e must have been in a very rude state when they were
raised. Domestic architecture must have been wretched in the extreme.
The buildings are all of stone, and almost all without cement, and
seem to have been raised by giants, and for giants, whose arms were
against everybody, and everybody's arm against them. This was indeed
the state of the Pathan sovereigns in India--they were the creatures
of their armies; and their armies were also employed against the
people, who feared and detested them all.[6]

The Emperor Tughlak, on his return at the head of the army, which he
had led into Bengal to chastise some rebellious subjects, was met at
Afghanpur by his eldest son, Juna, whom he had left in the government
of the capital. The prince had in three days raised here a palace of
wood for a grand entertainment to do honour to his father's return;
and when the Emperor signified his wish to retire, all the courtiers
rushed out before him to be in attendance, and among the rest, Juna
himself. Five attendants only remained when the Emperor rose from his
seat, and at that moment the building fell in and crushed them and
their master. Juna had been sent at the head of an army into the
Deccan, where he collected immense wealth from the plunder of the
palaces of princes and the temples of their priests, the only places
in which much wealth was to be found in those days. This wealth he
tried to conceal from his father, whose death he probably thus
contrived, that he might the sooner have the free enjoyment of it
with unlimited power.[7]

Only thirty years before, Ala-ud-din, returning in the same manner at
the head of an army from the Deccan loaded with wealth, murdered the
Emperor Firoz the Second, the father of his wife, and ascended the
throne.[8] Juna ascended the throne under the name of Muhammad the
Third;[9] and, after the remains of his father had been deposited in
the tomb I have described, he passed in great pomp and splendour from
the fortress of Tughlakabad, which his father had just then
completed, to the city in which the Minar stands, with elephants
before and behind loaded with gold and silver coins, which were
scattered among the crowd, who everywhere hailed him with shouts of
joy. The roads were covered with flowers, the houses adorned with the
richest stuffs, and the streets resounded with music.

He was a man of great learning, and a great patron of learned men; he
was a great founder of churches, had prayers rea