Muntakhab al-tawarikh 10: Death of Shaikh Salim Chishti. — The Author wounded. — Conflagration at Badaun.

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[Text, vol. ii. p. 136.] In the year 979 A.H. the palace at Agra and the palace at the new town of Fathpur were completed. * * * At the close of the month of Ramazan of this year, Shaikh Salim Chishti, of Fathpur, died. He was one of the chief saints of Hindustan, and his sayings are worthy of commemoration. I will hereafter give a notice of him, please God, in the supplement to this history.
During this year an unfortunate accident befell the author, of which the following are the particulars. At the period when Kant and Gola was held in jagir by Muhammad Husain Khan, and when it pleased fate to associate me with him for some time, as I was appointed Judge of that district, I went on a pilgrimage to Makanpur, a dependency of Kanauj, where is the tomb of the holy Shaikh, Badi'u-l Hakk wau-d din Shah Madar (may God sanctify his tomb !). This son of man, through the disposition which he inherited from his sinful and ignorant nature (which he imbibed with his mother's crude milk, and which is the cause of shame and reproach), and through innate darkness and ignorance (which are the source of presumption and baseness, and which came down to him by inheritance from father Adam), the eyes of his wisdom were covered with a film of lust, and he was inclosed in the net of lasciviousness, so that he committed all of a sudden, as was of old forewilled by Providence, a gross impropriety within that shrine. Since the chastisement as well as the mercy of God was upon me, I received upon earth the punishment of my sin, by his ordaining that several connexions of the girl whom I fell in love with should inflict nine sword wounds upon my head, hands, and shoulders. They were all slight, but one penetrated the bone of my skull, and reached to the brain, exposing me as a brainless fellow, and another partially severed the veins of the little finger of my left hand. I fainted away, and appeared to be travelling to another world. May God bless my resurrection !
I met with an excellent surgeon in Bangarmau, who closed my wounds within a week, and in the midst of my pain and illness, I made a vow, that if I recovered I would go to Mecca — a vow which I have not yet been able to perform, but which I hope, God willing, to do before I die, and before any obstacle intervenes to prevent the execution of that excellent resolve. The rest is with God!
Afterwards, I arrived at Kant and Gola, and had no sooner bathed after my recovery, than I was again laid on my bed by sickness, the wound having become ulcerous from the effect of excessive cold. Husain Khan (may God bless him with eternal Paradise! for he showed himself more than a father or a brother to me) administered some medicine, in the shape of a plaster and electuary, both made from the wood of the tamarisk, and enabled me to proceed on my journey to Badáún. There another surgeon took off the dressings, and re-opened the wound on my head. I was nearly expiring from the intensity of the pain. * * *
During this year a dreadful fire broke out at Badáún, and an immense number of Musulmans and Hindus perished in the flames. Carts full of the remains of those who were burnt were driven down to the river, and no one could tell who was a believer, and who an infidel. Many who escaped being burnt rushed to the ramparts, and were so scorched by the flames, that men and women precipitated themselves from the wall in despair. Some had their skins burnt and disfigured. Water seemed only to add fuel to the flames. All this I witnessed with my own eyes, and heard the noise of the flames with my own ears. Some it warned, others it destroyed. A short time before this, a half-witted fellow came from the Doab, whom I took into my own house and society. He said to me one day in private, that I ought to flee out of that city, as some infliction of Providence was about to befall it. But I paid no attention to him, as he was a frequenter of taverns.