Entire extract is from the book 📚 📖 Land of the Two Rivers 🏺 Nitish Sengupta 🪶I changed a few words to take care of the word limit and used adobe scan directly from the book which mixed up few words/blank spaces. (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1449637721220128771)
Turkish Invasion The Kingdom of Gaur under Early Turkish Ruler asfter his daring conquest of Nadia, Bakhtiar Khilji had a very a short-life. He occupied Gaur or Lakhnaoti, the western capital of the Sena dynasty. He spent the next two years consolidating his new kingdom and divided it into several administrative units, each in charge of a Turk or Khilji commander. He built many mosques and madrasas and converted many Hindus to Islam.
But he suddenly developed a quixotic vision of conquering distant and mysterious Tibet. He marched along the Brahmaputra River guided by one Ali, a Mech tribal leader, who had presumably been converted to Islam. He marched up to the sub-Himalayan hills where there was a stone bridge with twelve arches across the river, perhaps the present Teesta River.
He also got in touch with the king of Kamrup (Assam), requesting him to join in a combined invasion of Tibet. Kamrup king asked him to wait till the next year when he could also join this campaign. But Bakhtiar Khilji was impatient. He crossed the bridge and started a march along the Teesta Valley to Sikkim. After marching for fifteen days Bakhtiar reached Tibet by the Chumbi Valley. He started looting Tibetan villages. The Tibetans in turn inflicted heavy casualties on Bakhtiar’s forces.
Bakhtiar then decided to withdraw to Bengal but all along the escape route, the hilly forces carried on a relentless guerrilla-style attack on Turkish army. The raids turned into a route and Bakhtiar’s soldiers were forced to kill their own horsesfor food. After reaching the stone bridge at the foothills, he found that the Kamrup forces had destroyed a number of arches in the bridge. It was difficult to cross the river and Bakhtiar took shelter in a nearby temple where they were surrounded by the Assamese.
Bakhtiar then made a desperate bid to cross the bridge with his men and horses at a point where the river, from the looks of it was shallow. But the depth was actually very deep. The Turkish army lost many men and also their horses. With only about a hundred men left, Bakhtiar reached the otherside of the river where his old friend Ali met him and guided him back to Devkot.
By now Bakhtiar’s authority was challenged by many of his followers and in a few days he was assassinated. A merciful knife ended the agony of his last defeat. No turkic army ever dared to cross the Teesta again.