The Book of Akbar 297.9

297.9

Another of his inventions was a tent (khirgah) which had twelve partitions corresponding to the signs of the Zodiac. Each mansion (burj) had lattices (pinjarahd) through the interstices of which there shone the light of the stars of dominion. And there was another tent which was like the Heaven of Heavens which encompasses the heaven of the fixed stars. This surrounded the other tents and as the crystalline sphere (i.e., the Heaven of Heavens) is undotted (with stars) so this tent was without lattices. One of his pleasure-increasing inventions was the "carpet of mirth" (basat-i-nishat). This was a round carpet corresponding to the orbits of the spheres and the elemental spheres. The first circle which corresponded to the crystalline sphere was white, the second blue (kabud), the third black, like Saturn, the fourth, which was the house of Jupiter, was light brown (sandali), the fifth, which was related to Mars, was ruby-coloured, the sixth, which was the house of the Sun, was golden, the seventh, which was the house of Venus, was bright green, the eighth, which was the station of Mercury, was bluish (sūsanī, i.e., lily, or iris-coloured). For the nature of Mercury is composite and when blue and rose are mixed the result is sūsanī. And the reason why sūsanī was chosen in preference to other colours was that several philosophers have called the colour of Mercury that of collyrium (kuḥlī), and the sūsanī is nearer to collyrium than other mixed colours are.