The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.547

v3.c20.547

After his departure the whole of northern India was in indescribable disorder and confusion. Delhi, in ruins and almost depopulated, was without a master, and the miserable remnant of the inhabitants was afflicted with new calamities, in the form of famine and pestilence. Famine was the natural consequence of the wholesale destruction of stores of grain and standing crops by the invading army, and the pestilence probably had its origin in the pollution of the air and water-supply of the city by the putrefying corpses of the thousands of victims of the invader’s wrath. So complete was the desolation that 'the city was utterly ruined, and those of the inhabitants who were left died, while for two whole months not a bird moved wing in Delhi.' The kingdom was completely dissolved. It had been stripped of some of the fairest of its eastern provinces by the eunuch Khvāja Jahān, who ruled an independent kingdom from Jaunpur; Bengal had long been independent; Muzaffar Shāh in Gujarāt owned no master; Dilāvar Khān in Mālwa forbore to use the royal title, but wielded royal authority; the Punjab and Upper Sind were governed by Khizr Khān as Tīmūr's viceroy; Sāmāna was in the hands of Ghālib Khān and Bayāna in those of Shams Khān Auhadi; and Kālpī and Mahoba formed a small principality under Muhammad Khān. Mallū remained for the present at Baran, but Nusrat Shāh, the pretender whom he had driven from Delhi and who had since been lurking in the Doāb, again raised his head, and with the assistance of 'Ādil Khān became for a space lord of the desolate capital. Mallū's influence with the Hindus of the Doāb enabled him to defeat a force sent against him from Delhi, and by the capture of its elephants and material of war he obtained such superiority over Nusrat Shāh that he expelled him from Delhi and forced him to take refuge in Mewāt, his old home, where he soon afterwards died. In 1399 Mallū defeated Shams Khān Auhadi of Bayāna, who had invaded territory considered to belong to Delhi, led an expedition into Katehr, and compelled the turbulent Hindus of Etāwah to pay him tribute, but failed to convince them of his supremacy and was obliged, in the winter of 1400-01, to take the field against them. He defeated them near Patiālī and marched on to Kanauj with the object of invading the kingdom of Jaunpur, where Malik Qaranful had succeeded his adoptive father, the eunuch Khvāja Jahān, under the title of Mubārak Shāh. On reaching Kanauj he found Mubārak encamped on the opposite bank of the Ganges, but for two months neither army ventured to attack the other and a peace was concluded. He had been accompanied on this expedition by Shams Khān Auhadī and Mubārak Khān, son of Bahādur Nāhir, but he regarded both with suspicion, and during his retreat from Kanauj took the opportunity of putting them to death.