Timur’s invasion and the sack of Delhi

01The march and the battle

Timur’s own memoir and Yazdi’s Zafarnama describe the campaign in detail. He crossed the Indus in September 1398, took Bhatner, whose Rajput and Muslim defenders were killed, and reached Delhi in December. Before the battle he ordered the killing of the Indian prisoners in his camp, fearing they would rise. On 17 December he met the army of Mahmud Tughluq and Mallu Iqbal, with its war elephants, outside the city; his men used caltrops and ditches against the elephants and routed it.

02The sack and the return

Timur entered Delhi and accepted its submission, but a quarrel between his soldiers and the townspeople turned into a sack lasting several days; the Zafarnama itself describes the slaughter and the carrying off of artisans. On the way north Timur took Meerut, then fought Hindu bands gathered at Haridwar on the Ganga and in the Siwalik hills, and attacked Jammu, before crossing the Indus in March 1399. Delhi was left in ruin and famine, and the Sultanate broke into regional kingdoms.

Place · Mosque begun 1192–93 from the materials of 27 temples; minar begun c. 1199Qutb Complex, MehrauliInside Lal Kot, the citadel of the Tomaras and Chauhans, Qutbuddin Aibak raised Delhi’s first mosque from the pillars of the temples he pulled down, and began the Qutb Minar beside it. The Gupta iron pillar stands in the courtyard.Read →