Twilight of the Sultanate c19.s1: Appendix A: Tīmūr's Massacre of the Indian Prisoners
Twilight of the Sultanate c19.s1
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Appendix A: Tīmūr's Massacre of the Indian Prisoners
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Tʜᴇ ғɪɢᴜʀᴇ ᴏғ the prisoners massacred by Tīmūr on the eve of the battle of Delhi has been magnified by foreign chroniclers. Sharafuddīn Yazdī says that on a very conservative estimate a hundred thousand Hindus were put to the sword. In the *Mulfūzāt*, Tīmūr also has one lac. Mīr Khwānd says the same thing.¹ But this figure is challenged by Indian historians and contradicted by other statements of Yazdī himself. Sharafuddīn, before giving the details of the massacre, says that by the time Tīmūr reached Delhi, "more or less" a hundred thousand prisoners had been captured.² According to the same authority, these included women and children also. According to all writers, including Yazdī himself, only men above the age of fifteen were killed; women and children were spared.³ Thus the massacred could not certainly have been a hundred thousand. Mīr Khwānd copies Yazdī verbatim, but he could see through the mistake and while following Yazdī in all other details, takes care to say that "more than a lac Hindus had been captured".⁴ But Indian writers, whose sources in all probability included the writings of the above authors also, have a different story to tell. Nizāmuddīn Ahmad and Yahyā say that between the Indus and the Ganga about 50,000 "people of India" had been taken captive.⁵ They certainly comprised both Hindus and Muslims; Indian writers nowhere say that only the Hindus were captured or massacred. Since the number of the captives was fifty thousand, the number of the massacred must have been less than that. Yahyā, Badaonī and Hajī Dabīr, however, put the number of the massacred at 50,000.⁶
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¹ *Z. N.*, II, 92 says, بر روایت اقل صد هزار هندوی بے دین را بتیغ جهاد بگذرارند (According to a few (or on a conservative estimate), one hundred thousand faithless Hindus were dealt with (killed) by the sword of Jihād [Holy War].) Also M.T., E & D, III, 436; *R.S.*, VI, 109, line 7.
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² *Z. N.*, II, 92 has باين منزل کم و بيش صد هزار هندوی گشته اند (By this stage more or less one hundred thousand Hindus had been captured.)
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³ *Ibid*, II, 92-3.
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⁴ *R.S.*, VI, 109 line 7 has زياده از صد هزار (More than a hundred thousand.)
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⁵ T. A., I, 255; T. M. S., 165.
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⁶ T. M. S., 165; Badaoni, Ranking, I, 356; Z. W., III, 905. Ferishta's figure is one lac, I, 158.
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Thus the unfortunate prisoners who lost their lives on that sanguine day were about fifty thousand and not one hundred thousand. They were both Hindus and Muslims and not only Hindus. Yazdī and his followers have inflated the figure in all probability to bestow honour on the conqueror, little realising that by exaggerating the ghastliness of the deed they were only discrediting their hero in the eyes of posterity.
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Ahmad bin Arabshāh, who at places is quite critical of Tīmūr evers that his massacres "were prompted only by the exigencies of conquest and the necessities of world-empire".⁷ He used to massacre Muslims as mercilessly as he massacred the Indian prisoners of war. He caused two thousand prisoners to be built up in a wall in Sīstan (1383-84), he massacred 70,000 inhabitants of Isphahan in 1387, and he erected twenty towers of skulls at Alleppo and Damascus in the same year. The massacre of Indian prisoners was not a unique act of one who was responsible for incalculable bloodshed and suffering in the East.⁸
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⁷ Browne, *Literary History of Persia*, III, 181.
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⁸ *Ibid.*, 180, 181, 197.
Cites (1)
- Tārīkh-i Mubārakshāhī — Yaḥyā b. Aḥmad Sirhindī