The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.249

v3.c20.249

The popular prejudice against Fīrūz was soon discovered to be groundless. Save for an occasional outburst of wrath no milder monarch ever sat upon the throne of Delhi. His treatment of Kaiqubād belied his boast that he had never shed the blood of a Muslim, but throughout his reign he displayed the most impolitic tenderness towards rebels and other criminals. His mildness and his conduct when he first ventured into Balban’s Red Palace in the city gained him the adherence of many of those who had opposed him as a barbarian. He declined to ride into the courtyard, but dismounted at the gate, and before entering the throne room wept bitterly in the antechamber for Balban and his offspring and lamented his own unworthiness of the throne and his guilt in aspiring to it. The few old nobles of Balban’s court and the ecclesiastics of the city were moved to tears and praised his sensibility, but the soldiers and those of his own faction murmured that such self-abasement was unkingly, and Malik Ahmad Chap openly remonstrated with him.