as far as the lips. Their moustaches were of extravagant length, but the beards about their chins were very scanty. Their chests, in colour half black, half white, were covered with lice which looked like sesame growing on a bad soil. Their whole bodies, indeed, were covered with these insects, and their skins were as rough-grained as shagreen leather, fit only to be converted into shoes. They devoured dogs and pigs with their nasty teeth....Their origin is derived from dogs, but they have larger bones. The king marvelled at their beastly countenances and said that God had created them out of hell fire.’