The devastating raid of South India by Malik Kafur is best summed up in R C Majumdar’s words who characterizes it as being more “spectacular than eff… - Malik Kafur

The medieval historian, Ziauddin Barni described the invasion of Devagiri, Malik Naib Kafur reached Deogir and laid the country waste. He made Ramdeo and his sons prisoners, and took his treasures, as well as elephants. Great spoil fell into his hands .. and he returned with it triumphant to Dehli, carrying with him Ramdeo. The Sultan showed great favour to the Rai and sent him back in great honour ... to Deogir, which place he confirmed in his possession. The Rai was ever afterwards obedient, and sent his tribute regularly as long as he lived.

According to Amir Khusru ‘the Malik represented that on the coast of Ma’bar were 500 elephants, larger than those which had been presented to the Sultan from Arangal, and that when he was engaged in the conquest of that place he had thought of possessing himself of them and that now, as the wise determination of the king, he combined the extirpation of the idolaters with this object, he was more than ever rejoiced to enter on this grand enterprise.” Amir Khusru makes it appear that having seen all the country from the hills of Ghazni to the mouths of the Ganges reduced to subjection and having effectively destroyed the prevalence of the ‘Satanism’ of the Hindus by the destruction of their temples and providing in their stead places for the criers to prayers in mosques, Alau-d-din was consumed with the idea of spreading the light of the Muhammadan religion in the Dekhan and South India. According to the same authority Ma’bar was so distant from the city of Delhi ‘that a man travelling with all expedition could only reach it after a journey of twelve months,’ and there ‘ the arrow of any holy warrior had not yet reached.’ Apart from this statement of Amir Khusru, the object of this expedition is made quite clear in what he puts in the mouth of Malik Kafur himself that what he actually coveted were the elephants of better breed, and, what went along with them of course, other items of wealth.

J.L. Mehta characterizes Malik Kafur’s South Indian campaign as follows: Politically, his campaign to the far south proved a failure because both of the Pandya princes eluded him and none made a formal treaty of surrender nor recognized the paramountcy of Alauddin Khalji over the dominions of Madura. The campaign proved, however, most fruitful from the point of view of material gains; Malik Kafur returned to Delhi on October 18, 1311, with 612 elephants, 96,000 maunds of gold, 20,000 horses, and several chests of precious jewels and pearls. Amir Khusrau gives the weight of precious stones of incalculable value at 500 maunds.