From so terrific a blow Delhi was slow to recover.  A group of picturesque domes marks the resting-place of some of the Seyyid and Lodi kings who in turn ruled or misruled the shrunken dominions which still owned allegiance to Delhi.  The achievement of a centralised Mahomedan empire was delayed for nearly two centuries.  But the aggressive vitality of Islam had not been arrested, and out of the anarchy which followed Timur’s meteoric raid Mahomedan soldiers of fortune built up for themselves independent kingdoms and principalities and founded dynasties which each had their own brief moment of power and magnificence.  In all these states, which spread right across Middle India from the Arabian Sea to the Gulf of Bengal, Islam remained the dominant power; but, even whilst trampling upon Hinduism, it did not escape altogether the inevitable results of increasing contact with an older and more refined civilisation.  Amidst rapine and bloodshed and the constant clash of arms, it was a period of intense artistic activity which, as usual in the countries conquered by Islam, expressed itself chiefly in terms of stone and marble, and though Hinduism never triumphed as classical paganism, for instance, triumphed for a time in Papal Rome, the steady and all-pervading revival of its influence can be traced from capital to capital, wherever these Mahomedan podestas established their seat of government during that Indian Cinque Cento, which corresponds in time with, and recalls in many ways, though at best distantly, the Italian Cinque Cento, with its strange blend of refined luxury and cruelty, of high artistic achievement and moral depravity.

To the present day almost all those cities—­some of them now mere cities of the dead, such as Golconda and Gaur and Mandu, some, such as Bijapur and Bidar and Ahmednagar and Ahmedabad, still living and even flourishing—­bear witness to the genius of their makers.  From motives of political expediency, the Mahomedan rulers of those days, whether Bahmanis or Ahmed Shahis or Adil Shahis or whatever else they were called, were fain to reckon with their Hindu subjects.  Wholesale conversions to the creed of the conquerors, whether spontaneous or compulsory, introduced new elements into the ruling race itself; for converted Hindus, even when they rose to high positions of trust, retained many of their own customs and traditions.  Differences of religion ceased to be a complete bar to matrimonial and other alliances between Mahomedans and Hindus.  Even in war Mahomedan mercenaries took service with Hindu chiefs, and Hindus under Mahomedan captains.  There was thus, if not a fusion, a gradual mingling of the Mahomedan and Hindu populations which, in spite of many fierce conflicts, tended to promote a new modus vivendi between them.  It was a period of transition from the era of mere ruthless conquest, which Timur’s tempestuous irruption brought practically to a close, to the era of constructive statesmanship, which it was reserved to Akbar, the greatest of the Moghul Emperors, to inaugurate.