Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/210

 170 PROVINCIAL DYNASTIES gained her old ascendency. For a time Ikbal Khan, the vizir, held the capital, drove out Nasrat Shah, and made vigorous efforts to put down the growing hostility of the Hindu chiefs, who were now independent at Etawa, Gwalior, and many other strongholds. Sultan Mahmud found Delhi insupportable with all the power in the vizir's hands, and set up a separate court at Kanauj, until the death of Ikbal in a battle with Khizr Khan, the viceroy of Multan, in November, 1405, set him free and enabled him to return to the capital and rule a kingdom which had shrunk to little more than the Doab and Rohtak. The next six or seven years were spent in a struggle between the great feudatories, in which the dissolute and incompetent Sultan played a sorry part, and when Mahmud died in 1412 there was no king left at Delhi. The government was con- ducted by the Lodi amir Daulat Khan, but he made no assumption of royal dignity. Nor did his successor assume the title of king. Khizr Khan, the founder of the dynasty of Sayyids, who claimed descent from the family of the Arabian Prophet, had prudently cast in his lot with Timur when the " noble Tartarian " invaded India; and on taking the command at Delhi, in May, 1414, he made no pre- tension to be more than Timur 's deputy. There is no evidence, however, that this allegiance was anything more than a politic fiction, whilst the coinage issued by Khizr bore the names of Firoz and other defunct kings of the late dynasty as guarantees of its authen- ticity. The history of the Sayyid dynasty, which num-