The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c21.9

v3.c21.9

Early in 1418 Har Singh of Katehr was again in revolt, and was on this occasion brought to bay and suffered a complete defeat at the hands of Tāj-ul-Mulk. He fled, and was pursued into the hills of Kumāon, where Tāj-ul-Mulk, unable to seize the object of his pursuit, contented himself with the ignoble but customary satisfaction of plundering the people amongst whom the rebel had found an asylum, and returned to the plains. From Katehr he marched to Etāwah, and there besieged Raja Sarwar, who was again in rebellion. Unable to reduce the fortress, he plundered the inhabitants of the district and returned to Delhi in May, but his devastating progress, which had resembled rather the raid of a brigand chief than an expedition for the permanent establishment of order, had so exasperated the people of the region through which he had passed that before the end of the year Khizr Khān found it necessary to follow in the tracks of his lieutenant, and the record of his progress exhibits both the frailty of the bond between him and his subjects and the futility of the means which he employed for the establishment of his authority. He was compelled to use force against the people of Koīl, within eighty miles of his capital, and then, crossing the Ganges, laid waste the district of Sambhal. His proceedings so alarmed Mahābat Khān of Budaun, who was in his camp and was, perhaps, conscious of shortcomings in his administration or apprehensive of the discovery of his traffickings with the rebels, that he fled and shut himself up in Budaun, which Khizr Khān besieged for six months without success. For the history of this and the following reign the sole original authority is an encomiast of the Sayyids, and it is impossible to fathom the undercurrent of politics or to estimate the difficulties with which Khizr Khān was confronted, but Mahābat Khān was an old noble of the late dynasty, and there were in the royal camp several of his former comrades who had formally submitted to the new order of things, and in June, 1419, Khizr Khān discovered the existence among them of a conspiracy to which Mahābat Khān was doubtless a party, and, in order to separate his enemies, raised the siege and returned towards Delhi. On June 14 he halted on the banks of the Ganges and put the leading conspirators, Qavām-ul-Mulk and Ikhtiyār Khān, to death.