تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.35: ذكر ما فعلته في ترتيب المقبرة

The custom of the people of Hind is to make arrangements for their dead like their arrangements in life: elephants and horses are brought and tied at the door of the tomb, decked out. Accordingly I made arrangements in this tomb: I appointed a hundred and fifty reciters of the Qurʾān, whom they call khatmiyyūn, and appointed eighty students, and appointed the imām

the muezzins, the reciters with beautiful voices, the panegyrists, the clerks who record absences and the ushers; all of these are known among them as the arbāb. I appointed another class known as the ḥāshiya (retinue): the carpet-spreaders, the cooks, the runners (dawādawiyya), the ābdāriyya, who are the water-carriers, the sharbadāriyya who serve the drinks, the tanbūldāriyya who hand out the betel, the silaḥdāriyya (armour-bearers), the nīzadāriyya (lance-bearers), the shaṭrdāriyya (parasol-bearers), the ṭashtdāriyya (basin-bearers), the chamberlains and the heralds. Altogether they numbered four hundred and sixty.

The Sultan had ordered that the food there should be twelve maunds of flour each day and the same of meat. I considered that too little, while the grain he had ordered was plentiful, so I spent thirty-five maunds of flour each day and the same of meat, together with the accompanying sugar, sugar-candy, ghee and betel. I fed those on the establishment and others, whoever came and went. The scarcity was severe, so people found relief in this food and its good report spread.

Malik Ṣabīḥ travelled to the Sultan at Dawlat Ābād, and he asked him about the state of the people. He told him: "If there were two men in Dihlī like so-and-so, no one would complain of hardship!" This pleased the Sultan, and he sent me a robe of honour from his own clothes. On the festivals—namely the two ʿĪds, the noble Mawlid, the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ, the night of mid-Shaʿbān, and the anniversary of the death of Sultan Quṭb al-Dīn—I used to prepare a hundred maunds of flour and the same of meat, from which the poor and needy ate. As for those on the stipend, there would be placed before each of them his own portion. Let us describe their custom in this.