Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/222

 180 PEG VINCI AL DYNASTIES Ibrahim's successor, Mahmud, whose eighteen years' reign was from time to time disturbed by the necessity or temptation to take part in the struggle then centred round the decayed power of Delhi, which he besieged in 1452, also left a monument in the mosque of the Lai Darwazah, or Ruby Gate, so called from the vermilion entrance to the palace of his wife, Bibi Raji, who built the adjacent mosque; and their son Husain completed the magnificent Jami* Masjid, or cathedral mosque, which Mahmud had begun, and of which the foundation had been laid as far back as the last years of Ibrahim. This glorious building, the sister and the rival of the Atala mosque of his grandfather, is a worthy memorial to a king whose ambition, urged by a high-spirited wife, another princess of Delhi, soared to the possession of the throne of Mohammad Taghlak, and whose cam- paigns extended his frontier till they embraced Etawa, Sambhal, and Badaun, made the raja of Gwalior his vassal, and spread the terror of his arms over Orissa. The new Afghan King of Delhi, Buhlol, was too strong for him in the end, and a fatal battle near Kanauj in 1477 deprived Husain of all his possessions. He was allowed to dwell for some years at the city which he and his ancestors had embellished, and then fled to Bihar, whilst his supplanter, the son of Buhlol, laid low his beautiful capital, demolished the stately palaces, destroyed the royal tombs, and was with difficulty dis- suaded from razing even the mosques to the ground. The kingdom of Delhi once more touched the frontier of Bengal.