History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c6.3

c6.3

Ghiyas-al-Din Tughluq, the founder of the Tughluq dynasty, according to Ibn Batūṭah, was a Qaraunah Turk, one of those who dwelt in the mountains between Sindh and Turkestan. Shams-i-Sirāj ‘Afīf, the official historian of Firuz’s reign, writes in his *Tarīkh-i-Firuz Shahi* that he does not want to repeat his account of the origin of the dynasty which, he says, he has already given in his work, the *Manāqib-i-Sultan Tughluq*, of which, so far as I am aware, no copies are available.¹ Firishta,² who at the beginning of the reign of Nūr-al-Din Muhammad Jahangir made enquiries at Lahore from persons well-versed in the affairs of the Sultans of India, was informed that there was a tradition in the Punjab that the father of Sultan Ghiyas-al-Din Tughluq was a Turkish slave of Ghiyas-al-Din Balban, who had married a Jat woman of the Punjab, and he is supported by the author of the *Khulāsat-ut-tawarīkh*³ who bases his information upon oral tradition which he found current in his native country. He writes: