56 ISLAM AT WAR
his horse to retreat, and with a dexterous move, drove his lance into the
rajah’s face, knocking out several teeth. At the same time, the sultan was
himself struck in the eye by an arrow and would have perished, had his
guards not pulled him away. The battle ended as a narrow but costly
Muslim defeat.
Not deterred, Muhammad Ghori extended his conquests as far east as
Benares in 1193 and drove the defeated Rajputs to the hills and deserts
now known as Rajputana. In 1199, one of his lieutenants named Bakhtiyar,
led an army into Bengal and by clever stratagem expelled the last Hindu
raja of Nadia. This put the entire northern plain of India, from the Indus
to the Brahmaputra, under Muslim control.
Muhammad Ghori was murdered inA.D. 1206 (refreshingly, not by his
family) and Kutb-ud-din, his Mamluk successor, abandoned the title of
viceroy, proclaiming himself “Sultan of Delhi.” He had been trusted as
sole administrator by Muhammad, and upon his sovereign’s death, the
Mamluk slave became king. So widely was he admired, and so capable
was he, that he had no opposition. He founded what would be known as
the “slave dynasty,” which lasted from 1206 to 1288, so known because
Kutb-ud-din, himself a slave, married a slave, gave his sister to marry a
slave, and married his daughter to a slave—who succeeded him. The great-
est accomplishment of the Ghoris was the defeat of a major Mongol raid
in 1286. Just as the Mamluks of Egypt staved off the steppe horsemen,
so did the Mamluks of India. Sadly, this was only a raid, and in another
century India would feel the wrath of another, and much heavier Mongol
incursion.
In 1294, Ala-ud-din Khilji, the third great Muslim conqueror of India,
ascended the throne of Delhi by the treacherous assassination of his uncle
Feroz II, who had himself supplanted the last of the “slave dynasty.” He
sent an army to Gujarat to conquer and expel the last Rajput king of
Anhalwar. Leading another army in person, the sultan marched into the
heart of Rajputana and stormed the rock-fortress of Chittur.
A wonderful story about the siege of Chittur, one that could not possibly
be true, certainly conveys the romance of the period. Bheemsi, regent of
Chittur, was married to Padmani, a Ceylonese princess of such exquisite
beauty that she is said to have driven men mad. As Ala-ud-din arrived
with his army, he determined to have her and offered to call off the siege
if she was given to him. Bheemsi refused, and the siege proceeded. Ala-
ud-din relented and offered to lift the siege if he were only allowed to
view the woman. To do so, he entered Chittur, trusting in Rajput honor,
and, with an arrangement of mirrors and reflecting pools, was able to