THE TRAMP OF CENTURIES 17

of cavalry and passing through Kabul came down
through the Khyber Pass as far as Delhi, which he sacked
for five days and where he massacred 100,000 male Hindu
prisoners of war, building a tower out of their skulls.
** After him/' to quote Fielding King Hall, " not a bird
moved wing for whole two months in Delhi." His
ostensible reason for the expedition was the fact that as
a strict Muslim he was " disgusted by the tolerance which
the then Mohammedan rulers of Delhi were extending
towards Hinduism ".*

During Akbar's well-ordered and tolerant reign, East-
ern Baluchistan and the great Persian fortress of Kandahar
were added to the northern dominions and continued to
form part of the Moghal Empire till after the reign of
Aurangazeb. During the latter's reign and towards the
close of his father Emperor Shah Jehan's reign, trouble
arose beyond the Indus due to the Yusufzai rising and
the rising of the Khattaks respectively, and was put down
by sending out retaliatory columns against them. After
the initial reverse of the Moghal arms, the Khattaks joined
the Afridi confederacy and there was a general rising
" from Kandahar to Attock ". The Emperor himself con-
ducted operations (1664 A.D.) to reduce theYusufzais-and
" by skilful diplomacy contrived to bring the situation well
in hand ". His policy, which was the precursor of the
policy later followed by the British Government, was " to
set one tribe against another and to subsidize their chiefs
into keeping peace on the Frontier, where the establish-
ment of military posts proved less effective J'.f

Nadir Shah, the Persian monarch, overran the Frontier
province in 1739 A.D. when he crossed the Indus, just as
Timur the Lame had done in 1388, carrying fire and sword
wherever he went. After his assassination in 1739
Ahmed Shah Abdali (1747-1773) formed the Provin-
ces of Kandahar, Kabul and Ghazni, along with the area

* Cited by Fielding King Hall in Thirty Days of India, p. 1SS.
fDewan Chand Obhrai: The Evolution of North-West Frontier
Province, p. 23.