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تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.37

English (machine translation) 13.37

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English

13.37.1

The vizier had given me ten thousand maunds of the grain ordered for the zāwiya, and assigned me the rest on Hazār Amrūhā. The revenue governor there was ʿAzīz al-Khammār, and its amīr was Shams al-Dīn al-Badhakhshānī. I sent my men and they collected part of the assignment, and complained of ʿAzīz al-Khammār's high-handedness, so I went out myself to recover it. Between Dihlī and this district is three days. It was the season of the rains, and I set out with about thirty of my companions, taking with me two brothers, skilled singers, who sang for me on the road. We reached the town of Bijnūr—its name is spelled with i after the b, no vowel on the j, a after the n, and ending in r—and there I also found three brothers who were singers and took them along, so they would sing for me in one turn and the other two in another! Then we reached Amrūhā, a small, pleasant town. Its officials came out to meet me, and its qāḍī, the sharīf Amīr ʿAlī, and the shaykh of its zāwiya came, and together they entertained me handsomely. ʿAzīz al-Khammār was at a place called Afghānpūr on the river Sarw, with the river between us and him and no ferry on it. We took the baggage across on a ferry we made of wood and plants and crossed on the second day. Najīb, ʿAzīz's brother, came with a group of his companions and pitched an enclosure-tent for us; then his brother the governor came to me. He was known for oppression. The villages in his district numbered one thousand five hundred, and their revenue was sixty lakhs a year, of which he received one-twentieth. Among the marvels of the river on which we camped is that no one drinks from it during the rainy season

13.37.2

and no animal is watered from it. We stayed by it three days and no one scooped a single handful from it, nor did we even go near it, because it comes down from the mountain of Qarājīl, where there are gold mines, and passes over poisonous creatures, so whoever drinks from it dies (129).

13.37.3

This mountain extends a journey of three months, and from it one descends to the land of Tibet, where the musk-deer are. We have already mentioned what befell the Muslim army on this mountain. At this place a group of Ḥaydarī faqīrs came to me, performed a samāʿ, lit fires and entered them, and they did not harm them; we have mentioned that already.

13.37.4

A dispute had arisen between the amīr of this region, Shams al-Dīn al-Badhakhshānī, and its governor ʿAzīz al-Khammār, and Shams al-Dīn came to fight him, but he shut himself up in his house against him. The complaint of one of them reached the vizier in Dihlī, and the vizier wrote to me, to Malik Shāh, commander of the mamlūks at Amrūhā—they being four thousand mamlūks of the Sultan—and to Shihāb al-Dīn al-Rūmī, that we should look into their case and send whichever was in the wrong in fetters to the capital. They all met at my lodging, and ʿAzīz brought several charges against Shams al-Dīn, among them that a servant of his known as al-Riḍā al-Multānī had lodged in the house of the said ʿAzīz's treasurer, drunk wine there and stolen five thousand dinars of the money held by the treasurer. I questioned al-Riḍā about this, and he said to me: "I have not drunk wine since I left Multān, and that is eight years ago." I said to him: "So you drank it in Multān?" He said: "Yes!" So I ordered him flogged eighty lashes and imprisoned him on account of the charge, because of suspicious evidence that appeared against him.

13.37.5

I left Amrūhā, my absence having lasted about two months. Every day I slaughtered a cow for my companions. I left my companions behind to bring the grain assigned on ʿAzīz, with its transport at his charge, and he apportioned thirty thousand maunds among the people of the villages under his supervision, which they carried on three thousand oxen. The people of Hind carry loads only on oxen, and on them they transport their baggage on journeys; riding donkeys is a great disgrace among them. Their donkeys are small in body, and they call them lāsha. When they wish to expose someone to public shame after beating him, they mount him on a donkey!

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