Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/208

 168 PEOVUSTCIAL DYNASTIES pearls, gold and silver ornaments and vessels, silks and brocades. Only the quarter inhabited by the sayyids and ulama the heads of the Moslem religion escaped the general sack. Siri, Jahanpanah, and Old Delhi had been completely gutted. " Although I was wishful to spare them, I could not succeed, for it was the will of God that this calamity should fall upon the city." After a fortnight of state functions, feasts, and levees, it occurred to Timur that he had come to Hin- INDRAPAT, OR OLD DELHI. dustan to wage a Holy War upon the infidels, and that he ought to be stirring (Jan. 1, 1399). After entering the fort of Firozabad on the Jumna, and praying in its mosque, he took Mirat by storm, massacred the men, took the women and children prisoners, and razed the town to the earth. He then pushed north to Hardwar, where he had heard of the image of the sacred cow from whose mouth the Ganges was supposed to flow and whither the Hindus went in pilgrimage to the mysteri- ous source of the holy river. Such superstition roused the zealot's passion, and the wretched Indians were