The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.559

v3.c20.559

‘The rule of the Lord of the World extends from Delhi to Pālam’—a small town little more than nine miles south-west of the capital. Independent kingdoms had been established in Bengal and the Deccan before Muhammad’s death, and the rebellion of the royal officers in the south had enabled the Hindus to found the great kingdom of Vijayanagar and had facilitated the establishment in Telingāna of a Hindu state in subordinate alliance with the kingdom of the Deccan, not with Delhi. During the reigns of the feeble successors of Fīrūz the province of Oudh and the country to the east of the Ganges as far as the borders of Bengal were formed into the independent kingdom of Jaunpur; the great provinces of Gujarāt and Mālwa and the smaller province of Khāndesh severed their connexion with Delhi and became separate states; a Hindu principality was established in Gwalior and Muslim principalities in Bayāna and Kālpī; the nominal allegiance of Mewāt was transferred from one prince to another at the caprice of the local chieftain; the Hindus of the Doāb were almost continually in revolt and the ruler of Delhi had to be content with the small contributions which he could extort from them by armed force when he was not otherwise engaged; and the ruin of the state was completed by the invasion of Tīmūr, who established in the Punjab a power which eventually absorbed the kingdom of Delhi.