Muntakhab al-tawarikh 157: XXXVII. Ḥājjī Sulṭān of Thānesar.
Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 157
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XXXVII. Ḥājjī Sulṭān of Thānesar.
157.1
He has acquired the honour of performing the pilgrimage to Makkah the glorious and Madīnah the delectable. He is well versed in those branches of learning which depend on the memory and was for a long time in the imperial service. He was employed for four years alone and without any coadjutor, on the translation of the Mahābhārata which is known as the Razmnāma, and what was begun by Naqīb Khān was finished by him. On account of an accusation of the crime of cow-killing which was brought against him by the Hindus of that pargana an order was issued for his banishment to Bhakkar, and the Khān-i-Khānān, who was in those days in charge of the Ṣūba (of Multān) treated him with great consideration and kindness, and applied ointment to the wounds of his soul. After that land had been completely subjugated the Khan-i-Khanan took Haji Sultan with him thence, and promised to procure the reversal of the sentence of banishment which had been passed against him. Haji Sultan returned secretly to his native place, and the Khan-i-Khanan, after conquering the province of Asirgarh and Burhanpur, prayed in one of his petitions for the reversal of the sentence against him. His request was granted, and Providence watched over the Haji's affairs, so that the emperor privately ordered Shaikh Abu-l-Fazl to appoint him of Thanesar and Karnal, so that he was freed from the fear that had beset him. He still holds the appointment of Karori. dm, the Mufti, used to live.
157.2
Students and Sūfīs are gathered together in his hospice and profit by his companionship. He had a pupil, a one-eyed man named Maulānā Farīd, of whom it was said that, although he had not studied deeply, as soon as a difficult question or subtle and obscure argument was propounded to him from any advanced book whatsoever, he would at once call for pen and inkstand, and, having reduced it to writing, would solve it immediately, although he could not give the solution orally, or even read what he had himself written. Shaikh Ziyā’u-’llāh and the whole of the Ghausiyyah order submitted themselves entirely to the authority of this (Farīd), so that their subjection to the Sayyid may be imagined. I have also heard that the same Farīd would in one night relate to Sayyid Shāh Mīr events that had just happened in the farthest parts of the world, east or west. Some attributed this power to the possession of a Jinn, and others to other causes.
157.3
In the year in which the emperor summoned Shaikh Ziyā’u-’llāh from Agra with great favour and kindness and assigned a place to him in the ‘Ibādat on an occasion when there was a gathering of the Shaikhs and ‘Ulamā, I one night in private questioned the Shaikh concerning the matter of Farīd the scribe, and, after relating what was spread abroad concerning him, I said, “Are these things really so?” The Shaikh first of all enumerated his own fragmentary writings and the works of which he was the author, detailed his own accomplishments and acquirements, and gave me a full account of himself, and then said, “In spite of all these favours which God (may His Majesty be exalted!) has bestowed upon me I cannot call myself so much as a gleaner (in the field of knowledge) after Shaikh Farīd, and all that you have heard of him does not amount to one hundredth part of the truth. His dignity is above it all, and he has attained this great good fortune by means of sweeping the threshold of the holy Sayyid Shah Mir. Now I had seen Sayyid Shah Mir before this at Badaon, whither he had gone on business connected with his subsistence allowance. A copy of the Mashariqu-’l-Anwar was between us, and we had much learned discourse. He certainly had the meditative faculty strongly developed, a pleasant disposition, a ready understanding and a good stock of knowledge, but I did not find him such a prodigy as Shaikh Ziya’u-’llah and other men had represented.
157.4
As for the rest, God the most High knows the truth. It may be that he purposely concealed his abilities from me, but indeed what need is there to suppose that he might not have displayed to others those abilities of the display of which he allowed me to be disappointed?