The Book of Akbar 316.1

316.1

When the world-adorning purposes of God, which arrange the succession of events, visible and invisible, will that the robe of sovereignty be bound with the skirt of perpetuity, and be embroidered with the hem of permanence, He strips makebates and strifemongers of their leaves and branches, and overthrows them, root and stem. Moreover, those evildoers and mischief-makers do of themselves certain things which prove the cause of their ruin and destruction. An instance of this occurred in the beginning of dominion’s morning, and of the glory of the Caliphate, when fortune’s diadem was exalted by the grandeur of H.M. the Shahinshah and the throne of sovereignty irradiated by his light (far). At this time the stupefying wine of thoughts and caprices overpowered Shah Abu-l-M‘aali, whose brain had been ruined by the worship of his own beauty and the intoxication produced by the world, and whose foot of moderation had departed from the path of firmness, as has been here and there shown by accounts of his proceedings from the beginning of his service of H.M. Jahanbani till the death of that lord of the age.