An Expedition to Tibet.
There is a tradition in an old Muslim text that Bhaktiar Khilji, who famously conquered Bengal with 18 soldiers, later planned and executed an invasion of Tibet. The source for this tradition is most likely to be the The Tabaqat-i-Nasiri of Minhaj-ud-din . The same story has been repeated by the Riyazu-S-Salatin by Ghulam Husain Salim. This book was written at about the end of the eighteenth century and was used as a sourcebook for various Histories of Bengal written by the early British administrators. The book became available in English in 1902 when the Asiatic Society of Calcutta published a translation by Maulavi Abdus Salam who was a civil servant then posted in Cuttack. The story is interesting and bears repetition. Bhaktiar, fresh from his conquests in Bihar where he dealt the deathblow to the Nalanda University, decided in 1205 to invade Tibet. He led a force of cavalry 12000 strong to the mountains of North Bengal. The story goes that he was guided by a Koch warrior who ...