Tarikh-i Daʾudi 3.3.1

3.3.1

He was so zealous a Musulmán that he utterly destroyed divers places of worship of the infidels, and left not a vestige remaining of them. He entirely ruined the shrines of Mathurá, the mine of heathenism, and turned their principal Hindu places of worship into caravanserais and colleges. Their stone images were given to the butchers to serve them as meat-weights, and all the Hindus in Mathurá were strictly prohibited from shaving their heads and beards, and performing their ablutions. He thus put an end to all the idolatrous rites of the infidels there; and no Hindu, if he wished to have his head or beard shaved, could get a barber to do it. Every city thus conformed as he desired to the customs of Islám. In each quarter prayers were performed in public, and high and low were everywhere seized with a desire of acquiring knowledge. In Sikandar's time many tradesmen were wealthy, and so much rivalry in consequence existed amongst them, that each tried to exceed the other in his expenditure.