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تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.22

English (machine translation) 13.22

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English

13.22.1

When I arrived at the house prepared for my lodging, I found in it everything needed: furnishings, carpets, mats, vessels and a bed for sleeping. Their beds in Hind are light to carry; a single man can carry one, and everyone must take his bed along on a journey, his servant carrying it on his head. It consists of four turned legs across which four poles are laid, and on them braids of silk or cotton are woven. When a person sleeps on it he needs nothing to keep it cool, for it gives coolness of itself.

13.22.2

Along with the bed they brought two mattresses, two pillows and a quilt, all of silk. It is their custom to make white covers of linen or cotton for the mattresses and quilts, enclosing them; when they get dirty they wash these covers, and what is inside stays protected.

13.22.3

That night they brought two men, one a miller, whom they call kharrāṣ, and the other a butcher, whom they call qaṣṣāb, and they said to us: "Take from this one such-and-such an amount of flour, and from that one such-and-such an amount of meat," in weights I do not now remember.

13.22.4

It is their custom that the meat they give is equal in weight to the flour. What we have described was the hospitality of the Sultan's mother; after that the Sultan's hospitality reached us, which we shall describe. On the next day we rode to the Sultan's palace and greeted the vizier, who gave me two purses, each of a thousand dinars in dirhams, and said to me, "This is sarshustī," meaning "for washing your head." He gave me a robe of honour of fine goat's wool, and he had all my companions, servants and slaves listed, and they were divided into four classes: to each of the first class he gave two hundred dinars, to each of the second class one hundred and fifty dinars, to each of the third class one hundred dinars, and to each of the fourth class seventy-five dinars. They were about forty, and the total given them was four thousand dinars and more.

13.22.5

After that the Sultan's hospitality was assigned: a thousand Indian raṭls of flour, one third of it mīrā, that is, fine white flour, and two thirds khushkār, that is, coarse-ground flour; a thousand raṭls of meat; many raṭls of sugar, ghee, salīf and areca nut, whose number I do not remember; and a thousand betel leaves. The Indian raṭl is twenty raṭls of the Maghrib and twenty-five raṭls of Egypt. The hospitality of Khudhāwandzāda was four thousand raṭls of flour and the same of meat, with what goes with it of the things we have mentioned.

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