The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c28.13

v3.c28.13

The remnant of the army contrived, with infinite difficulty, to extricate itself from the hills and jungles, and joined those Decanis who had refused to accompany the expedition to Sangameshwar. They advised the fugitives to return to their fiefs and collect fresh troops for the renewal of the war, but the Foreigners returned to Chākan. Some of them had incautiously avowed their intention of informing the king that the disaster had been due to the refusal of the Decanis to support Malik-ut-Tujjār, whereupon the Decanis at once concocted a dispatch attributing it to Malik-ut-Tujjār's own rashness and imputing to the survivors the intention of transferring their allegiance to the enemy. The dispatch was delivered to the king, when he was drunk, by Mushīr-ul-Mulk, the bitterest of the Foreigners' enemies, who persuaded him to give him the command of a force wherewith to punish the fugitives in Chākan. He intercepted all messages which the Foreigners attempted to transmit to the court, lured them from Chākan by means of a forged decree granting them a free pardon and murdered their officers at a banquet. At the same time 4000 Deccani horse fell upon their camp, put to the sword 1200 Sayyids, 1000 other foreigners, and five or six thousand children, and appropriated the wives, daughters, and goods of their victims. Qāsim Beg and two other Foreign officers, whose suspicions had led them to encamp at a distance from the rest, contrived to escape, and, after undergoing great difficulties and hardships, succeeded in conveying to the king a true report of all that had passed. 'Alā-ud-dīn, overcome by remorse, avenged the wrongs of the Foreigners by executing the leaders of the Deccani party and reducing their families to beggary, Qāsim Beg was appointed to the government of Daulatābād, vacant since the death of Malik-ut-Tujjār, and his two companions were promoted to high rank. The Foreign party completely regained its former ascendancy, and in 1451 the king received from the poet Āzarī, in Isfarāyīn, a letter urging him to abandon the use of wine and to dismiss all Deccani officials. He obeyed both injunctions, and henceforth attended personally to affairs of state.