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Muntakhab al-tawarikh 61.1

Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 61.1

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English

61.1.1

Verse. My body bears a robe, surpassing splendid, My hopes for this world and the next are ended. I came yesterday, and have accomplished nothing, To-day my efforts have availed me nothing, To-morrow I depart, having learned no single secret, Better had been non-existence than this vain superfluity. And when one looks into the matter carefully one becomes aware that seeing that the Lord, the repository of the seal of the prophetic office, upon him and his family may the peace and blessing of God rest, says: "Would that the Lord of Mohammad had not created Muhammad,” it is not in the power of a weak-minded mortal (like myself) to draw a single breath in this valley (of desolation), and one fears lest such an attempt should lead to audacity in the way of religion, and lest its fruit should be everlasting destruction. I entreat pardon from God of all that is an abomination to Him. What power has the clay that it should say to the potter Why dost thou make me and why dost thou break me.

61.1.2

After that Shir Shah reached the hill-country of Balnat. He built there the fortress of Rohtas as a protection for the army of Hindustan against the Mughul forces. Then he appointed Khawass Khan to undertake the pursuit, and returned. While on the march he heard that a commander named Khizr Khan Sarak had become infatuated with rebellious notions and was behaving as though he were a Sultan. Shir Shah accordingly bent his course thither, and Khizr Khan hastening to encounter him was taken prisoner. Shir Shah took possession of that country and conferred it by way of jaegir upon several of his Amirs, and appointed to the superintendence of the fort of Rohtas, Qazi Fazilat the Qazi of the army, who was popularly known by the more appropriate title of Qazi Fazihat.

61.1.3

In the year 948 H. he came to Agra, and in the year 949 H. proceeded to Gwaliar with the intention of conquering Malwa. Abul Qasim Beg, one of the Amirs of Humayun Padshah who had entrenched himself in that fortress, came in and had an interview with him, giving up the keys of the fort. Mallu Khan the governor of Malwa, who was one of the slaves of the Khilji Sultans, and held absolute and unlimited power in that province, offered his services to Shir Shah, and was honoured by splendid rewards. Shir Shah also had tents pitched for him close to his own tent, and prepared a hundred and one horses and other apparatus of pomp and dignity in his honour. In the meantime a suspicion arose in Mallu Khan's mind, and one night he tore his tent and escaped alone after the accustomed manner of slaves, and fled. Shir Khan wrote the following: — Verse. You see how the chickenhearted slave Mallu has treated me It is a saying of Mustafa “There can be no good in a slave." Shir Khan then nominated Haji Khan Sultani to the subjugation of the province of Malwa, and Suzawal Khan to administer the affairs of the district of Sawas; Mallu Khan fought with Haji Khan and Suzawal Khan, and suffered a defeat from which he never recovered. Every weakling who fights with one stronger than he, Gets such a fall that he can never again rise.

61.1.4

And Shuja-at Khan Sarwani, who was the permanent Governor of the fort of Ranthambur, yielded up that fortress to Shir Shah and came with his family to the township of Basawar. It is said that some one introduced some poison into his cup. His tomb is in the suburbs of that township, in a pleasant spot, and is well-known at this time; Quatrain. Death, thou hast desolated hundreds of homes, In the kingdom of existence thou makest life thy spoil. No jewel beyond price has come into the world, But thou has borne it away and hidden it beneath the dust. In this year Shir Shah led an army against the fortress of Rai Sen and besieged it, because Puranmal the son of Silhadi, one of the Chiefs of Rai Sen, had attacked the city of Chanderi, which is one of the chief cities of Hindustán, and had put its inhabitants to death, and was keeping two thousand women, Hindus and Muslims, in his own haram. The following couplet was found to record the date of this siege: Qiyám-i-bárgáh báshad mubárak. May the stability of the court be fortunate. After prolonging the siege for some time Shír Sháh entered into a compact, and succeeded in dislodging Púranmal by the intervention of Shahzáda 'Ádil Khán and Qutb Khán Náib, and assigned him a place in his own camp, bestowing upon him a hundred horses, with a robe of honour and a sum of gold;

61.1.5

and eventually by the advice of Mír Saiyyid Rafí'u-d-Dín Safawí of Íj, which was given the title of Muqaddasa (Sacred) by Sikandar Lodí, broke his word, and caused Púranmal together with his family and children to be trampled to death by elephants. Not a single man of those turbulent and rebellious Hindus, who were near ten thousand souls, escaped in that battle. Their women and men either became food for the edge (jauhar) of the sword or fed the flames of the fire called jauhar, a well-known word in the Hindí language. This chronicle, from that day forward, remained as a record upon the pages of Time, may God be merciful to its author. This event occurred in the year 950 H., and after some time he girded up his loins for a holy war to uproot the pestilent infidels of the country of Márwár, and led a vast army against Rái Máldeo the leader of the Rais of Hindūstān, who held sway over the country of Nāgor and Jodhpur, and was a powerful opponent of the Muslims, and inasmuch as one of the maxims of Shīr Shāh, from which he never departed, was to throw up an entrenched position round his army, no matter how few the enemy might be, as soon as Māldeo arrived in the vicinity of Ajmīr with fifty thousand picked cavalry trained and experienced in war, intent upon slaying or being slain, and confronted Shīr Shāh, finding it impossible to make trenches and ramparts because of the sandy soil, held a conference with his experienced and veteran Amīrs.

61.1.6

No one of them however could devise a way to effect that object. Suddenly Maḥmūd Khān, the son of ‘Ādil Shāh, who was grandson to Shīr Shāh, notwithstanding his youth said, “Let Shāh ‘Ālam order the banjāras (grain sellers) of the army to fill sacks with sand and arrange them round the army.” This idea highly commended itself to Shīr Shāh, and he immediately placed his turban upon the lad’s head, and bestowed upon him in perpetuity the treaty territories. In the end Heaven did not favour his designs, and Islām Shāh, after reaching kingly power, made this unfortunate boy the very first of his family, heirs to the kingdom, to have his name blotted out from the page of existence, in accordance with the saying *Al mulku ‘aqīm* (The kingdom has no heir), and that treatment which he meted out to them, vindictive Time measured again to his posterity. Verse If thou hast done evil remain not secure from calamity, For the nature of things brings about requital. In short Shīr Shāh, who would not give the head of one of his soldiers for a kingdom, and to whom the Afghāns were far dearer than can be expressed, was by no means willing to involve his arms in calumniating with the ignorant, boor-natured, currish Hindus.

61.1.7

Accordingly he devised an artifice, and wrote fictitious letters purporting to emanate from the generals of Maldeo’s army, to himself, couched in enigmatical language, the substance of them being that there would be no need for the king in person to superintend the fighting, when the armies were drawn up for battle, because they themselves would take Maldeo alive and deliver him up, upon the condition that such and such places should be given them as a reward. Having done this he so arranged that these letters fell into Maldeo’s hands, with the result that Maldeo became utterly suspicious of all his generals, and, in the dead of night fled alone without looking behind him; and, notwithstanding that his generals denied their complicity with oath upon oath, saying that they never could have been guilty of such dastardly conduct, and that this was all the handiwork of Shir Shah in his desire to raise dissensions between them, it was of no use, and had no effect upon Maldeo’s mind. Kanhaiya, who was his minister and agent, abused Maldeo in violent terms, and taking four thousand resolute men devoted to death, or even more than this number, came down upon the army of Shir Shah, with the intention of surprising them by night, but missed his way, and after marching the whole night, when morning broke became aware that he had left the camp far in rear.

61.1.8

After striving to the utmost of their powers, when they had abandoned all hope of life, at the very moment when the army of Shir Shah came in sight, as a result of their own stupidity, by the good luck of Shir Shah or by the superior good fortune of Islam, the infidels in a body dismounted from their horses, and renewing their vows of singleness of purpose and mutual assistance binding their sashes together and joining hand to hand, attacked the army of the Afghans with their short spears, which they call Barchhas, and with their swords. Sher Shah had given orders saying that if any man ventured to fight with the sword with this swinish horde, his blood would be on his own head. He accordingly ordered the elephant troops to advance and trample them down. In rear of the elephants, the artillery and archers gave them a taste of the bowstring, and admitting them to the banquet of death, gave them the hospitality of the land of extinction. The bright surface of the world’s page was polished, and freed from the dark lines of the land of infidels, and not one of the infidels got off with his life, nor was a single Muslim lost in that encounter. A poet of Gwalior, whose takhallus is Fawrī, wrote this verse on that subject:

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