History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c6.20.2

c6.20.2

Firishta in speaking of the origin of the dynasty writes that Malik Tughluq was the name of the father of Ghiyas-al-Din Tughluq who was a slave of Sultan Balban. Now Firishta differs from other writers in one important particular. He alone speaks of the father of Ghiyas as a slave of Balban, while others (S. S. ‘Afif included) say that the three brothers Rajab, Abu Bakr and Tughluq came from Khorasan and entered the service of Sultan ‘Ala-al-Din Khilji.¹⁴ If Tughluq (Ghazi Tughluq) came with his brothers from Khorasan, how are we to explain the tradition that he was born of a Jat woman of the Punjab whom his father had married? The tradition need not be doubted, for among the Tughluqs there seems to have been no prejudice against such intermarriages, and we have the instance of the marriage of Sultan Ghiyas’s brother Rajab with Rana Mal Bhatti’s daughter at the suggestion of the former. There is no mention of Tughluq or even Ghazi Malik in Barani’s lists of the officers of Balban, Kaiqubad and Jalal-al-Din Khilji.¹⁵ In Barani’s history we hear of him for the first time in the reign of ‘Ala-al-Din Khilji, leading expeditions against the Mughals, Barani mentions Fakhr-al-Din Jūnā as occupying the office of Dādbaḳ¹⁶ at the opening of the reign, and we read of his father Ghazi Beg Tughluq driving out of India the Mughals under Aibak Khan, an officer of Amir Daud Khan, ruler of Transoxiana, in 1305 A.D. eight years after ‘Ala-al-Din’s accession to the throne.