In the year 1268, he appointed his eldest son viceroy at Lahore, where his court became famous for its elegance and learning. When Balin was 80 years of age, the Mo guls made a violent incursion into Multan, which the em peror sent his son to repel ; in this enterprizc lie was slain, and his father died soon afterwards. At the time of his death, his second son Kera,being absent in his viceroy alty of Bengal, Key Kobad, his son, was placed on the throne of Delhi ; but after a reign of three years, he was mur dered, A. D. 1289, and Feroze the Second, an Afghan chief, was raised to the sovereignty. Properly speaking, he was of the tribe of Chilligi ; but as the terms Patan or Afghan are applied in a loose manner to all the tribes bordering on the common frontiers of India, Persia, and Balk, he is included in the Patan dynasty. Although he was 70 years of age when he ascended the throne, yet he almost immediately projected the extension of his domi nions by conquest. To this he seems to have been excit ed by his nephew Allaodien, a man of the most restless and insatiable ambition. Alla was governor of the district of Gurrah, which bordered on the Decan ; it may be pro per, however, to premise, that at this period, by the Decan was meant the country lying generally to the south of the Nerbudda and Mahanuddy, or Cuttack rivers. This coun try nearly equalled in extent the dominions of Feroze ; for they stretched from the shores of the Indus to the mouth of the Ganges, and from the northern mountains to Cut tack, Sirong, and Ajmeer, the greatest part of Malwah, and the Guzerat and Sind, being then independent. Alla having learned that the king of Deogire, the present Dow latabad, one of the states of the Decan, was immensely rich, communicated this circumstance to the emperor, and represented the facility of obtaining his riches, and con quering his territories. This roused the covetousness of and war was agreed upon. Alla, being appointed to conduct it, made an irruption into the Decan ; his first expedition was attended with the capture of Deogire, and with it an incredible quantity of money and jewels. As soon as Alla gained possession of these, he increased army, and marching back to Delhi, deposed and murdered the emperor in A. D. 1295.
Alla began his plan or conquests by the reduction of Guzerat; for, while it continued independent, it present ed a formidable obstacle to the conquest of the Decan. Having succeeded in his designs against Guzerat, he next reduced Rantampore and Cheitore, two of the strongest fortresses of the Rajpoots in Ajmeet'; this was the first time that the latter fortress had fallen under the power of the .Mahomedans. In the year 1303, he conquered Waran gole, the capital of Tellingana, another principality of the Decan, comprising nearly the whole of the present dis trict of Golconda. But while Alla was pushing his con quests in the south, he was suddenly called upon to defend his own capital against the Moguls, who laid siege to it with a powerful army, and even plundered the suburbs ; lie arrived at Delhi just in time to save it from destruc tion ; and after one of the most obstinate and bloody battles that is recorded in Indian history, lie utterly defeated the Moguls, who with great difficulty effected their escape across the Indus. In the folloWing year the remainder of
Malwah was conquered ; but the continual and sudden irruptions of the Moguls rendering the presence of the emperor necessary in the northern provinces, the conquest of the Decan was assigned to Cafoor, an able and enter prizing general. He proceeded to the Deogire country, by the route of Baglana, which he reduced in his march ; and not only carried his arms into Deogire, and from thence into Tellingana, but into the Carnatic also in the year 1310. By the Carnatic is here meant the Peninsula in general, lying to the south of the Krishna river. How much farther he penetrated into the south of India is not accurately known, hut he was instructed by Alla to reduce Maber, by which Major Rennel understands the southern part of the Peninsula. The conquered countries were divided into provinces, over each of which Cafoor appointed a 1\la homedan governor. The quantity of treasure which he collected almost surpasses belief ; it is said that silver was regarded by the soldiers as too cumbersome, and that they would not load themselves with any thing but gold : ac cording to Ferislita, the treasure taken amounted to 100 millions sterling ; the princes of the Decan had been em ployed in amassing it for a great number of years, so that it is probable their country had remained undisturbed all that time. In the year 1312, Cafoor again ravaged the northern part of the Decan, and exacted fresh tribute from Tellingana and the Carnatic ; as, however, his expeditions were rather of a predatory nature, agreeably to the genius of his master Alla, the entire and permanent conquest of those countries was not accomplished till about three cen turies afterwards.
In the year 1316, Alla died. An illness under which he laboured, was increased by a general insurrection, at the head of which was Cafoor. He not only directed his am bition to the usual objects, wealth and conquest, but, in the early part of his life, he had formed the plans of found ing a new religion, and of leaving a viceroy in India, in order to rival Alexander the Great, after whom he called himself Seconder Sani, Alexander the Second. As he had raised himself to the throne by the murder of his uncle Peloze, he was constantly the prey of suspicion. In order to guard against conspiracies and rebellion more effec tually, he levied an immense army, whose services he endeavoured to secure by gratuitous advances of pay; he confiscated the property of several men of rank and Iluence in the empire ; he published an edict, forbidding all private meetings among his grandees, and prohibiting the use of wine, and all intoxicating liquors ; he strictly forbade the nobles to marry without license from him ; he exacted from his Mahomedan as well as his Hindoo sub jects, half the yearly produce of their lands; he set aside every part of the Mahomedan law which was at variance with his own views of policy. At the period of his death, all Ilindostan proper was comprehended in the Patan empire ; and though, as we have just seen, Alla was a cruel and despotic piince, yet the internal police was so admirably regulated, that strangers might travel throughout his whole empire in perfect security.