Muntakhab al-tawarikh 193: II. Ḥakīm Saifu-l-Mulūk of Damāwand.

193

To great learning and knowledge of medicine he united a taste for writing vilely scurrilous and satirical verse. His nom-de-plume was Shujā‘ī. As ill-luck would have it, whenever this physician undertook the cure of a sick man, the unfortunate patient surrendered his life to the messenger of death, for which reason the wits gave him the nickname of Saifu-l-Hukama. He attended one of the grandsons of the venerable Shaikh Jām, Muhammad-i-Khabūshānī by name, better known as Makhdūm-zāda, and helped him on his journey to the next world. The words “Saifu’l-Hukamā killed him” were found to give the date of his death. These few lines which were written on the physician Jalāl may well be applied to Saifu-l-Mulūk:
“Regarding the physician Jalāl the Angel of Death, Last night made his complaint to God, saying, ‘Thy slave is helpless before the physician, Where I kill one he kills a hundred. Either depose him, I pray Thee, from the position which he holds, Or assign to me some other employment.’”
He was held in much honour in India for some years during the time of Bairām Khān, and afterwards, but according to his own statement he received neither patronage nor honour, and returned to his country disappointed. Thence he wrote and despatched a satirical poem, which for gracefulness and the laughable nature of its subject has been equalled by the poems of few writers of this age. To whet the taste of my readers I transcribe here a few couplets from that poem, which recall themselves spontaneously to my memory:
“A pious calf, untimely born, hailing from Barbary, Whom I have sometimes called a cat, sometimes the mouse of the saints, A Brahman without caste-mark or thread, that is to say an Indian Shaikh:
Why do you ask me of that which I myself do not know. Verily I am the mystery of unity, though even that mystery cannot contain me.”
Other verses by ‘Ainu-l-Mulk.
“No desert place has been seen without a sign of some habitation. But against the incurable pain of love no plans avail. I became the prey of one fair as a gazelle, but when I looked intently (I saw) that there was nothing in the game-straps but a pure soul.”