Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

This was a testing time for Ala-ud-din. Around the time of the Ranthambhor incident, two other nephews of his, provincial governors, also rose in rebellion against him. But they were soon captured by royal forces and sent to the sultan in Ranthambhor, where he had them punished in his presence—‘they were blinded by having their eyes cut out with knives like slices of a melon,’ reports Barani. ‘The sultan’s cruel, implacable temper had no compassion for his sister’s children.’

At this time there was also an insurrection in Delhi, in which a group of discontented officers under one Haji Maula — an officer of ‘violent, fearless and malignant character,’ as Barani describes him — broke into the royal treasury, took out bags of gold coins from there, and distributed the money among themselves and their followers, and raised a distant descendant of Iltutmish (pretentiously named Shahinshah — King of Kings) to the throne. Fortunately for Ala-ud-din, the rebellion fizzled out quickly — it was suppressed within a week by loyal officers, and the pretender and his sponsor, along with many of their followers, were put to death.

ALA-UD-DIN RETURNED TO Delhi from Rajasthan in mid-1301, but in early 1303 he once again set out for Rajasthan, this time to capture the fort of Chitor, the possession of which, like that of Ranthambhor, was strategically important to him, to secure the route of his planned campaigns into central and peninsular India. In addition to these compelling strategic considerations, Ala-ud-din, according to a colourful romantic legend, was drawn to Chitor by what he had heard about the enchanting beauty of Padmini, the queen of Rana Ratan Singh of the kingdom. This legend has a few variations, but in broad terms the story is that Padmini spurned the sultan outright, and would not even agree to let him see her just once. The most she conceded was to allow him to fleetingly see her reflection in a mirror. But that momentary glimpse further inflamed Ala-ud-din’s passion, and he decided to capture her somehow.

This inevitably led to a battle between the armies of the raja and the sultan, in which the vastly superior Turkish army vanquished the Rajput army, even though Rajputs fought with great valour. Rajputs then retreated into the fort, where they barricaded themselves and performed the awesome rite of jauhar , in which Padmini and all the women in the fort flung themselves into an immense blazing pyre built there, preferring death to dishonour. When that rite was over, the gates of the fort were flung open, and the raja and his men hurtled out into the plain and tore into the arrayed enemy army, to kill and be killed, till all the Rajputs perished.

This story is told with many colourful frills in the bardic lore of Rajasthan, but there is no record of it at all in any contemporary chronicle. All that Barani says about Ala-ud-din’s Chitor campaign is that ‘the sultan then led forth an army and laid siege to Chitor, which he took in a short time and returned home.’ In fact, Amir Khusrav’s statement that after taking Chitor, the sultan ordered the ‘massacre of 30,000 Hindus,’ specifically excludes the possibility of jauhar having been performed there on this occasion.

The story also does not quite match what we know of Ala-ud-din’s character. He was a down-to-earth, hard-headed monarch, and it is unlikely that he had any serious romantic vulnerability. He did indeed seize and take into his harem the queens of some of the rajas he defeated, but that was for him like appropriating any other valuable asset of the enemy.

The earliest textual reference to the Padmini episode is in Malik Muhammad Jaisi’s epic Hindi poem Padmavat . This was written in the mid-sixteenth century, nearly two and a half centuries after Ala-ud-din’s conquest of Chitor, and is therefore of doubtful credibility. Moreover, Padmavat is a romance and not a historical work. The story is also mentioned by a few later chroniclers, such as Abul Fazl and Ferishta, but they were obviously just repeating popular legends. Still, despite all these negative factors, it is possible that there is some tiny kernel of truth in the story, though most of its details are clearly bardic embellishments.

IN 1305, TWO years after the capture of Chitor, Ala-ud-din sent his army into the kingdom of Malwa, which he had previously invaded, during his governorship of Kara, but whose rulers had since then, ‘rubbed their eyes with the antimony of pride, and … had forsaken the path of obedience,’ states Amir Khusrav. ‘A select body of royal troops … suddenly fell on those blind and bewildered men … The blows of the sword then descended upon them, their heads were cut off, and the earth was moistened with … [their] blood.’

The capture of Malwa cleared the path for the expansion of the Sultanate into peninsular India. Other circumstances also favoured the southward expansion of the Sultanate. The Mongol incursions, which had troubled the Sultanate for several decades, ceased around this time, and that enabled Ala-ud-din to withdraw several divisions of his army from his western frontier, and send them sweeping deep into peninsular India. The Sultanate was also relatively free of provincial rebellions at this time. ‘Wherever Ala-ud-din looked around upon his territories, peace and order prevailed,’ writes Barani. ‘His mind was free from all anxiety.’ He could therefore launch into his expansionist ambitions with ease of mind.

Ala-ud-din was the first ruler of the Sultanate to extend his kingdom into peninsular India, and also the first to carry out raids deep into South India, bringing virtually the entire Indian subcontinent within the ambit of his army. But his objective in these campaigns was not to annex the entire region to his empire, but to gather plunder and to claim tribute from the local rulers.

His first target in the peninsula was Devagiri in western Deccan. This town had a special appeal for Ala-ud-din, for he had raided it when he was the governor of Kara, and it was the plunder that he got from there that provided him the resources he needed to successfully execute his plan to usurp the Delhi throne. Ala-ud-din had imposed a tribute on the raja of Devagiri during that campaign, but no tribute had been received from him for three years. So in 1307 he sent a large army into Devagiri to enforce its compliance. This army was commanded by Malik Kafur, who had entered the service of Ala-ud-din just a decade earlier but had since risen rapidly in official hierarchy, and was now designated as Malik Naib, Lieutenant of the Kingdom. The Devagiri campaign was Kafur’s first major military assignment, and he executed it with expedition and efficiency, which would mark all his subsequent campaigns also. On capturing the Devagiri fort, he stripped it of all its treasures, seized its war elephants, and took them all to Delhi along with Ramadeva, the captured raja, his wives and children.

In Delhi the raja was received with courtesy and honour by Ala-ud-din. ‘The sultan showed great favour to the raja, gave him a canopy, and the title Rai-i-rayan (King of Kings),’ reports Barani. ‘He also gave him a lakh of tankas, and [after a few months] sent him back in great honour, with his wives, children, and dependents, to Devagiri, which place he confirmed in his possession. The raja was ever afterwards obedient, and sent his tribute regularly as long as he lived.’ Ramadeva would also provide invaluable assistance to the sultanate army in its subsequent campaigns in the peninsula; Devagiri in fact served as the base for Ala-ud-din’s peninsular military operations.

There is an engaging romantic tale associated with the Sultanate’s conquest of Devagiri, as with its conquest of Chitor, but this story has greater credibility, for it is told by the contemporary poet Amir Khusrav. The story, as told in Ashiqa , a long poem of Amir Khusrav, is that when Malik Kafur set out for Devagiri he was instructed by Ala-ud-din’s Rajput wife Kamala Devi (formerly the queen of Gujarat) to look for her young daughter Deval Devi, whom her father Karna had taken with him when he fled from Gujarat and took refuge in Devagiri during Ala-ud-din’s conquest of Gujarat some nine years earlier. The princess was now around 13 years old, and was betrothed to a son of the king of Devagiri. But while she was being escorted from her provincial residence to Devagiri for the marriage with the prince, a group of Sultanate soldiers, who were picnicking at the Ellora cave shrines, chanced upon her and seized her. She was then sent to her mother in Delhi, and there, according to the legend, Khizr Khan, Ala-ud-din’s eldest son, fell desperately in love with her. She was, according to Isami, a mid-fourteenth century chronicler, ‘a soul-enticing and heart-ravishing beauty … The beautiful girl captivated his heart and he became a slave of her coquetry and guiles.’ The lovers were eventually, after many twists and turns of events, happily united in marriage.