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

‘Although I was desirous of sparing them (the people of Delhi), I could not succeed, for it was the will of god that this calamity should fall upon the city …,’ states Timur. ‘By the will of god, and by no wish or direction of mine, all the three cities of Delhi — Siri, Jahan-panah and Old Delhi — had been plundered.’ Mughal chronicler Nizam-ud-din Ahmad in Tabaqat-i-Akbari records a somewhat different version of what happened. ‘Timur,’ he writes, ‘granted quarter to the people of the city, and appointed a number of persons to collect the ransom money. Some of the citizens, incensed by the harshness of the collectors, resisted and killed several of them. This daring incited the anger of Timur, and he gave orders to kill or make prisoners the people of the city. On that day many were captured or slain, but at length Timur was moved to pity and issued an edict of mercy.’

When at last the situation in Delhi quietened down, Timur took a ride around the three cities of Delhi. ‘Siri is a round city; its buildings are lofty, and are surrounded by fortifications built of stone and brick, and they are very strong,’ he noted. ‘Old Delhi also has a similar fort, but it is larger than Siri … Jahan-panah is situated in the midst of the inhabited city. The fortifications of the three cities have thirty gates.’

Timur was so greatly impressed by the magnificence of Delhi, and by the skill of its builders and artisans, that he took many of the men with him to Central Asia. ‘I ordered that all the artisans and clever mechanics, who were masters of their respective crafts, should be picked out from among the prisoners and set aside, and accordingly some thousands of craftsmen were selected to await my command,’ he reports. ‘All these I distributed among the princes and amirs who were present, or who were engaged officially in other parts of my dominions.’ But Timur kept for himself most of the architects and masons, for he was eager to develop Samarkand—‘my capital, my paradise’—into a great centre of art and architecture. ‘I had decided to build a Jami Masjid in Samarkand, the seat of my empire, which should be without a rival in any country,’ he writes. ‘So I ordered that all builders and stonemasons should be set apart for my own service.’

Mahmud had left 120 elephants in Delhi when he fled from the city, and Timur had them paraded before him. ‘As the elephants passed by me I was greatly amused to see the tricks which their drivers had taught them. Every elephant, at the sign of its driver, bowed its head to the ground, and made its obeisance, and uttered a cry … When I saw these mighty animals, so well-trained and so obedient to weak man, I was greatly astonished.’ He then ordered some of the elephants to be sent to his provinces in Central Asia ‘so that the princes and nobles throughout my dominions might see these animals.’

TIMUR WAS FASCINATED with Delhi, and he greatly enjoyed his stay there. Yet he was anxious to move on. ‘I had been in Delhi fifteen days, which time I had passed in pleasure and enjoyment, holding royal courts and giving great feasts,’ he writes. ‘I then reflected that I had come to Hindustan to wage war against infidels … I had triumphed over my adversaries, I had put to death some lakhs of infidels and idolaters … Now that this crowning victory had been won, I felt that I ought not indulge in ease, but rather [continue] to exert myself in warring against the infidels of Hindustan.’

So he set out again on his campaign. On 1 January 1399 he crossed the Yamuna and advanced north-westward, fighting battles all along the way, often without rest, disregarding fatigue. Once when Timur was told that at a nearby place ‘a large number of infidels … had collected with their wives and children, and with property, goods and cattle beyond estimate,’ he was initially reluctant to march against them, as ‘the road thither was arduous, through jungles and thickets … My first thought was that I had been awake since midnight, I had travelled a long distance without halt, and had surmounted many difficulties, I had won two splendid victories with a few brave soldiers, and I was very tired, so I should stop and take rest. But then I remembered that I had drawn my sword, and had come to Hind with the resolution of waging a holy war against its infidels, and so long as it was possible to fight with them, rest was unlawful for me.’

Timur therefore promptly advanced northward into the Shiwalik Range (where the local people had taken refuge) slaughtering people and pillaging the land all along the way. ‘So many of them were killed that their blood ran down the mountains and the plain,’ Timur writes. In mid-January he captured Kangra, then swerved westward and, fighting as many as twenty pitched battles in thirty days, reached Jammu and sacked the city.

That was Timur’s last major military engagement in India. He then crossed the Chenab, and on 6 March 1399 held a court there to bid farewell to his princes and nobles, and to send them off to their respective provinces. He himself then set out homeward. ‘When I was satisfied with the destruction I had dealt out to the infidels, and the land was cleansed from the pollution of their existence, I turned back, victorious and triumphant, laden with spoil.’

On 19 March 1399 Timur crossed the Indus and left India. But there would be no rest ever for this warrior sultan, for he soon got embroiled in a series of wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. His last campaign plan was to conquer China, but when he was engaged in the preparation for it, he fell critically ill, and died soon after, in February 1405.

Timur was in India for about six months only, but those were the most devastating six months in the entire history of India, as regards the number of the towns and villages sacked, and of the people butchered. Every town and village that his army passed through was littered with the putrefying copses. Typical of Timur was the order he once gave to one of his generals: ‘March up the Yamuna, and take every fort and town and village you come to, and put all the infidels of the country to the sword.’ Timur’s army was like a vast pack of howling, predatory animals rampaging through the land. Its blood-lust was appalling.

Yet, for all his savagery, Timur, like Mahmud Ghazni, was a man of culture. A writer himself, he loved the company of the learned and was an ardent patron of creative people. His autobiography, written in Chagatai Turkic language, is quite an engaging work, in which he describes his campaigns with cool candour. Timur had a good sense of his place in history, and he wrote his autobiography to preserve the record of his achievements. In some places he also had the account of his campaigns engraved on rock. ‘I ordered an engraver on stone, who was in my camp, to cut an inscription somewhere on those defiles to the effect that I had reached this country by such and such a route, in the auspicious month of Ramadan A. H. 800,’ he states.

Oddly, there was also a touching element of tenderness in the character of this most ruthless, sanguinary monarch — unbelievable though it might seem, of all the vast and opulent booty and gifts that he collected in India, what he most cherished were two white parrots presented to him by a chieftain near Delhi. These birds ‘could talk well and pleasantly,’ writes Timur. ‘The sight of these parrots and the sound of their voices gave me great satisfaction, so I gave directions that they should be brought before me in their cages every day so that I might listen to their talk … They brought [to me several] rare presents from Hindustan, but I looked upon the two parrots as the best of their gifts.’

Timur was also human enough to cry sometimes, though what he shed were tears of joy. ‘When I recounted the favours and mercies I had received from the Almighty — my excellent sons, the brave and renowned amirs who served under me, and the great and glorious victories I had won — my heart melted, and tears burst from my eyes,’ he writes.