The Rashīdī History 139.6

139.6

Those who were confined for lesser offences, were allowed to see a relation or friend once a week; and in like manner, there were many different gradations for individual cases, from which [favours], however, not the slightest deviation, in the way of enhancement, could be made, without authorisation. [Separate] work was found for the men and the women. The above is only one example, out of many, of Mirza Aba Bakr's cruelties. Many more instances might be mentioned, but they would disgust the reader, and the mind shrinks from narrating them. It has been related above, that Shah Begum, Mihr Nigar Khanim, my brother Muhammad Shah, and the maternal sister of my father (who was the full sister of Mirza Aba Bakr), when they were coming from Kabul, on their way to Badakhshan, were captured by the army of Mirza Aba Bakr. The Mirza brought them to Kashghar. His sister, Khan Sultan Sultanim, was a very pious woman, and had spent all her life in acts of religious devotion. For a long time he allowed her no food but wine, and when she was brought to the point of death by hunger and thirst, she was made by force to drink some of that [wine], so that she died in torture and suffering, all the same.