1883.] 
F. S. Growse —The town of Bulandshahr. 
285 
spicuous feature in any general view of the town, and the late Masum 
Ali Khan of Muradabad, whose son Munawar Ali Khan, being of weak 
intellect, is under the charge of the Court of Wards. The handsome range 
of shops in the market-place, built in 1882, is part of his estate. 
Of the Baranwalas, who adhered to the old faith, the most conspicuous 
person in the present century was Sital Das, who about the year 1830, 
built that portion of lower Bulandshahr which is known as Sital Ganj, and 
is now the property of his son Prem-sukh Das. 
In spite of the massacre and famine and wholesale expulsion of the 
inhabitants that took place in 1341, Zia-ud-din relates that his native 
town rapidly revived under the more benign sway of Firoz Shah. At some 
time during his reign, which lasted from 1351 to 1388, that Emperor founded 
Khurja, which has become the largest commercial mart in the neighbourhood; 
a part of it is still called Firoz Ganj. More than a century later, Sikandar 
Lodi, about the year 1500, founded what are now the two considerable 
towns of Sikandarabad and Shikarpur, at which latter place—as the name 
indicates—he had a small hunting-box for occasional residence. The only 
two other towns of any size in the district, Anupshahr and Jahangirabad, 
were founded later still, in the reign of Jahangir ; which shows, how 
essentially modern the present centres of population are, excepting only 
Bulandshahr itself and Dibhai: the latter is occasionally mentioned by 
the early Muhammadan historians as a muster-place for troops. 
The prosperity which the country had enjoyed during the long and set¬ 
tled reign of Firoz was followed by a series of fratricidal struggles between 
his sons and grandsons for the possession of the throne, and then by the ruin 
and rapine of foreign invasion. On the capture of Delhi by the Mughals 
in 1398, the puppet Emperor Mahmud fled away to Gujarat, while the 
Regent, Ikbal Khan, took refuge in the fort of Baran. Timur soon 
returned home with his plunder to Samarkand, and on his departure 
Nusrat Shah—also one of Firoz’s grandsons—marched up from Merath 
and re-occupied the ruins of the capital, whence he sent a large force 
“ under Shahab Khan to Baran to overpower Ikbal.* On the way, a band 
of Hindu foot-soldiers fell upon him in the night and killed him and 
dispersed his followers. As soon as Ikbal heard of this, and that the ele¬ 
phants also had been abandoned, he hastened to the spot and secured them. 
From that time his power and renown increased daily, and forces gathered 
round him, while Nusrat Khan grew weaker and weaker, so that after a 
stay of ten months he was able to leave Baran and recover possession of 
Delhi.” He also got into his hands the person of the Sultan Mahmud, 
whom he afterwards took to Kanauj and left there, while he himself 
* 
P P 
Tarikh i Mubarak Shah of Yuhya bin Ahmad. 
