Muntakhab al-tawarikh 79.2
Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 79.2
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79.2.1
“The clever bird, when it falls into the snare, Has to bear it as well as he can.” All this arose from my not consenting to be branded as his disciple, and I used frequently to allude to it, and in extemporary verse to [say]:— “I am glad I have not a horseman nor a foot-soldier, I am free from the bond of the king, and of the Prince too.” In this year the Tamghā, and the Jazyah, which brought in several krors of dāms were abolished, and edicts to this effect were sent over the whole empire. In the same year Ma‘ṣūm Khān, son of Mu‘īn-ud-dīn Aḥmad Khān Farankhūdī, who held the governorship of Jaunpūr, came to the Court, and was afterwards sent back to Jaunpūr. And Mullā Muḥammad Yazdī the Emperor appointed Qāzī’l-quzāt of Jaunpūr, and the governorship of Dihlī was given to Muḥibb ‘Alī Khān, son of Mīr Khalīfah. Mullā Muḥammad Yazdī, when he reached the province of Jaunpūr, issued a fatwā insisting on the duty of taking the field and rebelling against the Emperor. The consequence was that Muḥammad Ma‘ṣūm Kābulī, and Muḥammad Ma‘ṣūm Khān Farankhūdī, and Mīr Mu‘izz-ul-mulk, and Nayābat Khān, and ‘Arab Bahādur, and others, drew the sword, and in many places (as will be narrated) fought some desperate battles. The Imāms said, that the Emperor has in his dominion made encroachments on the grant-lands belonging to us and to God (He is magnified and glorified!), may the All-merciful have mercy on him!
79.2.2
Finally Mihtar Sa'ādat, who bears the title of Pēshrau Khān, when he had been to Ma'çūm Khān Jaunpūrī and returned to Court, informed the Emperor of the facts of this fatwā of Mullā Muḥammad Yazdī, who accordingly on some pretext or other sent for Mīr Mu‘izz-ul-mulk and Mullā Muḥammad Yazdī from Jaunpūr. When they arrived at Fīrōzābād, which is eighteen corns from Āgrah, the Emperor sent word that they should separate them from their guards, and put them into a boat, and take them by way of the Jamna to Gwālyār. Afterwards he sent another order that they should be made away with. So they put the guards into one boat, and them into another old one, and when they were in deep water ordered the sailors to swamp the boat of the lives of the two in the whirlpool of destruction. After some days Qāzī Ya‘qūb came from Bengal and the Emperor sent him to follow the other two. And one by one he sent all the Mullās, against whom he had any suspicions of dissatisfaction, to the closet of annihilation. And having banished the ‘Ulamā of Lāhōr, he separated them from one another like a disheveled thread. Of the number of these was Qāzī Qadr-ud-dīn Lāhōrī, whose free-thinking was greater than that of Makhdūm-ul-mulk; him he appointed Qāzī of Bahrōñch in Gujrāt. And Mullā ‘Abdu-sh-shukūr Guldār he appointed Qāzī of Jounpūr, and Mullā Muḥammad Ma'çūm he appointed to Bihār. And Shaikh Munawwar he banished to Mālwalı, and made him Çadr of that district.
79.2.3
In this way each of them obtained the promotion he wished, but away from home. But on account of his advanced age, and because the Mullās had refused him the title of Shaikh, looking on him, as they did, as a mere travester, and a regular enemy and ill-wisher to the Faith, and an unfortunate old beggar, the Emperor made an exception in the case of Shaikh Mu‘īn, grandson of Maulānā Mu‘īn, the celebrated preacher, and giving him no trouble left him at Lāhōr. He died in the year nine hundred and ninety-five. And Ḥājī Ibrāhīm Sarhindī he made Çadr of Gujrāt, and sent him thither. He abstracted much treasure and gold from the fief-lands by means of bribes, and so heaped up quantities of gold. If they would not pay the bribes he used to confiscate their lands. This matter was represented to the Emperor, and Haji Ibrahim had to sue for permission to retire to the Dak’hin, until on suspicion of rebellion the Emperor sent for him, and committed him to the keeping of Hakim ‘Azim-ul-Mulk. His Majesty used to send for him to attend the evening seances, and he inventing such things as would please the Emperor presented a pamphlet containing all sorts of lies about the great ones of the Faith. But this forgery and deception was found out.
79.2.4
The sum-total of it is that he wrote in a clumsy manner in an old worm-eaten book a spurious expression purporting to have emanated from Shaikh Ibn ‘Arabi (God sanctify his tomb!), to the effect that the Khalif of the age would have many wives, and would shave his beard; and he included many other peculiarities of the Emperor. So his Majesty became again propitiated, and admitted him once more among his courtiers. And according to report Haji Ibrahim had interpolated in an old pamphlet, one of the works of Mulla Abu Sa‘id, nephew of Miyan Panipati, a tradition to the effect that a son of one of the Companions of the Prophet came in shaven into his presence (God bless him, and his family, and grant them peace!), and that he said: “The people of Paradise will look like that.” When he took to boldly disputing with Shah Fath-ullah, and Shaikh Abu-l-Fazl, and Hakim Abu-l-Fath, and satirizing them, the Emperor sent him to the castle of Rintamb’hor. There he died; and after the razing of the fortress, they found his dead body, which was tied up with long strips of cloth, and the story got abroad that he had thrown himself down from the top of the fortress. This event took place in the year nine hundred and ninety-four:— “Last night our share in this world was in a garden like Paradise, But this morning we are without house, as if it had never been inhabited!”
79.2.5
And any piece of orthodox learning which a man might have acquired became his bane, and the cause of his degradation. And the Ulama and Shaikhs, the leaders of thought to all around, he sent for to the Court, and enquired into their grant-lands and pensions, He saluted and honoured them all in the Moghul style, and when they had had either a public or a private audience with him (p. 270), he settled upon them a certain portion of land according to the opinion he had formed of them. And any one, whom he knew to have pupils, or assemblies for dervish-dancing, or any kind of counterfeit worship, he named “a shop,” and either sent him to prison, or dismissed him to Bengal or Bakkar. And this business was always going on. Those Pirs who had reached a blessed old age, and those Shaikhs who were nearest eternity, were the best off. But to enter into details would be too long. And on account of these farmáns the Çūfīs, who gave themselves up to dances and ecstasies, were subjected to the testamur of Hindū examiners, and through their evil state “they forgot their religious ecstasy.” These were banished from their country and had to creep into mouse-holes, and the whole position was reversed: “There was one year such a famine in Damascus, That lovers forgot love. Heaven became so stingy towards earth, That fields and palms did not wet their lips.”
79.2.6
And in truth those wretched assemblies, and absurd ceremonies, and those worthless hypocritical Çūfīs were for the most part quite worthy of perishing:— “That is not Çūfī-action or liberality, But rather deceitful action and bawdery. Theft and robbery are better than this, Robbing the dead of their clothes is better than this.” However much I wish that this bit of sketch of a historical fact may be put together, my pen against my will slips from my guidance and turns in another direction to the description of this period of innovation, and the doctrines of the new sect and religion:— "The virtues of Kāfūr, if I wish to praise him, Or if I wish not, they dictate to me and I write." "Hush! the master is coming to the house." Would that I were quit of their business; But what can I do?— "They are gone under the skirts of those by whom we lived, And I am left among the worthless like the skin of a scabby camel." I reproached heaven, that with sword of oppression thou hast slain Assembly-adorning kings, and the youth of the Barmak-family. Thou hast placed thine own power of binding and loosing in the hands of a people, Compared with whom a dog is honourable in respect of generosity. But in the ear of my soul the answer came: Be content, live happily! For a period of eighteen days pulls out the beard of every one."
79.2.7
In this year Muzaffar Khān arrived in Bengal, and began a course of great strictness in his administration, and commenced wronging and oppressing the Amīrs of that district, and confiscated many of their jāgīrs. He practised the dāgh-u-mahall in the Court fashion, and the settlement of accounts in the old manner;—