تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 12.43
English (machine translation) 12.43
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12.43.1
The Shaykhzāda named Hūd was the grandson, through his daughter, of the pious shaykh and saint Rukn al-Dīn b. Bahāʾ al-Dīn b. Abī Zakariyāʾ al-Multānī. His grandfather Shaykh Rukn al-Dīn was highly honoured by the Sultan, as was his brother ʿImād al-Dīn, who resembled the Sultan and was killed on the day of the battle with Kishlū Khān, which we shall mention. When ʿImād al-Dīn was killed, the Sultan gave his brother Rukn al-Dīn a hundred villages to live on and to feed those coming
12.43.2
and going at his hospice. Shaykh Rukn al-Dīn died and bequeathed his place in the hospice to his grandson Shaykh Hūd, but the son of Shaykh Rukn al-Dīn's brother disputed this with him, saying: "I have the better right to my uncle's inheritance." They came before the Sultan while he was at Dawlat Ābād, which is eighty days from Multān, and the Sultan gave the headship to Hūd as the shaykh had bequeathed to him. He was a man of mature age, while the shaykh's nephew was a youth. The Sultan honoured him and ordered that he be entertained as a guest at every halt he stopped at, that the people of every town he passed through on the way to Multān should come out to meet him, and that a banquet be prepared for him there.
12.43.3
When word reached the capital, the jurists, the qāḍīs, the shaykhs and the notables went out to meet him, and I was among those who went out to him. We met him riding in a litter (dawla) carried by men, with his horses led beside him. We greeted him, and I disapproved of his riding in the litter, and said: "He ought rather to ride a horse and ride alongside the qāḍīs and shaykhs who have come out to meet him." My words reached him, so he mounted a horse and excused himself, saying that what he had done at first was on account of a pain that kept him from riding a horse. He entered the capital, and a banquet was given for him there on which a great sum of the Sultan's money was spent; the qāḍīs, shaykhs, jurists and aʿizza attended, the banquet was spread, and the food was brought in the customary way. Then dirhams were given to everyone present according to his due: the chief qāḍī was given five hundred dinars, and I was given two hundred and fifty dinars. This is their custom at a royal banquet. Then Shaykh Hūd went off to his town, accompanied by Shaykh Nūr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, whom the Sultan sent to seat him on his grandfather's prayer-carpet in his hospice and to give a banquet for him there from the Sultan's money. He settled in his hospice and stayed there for years. Then ʿImād al-Mulk, the amīr of the land of Sind, wrote to the Sultan stating that the shaykh and his relatives were occupied in amassing wealth and spending it on pleasures, and fed no one at the hospice. So the order was issued to demand the money from them, and ʿImād al-Mulk demanded it of them; he imprisoned some of them and beat others, and took twenty thousand dinars from them every day for a number of days until he had extracted what they had. Much wealth and treasure of theirs was found, among it a pair of sandals studded with jewels and rubies which were sold for seven thousand dinars; it was said that they belonged to Shaykh Hūd's daughter, and it was said to a concubine of his. When things grew hard for the shaykh he fled, making for the land of the Turks, but he was seized. ʿImād al-Mulk wrote of this to the Sultan, who ordered him to send him together with the man who had seized him, both of them under guard. When they reached him, he released the man who had seized him and said to Shaykh Hūd: "Where did you mean to flee?" He made some excuse, and the Sultan said to him: "You meant only to go to the Turks and say, 'I am the son of Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn Zakariyāʾ, and the Sultan has done such-and-such to me,' and come to fight us. Strike off his head!" So his head was struck off, may God Most High have mercy on him!
Linked texts (1)
- تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار — Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Arabic