In the subsequent mining which became necessary to reduce the fort, Sher-Shâh was blown to bits in an explosion of a powder magazine that had not been properly secured. Despite his treachery, he did much for India in the way of public works. The caravanserais, the wells which still stud the course of the high road from Bengal to the Indus, are of his building; and the very trees which shade the weary traveller in the long marching, if not of his planting, stand in the places of those which he watered with care. He reigned five years, and left two sons. The elder and rightful heir preferred obscurity to prolonged battle for the crown, and after a while disappeared and was no more heard of, leaving Islâm-Shâh, or, as he is called by a mispronunciation, Salîm-Shâh, to follow in his father's treacherous footsteps. The most noteworthy event in his reign was the insurrection of the Mâhdi sect, led by one Ilâhi. The tenets of their faith seem to have been curiously destructive of each other. Neither their profession of predestination nor their pure socialism prevented them from going about armed, meting out lynch-law to all and sundry whom they deemed to be disobeying any divine law. They must have been uncomfortable people to deal with, but the faith spread to such alarming proportions, that Salîm-Shâh finally called a Court of Arches to decide whether "Ilâhi's pertinaciously disrespectful manner to the king was consistent with his situation as a subject, or was enjoined by any precept of the Koran?" He was subsequently tried on the accusation of presuming to personate the Great Mâhdi--for whose advent all pious Mahomedans look--condemned, and refusing to abjure his faith, was brought up for punishment, though at the time suffering from the plague which was then raging. He died under the third lash. Almost immediately after this, Salîm-Shâh himself died, when his cousin Mobârik succeeded by a singularly brutal murder. Prince Ferôze, Salîm-Shâh's son, was then twelve years old. His mother, Bibi Bhâi, was Mobârik's sister, and devoted to her dissolute, pleasure-loving brother, whose life she had begged of the king. Notwithstanding this, immediately on the latter's death Mobârik entered the harem, tore the wretched boy from his mother's very arms, and killed him with his own hand. Fraternal affection with a vengeance. His subsequent career was in keeping with this initial act. Sensual to a degree and absolutely illiterate, he set a Hindu usurer called Hemu at the head of affairs, and contented himself with remaining in the harem, and parading the city with pomp, surrounded by a body of archers, whose duty it was to discharge gold-headed arrows worth ten or twelve rupees each amongst the crowd; the scramble for them amusing the jaded satiety of this truly Eastern potentate. He succeeded in A.D. 1552, and for two years the throne was the centre of a perfect anarchy of revolt.