Muntakhab al-tawarikh 305.1

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.”