Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/126

 96 ALA -AD -DIN KHALJI of Delhi. For a time at least the Turks had lost the empire. It is characteristic of the adaptability of the Indian people that although the Turks were foreigners and their rule had been anything but conciliatory, their suppression was resented as a wanton innovation. No Khalji, they said, had ever been a king, and the race had no part or lot in Delhi. Conservative in everything, the Hindu cherishes even his oppressors. Nevertheless, the Khalji dynasty lasted thirty years and included six sovereigns, and among them was one great ruler, whose reign of twenty years contributed powerfully to the extension of the Moslem dominion in India. Jalal-ad-din Firoz Shah himself was the mildest king that ever held a sceptre. An old man of seventy years, preoccupied with preparations for the next world, he utterly refused to shed blood, even for flagrant crimes. When Chhaju, a nephew of Balban, led an army against the Sultan and the rebels were defeated and captured, Firoz forgave them freely, and kindly commended their loyalty to the fallen house. A thousand Thugs were arrested, but Firoz would not consent to the execution even of the members of a society of assassins, and merely banished them to Bengal. Traitors, conspirators, and thieves alike found mercy and forgiveness at the hands of the long-suffering king, who had never stained his soul with blood save in open battle, when, as against the Mongols 'on the Indus in 1292, he had shown himself valiant indeed. The execution of a fakir suspected of magic and sedition was his only act of capital punish-