The Nāṣirī Generations 166: IV. SULTAN JALAL-UD-DIN, ’ALI, SON OF BAHA-UD-DIN, SAM, BAMIANI.

166

When the victorious Sultan Mu’izz-ud-Din, Muhammad-i-Sam, obtained martyrdom, and Sultan Baha-ud-Din, Sam, departed this life on the way [to Ghaznin], the heirs to the sovereignty, then remaining, were of two branches of the Shansabaniah race — one, the family of the Sultans of Bamian, and the second, the family of the Sultans of Ghur. When they conveyed the bier of the victorious Sultan from Dam-yak, the Turkish Slaves of the [late] Sultan, the great Maliks and Amirs, took the Sultan’s bier, together with vast treasures, and the magazines of military stores, from the Amirs of Ghur. Those Ghurian Amirs, who were in the army of Hindustan, were inclined towards the sons of Sultan Baha-ud-Din, Sam, and the Turk Amirs were inclined to Sultan Ghiyas-ud-Din, Mahmud, son of [Ghiyas-ud-Din,] Muhammad-i-Sam, the [late] Sultan’s nephew.
The Ghurian Amirs, such as were at Ghaznin, namely, the Sipah-Salar [the Commander of Troops] Kharoshti, Suliman-i-Shis, and others besides them, wrote letters to Ala-ud-Din, and Jalal-ud-Din [sons of Baha-ud-Din, Sam], and prayed them to come to Ghaznin, and they came thither, as will be subsequently recorded, please God, in the Section on the Sultans of Ghaznin.
When Jalal-ud-Din had seated his brother on the throne of Ghaznin, he returned himself, and ascended the throne of Bamian. A trustworthy chronicler related that they [the brothers] divided the treasures at Ghaznin, and that the share of Jalal-ud-Din amounted to two hundred and fifty camel-loads of pure gold and of jewel-studded articles of gold and silver, which he conveyed along with him to Bamian. A second time he assembled an army against Ghaznin, and drew together forces from every part of his dominions, consisting of Ghuris, Ghuzz, and Beghu and proceeded to Ghaznin, and was taken prisoner, and was subsequently released, and returned to Bamian again. During his absence, his uncle, Sultan ’Ala-ud-Din, Mas’ud, had seized the throne of Bamian. Jalal-ud-Din came back with but a few men, and one morning, at dawn, attacked his uncle unawares, took him prisoner, and put him to death, and the Sahib who had been his father’s Wazir he caused to be flayed alive ; and he brought the country [again] under his jurisdiction.
He reigned for a period of seven years, when Sultan Muhammad, Khwarazm Shah, made a forced march against him from the banks of the river Jadarah, and suddenly fell upon him, and took him prisoner; and the whole of that treasure which he had brought from Ghaznin, together with the treasures of Bamian, Sultan Muhammad appropriated, put Jalal-ud-Din to death, and retired.
Jalal-ud-Din was a very great monarch, and of great intrepidity, alertness, and gallantry, an ascetic, devout and continent, so that during the whole of his lifetime no inebriating liquor had ever passed his blessed lips, and the cincture of his garment had never been undone to any unlawfulness. Manliness he possessed to that degree, that no prince of the Shansabanian race came up to him in vigour, in valour, and in arms. He was wont, in battle, to discharge two arrows at one aim, and neither of his arrows would miss the mark, and neither animal of the chase nor antagonist ever rose again from the wound of his arrow. At the time when the Turks of Ghaznin followed in pursuit of him, at the Hazar Darakhtan [place of the Thousand Trees] of Ghaznin, he had struck the trunk of a tree with an arrow, and had overturned it [!] ; and every Turkish warrior who reached the tree would make obeisance to the arrow, and would turn back again ; and [the tree of] this arrow became [subsequently] a place of pilgrimage.
With all this strength and valour Jalal-ud-Din was mild and beneficent; but manliness availeth nothing against destiny, and, as his time was come, he died.