some of them now mere cities
of the dead, such as Golconda and Gaur and Mandu, some, such as Bijapur
and Bidar and Ahmednagar and Ahmedabad, still living and even
flourishing--bear witness to the genius of their makers. From motives of
political expediency, the Mahomedan rulers of those days, whether
Bahmanis or Ahmed Shahis or Adil Shahis or whatever else they were
called, were fain to reckon with their Hindu subjects. Wholesale
conversions to the creed of the conquerors, whether spontaneous or
compulsory, introduced new elements into the ruling race itself; for
converted Hindus, even when they rose to high positions of trust,
retained many of their own customs and traditions. Differences of
religion ceased to be a complete bar to matrimonial and other alliances
between Mahomedans and Hindus. Even in war Mahomedan mercenaries took
service with Hindu chiefs, and Hindus under Mahomedan captains. There
was thus, if not a fusion, a gradual mingling of the Mahomedan and Hindu
populations which, in spite of many fierce conflicts, tended to promote
a new _modus vivendi_ between them. It was a period of transition from
the era of mere ruthless conquest, which Timur's tempestuous irruption
brought practically to a close, to the era of constructive
statesmanship, which it was reserved to Akbar, the greatest of the
Moghul Emperors, to inaugurate.

Each of these early Mahomedan states has a story and a character of its
own, and each goes to illustrate the subtle ascendancy which the Hindu
mind achieved over the conquering Mahomedan. I can only select a few
typical examples. None is in its way more striking than Mandu, over
whose desolation the jungle now spreads its kindly mantle. Within two
years of Timur's raid into India the Afghan governors of Malwa
proclaimed themselves independent, and Hushang Ghuri, from whom the new
dynasty took its name, proceeded to build himself a new capital. The
grey grim walls of Mandu still crown a lofty outpost of the Vindhya
hills, some seventy miles south-east of Indore, the natural scarp
falling away as steeply on the one side to the fertile plateau of Malwa
as on the other to the broad valley of the sacred Nerbudda. The place
had no Hindu associations, and in the stately palaces and mosques
erected by Hushang and his immediate successors early in the fifteenth
century scarcely a trace of Hindu influence can be detected, though some
of them still stand almost intact amidst the luxuriant vegetati