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تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.30

English (machine translation) 13.30

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English

13.30.1

As I have mentioned, I had borrowed money from the merchants, which I spent on my journey, on what I prepared as a gift for the Sultan, and on my stay. When they wished to travel back to their own countries, they pressed me hard for their debts, so I praised the Sultan in a long qaṣīda that begins:

13.30.2

To you, revered Commander of the Faithful, / we have come, hastening our journey toward you across the desert.

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I have come as a visitor to a place of your exaltedness, / and your abode is a refuge worthy of visiting.

13.30.4

Were there a rank of glory above the sun, / you would be a leader fit for its highest point.

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For you are the glorious, peerless imam / whose nature is bound to speak and to act!

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I have a need that I hope your overflowing generosity / will fulfil, and my aim, before your glory, is easy.

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Shall I mention it, or has your modesty spared me? / For to mention your modesty would be more fitting!

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So hasten, for one who has come as a visitor to your abode, / the payment of his debt, for the creditor is in a hurry!!

13.30.9

I presented it before him while he was seated on a chair; he placed it on his knee and held one end of it in his hand and the other end in mine. Whenever I finished a verse of it I would say to the chief qāḍī Kamāl al-Dīn al-Ghaznawī:

13.30.10

"Explain its meaning to Khwand ʿĀlam!" He would explain it, and the Sultan would be pleased, for they love Arabic poetry. When I reached my words "So hasten, for one who has come," the verse, he said: "Marḥamat," meaning "I have taken pity on you." Then the chamberlains took me by the hand to lead me to their standing place, so that I might make obeisance according to custom, but the Sultan said: "Leave him until he finishes it." So I finished it and made obeisance, and people congratulated me on it. I waited some time and wrote a petition, which they call ʿarḍ dāsht, and handed it to Quṭb al-Mulk, the lord of Sind, who handed it to the Sultan. He said to him: "Go to Khwāja Jahān and tell him to pay his debt." He went to him and informed him, and he said: "Yes," but it was delayed for some days, during which the Sultan ordered him to travel to Dawlat Ābād. Meanwhile the Sultan went out hunting and the vizier departed, so I received nothing of it until after some time. The reason its payment was held up I shall relate in full. It was this: when those to whom I owed the debt resolved to travel, I said to them: "When I come to the Sultan's palace, make a claim of 'darōhī' against me, according to the custom of that country," since I knew that the Sultan, once he learned of it, would pay them. Their custom is that when someone has a debt owed him by a man enjoying favour and cannot obtain its payment, he stands in his way at the gate of the Sultan's palace, and when the man wishes to enter he says to him:

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"Darōhī of the Sultan! By the head of the Sultan, you shall not enter until you pay me!" Then he cannot leave his place until he pays him or begs him for a delay! It happened one day that the Sultan went out to visit his father's tomb and stopped at a palace there. I said to them: "This is your moment." When I wanted to enter, they stood in my way at the palace gate and said to me: "Darōhī of the Sultan! You shall not enter until you pay us!" The gate clerks wrote about this to the Sultan, and the chamberlain of petitions, Shams al-Dīn, who was one of the leading jurists, came out and asked them: "For what reason have you made a claim of darōhī against him?" They said: "He owes us a debt." He went back to the Sultan and informed him, and he said to him: "Ask them how much the debt amounts to." He asked them and they told him: fifty-five thousand

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dinars. He returned to him and informed him, and he ordered him to go back to them and tell them: "Khwand ʿĀlam says to you: the money is with me and I will see you are paid in full from it, so do not press him for it!" He ordered ʿImād al-Dīn al-Simnānī and Khudhāwandzāda Ghiyāth al-Dīn to sit in the Hazār Usṭūn, and the creditors to bring their contracts so that they might examine and verify them. The two did so; the creditors brought their contracts, and the two went in to the Sultan and informed him that the contracts were established. He laughed and said jokingly: "I know he is a qāḍī; he has fixed his business in them!" Then he ordered Khudhāwandzāda to give me that sum from the treasury, but he coveted a bribe for it and refused to write the khaṭṭ-i khurd. I sent him two hundred tankas, but he returned them and would not take them, and one of his servants told me on his behalf that he wanted five hundred tankas. I refused this, and informed ʿAmīd al-Mulk, son of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Simnānī, of it; he informed his father, and the vizier learned of it. There was enmity between him and Khudhāwandzāda, so he informed the Sultan and told him of many of Khudhāwandzāda's doings, which turned the Sultan's mind against him. He ordered him confined in the city and said: "For what reason did so-and-so give him what he gave him?" and they suspended the matter until it should be known whether Khudhāwandzāda would give anything if I withheld it, or withhold it if I gave it?! For this reason the payment of my debt was held up.

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