the temples, and the spoil which he brought back to Delhi was enormous. It is A.D. 1316. curious that silver is not mentioned as forming any part of it. Gold, indeed, seems to have been the precious metal chiefly used at this time in India, as coin, ornament, or plate. declining
Ala u din's declining fortune Ala-u-din had now reached the zenith of his power. Though he had been guilty of many crimes, fortune had never ceased to favour him, and his territories had extended on every side, till they assumed the magnitude and splendour of an empire. The period of decline, however, had now arrived. Mullik Kafoor, who possessed his utmost confidence, and used it for the promotion of his treasonable designs, disgusted the nobles, and spread discontent among the people. His own health, too, undermined by intemperance and vicious indulgence, gave way; and his family, to whose training he had never attended, entirely neglected him, and spent their time in revelry. His principal wife, Mullika Jehan, was equally indifferent; and he found himself in the midst of a palace, glittering with gold and jewels, destitute of every domestic comfort. He made his complaints to Mullik Kafoor, who turned them to good account, by insinuating that the queen and her sons Khizr Khan and Shady Khan, together with his brother Aluf Khan, had entered into a conspiracy against his life. The brother was accordingly seized and put to death, while the queen and her sons were imprisoned.
During these domestic calamities, the flames of insurrection burst forth in various quarters. Gujerat took the lead, and defeated the general sent against it with great slaughter. The Rajpoots of Chittoor, rising against their Mahometan officers, hurled them from the walls, and resumed their independence; while Hurpal Dew, the son-in-law of Ram Dew, stirred up the Deccan, and His death. expelled several of the Mahometan garrisons. The tidings made Ala-u-din mad with rage, and so increased his illness, that it took a fatal form, and carried him off in 1316, after a reign of twenty years. It is doubtful if his death was natural, for the subsequent conduct of his worthless favourite, Mullik Kafoor, tends to confirm the suspicion that poison was employed.
Mullik Kafoor's treasonable proceedings. The day after the death, Mullik Kafoor produced a will, said to be spurious, by which the late king gave the crown to Prince Oomor Khan, his youngest son, and made Mullik regent during his minority. The young prince, then in his seventh year, was placed upon the throne, while Mullik used him as a tool, and proceeded to carry out his own schemes. One of his first acts was to put out the eyes of Khizr Khan and Shady Khan, and increase the rigour of the sultana's confinement. Another act, somewhat singular, as he was an eunuch, was to marry the young king's mother, who had ranked as Ala-u-din's third wife. He meant, for additional security, to have put out the eyes of Prince Moobarik Khan, the son of the second wife of Ala-u-din, and had even proceeded to the still more atrocious step of sending assassins to murder him. The prince succeeded in buying them off; and a lieutenant of the guards, on hearing
