The Nāṣirī Generations 278.1

278.1

After the infidel Mughals, and Tatars, had taken their departure from Hirat and its territory, these sixteen persons — all men, it appears — issued from their places of concealment, and assembled before the shop of a certain halwa-i or confectioner, and began to look about them in all directions. Seeing no one, they stroked their faces and exclaimed: “Thanks be unto God, that during our existence we can once more breathe freely! After this, these sixteen, the unfortunate remnant of the inhabitants of Hirat, were joined by twenty-four others from the places adjacent to that city; and, for sixteen years, it is said, “there were no other inhabitants in Khurasan; and, for some time, from the banks of the Jihun or Amuiah to the territory of Astar-abad, if there were any people who had escaped with their lives in some out-of-the-way place, they must have existed upon such things as the dead left unconsumed.” These forty persons passed their time in the tomb of Sultan Ghiyas-ud-Din, Muhammad-i-Sam, Ghuri, which had not been destroyed by the infidels. A full account of the matter of these persons, and their names, is recorded in the History of Hirat. In the year 635 H. — but Alfi says in 634 H. — Uktae Ka'an gave orders that the cities of Khurasan destroyed by the Mughals should be restored, and among them was Hirat;