History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c8.42

c8.42

newly founded Hisar Firoza and parts adjacent.' According to Sujan Rai, whose information is obviously based on local tradition, the country remained waste and uncultivated until the rise of Bahlol Lodi in whose time Rai Ram Deva Bhatti farmed the whole of the Punjab for nine lakhs of *tankahs*.¹⁸ Major Raverty first places the flood in the beginning of the reign of Firuz Shah and in another place he fixes it sometime between the siege of Ucch by the Mughals and the invasion of Hind by Amir Timur, that is between 643 A.H. and 801 A.H. about the years 720—724 A.H. (1320—24 A.D.). Barani does not even throw out a hint that the Punjab was depopulated during his time, nor does he make mention of a great flood in the years 720—724 A.H. There is no evidence in Ibn Batūṭah, ‘Afif and ‘Ain-al-mulk who was governor of Multan for a pretty long time, of the flood to which Sujan Rai alludes. The silence of all these writers though not a conclusive argument against the occurrence of the flood is significant. Floods were a common occurrence in those days, and it does not seem likely that the Sultan would be influenced by them so far as to decide upon the change of the capital. The consideration seems to be too far-fetched to have appealed to the Sultan. The importance of the Punjab consisted in its nearness to the lands from which India's invaders have come, and the frontier question continued to trouble Muhammad's successors as much as it troubled him and his predecessors. To sum up, the Sultan's object in removing to Devagiri was to get rid of the Mughals and to settle and control the newly acquired possessions in the South. It was not, as many modern writers have suggested, a wild experiment due to the mad freak of a callous tyrant who had sworn vengeance upon his subjects.