Muntakhab al-tawarikh 78.40.3

78.40.3

At this time Khwajah Shah Mansur, a Shirazi clerk, who at the beginning of his career had been for some time clerk in the perfumery department, and had been obliged to flee on account of the hostility and power of Muzaffar Khan, came to Mun‘im Khan at Jounpur, and was received with the greatest respect, and appointed to be his divan. And after the death of Mun‘im Khan he came to Court in accordance with an imperial firman, and on account of his exceedingly fine business qualities and soundness of judgment, became divan of the whole empire, and by degrees became associated in imperial affairs with the prosperous Rajah:— “He is an incapable who does not rise to power, For at all events Destiny is on the look out for a capable man.” Some one has just reversed the statement and said:— “The incapables of the world have risen to power, How then can Destiny be on the look out for a capable man?” But the first is true, and the second is not a fair statement of facts. And among the events of that year was the appearance of a comet in the west. And, when Shah Mansur took to wearing a long tail to the back of his turban, they dubbed him ‘The Star with a tail’. And through his excessive economy and stinginess in the army expenses, and the pitch that he reached in grasping in season and out of season, people forgot the tyrannies of Rajah Muzaffar Khan and kept heaping upon him abundance of abuse:— “For many bads are worse than bad.”