Twilight of the Sultanate c12.s2.49

c12.s2.49

During Muhammad Saiyyad's eleven years of misrule, the king of Jaunpur annexed many eastern districts belonging to the Delhi Sultanate, Gwalior became completely independent, Mewat got out of control, and the Punjab was lost to the Afghans. Muhammad Shāh tried to crush Bahlūl Lodī, but he found himself completely helpless. We shall study about the power and politics of the kingdoms of Malwa and Gujarat in their proper perspective. Suffice it here to say that after the invasion of Tīmūr they had become independent of the Sultanate of Delhi. Maḥmūd Khaljī I of Malwa was ambitious and energetic. By 1445-46 he had extended its frontiers up to Kalpi and had compelled the ruler of Bayana to read the Khutba in his name. The situation was so hopeless indeed that had Gujarat's pressure not threatened Maḥmūd, he would probably have annexed Delhi to his kingdom. Thus when Muhammad Saiyyad died, no point on his frontier was more than forty miles distant from Delhi. Shāh 'Ālam could not hold even this little kingdom not to say of augmenting it. He even became a butt of ridicule, and nobody perhaps shed tears when he eventually faded out of history.