The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c22.3

v3.c22.3

The new king was just such a ruler as the distracted state required. With sufficient political acumen to serve his purpose he was active and warlike and had formed the resolution of restoring the kingdom to its pre-eminence among the Muhammadan States of Northern India. Among his Afghān kinsmen he was little more than *primus inter pares*, and was well content with that position, but he would tolerate no interference by strangers, and one of his first acts was to overthrow the powerful Hamīd Khān, by whom he had been called to the throne and whose influence in Delhi might at any time be sufficient to initiate a formidable movement for the restoration of the old order of things, when everybody was his own master. The Afghāns, acting under their leader’s instructions, behaved with grotesque boorishness at all his formal meetings with Hamīd Khān. The men-at-arms crowded into the hall of audience on the pretext that all soldiers and fellow-tribesmen were equals, and their conduct, while it excited the surprise and disgust of Hamīd Khān, encouraged him to believe that he had to deal with a horde of mere rustic simpletons. The Afghān troops were soon numerous enough to crush any disturbance which might arise in the city, and their numbers at court were always sufficient to enable Buhlūl to carry out any act of violence. At one audience Qutb Khān Lodī, Buhlūl’s cousin and brother-in-law, produced a chain and, casting it down before Hamīd Khān, informed him that it was considered necessary for reasons of state that he should be confined for a few days, but that in consideration of the services which he had rendered his life would be spared. How this promise was kept we do not know, but Hamīd Khān disappears henceforth from the scene.