The Nāṣirī Generations 291.4.5

291.4.5

Guzidah states that, during the massacre, a Mughal named Mianju, in one small street of the city, found upwards of forty motherless sucking-babes; and, thinking to himself, that without mothers’ milk they would perish, to death to deliver them from their suffering! I pass over the accounts given by some Oriental writers respecting the hoards of treasure, to get at which the rack was freely used, but I cannot pass over, without comment, the statement that “Mostassim,” who had given up all hope of life, and who did not know at what hour the order for his murder might be given, “begged to be allowed to keep 700 wives [Musalmans can only have four at one time, but concubines are unlimited] upon whom neither sun nor moon had shone, and was allowed to select 100,” as we are told in the Mongols Proper. What could he do with 100 wives, when he and his sons were kept in a tent under a Mughal guard, and allowed but four or five attendants for himself and them? Was he to leave his 100 wives for the sun and moon to shine upon in the camp among the brutal Mughals? This is a specimen how History may be travestied, and of “taking up the mattock” to “complete the work which the pioneer can only begin.” This little episode is taken from some foreign translation of “the great Raschid’s” Jami’-ut-Tawarikh, but the meaning of Rashid-ud-Din was either not caught by the translator, or the author of the Mongols Proper misunderstood it.