Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/537

 FYZ Then came the Ajodbya under the Delhi Emperors.

and

459

destruction of Kanauj; and in 1194, after a battle, the body of Jai Chand was found so disfigured with blood and wounds that he was only recognised by his false teeth

their gold settings.

After his conquest of Kanauj, Shahab-ud-din Ghori, or his lieutenant, overran Oudh in 1194. In Ajodhya, Makhdum Shah Jah^n Ghori was killed and buried. Muhammad Bakhtiar Khilji was the first to organise the administration and establish in Oudh a base for fresh military operations. In these he was so successful, even to the banks of the Brahmaputra, that on the death of Quttib-ud-dia of Delhi he refused to pay allegiance to a mere slave like Altamsh; his son Ghayas-ud-din partly succeeded in this attempt, anti a hereditary governorship of Bengal was established but Ajodhya was wrested from the Bengal dynasty and kept as a province of Delhi lying between Bahraich and Manikpur. great Hindu rebellion then ensued. Details are not given; it seems to have been a Sicilian Vespers, for 120,000 Musalmans, many of them probably converts, are said to have been killed. It now became the custom to send the heir-apparent to Oudh or Budaun. Prince Naslr-ud-din was despatched to crush this outbreak.

A

Nasir-ud-dln Tabashi and Qamr-ud-dln Kairdn successively are recorded Ajodhya in 1236 and 1242. In 1255, the emperor's mother, having married one Katlagh Khan and quarrelled with her son, was sent with him in honourable banishment to Ajodhya, which now was honoured with the presence of Malika-i-Jahan. Katlagh Khan rebelled and was expelled by his step-son's wazir, Balban ArsUn Khan Sanjar followed him, and in 1259 he also rebelled and was expelled. Amir Khan or Alaptagln was the next; he was ordered, after he had been in Oudh for twenty years, He was defeated, and Balban ordered his to attack the rebel Toghral. head to be struck off and placed over the gate of Ajwihya. Toghral was afterwards killed by a small party, which burst into his camp and struck Shortly afteroff his head, inside his tent and in the middle of his army. wards Farhat Khan, another governor of A.jodhya, when intoxicated, killed a person of low birth. The widow complained to Balban. The emperor, once himself a slave, sympathising with her, the governor received a public whipping of five hundred lashes, and his mangled body was then made over as a slave to the widow his victim. The romantic meeting of the youthful emperor Kaiqubad with his father Baghra Khan took place in Fyzabad, the two armies having encamped on the opposite banks of the Gogra. Kh£n-i-Jahan then became governor of Oudh, and in his time the court of Ajodhya was adorned for two years by the presence of the poet Amir Khusro. AUa-ud-dm Khilji, nephew of the founder of the Khilji dynasty, then held Oudh; but it does not appear that he visited Ajodhya. It was at Manikpur that he stabbed his uncle in the back, and the old man's headless corpse lay uncared for on the sands of the Ganges. It was during the Tughlaq (the succeeding) dynasty that Ajodhya was specially favoured. Firoz Tughlaq made repeated* visits to Ajodhya. Malik Sigin and Malik as viceroys at




 * In 1324 and in 1348 A. D. Dow,

I.

305.