ʿAmal-i Shalih 4.2

4.2

Notwithstanding the heavy fire kept up from the bastions and the citadel, in the course of ten days Mu'azzam Khan and the other brave commanders pushed their guns up to the very edge of the ditch and began to fill it up. Several times the garrison sallied forth and made fierce attacks upon the trenches, but each time they were driven back with a great loss in killed and wounded. The besiegers by the fire of their guns destroyed two bastions and battered down the battlements of the wall. On the 23rd Jumada-s sani, in the thirty-first year of the reign, Muhammad Murad, with a body of musketeers and other forces, sallied from his trenches to make the assault. As soon as he reached the bastion opposite the trench of Mu'azzam Khan, he planted scaling ladders in several places, and ascended the wall. Marjan, the commandant, had dug a great hole in the rear of this bastion, and had filled it with gunpowder, rockets and grenades (hukka). With his eight sons and all his personal followers he stood near this bastion, and with the greatest courage and determination endeavoured to resist the assault. Just then, through the good fortune which at all times attends the royal arms, * * a rocket directed against the besiegers fell into the above-mentioned hole, and ignited the gunpowder. A tremendous explosion followed, which destroyed many of the enemy. Sidi Marjan and two of his sons were severely burnt. Those who escaped the explosion bore him and his sons back into the citadel.