Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/199

 THE DECLINE OF DELHI 161 grandson, Taghlak II, was young and foolish, addicted to wine and dissipation, and the amirs and palace slaves rose and killed him before he had lolled on the throne five months. Another grandson, Abu Bekr, was op- posed by his uncle Mohammad, the prince whom the slaves had expelled from his regency under Firoz, and who had since established some sort of authority from Samana to Nagarkot in the Pan jab, and after several unsuccessful efforts secured Delhi in 1390. His four years' reign was vexed by a series of rebellions; the Hindu chiefs were everywhere in revolt, the great feu- datories under no control; and the persecution and banishment of the foreign slaves (whose nationality was tested by a Hindi shibboleth) did nothing to mitigate their disruptive influence. Mohammad's son Humayun, proudly entitled " Alexander r> (Sikandar Shah), died after a reign of six weeks, and though his brother Mah- mud occupied the throne for eighteen years (1394-1412), that throne was for some time set up at Kanauj, and even when at Old Delhi, his cousin Nasrat Shah, son of Fath Khan, held a rival court at the new capital of Firozabad close by; thus there were two kings at Delhi, and both were mere puppets in the hands of ambitious amirs. Such was the chaotic state of the kingdom of Delhi when Timur descended upon it with his ninety-two regiments of a thousand horse each. The great con- queror, whose career has become familiar through the pages of Gibbon and the drama of Marlowe, had already overrun all Persia and Mesopotamia as far as the fron-