Timur

(1334-1405)

   Born in the Barlas tribe of Mongolid Turks, Timur rose to kingship at Samarqand in 1370. With the help of his Turk-Mongol corps of military officers, he established a vast empire that soon came to include the whole of Khwarazm and Turkistan as well as Persia and Mesopotamia. This was followed by his invasion of Ottoman territories in Anatolia and the conquest of the entire ter-ritory up to the Sulaiman range in the east.

   In 1396-1397, Timur's grandson, Pir Muhammad, besieged the garrison stationed by the sultan of Delhi at Multan. The next year (September 1398), Timur crossed the Indus River near Bannu and ad-vanced toward Delhi, passing through Dipalpur and Ajodhan. Mus-lims as well as Hindus of this tract fought stoutly against the invaders, which prompted the Timurid historian Sharaf al-Din 'Ali Yazdi to de-scribe the Indian Muslims opposing Timur's advance as "faithless ones," faithless Hindus" "hyprocrites." Mallu Iqbal Khan, a minister of Sultan Mahmud Shah Tughlaq (1394-1412), came forward to check Timur but was defeated. Subsequently, outside Delhi, Timur massacred the 100,000 men (many of them Muslims) made captives during his march to Delhi. Sultan Mahmud Shah Tughlaq himself was defeated outside Delhi on 18 December 1398 and fled from the capi-tal; a general pillage followed. The city was systematically plundered for five days. A surviving inscription in a Delhi mosque cursing Timur testifies to the people's resentment over this atrocity. After a stay of a fortnight at Delhi, Timur proceeded to besiege Meerut and Hardwar. He left India via Kangra and Jammu, leaving the Delhi sultanate in total anarchy. Timur carried away a huge treasure as well as a large number of Indian artisans and masons as slaves, contributing to the dissemination of Indian handicrafts in Central Asia.