التاريخ اليميني 19.38

19.38

Khalaf ibn Aḥmad's men resisted from the battlements of the fortress with stone-throwers. War blazed between them, throwing out sparks like castles, and bearing down upon necks with crushing and force. The great elephant advanced to the fortress gate, tore it out with its two tusks and hurled it into the air, so that it fell to the ground from on high and killed a great multitude of Khalaf's men; the rest, at the edges of the barrier, took refuge at the inner wall. The Sultan's army was spurred on against the fortress. Khalaf's men held firm on the battlements of the next wall, defending them with the stones of the mangonels and the points of spears and javelins. When the crisis grew severe, Khalaf ibn Aḥmad looked out upon the place where the two sides met, and saw the terror of the sight: he saw the open space surging with ʿifrīts of champions upon devils of steeds, arrows flying like swarms of locusts, spears showering like the downpours of clouds, and blood gushing like the flowing of the sky. He saw the elephant bend down to one of his men with its trunk and fling him into the air the length of two spears, then catch him on its tusks, then turn on the others, trampling them with its feet, then bear down on the gate with its shoulders, shake it by its two doorposts and tear it out with the iron bolts upon it. At that his heart took flight, he was agitated and his mind was terrified, and the horror of the situation and the fear of annihilation compelled him to seek quarter and to implore the Sultan. [The Sultan] withheld from him the hand of pressure and laid aside from him the whip of vengeance, out of a generosity that God had nourished with His milk and gladdened with the intoxication of His wine.