Muntakhab al-tawarikh 134: XIII. MIYĀN ILĀHDĀD of Lakhnau.

134

He was one of those sages whose knowledge is always at command and ready for use. He possessed a naturally acute intellect and intuitive intelligence. In knowledge of practical theology and the first principles of that science, and of Arabic, he had no equal. He wrote a treatise on syntax which he named after one of the nobles, Qutbī by name, and which contained some evidence of its author’s industry.
I went to Lakhnau at the time when Husain Khān was governor of that place, and met the Miyān. Among his works there were two books which struck me as being wonderful. One was a treatise, written in columns, which covered a piece of paper capable of containing fourteen lines of ordinary writing, and as broad as it was long. In this treatise the leading principles and problems of fourteen different branches of knowledge were succinctly set forth. The other consisted of four Maqāmahs from a treatise in which the style of the Maqāmātu 'l-Ḥarīrī was imitated, which treatise he entitled Qiqān. He told me that he had composed other works besides these. His cousins, however, said that the treatise on fourteen different branches of knowledge and the Qiqān were written by Ḥakīm Zibriqī, who having come to Jaunpūr, employed himself in collating books, together with the well-known Qāzī Shihābu-'d-dīn. These works, they said, found their way, in the course of time, to the library of Shaikh A'zam of Lakhnau, who obtained the title of Sānī-i-A'zam, and thence came into the hands of Miyān Jīhadād who was a descendant of Shaikh A'zam—and God knows the truth of the matter.