Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 22.7.1

22.7.1

"Great will ever be the distance between the pattern and the copy." How could the poor Armenian, after having sold cloth by the yard throughout his whole life, pretend, that with an authority of only two days' standing, he would be able to pass such rules of strict obedience and discipline over a nation, not his own, and which was not yet accustomed to so much regularity and strictness? "The crow, wholly intent on learning the linnet's note, "Forgot to look at its own black coat first of all." The Navvab having taken post on the banks of the Rehva, where he tarried two or three days, Gurghin-qhan, who conformably to his custom, always came the last of all, and always encamped by himself, was actually in his tent, when two or three Mogul troopers from amongst those he had disciplined and trained himself, came and asked something about their pay. The General answered in an angry, peevish manner; but the two men, availing themselves of the unprosperous state of affairs, and of the revolution that had taken place, had the daringness to speak with violence. Gurghin-qhan, without attending to the difference of times, screamed out. What? Is there no one there to take these men into confinement? He had hardly uttered these few words, when those men finding themselves alone with him, drew their sabres, and in three or four strokes, stretched him on the ground; and, their horses being just at the door, they got upon them in an instant, and fled through the fields.