The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.534

v3.c20.534

The camp was situated on the Sutlej about midway between Ajūdhan (Pāk Pattan) and Dīpālpūr, both of which towns had incurred Tīmūr's resentment by rising against Pīr Muhammad. He marched to Pāk Pattan, where he visited the tomb of Shaikh Farīd-ud-dīn Ganj-i-Shakar, dispatched his harem and heavy baggage by way of Dīpālpūr to Sāmāna, started from Pāk Pattan on November 6, and by the morning of the following day arrived, after a march of eighty miles, at Bhatnair, where the fugitives from Dīpālpūr and Pāk Pattan had taken refuge. The ruler of Bhatnair was a Bhātī Rājput named Dul Chand, but his tribe was already undergoing the process of conversion to Islām, and his brother bore the Muslim name of Kamāl-ud-dīn. The city was captured, with great loss to the Hindus, and on November 9 Dul Chand, who had shut himself up in the citadel, surrendered. The refugees were collected and 500 of the citizens of Dīpālpūr were put to death to avenge their slaughter of Pīr Muhammad's garrison in that town. The citizens of Pāk Pattan were flogged, plundered, and enslaved. The assessment and collection of the ransom of Bhatnair again provoked resistance on the part of the inhabitants, and after a general massacre the city was burnt and laid waste, ‘so that one would have said that no living being had ever drawn breath in that neighbourhood.’