The year 1001A.D.saw the first inroad into India of the Muhammadans from over the north-west border,under their great leader Mahmud of Ghazni.He invaded first the plains of the Panjab,then Multan,and afterwards other places.Year after year he pressed forward and again retired.In 1021he was at Kalinga;in 1023in Kathiawar;but in no case did he make good his foothold on the country.His expeditions were raids and nothing more.Other invasions,however,followed in quick succession,and after the lapse of two centuries the Muhammadans were firmly and permanently established at Delhi.War followed war,and from that period Northern India knew no rest.At the end of the thirteenth century the Muhammadans began to press southwards into the Dakhan.In 1293Ala-ud-din Khilji,nephew of the king of Delhi,captured Devagiri.Four years later Gujarat was attacked.In 1303the reduction of Warangal was attempted.In 1306there was a fresh expedition to Devagiri.In 1309Malik Kafur,the celebrated general,with an immense force swept into the Dakhan and captured Warangal.The old capital of the Hoysala Ballalas at Dvarasamudra was taken in 1310,and Malik Kafur went to the Malabar coast where he erected a mosque,and afterwards returned to his master with enormous booty.[6]
Fresh fighting took place in 1312.Six years later Mubarak of Delhi marched to Devagiri and inhumanly flayed alive its unfortunate prince,Haripala Deva,setting up his head at the gate of his own city.In 1323Warangal fell.
Thus the period at which our history opens,about the year 1330,found the whole of Northern India down to the Vindhya mountains firmly under Moslem rule,while the followers of that faith had overrun the Dakhan and were threatening the south with the same fate.South of the Krishna the whole country was still under Hindu domination,but the supremacy of the old dynasties was shaken to its base by the rapidly advancing terror from the north.With the accession in 1325of Muhammad Taghlaq of Delhi things became worse still.Marvellous stories of his extraordinary proceedings circulated amongst the inhabitants of the Peninsula,and there seemed to be no bound to his intolerance,ambition,and ferocity.