The Memoirs of Jahāngīr (Jahāngīrnāma) 2.1

2.1

BY the boundless favour of Allah, when one sidereal hour of Thursday, Jumada-s-sani 20th, A.H. 1014 (October 24th, 1605), had passed, I ascended the royal throne in the capital of Agra, in the 38th year of my age. Till he was 28 years old, no child of my father had lived, and he was continually praying for the survival of a son to dervishes and recluses, by whom spiritual approach to the throne of Allah is obtained. As the great master, Khwaja Mu'inu-d-din Chishti, was the fountain-head of most of the saints of India, he considered that in order to obtain this object he should have recourse to his blessed threshold, and resolved within himself that if Almighty God should bestow a son on him he would, by way of complete humility, go on foot from Agra to his blessed mausoleum, a distance of 140 kos. In a.h. 977, on Wednesday, 17th Rabi'u-l-awwal (August 31st, 1569), when seven ghari of the aforesaid day had passed, when Libra (Mizan) had risen to the 24th degree, God Almighty brought me into existence from the hiding-place of nothingness. At the time when my venerated father was on the outlook for a son, a dervish of the name of Shaikh Salim, a man of ecstatic condition, who had traversed many of the stages of life, had his abode on a hill near Sikri, one of the villages of Agra, and the people of that neighbourhood had complete trust in him. As my father was very submissive to dervishes, he also visited him.