PREFACE. In this volume the history of Muhammadan rule in India is commenced. The first volume was, from the nature of the materials, introductory in its character; this opens with the accounts of the earliest inroads of the Ghaznivide conquerors. The copious extracts which it brings together from the oldest and most approved of the native historians supply ample means for tracing the rise and progress of that power which was destined to bring the whole peninsula under its sway, and to stand for seven centuries a conspicuous and brilliant example of the strength and weakness, the crimes, vices, and occasional virtues of Musulmán despotism. The history is here carried down to the year 1260 A.D., embracing the consecutive annals of the Ghaznivides, the Ghorians, and the Slave Kings, as far as the end of the reign of Násiru-d dín. The lives of the other Slave Kings will be drawn from the Tárikh-i Firoz Sháhí of Zíáu-d dín Barní, which, as its name implies, is a work more particularly devoted to the reign of Fíroz |