Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c3.18

c3.18

Dynasty. The *enfant terrible* of this line was Muḥammad Tughlaq. He is the man who made Delhi a desert, and who put Ibn Batuta in fear of his life. Apparently this Tughlaq was partially insane. The glory of the dynasty was Fīrūz Shāh. He was, perhaps, the best of the Muhammadan emperors of India. He was more humane and less whimsical and revolutionary than Akbar, and more warm-hearted and human than Aurangzeb. And he had the advantage of a long reign, for he lived to a great age, and ruled nearly thirty years. He was not, perhaps, so clever as some other Emperors, but he loved his people, and was beloved by them. It is not too fanciful to hold that his happy nature was the result of the blending of two noble races, the Persian and the Indian. His father was named Rajab, and was Sipahsalar, or Commander-in-chief, and so held the office of which Abul Faẓl gives such a glowing description in the *Ā'īn* (Jarrett’s translation, p. 37), and his mother was the daughter of the Rānā of Dipalpur in the Punjab, and belonged to the Bhaṭṭī caste. Her name was originally Bībī Nā'ila, but it became Sulṭān Bībī Kadbānū on her marriage to the Muhammadan Commander-in-chief. As a little girl, she showed her courage and spirit of self-sacrifice by offering herself as a ransom for her parents and her people, when they were being persecuted in order to win her as a bride for Sulṭān 'Alāu-d-dīn's friend Rajab. Probably, as in the