Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c10.223

c10.223

“The second project of Muḥammad Tughlaq was to make Deogir his capital. This brought ruin upon Delhi—that city which for 170 or 180 years had grown in prosperity and rivalled Baghdād and Cairo—with its sarais, its suburbs and villages spread out 4 or 5 kos. All was destroyed. So complete was the ruin that not a cat or a dog was left in its buildings, in its palaces or its suburbs. The Sulṭān brought learned men and gentlemen, tradesmen and landholders into the city and made them reside there. But this importation of strangers did not populate it ; many of them died there, and many more returned to their native houses.” ¹