Part 13 (1/2)

But here the star of Masud's fortune touched its zenith. The Turkomans, encouraged by success, renewed operations, finally forcing the king to abandon his border princ.i.p.alities and seek time in India to recover strength for renewed efforts.

Urged, perhaps, by kindness, perhaps by fear, he ordered his blinded and imprisoned brother to be brought to Lah.o.r.e, with the unforeseen result that his household troops suddenly revolted, and hoisting the blind prisoner on to their shoulders, incontinently proclaimed him once more King.

It was all over in a moment; and Masud, whose life was spared by the mild Mahomed, found himself forced to beg a subsistence of his brother. His pride, however, would not stand the pitiful dole of 5 which was sent him, so he promptly borrowed 10 from his servants and bestowed them as _baks.h.i.+sh_ on the messenger who had brought, and who took back, the shabby gift.

Not a very tactful way of beginning what was practically an imprisonment. But it was not to last long, for Prince Ahmed, Mahomed's son, in whose favour the blind king resigned the crown, would have no half-measures, and prevented further complications by burying Masud alive.

The historian explains that the prince was suspected of a ”strong taint of insanity.”

In truth, homicidal mania appears to set in generally, for the remaining records of the Ghuznevide dynasty are as irrational, as murderous as transpontine melodrama.

Prince Ahmed was in due time murdered by the murdered Masud's son, who reigned long enough to see his Indian empire almost reft from him; since with violent internal dissensions racking the body politic, there was naturally no time for foreign affairs. So in the year A.D.

1048 the Rajah of Delhi, taking counsel with his compeers of Ajmir, Kanauj, Kalungar, Gwalior, once more made themselves practically independent of the Crescent. Only Lah.o.r.e remained Mahomedan, repelling a siege of seven months, and after actual street fighting, succeeded in driving off the investing force.

Thus in a History of India there is small need to note that Masud II., a child of four years, succeeding his father, reigned six days; or that Hussan Ali and Absal Raschid between them numbered but four years.

In the general turmoil, wonder comes faintly how Ibrahim--a worthy soul who, as the historian says, ”begot 36 sons and 40 daughters by various women”--ever managed to rule for forty-two years. Apparently by a peaceful policy; but, as the same historian goes on to say that this monarch ”was remarkable for morality and devotion, having in his youth succeeded in subduing his sensual appet.i.tes,” one hesitates before accepting either the narrator's facts or his deductions.

Finally, after the Ghuznevide dynasty had touched a bakers' dozen, came one Byram, who was destined to lose the throne for his race by two useless and brutal murders. The first was the public execution of his son-in-law, an apparently harmless prince of Ghor--as the country of the Afghans was then called. The reason of this act is obscure, though it seems probable he was suspected of high treason. Be that as it may, Kutb-din Ghori-Afghan was an ill man to a.s.sail, for he had two big brothers. The first of these, Saif-ud-din, had no little success in his immediate campaign of revenge. Byram fled, Ghuzni was occupied; but finally, by a stratagem, the victor fell into his enemy's hands, whereupon the latter doubled and excelled his former crime, by blackening his captive's face, and sending him face tailwards round the town on a bullock as a preliminary to torturing him, beheading him, and impaling his grand _wazir_.

Allah-ud-din, the last brother, then took up the gloves, after defying Byram in these words: ”Your threats are as impotent as your arms! It is no new thing for kings to make war on their neighbours, but barbarity like yours is unknown to the brave, and such as none have heard of being exercised towards princes. You may therefore be a.s.sured that G.o.d has forsaken you, and has ordained that I, Allah-ud-din, should be the instrument of that just revenge denounced against you for putting to death the representative of the independent and very ancient family of Ghor.”

A quaint touch! that of the ”very ancient,” showing the value set on blue blood in those days.

Allah-ud-din proved a true prophet. In the resulting battle the two ”Khurmiels,” gigantic brothers-in-arms, the Gog and Magog of those days, brought victory to his arms by the ripping up of elephants'

bellies and other prodigies of strength and valour. Byram fled, to die miserably in India overwhelmed by misfortunes, while the conqueror earned for himself the t.i.tle of ”The Burner of Worlds,” by the deadly revenge he took on Ghuzni and its inhabitants.

”The ma.s.sacre,” writes the historian, ”continued for the s.p.a.ce of seven days, in which time pity seems to have fled from the earth, and the fiery spirits of demons to actuate men. A number of the most venerable and learned persons were, to adorn the triumph, carried in chains to Feroz-Kuh, where the victor ordered their throats to be cut, and tempering earth with their blood, used it to plaster the walls of his native city.”

Allah-ud-din thus ended the House of Ghuzni; for though two descendants of Byram's kept a feeble hold on power from Lah.o.r.e during the s.p.a.ce of a few years, he was the last real king. His actions are strangely at variance with his character, for he is said to have ”been blest with a n.o.ble and generous disposition!”

We hear also of an uncommon thirst for knowledge. But in truth these wild, revengeful Mahomedans of the borderland were then very much as they are to-day; that is to say, proud, lawless, quick to respond in kind to good or evil, above all, possessed by a perfect devil of revenge--the cruel revenge which is ever a.s.sociated with sensuality.

So, naturally, Allah-ud-din, after plastering the city walls with blood, spent the gold he had taken from Ghuzni on pleasure, until he died four years later, in A.D. 1156.

His son only reigned for a year. A fine fellow this, apparently, both physically and mentally, if we are to believe what is said of him; but, as usual, pa.s.sionate, revengeful. So, seeing a chief who had fought against and defeated his father wearing some of the family jewels which had been stripped from his own wife after that occasion, he out with his sword and slew the offender forthwith. Whereupon the dead man's brother, choosing a convenient moment in the middle of a subsequent battle, out with his lance and ran the young king through the body.

Scarcely any of them, however, died in their beds. The procession of murders and sudden deaths becomes indeed monotonous, but was now to be broken for a while by the advent of another of those strong men who every now and again make, as it were, a landmark in Indian history.

This was Shahab-ud-din who, counting the time during which he was his elder brother's deputy, was to reign for close on fifty years, and once more weld the princ.i.p.alities of India proper into one solid empire.

A strange history is this of the devoted brothers, who appear from their babyhood to have gone through life hand in hand in fortune and misfortune; but the house of Ghori seems to have been remarkable alike for its family feuds and for its family affection. The latter it was, be it remembered, which led to the establishment of the dynasty.

Another peculiarity was their sonlessness. Ghia.s.s-ud-din, the elder brother, succeeded to the throne by virtue of cousins.h.i.+p only, and as neither he nor Shahab-ud-din had sons, it pa.s.sed at their death to a nephew.

Before that, however, India had to be reconquered, and for this purpose the Campaigns of the Crescent had to recommence.