He was a man of great learning, and a great patron of learned men; he was a great founder of churches, had prayers read in them at the prescribed times, and always went to prayers five times a day himself.[10] He was rigidly temperate himself in his habits, and discouraged all intemperance in others.  These things secured him panegyrists throughout the empire during the twenty-seven years that he reigned over it, though perhaps he was the most detestable tyrant that ever filled a throne.  He would take his armies out over the most populous and peaceful districts, and hunt down the innocent and unoffending people like wild beasts, and bring home their heads by thousands to hang them on the city gates for his mere amusement.  He twice made the whole people of the city of Delhi emigrate with him to Daulatabad in Southern India, which he wished to make the capital, from some foolish fancy; and during the whole of his reign gave evident signs of being in an unsound state of mind.[11] There was at the time of his father’s death a saint at Delhi named Nizamuddin Aulia, or the Saint, who was supposed by supernatural means to have driven from Delhi one night in a panic a large army of Moghals under Tarmasharin, who invaded India from Transoxiana in 1303, and laid close siege to the city of Delhi, in which the Emperor Ala-ud-din was shut up without troops to defend himself, his armies being engaged in Southern India.[12] It is very likely that he did strike this army with a panic by getting some of their leaders assassinated in one night.  He was supposed to have the ‘dast ul ghaib’, or supernatural purse’ [literally, ’invisible hand’], as his private expenditure is said to have been more lavish even than that of the Emperor himself, while he had no ostensible source of income whatever.  The Emperor was either jealous of his influence and display, or suspected him of dark crimes, and threatened to humble him when he returned to Delhi.  As he approached the city, the friends of the saint, knowing the resolute spirit of the Emperor, urged him to quit the capital, as he had been often heard to say, ’Let me but reach Delhi, and this proud priest shall be humbled’.

The only reply that the saint would ever deign to give from the time the imperial army left Bengal, till it was within one stage of the capital, was ‘Dihli dur ast’; ‘Delhi is still far off’.  This is now become a proverb over the East equivalent to our ’There is many a slip between the cup and the lip’.  It is probable that the saint had some understanding with the son in his plans for the murder of his father; it is possible that his numerous wandering disciples may in reality have been murderers and robbers, and that he could at any time have procured through them the assassination of the Emperor.  The Muhammadan Thugs, or assassins of India, certainly looked upon him as one of the great founders of their system, and used to make pilgrimages to his tomb as such; and, as he came originally from