The Institutes of Akbar 135.6.6

135.6.6

He even asked His Majesty what he was to do with his beard, when he was told to let it be. On the same day, Mullá Taqí of Shúshtar joined, who looks upon himself as the learned of all learned, and is just now engaged in rendering the Sháhnámah into prose, according to the wishes of the emperor, using the phrase jallat ’asmatuhu wa ’azza shánuhu, wherever the word Sun occurs. Among others that joined were Shaikhzádah Gosálah Khán of Banáras; Mullá Sháh Muhammad of Sháhábád; and Cúfí Ahmad, who claimed to belong to the progeny of the famous Muhammad Ghaus. They all accepted the four degrees of faith, and received appointments as Commanders from One Hundred to Five Hundred, gave up their beards agreeably to the rules, and thus looked like the youths in Paradise. The words mútarásh-i chand, or ‘several shavers’, express the táríkh of this event (1004). The new candidates behaved like Hindus that turn Muhammadan, or like those who are dressed in red clothes, and look in their joy towards their relations, who say to them, ‘My dear little man, these rags will be old to-morrow, but the Islám will still remain on your neck.’ This Ahmad, ‘the little Cúfí’, is the same who claimed to be the pupil, or rather the perfect successor, of Shaikh Ahmad of Egypt.