ion, but, to quote
Fergusson, "displays the Pathan style at its period of greatest
perfection, when the Hindu masons had learned to fit their exquisite
style of ornamentation to the forms of their foreign masters." Yet the
atrocities of his twenty years' reign, which was one of almost unbroken
conquest and plunder, wellnigh surpass those of the Slave kings. He had
seized the throne by murdering his old uncle in the act of clasping his
hand, and his own death was, it is said, hastened by poison administered
to him by his favourite eunuch and trusted lieutenant, K[=a]fur, who had
ministered to his most ignoble passions. To the Khiljis succeeded the
Tughluks, and the white marble dome of Tughluk Shah's tomb still stands
out conspicuous beyond the broken line of grim grey walls which were
once Tughlukabad. The Khiljis had been overthrown, but the curse of a
Mahomedan saint, Sidi Dervish, whose fame has endured to the present
day, still rested upon the Delhi in which they had dwelt. So Mahomed
Tughluk built unto himself a new and stronger city, but he did nothing
else to avert the curse. Indeed, he invented a form of man-hunt which
for sheer devilish cruelty has been only once matched in the West by the
_cani del duca_ when the crazy Gian Maria ruled in Milan. Well may his
milder successor, Firuz Shah, have removed to yet another new capital.
Well may he have sought to disarm the wrath to come by pious deeds and
lavish charities. The record he kept of them is not without a certain
naive pathos:

Under the guidance of the Almighty, I arranged that the heirs of
those persons who had been slain in the reign of my late Lord and
Patron, Sultan Mahomed Shah, and those who had been deprived of a
limb, nose, eye, hand, or foot, should be reconciled to the late
Sultan and appeased by gifts, so that they executed deeds declaring
their satisfaction, duly attested by witnesses. These deeds were
put into a chest, which was placed at the head of the late Sultan's
grave in the hope that God in his great mercy would show his
clemency to my late friend and patron and make those persons feel
reconciled to him.

The curse fell upon Delhi in the reign of the next Tughluk, Sultan
Mahmud. Timur, with his Mongolian horsemen, swooped down through the
northern passes upon Delhi, slaying Mahomedans and Hindus alike and
plundering and burning on all sides as he came. Opposite to the famous
ridge, whe