Tamerlane in India - The slaughterer of Hindus in India

In 1938, Tamerlane, headless of the authority that the Abbasid Caliphs had bestowed upon the Tughlaqs, invaded the Indian Subcontinent. He made it clear in it, as India already had other Jihad leaders before him, that the invasion was all about Islam. At the fortress of Kator in Kashmir, he recounted with satisfaction, Tamerlane ordered the warriors of Jihad to kill all the men and make all the women and children prisoner and plunder all their property. Then he directed towers to be built on the mountain of the skulls of those obstinate unbelievers. At Bhatni, he made a great slaughter, as the Qur’an directs (8:67), at a Rajput fortress.

He wrote in his autobiography: “In a short space of time all the people in the fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers. They set fire to the houses and reduced them to ashes, and they razed the buildings and the fort to the ground.” At Sarsuti, he recounted, “all these infidel Hindus were slain, their wives and children were made prisoners and their property and their goods became the spoils the victors.”At Haryana, he told his men to “plunder and destroy and kill everyone whom they met.”

The jihadis obeyed; they “plundered every village, killed the men, and carried a number of Hindu prisoners, both male and female.” At Delhi, the warriors of jihad took some Muslim prisoners, which was understandable, since the city was the capital of the Tughlaq’s Delhi sultanate. Tamerlane commanded that the Muslim prisoners should be separated and saved, but the infidels should all be dispatched to hell with the proselytising sword.” Even when those prisoners had been killed, however, the immense success of Tamerlane’s jihad presented him with a problem: he had a hundred thousand Hindu prisoners. As he prepared to face an army of the Tughlaqs in an internecine jihad battle, his advisors told him “that on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolaters and enemies of Islam at liberty.”

Thus, “no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword.” Tamerlane recalls: “I proclaimed throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners should put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death. One hundred thousand infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasiruddin Umar, a counselor and man of learning who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives.” Tamerlane’s warriors defeated the Tughlaqs and found in Delhi that “a great number of Hindus with their wives and children, and goods and valuables, had come into the city from all the country round.”

He ordered them to be taken captive, and their property given to the Muslims. The Hindus set fire to their houses with their own hands, burned their wives and children in them and rushed into the fight and were killed. On that day, Thursday, and all the night of Friday, nearly 15,000 Turks were engaged in slaying, plundering and destroying. The following day, Saturday the 17th, all passed in the same way, and the spoil was so great that each man secured from fifty to a hundred prisoners, men, women, and children. There was no man who was less than twenty. The other booty was immense in rubies, diamonds, garnets, pearls, and other gems and jewels; ashrafis, tankas of gold and silver of the celebrated Alai coinage: vessels and silver ornaments of Hindu women were obtained in such quantities as to exceed all accounts. Except for the quarter of the Sayids, the ulama and other Musulmans, the whole city was sacked.