Twilight of the Sultanate c13.s5.1

c13.s5.1

The death of Bahlūl Lodī was due to over-exertion. He had died in harness. Throughout his life he had fought to extend the boundaries of his dominions. When he had ascended the throne his kingdom consisted of only ‘Az-Dehli-tā-Pālam’ territory. He had added to it, by stages, the Punjab and the whole of Uttar Pradesh. In the east his empire extended up to the western frontiers of Bihar, in the south up to Dholpur and in the south-west up to Alhanpur near Ranthambhor. Perhaps during his long reign he could have reclaimed some more territories, but the Saiyyads’ incompetency had made his task all the more difficult. The Jaunpur kings had time and again defeated the Saiyyad monarchs and had extended their dominions as far as Shamsābād and Etawah. The result was that it took Bahlūl more than a quarter of a century to destroy the Sharqī power. Indeed, because of his preoccupations against Jaunpur he cruelly neglected the Punjab where his kinsmen began to assume an attitude of independence and created insurmountable problems for his successors. All the same the extinction of the eighty-five-year-old Sharqī kingdom was a great achievement of Bahlūl. It fired the imagination of his contemporaries; and prompted Shaikh Fīrōz, grandfather of Rizqulla Mushtāqī, to write a *masnawī* on the Lodī-Sharqī war.¹³⁵