التاريخ اليميني 23
English (machine translation) 23
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23.1
News had reached the Sultan Yamīn al-Dawla wa-Amīn al-Milla of the state of the governor of Multan, Abū al-Futūḥ: the wickedness of his creed, the corruption of his inner disposition, the filth of his belief, the ugliness of his heresy, and his summoning the people of his land to the like of his opinion. He took offence on behalf of religion at leaving him alone despite the enormity of his evil and the hideousness of his affair. He sought guidance of God, the Chooser, in his intent, to bring him to repentance and to give precedence to God's judgement in falling upon him. He ordered the outlying forces gathered, the skirts tucked up, and horses massed upon horses. There joined him those volunteers of the Muslims for whom God had sealed good works and whom He had honoured from eternity with one of the two best things. He set out with them toward Multan when spring surged with the torrents of the rain-stars and the rivers overflowed with surplus moisture, and the Sīḥūn and its sister rivers were impassable to their riders and their courses hard for their people. So the Sultan asked Andpāl, the great one of Hind, to grant him passage through his kingdom to his destination; but he refused and rebelled, pride seized him in his baseness, and he declined and held firm.
23.2
In the darkness of that crisis the Sultan judged it the brightest course to begin with him, for all the strength of his position, [154a] so as to humble his arrogance, lay open his preserves, and tear apart his host and its rabble, thus combining two campaigns and gathering the fruit of both gardens. So he stretched over him the hands of slaughter and fettering, plunder and oppression, demolition and burning, driving him from one narrow pass to another and chasing him from road to road, folding up his lands upon him as the merchants of Ḥaḍramawt fold their cloaks, until the spears grew weary of rending the rings of coats of mail and the sword-blades grew drunk with sipping the blood of entrails and ribs. He followed his track into the hollows of his territory and the depths of his dwellings, searching out the soft plains and the stony rough ground, feasting the wild beasts of the air upon him between narrow entrances and wide deserts, until Kashmīr swallowed him up. When Abū al-Futūḥ, governor of Multān, heard what had befallen the great one of Hind — that eminent and lofty man, that impregnable barrier, that well-wrought sword — he measured his fathom against his span and his cubit against his finger-breadth, and was certain that the peaks of mountains are not matched by low hillocks, and that grey falcons are not reached by weak birds. So he hastened to carry his wealth on the backs of his elephants to Sarandīb, and left Multān empty for the Sultan to do with as he wished. The Sultan turned his rein towards it, seeking the help of God Most High against one who had introduced innovation into His religion [154b] or spoken to weaken it. He found its people stumbling in their error and wandering blindly in their transgression, 'desiring to extinguish the light of God with their mouths, but God refuses except to perfect His light, though the unbelievers dislike it.' He bore down on them with the full weight of siege and the breast of close combat and slaughter, cutting throats and severing hands from wrists and lying in wait for them with back-breaking calamities, until he took it by force, filled it with punishment and might, and imposed on them twenty thousand thousand dirhams with which to wash away the filth of their recalcitrance and ward off from themselves the disgrace of their insolence and refusal.
23.3
His fame — through what God granted him in aiding the religion and illuminating the landmarks of certainty — crossed the breadth of the sea to the lands of Egypt, until his feats there became a lesson of a kind not related even of Dhū al-Qarnayn, up to the point he reached in the matter of the two barriers. The shoulders of Sind and its sister lands trembled for fear of his violence and vengeance; the whispering of heresy there fell silent and the waymarks of error and obstinacy were effaced. How fine is Abū Tammām when he says:
23.4
Noble were your two campaigns yesterday, when the horses / were lean and the affair was no slight one,
23.5
when neither was the skin of the sky green / nor the face of winter cheerful. [155a]
23.6
Your fair days among the Byzantines / were red at the morning draught and red at the evening draught,
23.7
marked out, as if, with the blood that was shed, / they were the days of Sacrifice and of Tashrīq.
Translations (1)
- Tárikh Yamíní (extracts) — Henry Miers Elliot & John Dowson 1869, English
Linked texts (1)
- التاريخ اليميني — Abū Naṣr Muḥammad al-ʿUtbī, Arabic