تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 10.0

Arrival at Panj Āb; from Panj Āb to Sīwasitān; the city of Sīwasitān; from Sīwasitān to Multān; from Multān to Abūhar; agriculture in Hind; from Abūhar to Ajūdahan; from Ajūdahan to Dihlī

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. May God bless our lord and master Muḥammad, his family and his Companions.

Introduction

The shaykh Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Lawātī al-Ṭanjī, known as Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, may God have mercy on him, said:

On the first day of God's month of Muḥarram, the opening of the year seven hundred and thirty-four, we reached the valley of Sind known as Panj Āb, which means "the five waters". This river is one of the greatest rivers in the world. It floods in the hot season, and the people of that country sow their crops on its flood, as the people of Egypt do with the flood of the Nile. This river is the first point of the territory of the exalted Sultan Muḥammad Shāh, King of Hind and Sind. When we reached this river, the intelligence officers assigned to that duty came to us and wrote a report about us to Quṭb al-Mulk, the amīr of the city of Multān. At that time the amīr of the amīrs of Sind was a mamlūk of the Sultan named Sartīz, who is the ʿarḍ al-mamālik (muster-master), before whom the Sultan's troops are reviewed. His name means "sharp-headed", for sar, with the undotted s vowelled with a and the r without a vowel, means "head", and tīz, with a dotted t, a long ī and z, means "sharp". At the time of our arrival he was in the city of Sīwasitān in Sind, which is a journey of

ten days from Multān. Between the land of Sind and the Sultan's capital, the city of Dihlī, is a journey of fifty days, yet when the informants write to the Sultan from the land of Sind, the letter reaches him in five days by means of the post.