Muntakhab al-tawarikh 79.30.3

79.30.3

On the tenth of the month of Safar of this year the King of Poets, Shaikh Faizi, after suffering for a long time from conflicting diseases, viz., from the trouble of a difficulty in breathing, and from dropsy and swelling of the hands and feet, and from a vomiting of blood, which he had borne for six months, passed from this world. And since he had, in despite of Mussalmans, associated and been mixed up with dogs day and night, they say that at the moment of death they heard him bark like a dog. And through his bigotry in the matter of heresy and denial of the religion of Islam, he involuntarily at that moment even in the presence of men of learning, lawyers and ascetics, uttered meaningless words and such foolish gibberish, and stuff and nonsense, and unbelief in religious matters, as he was accustomed to, and in which he had formerly so persisted. At length he went to his own place, and a mnemotynon for the date is “Woe to the heretic, and Shi‘ah, and natural-philosopher, and the worldly man,” and another “The pillar of heresy is broken.” And one of his friends invented this mnemotynon:— “Seest thou what a number of tricks the Heaven plays, The bird of my heart out of its cage became a nightingale. That bosom, which treasured in itself a whole world, Became too contracted to draw half a breath.”