Cafuor did not long enjoy the fruits of his ingratitude and treason; for, after a few months, Cottub, the eldest son of Alla, was placed on the throne. Nothing remarka ble occurred during his reign, nor till the period when Mahomed III. became emperor. This prince at first seems to have been successful in the Decan ; for he car ried his arms to \Varangole, the capital of Tellingana, which, during the disturbances that preceded Mahomed, had shaken off the Mahomedan yoke ; but afterwards his was marked with misfortune. The Moguls pene trated nearly to Delhi ; and he was obliged to raise im mense sums from his subjects to induce the invaders to retire; the consequence was, that the farmers were so severely taxed, that some burnt their houses and crops in despair, and many lied to the forests, where they main tained themselves by robbery. To remedy these evils, Mahomed very unwisely issued base money, which ne cessarily increased them. Ile also lost much territory by rebellions in Bengal, Gozerat, and the l'unjab. Under these calamities, he projected an invasion of China, to which he appears to have been stimulated by the reports that had reached him of the immense riches of that coun try ; but he was repulsed on the frontier ; nearly the whole of his army perished, and he was soon called upon to quell i ebellions in the southern part of his dominions: he also planned the absurd scheme of transferring the scat or gov•inment from Delhi to Dowlatabad, and attempted it to ice, but without success. Dowlatabad soon remained his cnlv possession in the Decan ; for some of the Multi° princes, headed by Belaldeo, king of the Carnatic, taking auvantage of the distracted and weakened state of his em pire, Move his armies out of that country. About the sante tone, Belaldeo founded the city of Bijinagur. Mahomed died, after a reign of 27 years, in A. D. 1351.
lie was succeeded by his nephew, Feroze lI I. ; the new sovereign was much more desirous of improving what re mained of his empire, than of adding to it by conquest. But whenever war was necessary, he displayed great energy and skill ; and during his reign, he was called upon more than once to quell insurrection, and repel in vasion. He built fifty great sluices or canals, forty mos ques, thirty schools, twenty caravansaries, a hundred pa laces, five hospitals, an hundred tombs, ten baths, ten spires, one hundred and fifty wells, one hundred bridges, and gardens almost innumerable ;—such is a list of the works of this monarch ; and in almost every instance they were planned and executed with great judgment, and con tributed most materially to improve and beautify his king dom. He was also fond of literature ; and so thoroughly convinced of the beneficial effects of education, that he spared no pains or ex pence to bestow on his children the best that his time and age could afford. In the year 1357, the Moguls made another irruption; indeed the empire was not secure for any length of time, either from the in vasion of these barbarians, or from the attempts of the Hindoos to regain their native land. The old age of Feroze was rendered unhappy, by the death of several of his chil dren, and by a rebellion against his son Mahomed, to whom he had resigned the empire : he died in 1338. The grand
son of Feroze, who seems to have succeeded to the throne, reigned only but five months ; rebellion and civil war rag ed, and prepared the kingdom for foreign conquest. The nobles having put him to death, placed his cousin on the throne ; but he also was unfortunate ; for his uncle, Ma homed, returning from the exile into which he had been driven, recovered the dominions of his father; civil war still raged, and the historian relates an unusual circum stance which arose out of this civil war,—two emperors in arms against each other, residing in the same capital. In the mean time, an independent kingdom was rising up in the Decan, which was founded by Houssan, who had been a general under Mahomed III.: before his time, Deogire had been the capital of this part of India, but Houssan fixed his residence at the ancient Koolbourga, which he named Ahssunabad.
In the year 1397, intelligence was received at Delhi, that Thnu• Bee was approaching ; this famous conqueror, after having overrun Persia, Turkestan, and part of Russia, turned his ambitious views towards Hindostan. During this year, • he had sent his grandson, Peer Mahomed, to reduce the Punjab and Multan ; and in the month of Oc tober he crossed the Indus himself. When he first pro posed to his princes the invasion of Hindostan, he was an swered by a murmur of discontent and despair. The rivers, and the mountains, and the deserts, and the soldiers clad in armour, and the elephants, destroyers of men." These things his princes thought it was impossible to over come ; but when they perceived he was determined on the invasion, they gave tray to his superior judgment, or were terrified into submission by his dreadful character. lie had been informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Ilindostan; the soubahs of the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion ; and the monarch was despised and disobeyed, even in his capital. The Mogul army moved in three divisions ; between the Shylum and the Indus they crossed one of the ridges of mountains, styled, by the Arabian geographers, the stony girdles of the earth. The mountaineers, after a brave resistance, were reduced er extirpated ; but great numhers of men and horses poi ished in the snow ; the emperor himself was obliged to he let down one or the precipices on a portable scaffold, the ropes to which were 150 cubits iu length, and before he could reach the bottom, this dangerous opera tion was five times repeated. He crossed the Indus at the passage of Attock : from this place to Delhi, the direct and most frequented road measured only 600 miles; but Timur deviated to the southeast, for the purpose of joining his grandson, who had by this time succeeded in the conquest of the Punjab and Multan. Being in want of provisions, he gave up the large and populous town of Tulmubini to the plunder of his soldiers ; and when its in habitants murmured at this conduct, he directed them to be massacred. After crossing the Hyphasis, he entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batner, and advanced with little of no resistance to the city of Delhi.