The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.279

v3.c20.279

In 1299 an army of 200,000 Mughuls under Qutlugh Khvāja invaded India. Their object on this occasion was conquest, not plunder; they marched from the Indus to the neighbourhood of Delhi without molesting the inhabitants, encamped on the banks of the Jumna, and prepared to invest the city. Refugees from the surrounding country filled the mosques, streets, and bazars, supplies were intercepted by the invaders, and famine was imminent. The king appointed ‘Alā-ul-Mulk to the government of the city and led his army out to the suburb of Sīrī, where he summoned his nobles to join him. The timid *Kotwāl* ventured to resume the character of adviser, and implored ‘Alā-ud-dīn to temporise with the Mughuls instead of risking all by attacking them at once, but the king refused, in his own phrase, to sit on his eggs like a hen. ‘Man,’ he said, with good-humoured contempt, to the unwieldy *Kotwāl*, ‘you are but a scribe, the son of a scribe; what should you know of war?’ On the morrow he attacked the Mughuls. The bold and impetuous Zafar Khān charged the enemy’s left with such vigour that he drove it before him and pursued it until he was lost to the sight of the rest of the army. Other bodies of the enemy turned and followed him, so that he was surrounded and slain, after refusing to surrender. Even in this moment of peril ‘Alā-ud-dīn and Ulugh Khān saw with satisfaction that the object of their jealousy had rushed to certain death, made no attempt to support or succour him, and contented themselves with a languid demonstration against the diminished army which remained opposed to them; but the valour of Zafar Khān had so impressed the invaders that they retreated precipitately in the night, and when the sun rose ‘Alā-ud-dīn, finding that they had decamped, returned to Delhi, hardly less thankful for the death of Zafar Khān than for the flight of the enemy. It is said that the name of Zafar Khān was for some years afterwards used by the Mughuls as that of Richard of England is said to have been used by the Saracens of Palestine, and that they would urge their weary beasts to drink by asking whether they had seen Zafar Khān, that they feared to slake their thirst.