The Invasion of India
In 1397 Timur-i-lang obtained the intelligence that the Tughlaq
Sultanate in India was on the decline. After the destruction the
Southern Alliance of Mir Hussain (whose grandfather, Amir Qazaghan of
Balkh was a great backer of Mohamed bin Tughlaq and Firoz Shah Tughlaq)
and the conquest of Balkh by Timur, the Tughlaqs lost the backing of the
Southern Alliance and the buffer provided by this alliance against the
Central Asian Khanates. As a consequence the Kokhars of the Salt Range
under Raja Jasrat led a massive rebellion against Mahmud Shah Tughlaq.
In South India too, the Tughlaq armies were repulsed by the Hindu
revival, and the local Islamic governors of Bijapur, Golconda and
Ahmednagar broke free from Delhi. Turkic chieftains in Bengal, Gujarat
and Avadh also crowned themselves local Sultans. The Rajput chief Rai
Dalachandra liberated himself from the Tughlaqs and took the forts of
Bhatnair and Loni on the road from Multan to Delhi. Timur saw a great
opportunity of plundering India, and also that for a Jihad on the
polytheists. The Zafar Nama piously announces: �There arose in my heart
the desire to lead a jihad against the infidels, and to become a ghazi;
for it had reached my ears that the slayer of infidels is a ghazi, and
if he is slain instead while fighting the fire-worshipers he becomes a
shahid. It was on this account that I formed this resolution, but I was
undetermined in my mind whether I should direct my jihad against the
infidels of China or against the idolaters and polytheists of India. In
this matter I sought an omen from the Quran, and the verse I opened
upon was this: O Prophet, make war upon infidels and unbelievers and
treat them with severity. The Quran emphasizes that the highest dignity
which man may attain is to wage war in person on the enemies of the
Faith. This why I, the great Timur-i-Lang was always concerned about
exterminating the worshipers of the fire and the sun, as much to acquire
merit as from the love of undying glory.�
He held a Quriltai in 1398 and asked his grand Amirs to give their
opinions on the plan to invade India. Some of his Amirs said that in
the past Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi the descendent of the Turkish lord
Subuqtegin conquered Hindustan with a mere 30,000 cavalry, and
established his own naukers as rulers of Hind. He slaughtered Hindus and
carried off many thousand carts of gold, silver and jewels from them,
besides subjecting them to Jaziya. They posed the rhetoric question: �is
our Amir inferior to Sultan Mahmud?� And replied �Allah has made our
exalted Amir Timur-i-lang the lord of an even mightier army of Mongols
and Turks. He will become a ghazi and mujahid before Allah, we shall be
attendants on an Amir who is a ghazi, the army will be contented, the
treasury rich and well filled with the gold of Hindustan�. Then Shah
Rukh, his youngest son spoke �The conquest of India, it is said is a
higher honor than bearing titles like Kha�Khan, Caesar, Shahinshah,
Sultan or Faghfur. So it would be a pity if we were not to exterminate
the Indians� Then Pir Mohamed, his grandson spoke �We have to grab that
land which is full of gold, jewels, and in it there are seventeen mines
of gold, silver, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, tin, iron, lead, copper and
mercury.� Timur, pleased by these words, stated �I have made up my mind
to rid India of the filth of the polytheistic Hindus who make offerings
in fire called Yazad, destroy their temples and idols, and become
ghazis and mujahids before Allah.�
In January 1398 Timur sent a raiding squadron under his grandson Pir
Mohamed from Balkh to attack Multan (Mulasthana) and sent another army
under his other grandson Mirza Iskander to assault Lahore. Pir forded
the Sindhu and besieged Multan and bombarded it with trebuchets and fire
pots. After a protracted siege of six months he took the city and
looted it completely. In the mean time Iskander took Lahore and they
prepared the path for Timur. Timur took his own course; first he
decided to destroy the Kalasha Kafirs of Afghanistan. The Kalasha were
an ancient Indo-Iranian tribe, who represented the last surviving group
of the 3rd branch of the Indo-Iranian peoples. They were inveterate
pagans worshiping the old Indo-Iranian deities, completely unaffected by
Islam that had washed away the Indo-Aryan culture all around them.
Timur decided to strike them in the upper reaches of the Panjshir
valley. But he was prevented from entering the valley by the Kalasha
Raja, who was blocking the advance of Timur through a guerrilla attack
from Siah Posh. He sent a second force of 10,000 cavalry to take Siah
Posh, but the Kalasha Raja demolished it through a surprise sally.
Furious over this Timur decided to directly attack the Panjshir valley
despite the heavy snow. He set up a system of pulleys and lowered his
troops into the valley via large baskets braving severe cold and snow
storms. Having entered the valley his spread mayhem amidst the Kafirs.
However, they fled to the mountains and continued to fight. Timur
dejected over the hold up, built fortifications to fend off the Kafirs
and marched on, exiting the valley at Khawak. Before leaving he carved
an inscription on the mountain defiles of Kator marking his invasion of
the Kafir land.
Proceeding south, Timur with a force of 93,000 horsemen, crossed the
Sindhu on Sept.24th 1398 and made a broad sweep towards the rich town of
Talamba, north of Multan. Having sacked and obliterated the city, he
merged with his grandsons� tuemens at Multan. Then the combined Timurid
army marched rapidly towards the west bank of Shutudri (Sutlej) river.
Here Timur took on Raja Jasrat and having killed him in a quick heavy
cavalry charge, destroyed the Khokhar army. The survivors were forcibly
converted to Islam at the threat of immediate execution. Having crossed
the river he secured the Multan-Delhi road and started his march on
Delhi. The fort of Bhatnair stood on this road and offered formidable
defense against the invader. Timur promptly besieged the fort after
sweeping through the countryside and forced Rai Dalachandra into the
defensive. On 10th November 1398, he suddenly assaulted fort with giant
fort-breaking ballistas that hurled huge rocks over a ton on the fort
walls. Prince Shah Rukh, Mazid al Baghdadi and Jahan Maliq, Timur�s
fierce generals, led the assault on the Hindus. The Hindus retaliated
with an heavy rain fireworks from their ramparts, but the Timurids
pushed on building mines to break the ramparts. Finally, the fort
ramparts were demolished and the Timurid army rushed into the fort
capturing Dalachandra and killing other defenders after much desperate
fighting at close quarters.
Timur then sacked the town of Sirsuti (on the old Sarasvati) and
destroyed it completely slaying numerous Hindus. Then he quickly took
the towns of Aspandi, Kaithal, Samana and completely depopulated them.
He states that while destroying these places he noticed several
fire-worshipers, similar to the Parsis of Iran and exterminated them in
the true spirit of a ghazi (most probably he meant Brahmins). On 5th
December he sacked Panipat and took the wheat granaries there as the
Hindus fled in terror on hearing of his approach. On December 10th he
proceed to attack the Loni that stood the north-east of Delhi, the Hindu
defenders shaken by the loss of their chief failed to put an effective
fight and were trashed by the Timurid army. Timur seized about 100,000
Hindus after the battle by encircling them in a crescent-like movement,
even as held their mass Mongols hunting expeditions on the steppe. He
ordered his men to slaughter each one of them right away. He proudly
describes how a Mullah who had not even killed a sparrow in the past now
slew several Hindus with great enthusiasm. On December 17th he reached
the banks of the Yamuna, between Delhi and Panipat and engaged the
Tughlaq army commanded by Mallu Iqbal and Sultan Mahmud Shah Tughlaq.
Timur�s troops first fired bolts shaped like spiked tetrahedra on the
field in front of them and retreated behind this zone of spikes. The
Tughlaq army seeing the Timurids seeming to retreat, led a direct
elephant charge. But, this was immediately nullified as the elephants�s
feet were spiked by the tetrahedra. The Delhi cavalry was pressed into a
charge on a short notice and was engaged by the right wing of Timur�s
army comprising of cavalry archers. As the Delhi cavalry was being mowed
down by the Central Asian archers, the left wing of Timur�s army,
comprising of the heavily armored cavalry, encircled the right wing of
the Tughlaq army, and cut it down. The Tughlaq army faced complete
encirclement: Mallu Iqbal was killed and he was speared like a kebob and
displayed to force the survivors to surrender. Mahmud Tughlaq escaped
just before the encirclement and fled to Gujarat, even as his army lay
�with heads and hands mixed with the trunks of the pachyderm�.
Timur triumphantly marched into Delhi and the Ulema begged him to spare
the lives of the Moslems. He asked them to proclaim him the exalted
sultan of Hindustan. The Hindus seeing that they faced a brutal death
revolted enmasse and were slaughtered with much fury in the fierce
fighting that broke out through the streets of Delhi. Four pyramids of
the heads of slaughtered Hindus were set up in the four corner of Delhi
and only the qualified craftsmen were bound and sent off in slave trains
to Samarqand. Any Moslems who failed to give Timur�s troops their
supplies were also forthwith roasted like Kebobs. Timur spent 15 days in
Delhi solemnly occupying the throne of Delhi declaring himself emperor
of India. He summoned 120 elephants and made them bow their heads and
kneel before him in obeisance and trumpet in unison. He felt that it
marked the submission of Hindustan itself at the feet of the world
conqueror. He then sent off the elephants in long strings to the Herat,
Tabriz, Shiraz and Samarqand. The treasury was taken by Timur and in
one stroke the wealth that the Moslem rulers had robbed from Indians
over two centuries, comprising of incalculable amounts of gold, silver
and gems. He then performed his Islamic prayers in the old Jami Masjid,
placed a cleric from Bokhara as its Imam and had him read the Friday
Namaz in his name. Finally on January 1, 1399 when the stench of the
corpses made his stay impossible, he ordered his troops to burn down
Delhi, except for the Moslem quarters, and proceeded to attack Meerut.
In Meerut he demolished all the Hindu temples and captured the Hindu
inhabitants. The Hindus were then skinned alive or their throats were
slit. Timur triumphantly declared that he had observed his vow of waging
Jihad and then burnt the city down. He then obtained intelligence
regarding the flourishing Indian shrines in Haradwara and decided to
destroy them and defile the Ganga with blood of cows and �wearers of the
thread�. To this end he fell upon a large group of pilgrims, north of
Meerut, who were advancing for the Mela on Ganga and slaughtered several
thousands of them. As he advanced towards the banks of the Ganga, when
Hindus of all denominations, from throughout the region, both men and
women, decided to stop him at all costs. 200000 Indians assembled with
whatever weapons they could gather and decided to block the path to the
Ganga and the temples of Haradwara. At Bhokar Heri near Ganga the Hindu
force took on the Timurid army in a frontal assault. Though Timur was
vastly outnumbered, his cavalry was much larger, as only a small subset
of the 200000 Hindus, namely the Rajput and Brahmin fighters had horses.
The battle raged on fiercely for 3 days with Timur�s general Suleyman
Shah leading the charge; despite heavy losses the Hindus, in resolute
defense of their holy sites kept their flag aloft, with most of the
Rajputs falling in battle. Timur seeing no major gains from this
encounter, and also fearing attacks on his heavy booty, decided to
withdraw without reaching the Ganga (Though he claims that he crossed
it). He captured numerous cows and buffaloes that he used as food in his
advance.
He returned taking a northerly route along the Siwaliks and attacked the
fortress of Trisarta (modern Kangra) that was under the control of the
Raja Ratana Sena and Raja Brihata. The Hindu defenders were beaten in an
involved charge led by his heavily armored cavalry. Brihata was slain
first and the Hindu women in camp fell into the hand of the Timurid
army, much to his delight. He next killed Ratana Sena after a fierce
battle that was led by Pir Mohamed and Suleyman Shah and captured 50,000
Hindus as slaves to be sent off to Samarqand and Bukhara. Then he
engaged the Hindu Raja of Jammu, Maaladeva again near Jammu and crushed
his forces in the encounter. He captured Maaladeva while he was fleeing
near the upper Chenab and had the great joy of making him eat beef and
forsake Hinduism for Islam. Sikander, the Sultan of Kashmir, humbly
submitted to Timur and accepted his suzerainty. He then appointed Khizr
Khan Sayyid as viceroy in Delhi and a local Moslem warlord as the
governor of Multan. Rich in booty and slaves he triumphantly returned to
Samarqand.
Nehru's view on Timur-i-Lang
Nehru was not only a politician but a writer also and that too of no
mean repute. Beside his politics, his books too have an indelible
impression on the young minds of the nation. He is regarded not only as a
social progressive communism oriented thinker, philosopher and a world
statesman but also a historian. It is his historical writing that we
shall contend here.
"Late in the fourteenth century, Timur, the Turk or Turco-Mongol,
came down from the north in India; he came to Delhi and went back. But
all along his route he created a wilderness adorned with pyramids of
skulls of those he had slain; and Delhi itself became a city of the
dead. Fortunately he did not go far and only some parts of the Punjab
and Delhi had to suffer this terrible affliction." wrote Nehru in his "Discovery Of India".
In describing Timur's motivation to invade India, Nehru wrote in "Glimpses of World History": "The
wealth of India attracted this savage. He had some difficulty in
inducing his generals and nobles to agree to his proposal to invade
India. There was a great council in Samarkand, and the nobles objected
to going to India because of the great heat there. Ultimately Timur
promised that he would not stay in India. He would just plunder and
destroy and return. He kept his word." He also goes on to write: "So
when Timur came with an army of Mongols there was not much resistance
and he went on gaily with his massacres and pyramids. Both Hindus and
Muslims were slain. No distinction seems to have been made. The
prisoners becoming a burden, he ordered all of them killed and 100,000
were massacred."
Describing Timur's savagery, Nehru goes on to write in "Glimpses of World History": "wherever
he went he went he spread desolation and pestilence and utter misery.
His chief pleasure was the erection of enormous pyramids of skulls. �
But Timur was much worse. He stands apart for wanton and fiendish
cruelty. In one place, it is said, he erected a tower of 2000 live men
and covered them up with brick and mortar."