The Rashīdī History 3.6.5

3.6.5

Thus, whatever faults the Mirza may have had, disloyalty to his chiefs can hardly be accounted one of them. He served his first master, Sultan Said Khan, with devotion till the end of the Khan's reign, and when forced by the barbarities of his successor, Rashid Sultan, to seek safety for his life with the Chaghatais in India, he served them likewise with good faith, as long as he lived. Besides Abul Fazl's and Firishta's, the notices of Mirza Haidar's life, among the writings of Asiatic authors, appear to be few. Several quote his history, and even copy from it extensively, but only two, as far as I have been able to ascertain from translations, make any mention of his personality. Jauhar, in his Memoirs of Humayun, does no more than briefly allude to his master's faithful lieutenant. The author of the Tarikh-i-Daudi, cited above, calls him "a youth of a magnanimous disposition," but vouchsafes no more. Amin Ahmad Razi, however, has devoted a few sentences to him in his geographical work, the Haft Iklim, an important extract from which was translated into French by Quatremère, and published in 1843. Ahmad Razi tells us that Mirza Haidar "was endowed with an excellent character and a rare talent for elegant composition in verse, as well as in prose. To these gifts of nature, he added those of extreme valour, and all the qualities that constitute a great general.