The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c25.4

v3.c25.4

The kingdom of Gujarāt was established in 1396. Farhat-ul-Mulk, who had been appointed governor of the province by Fīrūz Shāh, had long ceased to pay any heed to orders received from Delhi and the inhabitants groaned under his yoke. In 1391 Muhammad Shāh, the youngest son of Fīrūz, appointed Zafar Khān to the government of Gujarāt, and sent him to establish his authority there. The new governor was the son of a Rājput convert to Islam, Wajīh-ul-Mulk of Dīdwāna, governor of Nāgaur. On January 4, 1392, he defeated and mortally wounded Farhat-ul-Mulk at Gāmbhū, eighteen miles south of Pātan, and gradually reduced to obedience all disorderly elements in the province. In 1396 the strife between two rival kings, Mahmūd Shāh and Nusrat Shāh, and the impossibility of determining to whom allegiance was due, furnished him with a pretext for declaring himself independent, and he was joined in the following year by his son Tātār Khān, who, having espoused the cause of the pretender Nusrat Shāh, had been compelled to flee from Delhi. Zafar Khān was preparing to march to Delhi when he was deterred by tokens of Tīmūr's impending invasion, and devoted the whole of his attention to his campaign against the Rājput state of Īdar, which he subdued in 1400.