286 F. S. Growse —The town of Bulandshahr. [No. 3, 
reigned as the real sovereign of the country, till 1405, when he fell in 
battle at Multan. 
Two years later, viz., in 1407, Ibrahim Shah, the king of Jaunpur, 
marched up against Delhi, where Mahmud was then enthroned ; but hear¬ 
ing of disturbances at home he hastened back, leaving Marhaba Khan, 
a protegfi of Ikbal’s, with a small force, at Baran. After six months 
Mahmud marched from Delhi against Baran, and Marhaba Khan came 
out to meet him ; but in the battle that ensued he was beaten and driven 
back into the fort, where the Imperial troops followed and killed him. 
The next mention of Baran is in 1421, during the reign of Khizr 
Khan, the first of the Saiyid dynasty, when the Vazxr, Taj-ul-Mulk, march¬ 
ed through it on his way to suppress a rebellion in Kol and Etawa. Again, 
in 1434, after the assassination of Khizr’s successor, Mubarak Shah, 
an army of the Hindu Vazir’s, Sarwar-ul-Mulk, under the command of 
Kamal-ud-din, proceeding against Allah Dad, the chief of the insurgents, 
halted at Baran, the half-way station between the Jamuna and the Ganges. 
Allah Dad withdrew to Ahar, where the two generals came to an under¬ 
standing and turned their combined forces against the Yazir, whom they 
besieged in the fort of Delhi, where shortly afterwards he was slain in an 
attempt on the life of the Emperor Muhammad Shah. 
The earliest Persian inscription in Bulandshahr is a tablet let into 
the wall of the Id-gab, which records the construction of a mosque by 
Nek-bakht Khan, in the year 943 Uijri (1536 A. D.) in the reign of the 
Emperor Humayun and during the governorship “ of the chaste Bano 
Begam.” The fact of a female Governor is somewhat curious. At Til 
Begampur, fifteen miles north-west of Bulandshahr, is a bathing-well (or 
hdoli) with an inscription dated only two years later, viz., 1538, in which 
the local Governor’s name is given as Amir Fakir Ali Beg. As an I'd-gali 
would not be styled a mosque, the stone must have been brought from 
elsewhere, but probably from the immediate neighbourhood. Fragments 
of an Arabic inscription in Cufie characters have also been inserted in the same 
wall at regular distances, to serve as decorative panels, and the later Persian 
inscription seems to have been utilized with simply the same object. The 
appearance of this building, with its blackened and crumbling masonry, 
is scarcely creditable to the Muhammadan community, who should take 
some steps to clean and repair it. 
About 100 yards to the east of the Id-gah and the adjoining English 
cemetery, is a square-domed tomb of substantial brick masonry and some 
size, but no particular architectural merit, with a Persian inscription. This 
records its completion during the reign of the Emperor Akbar, in the year 
1006 Uijri (1597 A. D.) as a monument to the memory of Miyan Bahlol 
Khan Bahadur. He belonged to the Bahlim clan of Shaikhs, and his 
