Muntakhab al-tawarikh 349: CXXXVII. MAUZŪN.

349

He is the son of Shaikh Pīr of Āgra, who wrote seven scripts well, and whom I met in Peshāwar in the reign of Salīm Shāh. His son also was a capable youth and passably proficient in the art of composing enigmas and in penmanship. He also played chess, both two-handed and four-handed, well. These few verses are quoted as an example of his style:—
“What profit is mine from the many colours of the flowers of spring particularly the battle against Sikandar Sur, which contained an account of the valour of Muhammad Husain Khan. He presented it to the Khan at Patyali, and the Khan made some corrections in it and told him the whole story of the fight in proper order, from beginning to end. Manzari in one night, as it was the Khan’s wish, corrected those three or four hundred couplets and read them at his levee the next morning, and received a notable reward. The following couplet occurs in that poem : —
“ The sound of his trumpet deafened the sky. The chief was perplexed by his sudden attack.”
The following opening couplet by him is very well known, and is often illuminated : —
“ In thy absence I am always destitute, I am one who never enters thy thoughts.”
The following ghazal is by him : —
“ See the down growing on the moonlike cheek of that lovely silver-bodied one. Both down and cheek are signs of the disturbances of the age of the moon. See a chain of dark ambergris drawn across the face of the moon ; See a ringletlike violets on a cheek like a moist rose-petal ; See her heart-ravishing eyes and her lashes that shoot arrows, See perils upon perils in the road of love.”
This last couplet is the best. As for the rest it is evident that he toiled hard at them to no purpose but to weary our ears.
This rhyming of ma‘ruf and majhul is very strange. The following ode, ‘The Master of the House,’ is by the above mentioned Muhammad Yusuf:—
“Happy is he who has taken up his abode in the wine-shop, And is seated by the tun with a cup and a measure, It is he who has given to the beloved her languishing glances heavy with wine. I am drunk with the languishing glances of those two narcissus-like eyes. The owl found no well-peopled spot in this transitory world And hence chose for its dwelling the corner of a ruin. I said (to my love), ‘Take up thy abode in my eyes,’ but she answered coquettishly ‘Does anybody build a house in a channel through which floods flow?’ The comb has disordered thy locks, May the hand of him who made that comb for thy locks be broken!”
The following couplet is by him:—
“In thy absence I attempted in vain to take rest, Disappointed by thy absence I took such rest as I could.”