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The most ancient of all the rulers of the kingdoms in that large division of Western India was Udai Singh, Ráná of Mewár, a man possessing a character in which weakness was combined with great obstinacy. His principal stronghold was the famous fortress of Chitor, a fortress which had indeed succumbed to Allah-ud-dín Khilji in 1303, but which had regained the reputation of being impregnable.
His nephew and chief Captain Ala ud din opened a career of conquest, invading the Deckan even before he secured the throne for himself by assassinating his uncle. In fact, he extended his dominion over almost the whole of India in spite of frequent rebellions and sundry Mongol incursions all successfully repressed or dispersed. In 1321 the Khilji dynasty was overthrown by the House of Tughlak.
It was the second of these Khilji princes, Ala-ud-Din, who built, alongside of Kutub-ed-Din's mosque, the Alai Darwazah, the monumental gateway which is not only an exceptionally beautiful specimen of external polychromatic decoration, 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."
But in 1186, the dynasty of the Ghaznívís was destroyed by the dynasty of Ghor or Ghur, founded by an Afghán of Ghur, a district in Western Afghánistán, a hundred and twenty miles to the south-east of the city of Herát, on the road to Kábul. The Ghuri dynasty was, in its turn, supplanted, in 1288, by that of the Khiljí or Ghiljí.
Very soon after this the Mongol Chief Chengiz Khan devastated half the world, but left India comparatively untouched. Altamish established the Mahometan rule of Delhi over all Hindustan. This series of rulers, known as the slave kings, was brought to an end after eighty-two years by the establishment of the Khilji dynasty in 1288 by the already aged Jelal ud din.
The story of the whole dynasty is a long-drawn tale of horrors until the wretched Kaikobad, having turned Delhi for a short three years into a house of ill-fame, was dragged out of his bed and flung into the Jumna, his infant child murdered, and the house of Khilji set up where the Slave kings had reigned.
Mandu was at first an essentially Mahomedan city, and under Mahmud Khilji, who wrested the throne from Hushang's effete successor, its fame as a centre of Islamic learning attracted embassies even from Egypt and Bokhara. But its greatness was short-lived. Mahmud's son, Ghijas-ud-Din, had been for many years his father's right hand, both in council and in the field.
In 1293 Ala-ud-din Khilji, nephew of the king of Delhi, captured Devagiri. Four years later Gujarat was attacked. In 1303 the reduction of Warangal was attempted. In 1306 there was a fresh expedition to Devagiri. In 1309 Malik Kafur, the celebrated general, with an immense force swept into the Dakhan and captured Warangal.
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