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From the time of the massive Islamic invasions of India by Mohammed Qasem (712 A.D.), Mohammed Ghazni and Mohammed Ghori, break away Muslim freebooters kept on pushing into and penetrating different regions to lodge themselves there as so many menacing viruses. One such was Farid Khan, an Afghan who later came to be known as Sher Shah.
An account of his rise to power, since he happened to dislodge and displace the Moghul emperor Humayun for a brief 5-year period, was written a generation later by Abbas Khan (son of Shaikh Ali Sarwani) at the command of emperor Akbar. That chronicle is since known as Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi. The author was related by marriage with the family of Sher Shah. Copies of that work transcribed in hand from time to time differ in content considerably from one another.
Farid Khan's grandfather Ibrahim Khan Sur accompanied by his son, Hasan Khan, came to Hindusthan from a place called Shargari in the Afghani tongue and Rohri in Multani language, during the reign of Bahlol Lodi.
Farid Khan's father Hasan Khan entered the service of Masnad-i- Ali Umar Khan Sarwani Kalkapur who bore the title Khan-i-Azam and was a counselor and courtier of Sultan Bahlol.
As an impressionable lad Farid Khan was witnessing all around him how elder Muslim marauders were raping, plundering, massacring and torturing Hindus to convert them to Islam. He was therefore chafing to open his own account as a participant in the general Muslim rape and rapine of Hindus and Hindusthan.
Young Farid Khan began to pester his own parents to persuade any established Muslim marauder to take him as an aspiring apprentice. Accordingly, Masnad-i-Ali Umar Khan was persuaded to employ Farid Khan. The latter was taken as a retainer and given a village known as Balhu so that he may earn his living as a Muslim brigand by extracting everything he needed by threatening and coercing defenseless Hindu villagers.
Both Hasan Khan the father and son Farid Khan were growing in power and status commanding more and more men and territory. The father Hasan Khan was now a fief-holder of the regions of Sahasram (in Bihar), Hajipur and Tanda (near Benares) to be able to maintain a cavalry of 500 horsemen.
Author : Shri Purushottam Nagesh Oak
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