Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.7.7

42.7.7

And whereas the accounts of the pay and receipts of the apanage holders were hitherto kept by solar months, according to the course pointed out by the Yonani (Yonian) Calendar, he consented that the above method should continue in the above particular part, but forbade it in any other part of the public Registers, ordering that they should be kept by lunar months according to the Musselman system. He abstained likewise from prying into futurity according to the rules of the Yonian system, and was so little superstitious on those articles that the Tuesday and Thursday, those days generally held ominous by all the world, he set apart for his days of going on a progress, or for setting out on an expedition. He now commenced abstaining from jewels or any rich stuff, rejected any other colour than the white in his own apparel, and he forbade any one of his Grandees to be admitted in his presence, that should wear either rich stuffs, jewels, or gaudy colours; so that simplicity became now the etiquette of the Court. These alterations, which deprived an infinity of families of their bread, were taken to task by the singers and farcers, who having put a richly clothed figure of clay in a coffin, carried it in procession throughout the principal streets, whilst some other took care to throw quantities of dirt at it as it went by; and all this under the very windows of the apartment where they knew the Emperor to be actually sitting.