1892.] H. G. Raverty —The Mihran of Sind and its Tributaries. 
281 
Amir Timur having gained possession of Tulanbah, together with 
its hisdr or fortress, 247 moved from thence, and the next day encamped 
near a great chdl , kol-i-db, or lake, near the banks of the Biah, and near 
the mauza ’ of Shah Nawaz, on or close to which chdl, the Khokhar chief, 
Nusrat [brother of Shaikha, previously mentioned] had fortified himself. 
This chdl or lake, so styled, appears to have been what is called in 
the Panj-ab and Sind, a dhand. There is one still thereabouts, close to 
the old bed of the Biah, about thirty miles south-east of Multan, but, at 
the period of Amir Timur’s invasion, it appears to have extended much 
farther towards the north-east than at present, and was of great extent 
and considerable depth. 218 Amir Timur was in these parts just at the 
beginning of the year 801 H. (The year began 12th September, 1398 
A. D.) ; for he crossed the Ohin-ab on the 2nd of October of that year 
(1398 A. D.). All the rivers of this part are at their full in August in 
the present day ; and the above shows what changes have taken place. 
One would scarcely attempt to bridge the united Jihlam and Ohin-ab 
247 The town and fortress was surrendered on the 1st of Safar, 801 H., without 
any opposition whatever. There was, in fact, no one able to oppose him. 
Cunningham, in his “ Ancient Geography of India,” says (p. 224), that Tulamba 
must have had a remarkably strong fortress, “as Timur left it untouched, because 
its siege would have delayed his progress,” and Briggs’s ‘Ferishta’ is quoted. On 
the next page he says, “ The old town was plundered and burnt by Timur, and its 
inhabitants massacred, but the fortress escaped his fury, partly owing to its own 
strength and partly to the invader s impatience, etc., etc. 
The Malfuzat-i-Timurl says, that the chief people of Tulanbah presented them¬ 
selves in the Amir’s camp before he reached that town, and that the sum of two 
lakhs of rtipis had been fixed as an indemnity for sparing the place ; and Sayyids 
and ’Ulama were exempted from payment. There was no opposition whatever. 
Provisions being exceedingly scarce, Amir Timur wished the people to pay the 
ransom in corn instead of money, but they refused to do so ; and a large body of 
fresh troops having arrived in the mean time, but, unaware that teims had been 
concluded, and being distressed for want of food, entered the place and began to help 
themselves. As soon as intimation was brought to Timur of these doings, he says : 
“ I gave orders to the Taivdchis and Sazdwals to expel those troops from the town, 
and commanded that whatever corn they had plundered or property seized, should 
be taken as an equivalent for so much of the ransom.” I think most troops would 
have acted in just the same manner. No people were massacred, nor was the place 
burnt, but some of the refractory inhabitants of the parts around, who, after first 
submitting of their own accord to his grandson, Pir Muhammad the previous year, 
on his march to Multan, and had acted in a rebellious manner after, and massacred 
some of his men, were punished. A detachment was sent against them, and they 
were harried, the men killed, and their families and cattle were brought in, and were 
distributed among the soldiery. Most European generals and their troops would 
have acted in m°uch the same fashion and punished the “ rebels,” I expect, in the 
fourteenth century, as well as in the nineteenth. 
243 gee note 192, page 244. 
