تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 12.27
English (machine translation) 12.27
- Language
- English
12.27.1
When this amīr came to the Sultan, he treated him with honour and lodged him in the palace of Sultan Jalāl al-Dīn inside the city of Dihlī, known as Kushk Laʿl, which means the Red Palace. It is a great palace with a very large audience hall and a huge vestibule; over its gate is a dome that overlooks this audience hall and the second audience hall through which one enters the palace. Sultan Jalāl al-Dīn used to sit in it while ball was played before him in this audience hall. I entered this palace when he took up residence in it and saw it full of furnishings, bedding, carpets and other things, all of it in tatters and of no use. For their custom in Hind is that when a sultan dies they leave his palace with everything in it, not touching it, and his successor builds a palace for himself. When I entered it I went round it and climbed to its top, and it gave me a lesson from which arose tears. With me was the jurist, the good man of letters Jamāl al-Dīn al-Maghribī, of Granadan origin and born in Bijāya, who had settled in Hind, having come there with his father, and has children there. When we beheld it, he recited to me:
12.27.2
Their sultans — ask the clay about them ... / for the mighty heads have become [mere] bones!
12.27.3
It was in this palace that his wedding feast took place, as we shall relate. The Sultan was greatly devoted to the Arabs, favouring them and acknowledging their merits, and when the amīr reached him he gave him lavish gifts and treated him with great generosity. Once, when I was present with him, he gave him the gift of A‘ẓam Malik al-Bāyazīdī from the land of Mānikbūr, eleven horses of noble breed, and on another occasion he gave him ten horses saddled with gilded saddles and bearing gilded bridles. After that he married him to his sister Fīrūz Khūnda.
Linked texts (1)
- تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار — Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Arabic