The Nāṣirī Generations 269.p3

269.p3

Surgeon-Major Bellew, in his Kashghar Mission History, referring to “Changiz” sending his son “Aoktay in mid-winter to Ghazni and Ghor, there to wipe out in the blood of the people the disaster his troops had suffered at the hands of Jalaluddin at Parwan,” which he is said to have done so effectually during a “campaign of two years,” that “the aboriginal Aryan stock” were annihilated, considers the Hazara “still pure Moghol in race type, and against the fortress of Ashiyar, and that body advanced to the foot of that stronghold, and the attack commenced; and, for a considerable time, they assailed it.
When they found that, through the vast strength of the fortress, and the brave men [within it], it was impossible to take it [by force], they sat down before it [and blockaded it] for a period of fifteen months — but God knows best — and, through scarcity of provisions, the people within the fortress became reduced to great straits. As long as there were provisions and flesh, they used to consume them; and, when food of that kind failed, affairs reached such a pitch that they were wont to eat the flesh of whoever was killed, or who died, to that degree, that every person used to keep his killed and dead for curing and eating. Some have related after this manner — the narrators are responsible for correctness — that there was a woman of the minstrel class in the fortress of Ashiyar. She had a mother and a female slave. Her mother died, and she dried her body; and her female slave likewise died, and she dried her body also. She sold the flesh of both of them, so that, from the two corpses, she acquired two hundred and fifty dinars of pure gold. At last she also died.
When a period of fifteen months and ten days had expired, about thirty men only remained alive within the fortress. They seized Amir Muhammad-i-Maragham, and martyred him, and threw his head near to the camp of the Mughal forces, in hopes of their own deliverance. When the Mughal troops beheld this occurrence, they at once assaulted the fortress and took it, and martyred the whole of those within it.
During this period [of the investment of Ashiyar] they [the Mughals] captured the other fortresses of Gharjistan likewise, so that, during the year 619 H., all the strongholds of Gharjistan were taken; and they sated the hearts of the Mughals with slaughter.
May the Most High God continue the gates of victory and success open unto the servants of the kingdom of the present sovereign, SULTAN Nasir-ud-Dunya wa ud-DIN, Abu-l-Muzaffar-i-Mahmud Shah, for the sake of His prophet and his race!