Twilight of the Sultanate c7.s2.6

c7.s2.6

At last Amīr Tīmūr woke up to the situation. Unable to restrain his soldiery, he was enraged at the resistance of the people. On Sunday the 21st he ordered Amīr Shāh Malik and Sultan Husain Tawāchī to go into the city and kill the people who had taken shelter in the Jama' Masjid. They were massacred in cold blood and then the entire city was given over to rapine and plunder. Tīmūr, however, pleaded innocence of all that had happened. With the easy conscience of a conqueror he described the horrible occurrence thus: "By the will of God, and by no wish or direction of mine, all the three cities of Delhi by name Sīrī, Jahānpanāh, and old Delhi, had been plundered. The Khutba of my sovereignty, which is an assurance of safety and protection, had been read in the city. It was therefore my earnest wish that no evil might happen to the people of the place. But it was ordained by God that the city should be ruined. He, therefore, inspired the infidel inhabitants with a spirit of resistance, so that they brought on themselves their own ruin."¹¹⁷ The explanation is as unconvincing as the event was monstrous, and the sack of Delhi will ever remain a blot on Tīmūr's even otherwise also not too clean a career.