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Muntakhab al-tawarikh 1: TRANSLATION OF THE AL-BADAONI.

Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 1

Language
English

TRANSLATION OF THE AL-BADAONI.

1.1

IN THE NAME OF GOD THE COMPASSIONATE, THE MERCIFUL. Oh thou from whose name spring all other names, Kings at thy door are suppliant as I at theirs. When once the impulse of zeal for thee was felt No foot remained shod, no head remained crowned. Emperor of the world! with this unprofitable soul of mine which is an abode of demons and wild beasts, in what way can I contrive thy praises, and with this worn and foolish mind which is become as it were food for cats and dogs, how can I chant thy eulogy. How can the miserable dust proclaim the Unity of God, How in this state of defilement praise the Divine Being. The foot of search limps feebly in this unknown expanse of my constant anxiety and habitual fear, while in thy limitless art, my stammering tongue finds the sphere of speech always contracted. All that my soul knows is but secondary, what my tongue speaks are but particles [and therefore unintelligible]; How can I know thee in my soul or express thee with my tongue.

1.2

Thou knowest that I may turn from travelling in this valley, and having hidden the head of bewilderment in the cloak of meditation on men and regions should open the eye of my understanding to the knowledge of Thy all-perfect works and unfading kingdom and proceeding, through the vicissitudes of affairs of created beings, to the Unity of thy exalted personality, should end with the words of proclaiming and confessing the Unity of God, so that I may see with the eye of certainty — nay more that I may recognise that In thy excellence there is no room for duality, Thou and thy majesty make up the universe. and I have moistened my lips with the pure water of the praise of that chieftain whose name is "praised," whose end is lauded; lord of the promised fountain, and of the praise which is on every tongue (may the blessing and peace of God be upon him and his family) because the mantle of the honour of eternal and everlasting empire lies gracefully upon his noble figure, and the proclamation and stamp of undiminishing power and glorious sovereignty of right belongs to his exalted name. The monarch of Arabia of whom the world is a manifestation, The Lord of the earth, whose servant he is, swears by his name. He was the near neighbour of the Truth, for this reason had no shadow To the end that no one should place a foot on (the shadow of) his head—

1.3

Countless praises and eulogies on the elect family and the truth-perceiving companions of the Prophet, especially upon the rightly-guided Khalifahs (may the favour of God be on them all) who, for the elevation of the standard of religion, and the promulgation of the word of evident truth, risked their lives and laid down their heads as a ransom, and thus cleared the thorns of infidelity and the undergrowth of heresy from the plain of the kingdom of the sacred law.

1.4

After the praise of God and of the Lord the protector of the divine missive (may the blessing of God be upon him, his family and his companions, a blessing safe from all termination), we have to declare that the science of History is essentially a lofty science and an elegant branch of learning, because it is the fountain-head of the learning of the experienced, and the source of the experience of the learned and discriminating, and the writers of stories and biographies from the time of Adam to this present time in which we live, have completed reliable compositions and comprehensive works, and have proved the excellence thereof by proofs and demonstrations, but it must not be supposed that the reading and study of this science — as certain lukewarm religionists, and the party of doubt and dissent, shortsighted as they are, are wont to affirm — has been or will be a cause of wandering from the straight path of the illustrious law of Muhammad (may the blessing and peace of God be upon him and his family), or become the entry into and way of ascent to the fountainheads of scepticism, and drinking places of defilement of the licentious and heretical, and those who have gone astray;

1.5

because for a body of men who in the very essence of their constitution are devoid of any share in religious principle, the reading of the eternal word which is the key of evident happiness and “a healing and a mercy for the worlds,” becomes a cause of misery and everlasting loss: “and if they are not guided by it they say—‘this is an antiquated lie.’” If this is the case with the Quran what chance has History? “When any man has lost his hearing through melancholia, He cannot participate in the music of David and its harmony.” But I address my words to those who are endowed with the qualities of sound intellect and brilliancy of genius, and natural equity—not to those who are not led by the sacred law and who deny all principle, fundamental or derivative, because such men are not worthy of this discourse, nor are they within the pale of the wise, and discreet, and understanding, and how can one absolutely refuse to admit a science which is one seventh of the seven sections upon which the foundation of the establishment of Faith and Certainty is laid.

1.6

"And all that we relate to thee of the tidings of the prophets with which we have established your hearts" tells us of this, and a large body of the learned expositors of the traditions and commentators on the Quran, as for example Imam Bukhari and Qazi Baizawi up to our own times have occupied themselves in writing about this heart-enthralling science, and their words and practice have become an authority for the nations both East and West, in spite of the diversity of their origins and the distinction of their various degrees. While on the other hand an insignificant band of innovators and inventors who with the disgraceful partisanship of greedy mindedness and importunate desires, and shortsightedness as regards both outward and inward qualities, have placed their feet in the valley of audacity, and have introduced interpolations and errors into true and memorable histories, and having abandoned recognised constructions and explanations, and interpretations of obvious nature, and estimating the conflicts and discussions of the noble companions and mighty followers (of the Prophet) by their own condition, attributed them to mutual contradiction and hatred, and to rivalry in the splendour and amount of their property and family, and having seduced simple-minded people of elementary belief, have led them, by their own error and by attributing error to others, to Gehenna, the house of perdition:

1.7

“When the crow becomes leader of a tribe, he will surely lead them along the path of destruction.” And if the eye of a man be instilled with the collyrium of the Divine guidance, and illuminated by the light of truth, and guarded from every calamity which happens in the world of existence and evil, he passes to the Unity of the Creator, the Ancient of days, the Glorious, freed from the stain of innovation, and purified from the blemish of change and alteration. And when I look carefully, I see that the world is itself an ancient archetype which has neither head nor root; its pages are a confused record, and in each page there is a list of the affairs of a section of mankind who have had the reins of the management of affairs entrusted to their hands. This ancient Shahnama relates the affairs of the kings of the world: Do thou always look and read therein with circumspection. The spoil of this narrative brings sweet sleep to him Who is in delirium, and has become distracted with madness of the brain. But it also wakens him who on account of pride, has fallen into the slumber of carelessness and whom the devil has deceived.

1.8

And inasmuch as the invoker of blessing upon all mankind, ‘Abdul Qadir ibn Muluk Shah Badaoni (may God erase his name from the book of sins) in the beginning of the year 999 in accordance with the fateful order of his excellency the Khalifah of the time, the shadow of the Deity, Akbar Shahi when he had finished his selection from the History of Kashmir which, by the soul-inspiring order of that world-conquering Emperor whose throne is the heaven, one of the incomparable doctors of India had translated from the Hindi into Persian, yielded to a liking which he had for this science from youth to maturity, and as it was seldom that he had not been occupied in reading and writing it, either of his own free will and accord or in obedience to orders, it used often to occur to him to write as well an epitome of the affairs of the Emperors of the metropolis of Dehli, from the time of the commencement of Islam to the time of writing, in a concise manner, All the world is but a village that (city of Mecca) is the central point (of Islam). that it might be a memorandum comprising a portion of the events of each reign in brief form, and a memorial for my friends, and a conspectus for the intellectual, and although it might not be a book to be relied upon, or a notable composition, still in accordance with the saying “These ancient pages of the sky whose beauty the stars are, Are an ancient history of many Emperors whose armies excel the stars in number,”

1.9

it may be that from the perusal of this book a messenger from the world of spirits and invisible mysteries may cast a ray of light upon the receptive mind, and thus being a cause of abstraction and seclusion, may wean the soul from the love of this transitory world, and may aid the compiler of these pages in the prosecution of his task, and his hopes may not be blighted, and inasmuch as each day some new grief used to appear, and some vexatious annoyance used to shew itself, helps being few and hindrances many, moreover by reason of fresh toils and temporal changes it was difficult to remain in one place “Each day would bring a different place, each night a different roof” And besides all this, my sustenance was by no means assured, hanging as it were between heaven and earth, and my heart utterly distracted by separation from kindred and friends, accordingly that commission was only accomplished by fits and starts, until a kind and complaisant man of wealth, orthodox and religiously disposed, and happily furnished with this world's goods, who was very devoted to me, and for whom I too entertained an indescribable affection, having completed the writing of the ’Tarikh-i-Nizami’ which is a bulky volume, and which is here being completed by me—removed the furniture of life to the sublime abode of Paradise. “He has departed—I too follow him. Each one at last must go the self same way.”

1.10

At this juncture, when Time departing from its usual custom, has treated me in the matter of leisure with some sort of liberality, it has come about that I have been able to steal a morsel of the chequered hours of my life from his grasp, so that I renewed my intention and confirmed my purpose, and on this ground that there is no bygone event which has not left something for the present, “If the peasant thoroughly clears under the sheaves of wheat He leaves the sparrow’s portion on the ground,” I have selected and transcribed accurately a portion of the circumstances of some of the autocrat Emperors of Hindustan from the Tarikh i Mubarak Shahi and the Nizamu-t-Tawarikh of Nizami which is as it were a drop in the ocean and a bubble of the turbulent floods, and have also added somewhat of my own, and have kept before me the desirability of conciseness and have imposed upon myself the necessity of avoidance of all affectation of style and metaphor, and have named this modest composition Tārīkh. I hope that this imperfect collation and composition, whose object is the perpetuation of the auspicious names of the Emperors of Islām, and the transmission of a memorial thereof in this changing world until the final consummation, may lead to the pardon of the author in the world to come, and not be an augmentation of the crimes laid to his charge. “And do thou, O Nightingale, as thou roamest through this garden, With all thy sweetness, abstain from blaming the defects of the crow.”

1.11

Since the object of my ambition is to write correctly, if I should by accident let fall from my pen the instrument of my thoughts, or commit in my thoughts, which are the motive agent of my pen, any slip or error, I hope that He (may He be glorified and exalted) in accordance with His universal mercy which is of old, will overlook and pardon it. By speaking evil do not change my tongue, And do not make this tongue of mine my wrong. And since the first of the Emperors of Islām who were the cause of the conquest of Hindūstān—(after Mahomed Qāsim, cousin and son-in-law of Hajjaj-ibn-Yusuf Saqfi, who in the year, 93 A.H., (711 A.D.), conquered the countries of Sind, Multan and Gujrat; and, by the order of Walid ibn-'Abdul Malik Marwani who on an important occasion wrote to him from Damascus and summoned him to his presence, starting from Oodypur in India, and wrapping himself in a raw hide, while on his journey yielded up his life to God, and after him the affairs of Islam in that became the seat of Government, so that Islam never again lost its hold on that country—deemed it right to commence this history with an account of that monarch whose end was glorious, so that it may be fortunate from the first, and lauded at the last—and God is the best of helpers and defenders.

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