Ala-ud-Din Khilji’s Conquest of Gujarat

After the first Mongol invasion. Ala-ud-Din sent Ulugh Khan and Nusrat Khan to conquer Gujarat in 1299. Although it had been occasionally conquered, it had remained unsubdued. At that time it was being ruled by Rai Karan Deva II, a Bagela Rajput Prince.

The Delhi army besieged Anhilwara and captured it. Kamla Devi, the beautiful queen of Karan Deva II, fell into the hands of the invaders and she was taken away to Delhi where she was made the favourite queen by Ala-ud-Din. However, Karan Deva and his daughter, Deval Devi, took refuge with king Ram Chandra Deva of Devagiri. The Delhi army plundered the rich ports of Gujarat and took away a large amount of booty and a eunuch named Kafur.

This Kafur ultimately rose to be the most influential person in the state. He became virtually the master for some time before and after the death of Ala-ud-Din. There was some trouble with regard to the division of the spoils and the new Mussalmans revolted but they were ruthlessly put down and practically exterminated.

Dreams of Ala-ud-Din

Ala-ud-Din achieved great success during the first three years of his reign. Sons were born to him. Victories were won by his generals and a lot of wealth was brought by them. He had no enemy or rival to fear. According to Zia-ud-Din Barani, “All this prosperity intoxicated him.

Vast desires and great aims far beyond him formed their germs in his brain and he entertained fancies which had never occurred to any king before him. In his exaltation, ignorance and folly, he quite lost his head, forming the most impossible schemes and cherishing the most extravagant desires.

He was bad-tempered, obstinate, hard-hearted, but the world smiled upon him, fortune be friended him and his schemes were generally successful, so he only became the more reckless and arrogant.” The Sultan began to cherish the dream of founding a new religion and conquering the world like Alexander the Great.

Ala-ud-Din began to dream like this: “God Almighty gave the blessed Prophet four friends, through whose energy and power the law and religion were established and through this establishment of law and religion, the name of the Prophet will endure to the Day of Judgment. God has given me also four friends: Ulugh Khan, Zafar Khan, Nusrat Khan and Alap Khan, who through my prosperity, have attained to princely power and dignity.

If I am so inclined, I can, with the help of these four friends, establish a new religion and creed; and my sword, and the swords of my friends; will bring all men to adopt it.Through this religion, my name and those of my friends will remain among men to the last day, like names of the Prophet and his friends I have wealth and elephants, and forces beyond all calculation. My wish is to place. Delhi in charge of a vicegerent and them, I will go out myself into the world, like Alexander, in pursuit of conquest and subdue the whole habitable world.”

Ala-ud-Din consulted Malik Ala-ul-Mulk, uncle of Zia-ud-Din Barani and the latter gave the following advice: “Religion and law spring from heavenly revelation; they are never established by the plans and designs of men. From the days of Adam till now they have been the mission of Prophets and Apostles, as rule and government have been the duty of kings.

The prophetic office has never appertained to kings and never will so long as the world lasts, though some Prophets have discharged the functions of royalty, my advice is that Your Majesty should never talk about these matters.

Your Majesty knows what rivers of blood Chingiz Khan made to flow in Muhammadan cities, but he never was able to establish the Mughal religion or institutions among Muhammadans. Many Mughals have turned Mussalmans but no Mussalman has ever become a Mughal.” The Sultan agreed to accept the advice of Malik Ala-ul-Mulk and took the task of conquering the whole of India.

Suggestion and arrangements were made to show Padmani in the mirror. After seeing Padmani through a mirror, the determination of Ala-ud-Din to have Padmani became all the greater and he made Ratan Singh a prisoner.

A message was sent to Padmani that her husband would be released if she agreed to come into the harem of Ala-ud-Din. Padmani sent the reply that she was coming with her attendants. 700 litters said to be carrying her attendants, but actually carrying brave Rajput warriors, entered the camp of Ala-ud-Din and rescued Rana Ratan Singh.

Thus, Ala-ud-Din was outwitted. Although Gora and Badal resisted the invaders at the outer gate of the fort of Chittor, they could not stand against the Delhi Army for long and thus Chittor was captured but before its fall, Padmani burnt herself and refused to fall into the hands of the Muslims.

About the story of Padmani, Gauri Shankar Ojha observes. Col. Tod has written this story on the authority of Bhatts of Mewar and the Bhats have taken it from Padmavat such being the case, Tod’s statement lacks conviction. If there is any basic fact (lit. root; jad) behind the statement of Tarikhi-Ferishta, Tod and Padmavat, it is this that Ala-ud-Din captured Chittor after a siege of six months, that its ruler Ratan Singh was killed in this fight with Lakshman Singh and that his queen Padmani died in the fire of Jauhar with several other ladies.”

Again, in the absence of history people accepted Padmavat as history. But in truth it is only a story in verse, like a modern historical novel, the structure of which rests upon these historical facts that Ratan Sen was the ruler of Chittor, Padmani was his queen and Ala-ud-Din was the Sultan of Delhi, who wrested the fort of Chittor from Ratan Sen (Ratan Singh) by fighting.”

However, Dr. K. R. Qanungo points out in “Studies in Rajput History” that Ojha is not clear on the point that Ratan Singh or Ratan Sen was killed in this fight not with Lakshman Singh but before. Ala-ud-Din wrested the fort of Chittor not from Ratan Sen but from Lakshman Singh. “Padmani was his (Ratan Sen’s) queen” has not been proved by Ojha to be a historical fact and in spite of that Ojha speaks in the indicative mood about the so called Padmani palace and Padmani tank of Chittor.

Dr. Qanungo rejects the story of Padmani as completely unhistorical. However, Dr. A. L. Shrivastava points out that those writers who regard the story of Padmani as unhistorical base their arguments on a superficial study of the writings of Amir Khusro. Amir Khusro does make a reference to the story of Padmani when he compares Ala-ud-Din with Solomon.

He refers to his Seba as being in the fort of Chittor. Amir Khusro describes himself as Hud-Hud which was the bird which brought the news of Bilquis, the queen of Seba, to Solomon. It is true that Malik Khusro has omitted many things which might have been disliked by his master Ala-ud-Din such as the murder of Jalal-ud-Din by Ala-ud-Din but it is too much to believe that the whole story of Padmani was concocted by Jayasi.

It cannot be denied that Jayasi derived the main story of his Padmavat from Khazain-ul-Futuh of Amir Khusro. The details of romance of Jayasi’s Padmavat may be imaginary but the main plot is most probably based on historical truth. Had there been no truth in the story, the Rajput bards would never have included it in their traditional songs, particularly when the whole story is a slur on the honour of the Rajputs.

The view of Dr. K. S. Lai is that the stories of Ferishta, Hajiuddabir and other later Persian Historians and the Hards of Rajputana, except in certain minor variations, closely resemble one another and seem to have drawn upon the Padmavat of Jaisi.

However, it is doubtful whether even Jaisi, while writing the Padmavat, ever meant to write about the life story of a princess of Chittor. At the end of his epic, Jaisi says: “In this epic, Chittor stands for the body, the Raja for the mind, Singhaldvip (Ceylon) for the heart, Padmani for wisdom and Sultan Ala-ud-Din for lust (Maya). The wise can understand what is meant by this love story.” From this remark of Jaisi, Dr. K. S. Lai has come to the conclusion that Jaisi was writing an allegory and not narrating a true historical event.

It may be that the selection of this particular theme may have been inspired by the tragic Jauhar of Chittor in Jaisi’s own times when Bahadur Shah of Gujarat invaded Chittor in the year 1534. Once Jaisi had written the romantic story, the Mohammadan historians of India who not infrequently copied verbatim from the Persian histories also, adopted this story in extenso.

The Padmavat was completed 224 years after the death of Ala-ud-Din and 237 years after eventful siege of Chittor and not a single historian or chronicler, Persian or Rajasthani, ever ote about Padmani before the Padmavat of Jaisi.

Dr. K. S. Lai points out that there is one fact which causes some hesitation in rejecting theory altogether. The Mewar tradition which accepts the story is a very old one, handed down m generation to generation and if Padmani’s episode was a mere literary concoction, it should t have gained so wide a currency in Rajputana.

However, the answer of Dr. K. S. Lai is that diction is not a very authentic source of history and it is not easy to say how old the Mewar edition is and whether it is older than the Padmavat of Jaisi. The baric chronicles were written long after the completion of the Padmavat and even Ferishta’s Tarikh and it cannot be said with ratably whether the bards based their accounts of Padmani on oral tradition or on the Padmavat Self.

It is probable that Jaisi may have struck at the plot of Padmavat from the terrible battle of “chittor just as Charles Dickens struck at the plot of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ from the extraordinary limes of the French Revolution. Regarding the wide currency it gained in Rajputana, the answer is at once such stories are in the air they are repeated everywhere with added incidents and suggestions.

The romantic story of Padmani got so much currency in India that not only Farishta d Hajiuddabir but even Manucci relates its incidents in connection with Akbar’s invasion of Chittor and says that Padmani was the queen of Raja Jaimal who was rescued from royal imprisonment through the stratagem of litters.

Against these confused and varied accounts is the testimony of the contemporary historians, poets and travelers, who never alluded to Padmani affair at all. All these historians and chroniclers cannot be accused of deliberately entering into a conspiracy of silence of the Chittor Episode.

Amir Khusro who accompanied the Sultan to Chittor has very fearlessly and even exaggeratingly given the details relating to the siege. How can it be said that such an incident as that of Padmani, if it really happened, escaped mention from his pen?

The story of Padmani is to be found in Jaisi’s Padmavat, in traditional lore and in those chronicles the accounts of which have borrowed it from the Padmavat and the traditions.

Tradition is no doubt a source of history but it is surely the weakest one and until it is corroborated by contemporary evidence-literary, historical, epigraphically and numismatic-it cannot be accepted as true history.

In the case of Padmani the antiquity of the tradition which furnishes the story is not known, while the story itself is a long one. But it cannot be accepted simply because it was so popular and for so long a time. To say that where so much is alleged, something must be true is not the historian’s habit.’