In the year 1200, Turkish plunderer-adventurer Bakhtiyar
Khalji proceeded toward Nalanda University with a band of just 200 armoured
cavalrymen. He had received intelligence about a lightly defended fortress, guarded
by a handful of men and possibly containing huge amounts of gold.
Gone were the days when such plundering expeditions from the northwest
were met by massive field armies deployed by Maharajas in north India. Samrat
Prithiviraj Chauhan, the gatekeeper of Delhi, had died eight years ago. The
Gahadavala dynasty that ruled over much of modern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in
those days fell soon after. Now a vast ancient land lay unprotected before the
conquerors- its cities and temples teeming with gold and no army to protect
them. Petty Rajas that ruled from their rural mud fortresses were in no
position to take on professionally trained armor-clad Turkish cavalrymen. The
invaders had little interest in governing this newly conquered realm yet. They lived
confined within the walls of their garrison towns, emerging seasonally to raid
and plunder the countryside. The Turkish Sultanate during this phase resembled
a robber state, run by an army of professional brigands. The conquerors did not
speak local languages, nor did they have any interest in the native philosophy
and culture. Most of them were military men- rude brigands and barbarians in
the eyes of natives, whose only legitimacy to rule was the tip of their blades.
Nalanda University was no fortress. The few guards were
easily overpowered by Bakhtiyar Khalji’s men. But what they found inside did
not make sense to them- There were reams and reams of books, and the place was
full of ‘brahmins with shaven heads…wearing yellow robes. Khalji’s soldiers
quickly set fire to the place, slaughtered any men they came across and set
about plundering- gold, expensive utensils, horses, elephants, and other valuable animals. Within a matter of hours, a seven-hundred-year-old university- the
biggest centre of learning in the East and the most famed library in the world was
burnt to cinders.
When the looting was over, some of the raiders became curious
about what these books were all about. But by then all the literate men within
the precincts of the place had been killed. After some enquiries, Bakhtiyar
Khalji was told that the men who had been slaughtered were in fact not Brahmins
but Buddhist monks and the place was not a fortress but a college, which they
called a Vihara. Khalji could not have cared any less. All he would have
understood was that places such as these made for easy targets. Within a few
years, the universities at Odantapuri and Vikramshila in Bihar met similar
fates. Part of the booty was sent to Sultan Qutbuddin Aibak in Delhi, who
reportedly looked upon these exploits very favourably.
But Bakhtiyar Khalji was yet to reach the peak of his career.
His next target was the prosperous kingdom of Bengal. Maharaj Lakshman Rai, who
ruled from his capital at Nadia was over eighty years old. He was a popular
king much adored by his subjects. During the course of his reign, he had
watched the Turkish menace from the northwest engulf empires one by one. An
astrologer had predicted doomsday and prophesied that Maharaj’s nemesis would
be a man of despicable features whose hands would reach up to his knees.
Intelligence reports had revealed that Bakhtiyar Khalji indeed matched this description
and was preparing an invasion of Bengal. In his day, Maharaj had been a fierce warrior,
but he was old now. Nevertheless, he quietly prepared for the coming invasion of
his capital.
Bakhtiyar Khalji marched out towards Nadia ahead of his main
army disguised as a horse dealer from the northwest. When he reached Nadia, this
ruse worked so well that he was able to march right up to Maharaj’s palace
unchallenged. Now his men pulled out their swords and stormed in. The confusion
was so great that nobody had the time to properly assess the situation.
Maharaj’s royal guard thought that the entire Turkish army had entered the
capital and advised the king to retreat to safety. Maharaj left the capital with the royal guard through a secret backdoor.
The main army in the city, now rendered leaderless, panicked and quickly melted
away into the surrounding countryside. Small gangs of Turkish cavalrymen kept
joining Bakhtiyar Khalji all through the day, now lodged inside the royal palace.
By the time the demoralized citizens realized what had taken place the main
Turkish army arrived the next day. Bengal had fallen into Turkish hands through
a crazy commando raid.
Bakhtiyar Khalji’s rise to power had not been easy. Born into
a family of chieftains in Garmsir (warm regions) of Afghanistan, upon coming of
age he presented himself before the muster master at Ghazni to seek a military
rank. But he was assigned to a very low station. Dissatisfied, Khalji made his way
to Delhi to seek employment at the newly established Sultanate of Qutbuddin
Aibak. However, luck defied him there too; he was found unsuitable to serve in
the imperial guard owing to his ‘ugly features'. Finally, a suitable
opportunity presented itself when he was invited by the Iqtadar of Nagaur,
Ali Nagauri to join his service. Ali had fought alongside Bakhtiyar Khalji’s
uncle against Prithviraj Chauhan at Tarain. Now he wanted to help his nephew by
giving him a rank suited to his family background.
Turkish Sultanate during this period lacked local roots in
Indian society. It had almost no willing local allies or social connections
with the native population. Despite its recent military victories, the
Sultanate consisted essentially of a handful of armed men, who were perpetually
in danger of being overwhelmed by the numerically superior natives. In this Dar-ul-Harb
(the realm of war) and the land of pagan idolators, as a contemporary Sultanate
chronicler describes India, there was a constant need for military men from the
northwest to buttress the ranks of the ever-expanding Sultanate.
Bakhtiyar Khalji took full advantage of the possibilities offered
by this newly conquered realm. During the initial phase of his career, his
strategy had been to milk the countryside without taking any undue risks.
Remnants of the Gahadavala kingdom, local chieftains, and undefended temples
and monasteries were his initial targets. Soon, he subjugated Bihar, but his
most crowning achievement was the surprise conquest of Bengal. After this
victory, his ambition knew no limits. He became quasi-independent and nurtured
the dream of declaring himself a Sultan in Bengal one day.
By now Bakhtiyar Khalji had begun to conceive of an even more
audacious project- the conquest of Tibet. In his juvenile geographical
imagination, Turkistan, the land of famed mounted archers lay just beyond the
highlands of Tibet. If Tibet could be captured, he would have access to an
unending train of military adventurers and mercenaries from Central Asia. In
time, he could recruit a massive army and set himself up as an independent monarch
in Bengal. However, the Tibet campaign proved to be a disaster- the terrain was
unlike anything he had encountered before and the resistance was found to be unusually
fierce. His army was surrounded and annihilated. Bakhtiyar Khalji himself narrowly
escaped death by abandoning his army to carnage and making a run for his new
capital at Lakhnauti. One crazy misadventure had won him the kingdom of Bengal,
and another proved to be his undoing. Following this disaster, his popularity
among troops plummeted and his Amirs began to conspire to overthrow him. Then one
night, when he went off to sleep in his tent, one of his trusted Amirs Ali
Mardan, who wanted to be Sultan himself, drove a dagger through his heart, thus
pulling the curtain on the life of this robber conqueror (1206 AD).
Bibliography:
The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1 (1200-1750) ed. Irfan Habib and Tapan Raychaudhuri, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982
The History of India As Told by its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period, Sir HM Elliot, ed. John Dowson, Sushil Gupta Limited, Calcutta, 1955
A Comprehensive History of India, Vol-5, The Delhi Sultanate (1206-1556)- ed. KA Nizami and Mohammad Habib, People’s Publishing House, 1960
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