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Muntakhab al-tawarikh 58: THE DATE OF THE DEATH OF BABUR BADSHAH.

Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 58

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English

THE DATE OF THE DEATH OF BABUR BADSHAH.

58.1

This took place in the year nine hundred and thirty-seven. The words Shash-i Shavval also form the date of his decease. while the date of his birth may be found from this couplet: Since this revered monarch was born in the month of Muharram, The year of his birth also is Shash-i-Muharram. The duration of his reign in Mawara-annahr, Badakhshan, Kabul, and Qandahar, as well as in Hindustan, was thirty-eight years. He had succeeded to the kingdom at the age of twelve, and Khwaja Kalan Beg wrote this couplet in his funeral ode: Alas! that time and the changeful heaven should exist without thee. Alas! and Alas! that time should remain and thou should'st be gone. Among the learned men of his time is Shaikh Zain Khafi, who translated in most elegant style, the Waqiat-i-Babari, which the deceased monarch wrote, and the following verses are by him: Verses. 342. Thou hast rested with thy guardians and hast fled from me What have I done? or what hast thou heard or seen from me? There was no necessity for injustice to enable thee to seize my heart. I would have yielded it had'st thou but desired it of me. Verses. So straitened did my heart become for longing for those lips of thine Too narrow was the way by which my soul should quit its earthly shrine. ‘My verses are both rational and traditional, and my desire is, that Maulana Hasan, who comprises in himself all rational and traditional science, may hear them.’

58.2

Another is Maulana Baqai who wrote a Masnavi in the metre of the Makhzan-i-Asrar. At the moment I do not remember a single poem of his. Another is Maulana Shihabu-d-Din the Enigmatist, whose general learning was overshadowed by his special skill in the composition of enigmas, and at the time when Durmish Khan was appointed by Shah Isma'il Safawi Husaini to the Governorship of Khurasan, that prince of traditionists, Mir Jamalu-d-Din, the traditionist, one day while the preaching was going on, in dispelling the apparent contradiction between the sacred word ‘Verily your Lord is God, who created the heavens and the earth in six days,’ and that true Hadis (tradition) that ‘He created the world in seven days,’ explained it in two ways, Maulana Shihabu-d-Din refuted it, by adducing one after another several excellent arguments and wrote a treatise on that subject, to which the learned divines of that time subscribed their signatures. The writer of these pages also on the same occasion wrote a few lines of prose and poetry, from which the following ruba'i is selected: Quatrain. This writing which has appeared like lawful magic, Its poetry and prose are purer than the purest water: It is a gleam from the brightness of " the brilliant Star," In describing whose dignity the tongue of meditation is struck dumb. The following enigma on the name Kashif is also by him. Quatrain.

58.3

With a view to deceive the heart of this broken-hearted one, That idol with mouth like the rosebud is every moment displaying coquetry. Upon the leaf of the rose she wrote that curling ringlet And then displayed her moon-bright face from one corner. The death of the Maulavi took place at the time of the return of the Emperor Muhammad Humayun, whose abode is in Paradise, from his expedition to Gujrat in the year 942 H., and Mir Khond Amir the historian invented the chronogram Shihabu-s-saqib. And one of the wonderful inventions of that Emperor, whose shelter is the pardon of God, is the Khatt-i-Babari (the Babari script), in which writing he indited a copy of the Qur'an, and sent it to the sacred city of Makka: his anthology of Persian and Turki poetry is well-known. He has also composed a book on the Hanifite Theology called Mubaiyyin, and Shaikh Zainu-d-Din wrote a commentary upon it which he entitled Mubin. His treatises on Prosody are also in common use. Verse. The heaven, whose sole skill is oppression, Has this one object, to wring each moment the heart's blood; It gives not to the tulip the crown of royalty without laying low under the foot of oppression the head of a crowned monarch.

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