288 H. Blochmann —Geography and History of Bengal. —No. II. [No. 3, 
but “ people shut their eyes at him,” and he shrank from the cares and 
anxieties with which he saw the proffered crown surrounded. If Amir 
Khusrau had not immortalized him in his ‘ Qiran-ussa’dain,’ which describes 
the meeting between Bughra Khan and his son and emperor Ivai Qubad at 
the banks of the Sarju, the then frontier between Bengal and Dihli, he 
would have sunk immediately after his appointment as governor of Lak’h- 
nauti into utter oblivion. Even the death of his son Kai Qubad and the 
accession in 6S9 (A. D. 1290) of Sultan Jalaluddin Firuz Shah, when the 
Turks went out and the Khiljis came in, did not rouse Bughra Khan to 
assert the hereditary rights of his family ; and nothing shews better the 
contempt in which the king of Bengal was held at Dihli than Jalaluddin’s 
mode of disposing of the dacoits captured in the Dihli territory.* 
Nayiruddin Bughra Khan appears to have died in 690 or 691 (A. D. 
1291 or 1292) ; for in 691 we find that his son Buknuddin reigned as king 
of Bengal under the name of Sultan Kai Kaus. He is the first independ¬ 
ent Muhammadan king of Bengal, whose authority was not disputed. 
From inscriptions found in Gangarampur, near Dinajpur, and Kagol, near 
Lak’hi Sarai in Bihar, we know that he was still alive in 697 (A. D. 1297), 
but the year of his death is not known.f For the four years from 698 to 
701 (A. D. 1298 to 1301) we possess neither medallic nor mural evidence. 
In 702 (A. D. 1302-3), however, we find the brother of Kai Kaus reigning 
in Bengal under the name of Shamsuddin Firuz Shah I.J His reign ap¬ 
pears to have been a prosperous one. He had several sons, of whom we 
know the names of five, viz., Bughra Khan (so called according to Muham¬ 
madan custom after his grandfather), Na^iruddin, Ghiyasuddin or Bahadur 
Khan, Qutlu Khan, and Hatim Khan. The third son, Ghiyasuddin, appears 
to have made conquests in Eastern Bengal. He established himself at Sunar- 
gaon under the name of Bahadur Shah, and struck coins with his name from 
1311, if not earlier. There may be some truth in the ill attested statement 
of a later historian that Bahadur Shah had the moral support of ’Alauddin 
Khilji, whose interest it was-to have neighbours divided against themselves. 
The fifth son, Hatim Khan, was in 1309 and 1315, and very likely also 
during the intermediate years, governor of Bihar. The ruins of his palace 
in the town of Bihar still exist. Several families claim descent from him, 
* He sent them by shiploads into Bengal, where he let them loose. Barani, p. 189. 
That Bengal was completely severed from the Dihli empire is clear from the omis¬ 
sion of the Bengal Balbanis from the lists of imperial commanders which Barani gives in 
the beginning of the reigns of the Khiljis. 
f It was during his reign that Prince ’Alauddin meditated a descent on Lak’hnauti ; 
hut he ultimately directed his plundering expedition to the Dak’bin. 
X Ibn Batutah calls him merely Shamsuddin. Vide the extract from the French 
translation in Thomas, Chronicles, p. 147; and Lee’s translation, p. 128. 
