A History of Agriculture in India v2.c55.s8: Mongol Invasion
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c55.s8
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Mongol Invasion
v2.c55.s8.1
In A.D. 1299 India was menaced by a Mongol invasion. Their leader, Qutlugh Khwaja, planned the conquest of Delhi. Amir Khusrau, who saw the Mongol horde, thus describes them. 'There were more than a thousand Tatar infidels and warriors of other tribes, riding on camels, great commanders in battle, all with steel-like bodies clothed in cotton; with faces like fire, with caps of sheep-skin, with their heads shorn. Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel. Their stink was more horrible than their colour. Their faces were set on their bodies as if they had no neck. Their cheeks resembled soft leathern bottles, full of wrinkles and knots. Their noses extended from cheek to cheek, and their mouths from cheek-bone to cheek-bone. Their nostrils resembled rotten graves, and from them the hair descended as far as the lips. Their moustaches were of extravagant length. They had but scanty beards about their chins. Their chests, of a colour half black, half white, were so covered with lice, that they looked like sesame growing on a bad soil. Their whole body, indeed, was covered with these insects, and their skin as rough-grained as chagreen leather, fit only to be converted into shoes. They devoured dogs and pigs with their nasty teeth. Their origin is derived from dogs, but they have larger bones. The king marvelled at their beastly countenances, and said that God had created them out of hell-fire. They looked like so many white demons, and the people fled from them everywhere in affright.'¹
v2.c55.s8.2
¹ Amir Khusrau. *Kiranu-s Sa'dain*, in Elliot and Dowson, *The History of India...*, Vol. III, p. 528
v2.c55.s8.3
The Mongols were defeated by the army of Ala-ud-din. Thousands of them were taken prisoners and were killed by trampling them under the feet of elephants.