Malik Kafur

Malik Kafur (died 1316) was the slave-general and viceroy of Alauddin Khalji, sultan of Delhi ¹. The English article gives no birth year for him, and none is built in this record ¹. He was of Hindu descent and converted to Islam after his capture in 1299, a conversion the Urdu article also states ^{1 2}. Because no text names a legal school or an order for him, his faith is recorded as unknown, with the conversion stated in full ¹.

He was a eunuch slave of a Khwaja of Khambhat, said to have been bought for a thousand dinars, from which came his epithet Hazar-Dinari ¹. During the Delhi army's invasion of Gujarat in 1299, Nusrat Khan captured him at Khambhat ³. He was presented to Alauddin at Delhi and rose in the sultan's service ¹.

As Alauddin's commander he defeated the Mongol invaders in 1306 ³. He then led the sultanate's great expeditions into the south — against Devagiri in 1308, Warangal in 1310, Dwarasamudra in 1311 and the Pandya country in the far south ¹. He was made governor of Devagiri from 1313 to 1315 ¹.

Recalled to Delhi, he became na'ib — viceroy — of the sultanate in 1315 ¹. Within weeks of Alauddin's death he was assassinated at Delhi by the late sultan's former bodyguards, about 11 February 1316 ¹.