تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 11.12
English (machine translation) 11.12
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11.12.1
Quṭb al-Dīn deposed his brother Shihāb al-Dīn, cut off his finger and sent him to Kālyūr, where he was imprisoned with his brothers, and the kingdom was firmly established for Quṭb al-Dīn. After that he went out from the capital Dihlī to Dawlat Ābād, which is forty days' journey from it. The road between them is lined with trees, willows and others, so that one walking along it seems to be in a garden. In every mile of it there are three dāwas, that is, the post, whose arrangement we have described, and in every dāwa there is everything the traveller needs, so that it is as if he were walking through a market for the forty days' journey. In the same way the road continues to the lands of Tiling and Maʿbar, six months' journey, and at every halting-place there is a palace
11.12.2
for the sultan and a hospice for those coming and going, so that the poor man need not carry provisions on that road! When Sultan Quṭb al-Dīn set out on this expedition, some of the amīrs agreed to rebel against him and to set up the son of his brother Khiḍr Khān, the imprisoned one; the boy was about ten years old and was with the sultan. News of this reached the sultan, so he took this nephew of his, seized him by the legs and dashed his head against the stones until his brains were scattered, and he sent one of the amīrs, called Malik Shāh, to Kālyūr, where the boy's father and uncles were, and ordered him to kill them all! The qāḍī Zayn al-Dīn Mubārak, qāḍī of this fortress, told me: "Malik Shāh came to us in the forenoon of a day when I was with Khiḍr Khān in his prison. When he heard of his arrival he was afraid and changed colour. The amīr came in to him, and he said to him, 'What have you come for?' He said, 'On the business of Khwand ʿĀlam.' He said to him, 'Is my life safe?' He said, 'Yes,' and went out from him. He summoned the kotwāl, who is the commander of the fortress, and the mufradūn, who are the zimāmiyyūn, three hundred men, and sent for me and for the notaries, and produced the sultan's order. They read it, then went to Shihāb al-Dīn the deposed and struck off his head, and he was steadfast and not fearful. Then they struck off the heads of Abū Bakr Khān and Shādī Khān. When they came to strike off the head of Khiḍr Khān he was terrified and distraught; his mother was with him, so they shut the door on her and killed him. They dragged them all into a pit without shrouding or washing." Years later they were taken out and buried in the tombs of their fathers. Khiḍr Khān's mother lived on for a time, and I saw her in Mecca in the year [seven hundred and] twenty-eight.
11.12.3
This fortress of Kālyūr stands on top of a lofty height, as if carved from the rock, with no mountain facing it. Inside it are water cisterns and about twenty wells, with walls around them joined to the fortress, on which mangonels and ballistas are set up. One climbs to the fortress by a wide road which the elephant and the horse can ascend. At the gate of the fortress is the figure of an elephant carved from stone, with the figure of an elephant-driver on it; when a person sees it from afar he does not doubt that it is a real elephant. Below the fortress is a fine city, built entirely of dressed white stone, its mosques and its houses alike, with no wood in it except the doors; so too the royal palace there, and the domes and audience halls.
11.12.4
Most of its tradespeople are infidels, and in it are six hundred horsemen of the sultan's army who are constantly engaged in holy war, since it lies among the infidels.
11.12.5
When Quṭb al-Dīn had killed his brothers and held the kingdom alone, with no one left to contest it with him or rebel against him, God Most High sent against him his own favourite, the greatest of his amīrs and the highest in rank with him, Nāṣir al-Dīn Khusraw Khān, who fell upon him, killed him and took his kingdom for himself. But his time in the kingship was not long, for God likewise sent against him one who deposed and then killed him, namely Sultan Tughluq, as all this will be fully explained and set down hereafter, if God Most High wills.
Linked texts (1)
- تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار — Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Arabic