Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/161

 TAGHLAK SHAH'S SON HIS SUCCESSOR 129 Peace and prosperity once more reigned in Hindustan, and two expeditions under Taghlak Shah's eldest son, Prince Jauna, then known as Ulugh Khan, recovered the Deccan provinces as far as Telingana, which the recent troubles had encouraged to revolt. Taghlak him- self led his army to Bengal, which had never been even nominally subject to Delhi since the death of Balban, and there he received the homage of the provincial vice- roy of Lakhnauti, Nasir-ad-din (grandson of Balban 's son Bughra Khan), and carried in chains to Delhi his recalcitrant brother Bahadur Shah, who styled himself king in Eastern Bengal. On his return from this expe- dition the gallant old Sultan met his death (1325) by the fall of a roof, which crushed him beneath its ruins. His body was found arched over his favourite child, whom he strove in his last moments to protect. There seems little doubt that the catastrophe was treacher- ously planned by his eldest. son, at least if we may accept the authority of the Moorish traveller, Ibn Batuta, who was at Delhi sixteen years later and had his information from some one that actually witnessed the occurrence. It is in this son, Prince Jauna, who ascended the throne as the Sultan al-Mujahid Mohammad ibn Tagh- lak, that the main interest of the Karauna dynasty abides. In each of the three dynasties that ruled India throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was one conspicuously remarkable figure. Among the slave kings it was Balban, the man of action ; among the Khaljis it was Ala-ad-din, the crude but daring political