The Book of Akbar 300.2

300.2

The loyalists who were on the spot endeavoured to conceal the dreadful occurrence and took measures to send information to the heir-apparent of the masnad of the khilāfat and to collect the principal officers who had obtained leave to various parts of the kingdom. With extreme prudence they kept this life-destroying event from the public for seventeen days. Those who were present at court and the counsellors of the threshold of the khilāfat, viz., Khizr Khwāja Khān, ‘Alī Qulī Khān, Laṭīf Mīrzā, Khizr Khān Hazāra, Qunduq Khān, Qambar ‘Alī Beg, Ashraf Khān, Afzal Khān, who were in the list of helpful ministers (vuzarāi kifāyat sha‘ār) and Khwāja Ḥusain of Merv, Mīr ‘Abdu-l-Ḥai, Peshrau Khān, Mihtar Khān, and after some days Tardī Beg Khān, who inscribed on his heart’s tablet the office of Amīr-al-Umarā (Blochmann, 240) assembled together and on the 28th of the same month, 11th February, 1556, they recited the khutba in the famous name and lofty titles of the Khedive of the age, and so healed and mended the distracted world and gave the terrene and terrestrials a message of enduring restoration. The stewards of heaven, who had been in expectation of this, rejoiced, and the desires of the administrators of the natural world were accomplished. Mīr ‘Abdu-l-Ḥai Ṣadr recited this couplet:— Verse. If the world’s new year be destroyed, Let the hundred-leaved red rose remain.