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.