Muntakhab al-tawarikh 305: XCVI. GHUBARI.
Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 305
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XCVI. GHUBARI.
305.1
He is Qasim ‘Ali, son of Haidar the grocer, and was notorious for his pride and groundless vanity. He used to call himself a Quraishi until it became generally accepted that anybody who had no descent whatever to boast of claimed connection with the Quraish. Whenever he was ashamed of the arrival of his father in any social gathering and lost his temper his father used to say, Overthrow (in thy mind) the foundations of the kingdom of this world, like Ibrahim, the son of Adham; Withdraw thy notice from thyself and thy friends that thou may be at rest, And if even the light of thy eyes should meet thee in the way, turn aside. When he was governor of Sambhal he gave great vogue to the following ode of Shaikh Sa‘di (may his tomb be hallowed)— “The heart which loves and is patient must surely be a stone, For love and patience are a thousand leagues apart.” He himself wrote as follows— “When the cupbearer’s cheek is rosy with wine, Drink wine to the sound of the flute, for the heart is sad.” Mir Amani and other poets composed answers to these verses, in imitation of them, each according to his capacity and frame of mind, and one of them, the late Jamal Khan of Badaon, who was a constant and intimate companion of the Khan, and was unrivalled in wit, composed an ode of which the following was the opening couplet, “Thy cheek is ever rosy with the wine of delight, My heart, like a closed bud, is constricted with grief in meditating on thy mouth.”
305.2
When I was in Kant-u-Gola in the service of Husain Khan this ode reached me one night in a letter from Miyan Jamal During my twenty-one years’ acquaintance with Ghubārī he has been constantly engaged in taking lessons in (what may be called) the middle standard, and he used to compel his teachers to make obeisance to him, and if they did not consent to do so he would not come for his lesson, and in the lessons received under these unfortunate conditions he never progressed beyond the elements of accidence. His taste in poetry may be estimated from the following verses : — “I love water, and the bath is my place, The bath-house is the house which is appropriated to me.” In imitation of the opening couplet which runs, “ I wish for one hair from the curled lock of my love. That is to say, I am an idolator, and I wish for a sacred thread.” He wrote the following: — “I wish to explain my grief to the dog of my love. That is to say, I am grieved, and I wish to explain my grief. ” The following verses are also by him : — “ From her eyes nothing but calamity reaches me. Nobody has ever such calamity.” A quatrain. “ Everybody who is afflicted by love Becomes acquainted with toil and grief ; Everybody who has found his way into love’s circle Revolves around calamity like a pair of compasses.”
305.3
Ghubārī departed from this world, very unwillingly, in a.h. 1000 (a.d. 1591-92), and the chronogram found for his death consisted of the words, “ Qasim ‘Alī Khan the fool.” Accord- ‘To spite you I will sit in the shop which I have in Agra, selling fruit and electuaries, and to everybody who comes to the shop whether he questions me or not, I will say, ‘Let it be known that Qasim ‘Ali is my son, begotten by me. You may kill him if you like.’’ Somebody asked Haidar how many sons he had, he replied, “Eight, the particulars are as follows:— “Two are mine, and two are my wife’s, and two belong to us both; Two others there are which belong neither to my wife nor to me.” Qasim ‘Ali was in his youth very handsome, and used to sing at social gatherings, and was then for some time servant to the Khalifah of the age (Akbar), became a man of some importance, and acquired the title of Khan, and this case was an illustration of the remark made by a man when another said to him, “Have you heard that they have made so and so a Khan?” and he replied, “Well, the mannikin deserved it.”
305.4
His manner of forming his letters and his handwriting were like those of the master of the world. His unformed hand and his ill-formed letters are like those of boys, but in spite of that hand and those letters he has a childish confidence in himself. experienced holy rapture, and, springing up from my place as one beside himself, uttered the following couplet:— “Whether Thou showest me favour or whether Thou showest it not I am one of that brotherhood who wear the ring of Thy service in their ears.” His holiness the Shaikh seized me by the hand and whirled me round with him, and the delight of that moment never leaves my heart. He died in Agra, in the neighbourhood of Shaikh Farid’s College, in a.h. 966 (a.d. 1558-59). The following opening couplet of one of his odes is well known: “The mouth of my Friend last night told me a secret mystery, ‘I am the fountain of the water of life, and thou knowest it not.’ ”
305.5
The following verses are also by him:— “Why does not fate shed my blood where thou art not? It would seem that this is beyond the power of fate.” The words which fell from her lips were brief, and I could not understand them, The down around her lips is a marginal commentary brief enough. In travelling the road of love for thee I arrived at no stage At which I did not find that the pain of love for thee had preceded me.” ing to another account the year of his death was A.H. 1001 (A.D. 1592-93), and if this be accepted as correct the word jahil (‘ignorant’) substituted for the word ablah (‘fool’) will give the correct date: Since thou art ignorant grieve not if they call thee fool, For these two expressions are synonymous.