The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.366

v3.c20.366

Meanwhile disquieting news of his son's behaviour in the capital reached Tughluq. Ulugh Khān had purchased vast numbers of slaves and had formed a party by extravagant gifts and grants to those who he believed could be converted by this means into adherents. His chief crime appears to have been his intimate association with the obnoxious Shaikh Nizām-ud-dīn Auliyā, whose disciple he had become, and who was believed to have prophesied, in one of his ecstatic trances, his imminent accession to the throne. It was also reported that astrologers had prophesied that the king would never return to the capital alive. Reports of these conversations and machinations reached Tughluq in his camp, and enraged him. He wrote to the astrologers, menacing them with his displeasure; to his son, threatening to deprive him of his office and to exclude him from any participation in public business; and to the Shaikh, to whom he addressed the threat that when he returned from Bengal Delhi would be too small to hold both of them. The Shaikh is said to have replied with the prophetic menace, which has since become proverbial, *Hanūz Dihlī dūr ast*, ‘Delhi is yet afar off,’ and so it proved to be.