التاريخ اليميني

Mention was made earlier, at the beginning of this book, of the Amīr Khalaf ibn Aḥmad, in connection with what the Rightly-Guided Manṣūr ibn Nūḥ saw fit to do in restoring him to his house and giving him the upper hand over his adversary, until the meteors of discord came crashing down upon Khurāsān; the preoccupation of its governors with the calamities that befell them from it left him free to rest and settle at ease, and to strengthen himself with the various kinds of revenue that the land of Sijistān yielded him, until the compass of his ambition widened to seek superfluities and to contend with the stallions and champions.

When the Amīr Nāṣir al-Dīn Sebüktigin set out to engage the king of Hind as he came pressing upon the borders of Islam, as the opening of this book has related, Khalaf ibn Aḥmad seized the opportunity of Bust being bereft of its guards and empty of its garrison, and sent against it by night men who broke open its egg and deflowered its maidenhood, turned the allegiance there away from [its rightful lord], and plunged his hand into its wealth, collecting it and hoarding it up. When God gave Nāṣir al-Dīn victory over the accursed infidel, he turned his reins toward Bust, indignant at Khalaf's treachery and resentful of his bad [109b] faith; and Khalaf ibn Aḥmad's men shielded themselves from him by showing their backs in disgrace, turning tail in flight and abasement. Nāṣir al-Dīn Sebüktigin resolved to rise against him and sought God's guidance about engaging him in battle; whereupon Khalaf sent him someone to explain away that expedition as his concern, in keeping with the bond of loyalty, to protect his province, to guarantee the settlement of what had come into his revenue, and to offer voluntarily an extra sum to stand as compensation for his offence, so as to avert the heavy tread [of Sebüktigin's army] upon his territories and to shield himself from the shame of exposure in fighting him. Nāṣir al-Dīn feigned not to notice the evil of his treachery, restraining the hand of power and contenting himself with the humility of his apology; [his case in this was as Abū Tammām said:

The dull man is not the lord among his people, / but the lord of his people is he who feigns not to notice.]

Then he demanded that he settle the money, until he paid it, and he took hostages for it as a pledge of some of his goodwill. Relations between them [thereafter] rested on a general footing of peace, until there occurred the affair of Abū ʿAlī ibn Sīmjūr in the clash that befell him at the gate of Nīshāpūr, as related earlier. [Khalaf] then showed eagerness to win favour with Nāṣir al-Dīn by helping him against his adversary and aiding him in person together with all his people, making a show of obliging him by open support, while secretly harbouring the wish to take revenge on Abū ʿAlī through this ready help and dazzling strength, since [Abū ʿAlī] had wronged him by setting out to besiege him, attacking him [110a] in the heart of his own home and constraining him with the swords of his supporters.

He accompanied him to Būshanj with all his partisans and followers; then Nāṣir al-Dīn Sebüktigin left him behind there, to spare him the burden of travel and to keep him out of the path of danger, and marched to Ṭūs to engage Abū ʿAlī and to seek the vengeance that had lain dormant with him. When he had driven him off and shaken his hand free of the business of that war, he sent Khalaf ibn Aḥmad's men back to him laden with dazzling favours and adorned with splendid robes of honour, preceded by mounts and led horses and followed by fine camels and precious gifts.

They returned and praised him as he deserved; / and had they kept silent, the saddlebags would have praised him.

On that account the watering-place of relations between them was cleared of the mote of dissimulation and freed of the scum of deceit and duplicity, until the Amīr Nāṣir al-Dīn Sebüktigin crossed the river into Transoxiana to repel Ilek Khān from the province of al-Riḍā, either by the gentleness of good counsel or by the violence of combat. Then the circumstances obliged him to concede some of those lands to [Ilek Khān], on condition that the rest be surrendered to him, and that its nomads and settled folk be safe from the harm of plunder.

Meanwhile there reached him word of Khalaf ibn Aḥmad's correspondence with Ilek Khān, sharpening his edge and inciting him to make war on him, in hope of [gaining] Bust and its districts, and Ghazna and what lies around it. [110b] To this were added reports and stinging remarks that flashed toward him from [Khalaf's] side concerning the affair of Abū ʿAlī: his professing regret for having helped him against [Abū ʿAlī], and his declaring openly before witnesses, by way of insinuation, that the destruction of kings is ill-omened, that the violation of noble houses is base, and a well-known weakness of judgement.

Nāṣir al-Dīn flew into the utmost rage, and the pride of power urged him to hasten to the land of Sijistān to quench his burning thirst and cure the inward malady. But his secretary Abū al-Fatḥ [ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad] al-Bustī turned him from what he intended with gentle words and counsel aided by success, sprinkling the water of tact upon that blaze. He showed him that some of the reports were false, and that the one who accepts them, like the one who utters them, is held to account and burdened with guilt for them; that the hearts of men are shy wild beasts and birds swimming in the seas of the air, which can be caught only by employing stratagems in setting snares, loosing hunting animals, shooting pellets and scattering grain and food, and yet nothing is easier than for them to slip from the hunter's net and escape the fowler's snare; likewise hearts are caught only with the snares of benefactions and kindnesses, led only by the reins of favours and bounties, and won only by lavishing inherited and newly acquired wealth. Then [111a] a harsh word stirs up what is tranquil among them, scares off what has alighted, and muddies their watering-places for them. And he recited to him the words of God Most High: "O you who believe, if an evildoer brings you news, verify it, lest you harm a people in ignorance and then come to regret what you have done." Then he explained it, until [Sebüktigin] dismounted from the back of haste onto the ground of deliberation.

Abū al-Fatḥ al-Bustī recited to me verses of his own explaining what passed between him and Nāṣir al-Dīn:

If you wish to capture the love of a man of understanding / and possess the precinct of his heart and its inmost core,

make him a partner in the good with which you have been provided, / and draw him by kindness into the snare of love.

Do you not see the birds of the air swooping low / for grain like drops pouring from the heights of the sky?

So too the man of judgement and intelligence does not capture / the loves of hearts' kernels without grain.

After that Khalaf ibn Aḥmad wrote disavowing what had been attributed to him and clearing himself of what he was blamed for. Nāṣir al-Dīn pardoned what had rankled in his breast concerning him, and overlooked what he had drawn from the well of his heart and the pool of his treachery, and for the rest of his life he remained steadfast in humouring and treating him kindly, until certainty came to him from his Lord and he passed into the neighbourhood of His mercy and forgiveness.

The Sultan Yamīn al-Dawla wa-Amīn al-Milla learned that [111b] [Khalaf] had loosed the girdle of sobriety by showing malicious joy, and he called to mind the words of the poet:

Say to him who wishes for the opposite of what has passed: / Prepare yourself for another like it — it is as good as come.

Then he kept it hidden within himself, awaiting the appointed moment of opportunity to strike at him and take satisfaction from him, until he inherited the kingdom of Khurāsān with its borders clear of the dust of dissent and its horizons free of the dust of discord.

Now, at the time when the Sultan rose to secure the kingdom for himself, Khalaf ibn Aḥmad had sent his son Ṭāhir to Quhistān, which he took; then he turned from there to Būshanj and seized it. Harāt and Būshanj had been assigned to Bughrājuq, the brother of Nāṣir al-Dīn, and when God had relieved the Sultan of the burdens of those great battles, his uncle came to him asking leave to drive the usurper out of his province and to blunt the edge of his renewed aggression. He gave him leave, and he set out; and when he drew near Būshanj, Ṭāhir ibn Khalaf met him with the host that followed him, clad in iron. They fought hand to hand, cleaving heads along the lines of their partings, slicing bodies at the waist where the belts lie, drawing up souls with the ropes of spears, and mowing [112a] heads with swords like the swords of the Rūs. Then they charged one another, and right wings swept away left wings, and left wings right wings. Ṭāhir was routed and fled before him, and Bughrājuq followed, driving him on like a fleeing ostrich.

Before girding himself for battle, Bughrājuq had taken cups [whose potency had lulled the eye of reason to sleep and quickly clouded his hope, so that] the eyes of thrust and blow might be roused by them. Two fires, of wine and of valour, combined against him, until through them he neglected the safeguard of readiness and forgot the insight of caution and vigilance; he risked himself in pursuing his foe, deluded by the fancy of his drunkenness, and was aware of nothing until Ṭāhir ibn Khalaf wheeled upon him with a blow that struck him dead on the spot. At once someone dismounted to him and cut off the head from between the neck-veins. Rout then overtook both sides alike, so that [the slayer could not be told from the slain, nor] the victor from the vanquished, nor the despoiler from the despoiled—except Ibn Khalaf, who followed in the tracks of his broken troops with those who brought them back to his quarters.

The bearer of the death-news reached the Sultan, and the loss of his uncle grieved him as a father is grieved by the loss of his only son, or a son by the loss of his father's brother. From what had befallen at Ibn Khalaf's hands he inferred that misery was closing [112b] in on him and his father and that calamity would engulf him and those about him; and he surmised that the cow digs up the knife with her horns, that the ant is doomed when her wings sprout, and that were the moth wise, [it would not, as long as it lived, make its way] to the light of a fire, nor rush headlong into a place of ruin:

The Persians have made a proverb current in their tales, / and the non-Arabs have a proverb from their days:

They say that when a camel's death is near, / it circles the well until the camel perishes.

In the months of the year 390 the Sultan advanced against Khalaf ibn Aḥmad, who had shut himself up in the fortress of Iṣbahbadh—a castle between which and the course of the stars lay but two bow-lengths, nay, two arrow-lengths; eyes fall short of its heights and birds are bewildered before its summits. He besieged him there, barred from freedom of choice, afflicted with dire necessity, robbed of the comfort of rest and the pleasure of sleep, until terror emptied his heart and his spirit bade farewell to ease. Then he resigned himself to submission and obedience, displayed humility and abasement, and asked, as a wretched supplicant asks, that the noose round his throat be loosened and the rope of his oppression slackened, on condition that he ransom himself with a hundred thousand [113a] dinars, together with suitable service, gifts scattered in tribute, rarities and presents. The Sultan granted what he requested, appointed someone to exact the money until he had collected it in full, and left him as he was, in the captivity of the siege and the grip of bondage. He intended to go to Sijistān, but he wished to make a campaign in Hind a prelude to what he had in view, and an alms offered before his private counsel, seeking blessing from what would come about [at his hands] in raising the banner of the faith, widening the domain of certainty, making the word of truth shine forth, and launching the power of the right.

So he pressed deep into the lands of Hind, trusting in God, who guided him by His light and decreed for him glory in His ordainment and success in the course of his affairs, until he reached the city of Purshūr and encamped outside it. News reached him that Jaybāl, the enemy of God and king of Hind, had dared to meet him and was hastening his doom by drawing near his domain. He reviewed the horsemen of his muster-roll and all the volunteer warriors of the faith with him, and chose for the holy war fifteen thousand riders from the foremost men and the stalwart heroes. He forbade anyone whom selection had rejected and scrutiny found counterfeit to mix with them; and when their number had been purified by selection, and [113b] he had looked them over like the jinn of the sands or the lions of the thicket, he advanced with them to fight the base, accursed one, with hearts firm as hills and branches of endurance growing on the great tree of sincere devotion. The wicked infidel came on with twelve thousand horsemen, thirty thousand foot, and three hundred elephants, under whose tread the earth groaned and beneath whose heavy feet it gave way, until he halted opposite the Sultan, vaunting his numbers and boasting of the length of his reach and the strength of his arm, thinking that the multitude of his hosts would roll up the Book of God and avail somewhat against the command of God. Had the ignorant man studied the Book of God, he would have read: “How many a small company has overcome a large company by God's leave! [And God is with the steadfast.]”

The infidel stood fast in his position, inclined to delay, guarding himself by holding off and evasion, waiting for the rabble of armies and riffraff of tribes and peoples behind him. But the Sultan hurried him out of what he had resolved on—putting delay first and deferring the encounter—and stretched out against him the hands of God's friends, who gave them their fill of war and plunder, of slashing and shooting, of cutting and piercing, of scraping and destroying. So he was forced to defend himself and to roast in the fire of combat. Then the horses drew up in ranks, the drums beat, the elephants advanced, and each side came at the other to assail it. Arrows flew at the targets as boys in the late afternoon pelt one another with pellets; the blades of the swords flashed as the lightning of the clouds flashes in the depths of darkness; and springs of blood gushed forth as the rain-bearing stars pour down their showers. God's friends pressed in numbers upon the masses of the fleeing, driving them on relentlessly and urging them into prancing and bounding flight. Midday had not come before the Muslims had exacted their due from God's enemies, the polytheists. They gave the swords free rein over some five thousand men, laid them out on the bare ground, and fed them to the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air. On the field of battle fifteen elephants were thrown down, their hamstrings pierced by the points of arrows and their trunks cut through by the swords of the brave. God's enemy Jaypāl was surrounded, together with his sons, his grandsons, his nephews, and the men of renown among his clan and kin, and they were driven with the halters of compulsion and captivity to the Sultan's station, as criminals are driven to the fire—faces covered with the dust of unbelief and overspread with the gloom of abandonment—some with their arms bound by force behind their backs, some dragged along on their cheeks, some struck on the jugular in cold blood. From Jaypāl's neck was loosed a necklace strung and inlaid with unique pearls, brilliant jewels and red rubies, valued at two hundred thousand dinars, and twice as much was taken from the necks of those of his kin who were shared out between killing and captivity, and who were fed to the jaws of hyena and vulture. God bestowed upon His friends booty beyond the bounds of counting and exceeding every effort at reckoning and enumeration, and He gave them as spoils five hundred thousand head of the finest male and female slaves. The Sultan returned with the friends of God who were with him to the camp, laden with spoils, abundant, victorious, triumphant, giving thanks to God, Lord of the worlds.

God opened to the Sultan a land of the realms of Hind beside which the lands of Khurāsān shrink in length and breadth. This battle, whose effect was dazzling and whose report spread to the horizons, fell on Thursday, the eighth of Muḥarram in the year three hundred and ninety-two. When this war had laid down its burdens and set down its loads from the backs, the Sultan wished to send Jaypāl back, so that his sons and kin might see him in the garb of shame and the bonds of loss, and so that the awe of Islam might spread through the lands of the infidels. He came to terms with him for fifty head of light elephants, and took as hostages a son and a grandson of his to ensure their full delivery.

The infidel went back, and when he had settled in his place he wrote to his son Andpāl—whose kingdom lay beyond the Sayḥūn—complaining to him of the crushing calamity and the great disaster that had befallen him, and asked him, importunately, to discharge the guarantee on his behalf by whatever means, precious or cheap. So he sent him the elephants and dismissed the messenger.

All of them were driven to the Sultan, who ordered the release of those hostages and sent them packing toward those cities.

Andpāl told himself that his father had put on the mantle of dotage and was chewing the cud of old age; that the Vulture of captivity and the Dabarān of misfortune had risen over him, the ʿAwwāʾ of trial had howled at him, and the Shawla of abandonment had lifted him up; that the time had come for him to meet his death and for Time to exact its debt from him. Among their customs, which they obey, is that whoever of them falls captive into the hands of the Tāʾiyya—that is, the Muslims—can never afterwards hold rule, nor attain full leadership and government. When Jaypāl saw himself caught between the fetter of old age and the thong of humiliation, he preferred fire to shame and death to disgrace. He began by shaving his hair, then threw himself upon the fire until he was burnt.

When what the Sultan wished had been settled for him, and what he led had submitted to him, he was eager for another raid with which to embroider the brocade of his standing and to adorn the fringes of his banners with its beauty. So he turned toward Wayhind, and bore down upon it with the full weight of his power until he took it in abasement and gained ease from it after hardship.

He learned that bands of the Hindus had taken refuge in the ravines of those mountains and were concealing themselves in the cover of thickets and jungles, talking of banding together for mischief and uniting in defiance. So he sent an army against them to subdue their ground and to tear their joints apart before arriving. The swords lapped at them until they were sated with the spray of their blood and rusted from contact with their entrails and last breaths. Those who escaped the sword-edges fled like ibexes onto the ledges of those mountains, seeing the stars at midday and death black and red; they tasted the evil consequence of their conduct, and the outcome of their conduct was loss. The Sultan's banners turned back to Ghazna fluttering with widespread success, splendid conquest, firm strength and manifest victory; the face of Islam shone, the mouth of faith smiled, the breast of the religion was gladdened, and the back of polytheism and heresy was broken.

When the Sultan's banner had turned away from him, Khalaf ibn Aḥmad had entrusted to his son Ṭāhir the administration of Sijistān and committed its affairs to him, preferring him over himself and giving him the bride of kingship before its time, so as to secure her in his possession before he would deserve her by inheritance—hinting thereby to the Sultan that he had resigned from kingship, turned to asceticism, and exchanged the humility of worship for the loftiness of rule, so that by the affair passing out of his hands he might cut off the Sultan's hope of attacking and reaping him. But when time had stretched over what he had entrusted, the signs of ingratitude spoke in [Ṭāhir's] choices, and the molars of filial disobedience showed through the folds of his doings. So [Khalaf] kept treating him kindly and humouring him until he blinded him to what he intended for him. Then he feigned illness in the aforementioned fortress and summoned his son to receive his testament and take over the hidden deposits. [Ṭāhir] was heedless of the secret of the scheme and of the punishment and reprisal being planned, and he came as Ṭarafa ibn al-ʿAbd came to the hyena's two choices: a blow on the neck or the cutting of the jugular.

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad had set squadrons of his army in ambush for him, and they surrounded him as al-Zabbāʾ's horsemen surrounded Jadhīma al-Waḍḍāḥ, until he ended up in his prison and was confined in the lair of his doom. He remained in prison in that state until his bier was carried out, it being alleged that he had killed himself and committed a crime against his own life and blood.

When Ṭāhir ibn Zayd, commander of the army of Khalaf ibn Aḥmad, and the rest of the commanders in Sijistān heard what had befallen Ṭāhir, their hearts entered into obedience to him [the Sultan], their inner thoughts were corrupted toward [Khalaf] in loyalty to him, and their resolve gave way for fear of sharing his [Ṭāhir's] fate. They held that city in obedience to the Sultan and in support of him, and sent to him declaring their resolve to hold fast to the rope of obedience and to observe the religion of the community, and asked that someone be dispatched to take over the region from them, so that they might hasten to his court and perfume themselves by kissing its dust. The Sultan did what they asked and rewarded them well for what they had done. The allegiance (khuṭba) was proclaimed there for the Sultan in the year 393.

When God had opened its gate and made its opening easy for him, he resolved to march against Khalaf, to cut out his disease, and to spare the elite and the common people the assaults of his cunning and guile. He was at that time in the fortress of al-Ṭāq, which is described as having seven ramparts with lofty walls, impregnable construction and firm foundations, surrounded by a moat of great depth, wide breadth and impassable crossing, which could be crossed only by [a single] narrow way over a bridge that was laid down when needed and raised when not. The Sultan encamped around it, encircling it on all sides as the circumference encircles the central point. He set about seeking, by deliberation, a stratagem for filling and packing that moat, so that horseman and foot-soldier might easily wade and cross it. Around his camp grew dense, tangled thickets of tamarisk and tamarix, so he required the people of his army, elite and common, foot and horse, to cut down as much of them as they could, in bundles and faggots to be fed into the breadth of the moat, so that the surface of the passage and crossing might be made level.

The men hastened to it, and before the sun had reached midday the breadth of the crossing on the side of the fortress gate had become wide enough for riding. Thereupon the horses rushed onto it, and the elephants followed them.

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad's men resisted from the battlements of the fortress with stone-throwers. War blazed between them, throwing out sparks like castles, and bearing down upon necks with crushing and force. The great elephant advanced to the fortress gate, tore it out with its two tusks and hurled it into the air, so that it fell to the ground from on high and killed a great multitude of Khalaf's men; the rest, at the edges of the barrier, took refuge at the inner wall. The Sultan's army was spurred on against the fortress. Khalaf's men held firm on the battlements of the next wall, defending them with the stones of the mangonels and the points of spears and javelins. When the crisis grew severe, Khalaf ibn Aḥmad looked out upon the place where the two sides met, and saw the terror of the sight: he saw the open space surging with ʿifrīts of champions upon devils of steeds, arrows flying like swarms of locusts, spears showering like the downpours of clouds, and blood gushing like the flowing of the sky. He saw the elephant bend down to one of his men with its trunk and fling him into the air the length of two spears, then catch him on its tusks, then turn on the others, trampling them with its feet, then bear down on the gate with its shoulders, shake it by its two doorposts and tear it out with the iron bolts upon it. At that his heart took flight, he was agitated and his mind was terrified, and the horror of the situation and the fear of annihilation compelled him to seek quarter and to implore the Sultan. [The Sultan] withheld from him the hand of pressure and laid aside from him the whip of vengeance, out of a generosity that God had nourished with His milk and gladdened with the intoxication of His wine.

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad set about offering his gift until permission was sought for him to come before the Sultan. He entered and bowed to the ground with his white beard, finding honour in the humility of service. He covered the carpet with strings of jewels and unique pearls such as eclipsed the day and dazzled the eyes, a scattering-offering to stand in for him in giving thanks for the coolness of pardon and mercy he had been given to taste, and for the protection of his life and soul. The Sultan graciously raised his rank and, on drawing him near, pressed his hand to his breast, deliberately forgetting his past misdeeds and overlooking the blood-feuds and wrongs he had committed. He gave him authority to carry off whatever he wished of the cream of his wealth and the treasures of his fortress, and gave him the choice to reside wherever he wished among the lands and cities of his realms. He chose the land of al-Jūzjān, finding refreshment in the breeze of its air, delight in the sweetness of its water, and ample room in the hunting-grounds around its regions. The Sultan ordered that he be sent there in the state of persons of dignity, preserved by the garment of protection from the shame of humiliation. He stayed there nearly four years in the shade of comfort, and contentment with his condition stood by him.

Then the Sultan was informed of a secret correspondence between him and Ilek Khān, through confidential letters he had sent him and messages by which he incited him against [the Sultan]. Prudence required that he be moved to Jardīz, to spare him, should what was ascribed to him prove true, to complete the favour done him, and to guard against what might lead to the nullifying of that kindness and the muddying of that pool. He remained there in that state until the decree fell due upon him and death carried him off, in Rajab of the year 399. The Sultan ordered that all he left behind be kept for his son Abū Ḥafṣ, confirmed in his possession, and that he be allowed to enter his service.

Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī recited to me verses of his own about him, when his affairs had collapsed and his hand had become empty of kingship:

Who is there whose stubbornness fate does not humble, / and whose spear the hand of the days does not bend?

Do you not see Khalaf, the elder of kings, has become / the captive of one who conquered his virgin city?

Yesterday he was a king without peer; / today he is in captivity, and his family cannot rescue him.

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad's court was thronged by visitors from the far ends of the lands, because of the openness of his hand, the abundance of his bounty, and his generosity to the people of learning and their company. He was praised by the tongues of poets and scholars in verses that circulate widely, and his fame flew to the horizons. He had gathered the scholars to compose a book of commentary on the Book of God Most High, [118b] in which not a letter was left out of the sayings of the commentators, the interpretations of the interpreters, and the subtle points of the preachers. He followed this with the various readings, the grounds of grammar and morphology, and the marks of masculine and feminine, and adorned it with what he transmitted from trustworthy, reliable authorities [of ḥadīth]. I have heard that during the time they were occupied in helping him compile and compose it he spent twenty thousand dinars on them. A copy of it exists in Nīshāpūr in the madrasa of al-Ṣābūnī, but it would consume the lifetime of a scribe and exhaust the ink of a copyist, unless copyists divide it among themselves in different hands. Abū al-Fatḥ [ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad] al-Bustī [may God have mercy on him] told me: "I had composed three verses about him without any intention of having them conveyed to him, but they travelled to him on the tongues of transmitters, and before I knew it there was a purse containing three hundred dinars which he presented to me through one of his trusted men, as a gift for what I had said and composed." The verses are these:

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad, most praiseworthy of successors, / surpassed his forebears in lordship.

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad is in truth but one, / yet he outweighs thousands.

To the house of al-Layth he has become, among the banners of mankind, / what the Prophet was to the house of ʿAbd Manāf.

I said to him: Close to this case is the story of Ibrāhīm ibn Hilāl al-Ṣābī. [119a] An envoy of Sayf al-Dawla had come to the City of Peace and asked him, on his master's behalf, for some of his poetry. He put him off until his departure drew near, and at the farewell the envoy came to him pressing him to fulfil it, so he gave him, on the spur of the moment, these words:

If I have betrayed you in affection for a single hour, / then may I have reviled Sayf al-Dawla, the praised,

and claimed that he has a partner in loftiness, / and denied him, in his excellence, his oneness —

an oath such that, were I to swear it in its binding form / to a creditor, he would want no more.

When the envoy returned to the court, he sent him a purse containing three hundred dinars stamped with his name.

And Shaykh Abū al-Fatḥ al-Bustī also has these lines praising him:

Whoever seeks lofty renown and honour, / and wants the favour of a fortune that has turned away and been harsh,

or hopes for a rank with God / that will grant him nearness to the righteous and closeness [to Him],

or seeks a faith by which to keep upright, / seeing in it no crookedness or deviation,

or looks for a replacement for what he has lost — / let him serve the just, well-pleasing king Khalaf,

heir of justice and eminence from forebears / who, with their eminence, threw dust in the face of those before them;

who prefers moderation in the ways of his lordship, / but when he wishes to give, prefers excess. [119b]

When a neck twists, he entrusts its judgment / to a sword that, when it claims a right, exacts it in full.

The sword is the most eloquent admonisher of necks: / how many an arrogant one has its edge cured of arrogance!

And if a blemish appears on the face of a noble deed, / he clears the blemish from its face without strain.

His favour turns away from whoever seeks his protection / the turns of time, when they befall him.

When the age shudders from its drought, / his bounty enriches mankind and suffices and pours down. / By his wrath he leaves the spheres afraid, / the sun bewildered and the moon eclipsed.

He holds hesitation on the day of battle and the day of giving / a disgrace — yet over a difficult judgment he pauses.