التاريخ اليميني 28.2

28.2

When the king of Hind saw the scourge of punishment that God had poured upon him and the people of his kingdom through the onslaughts of the Sultan [Yamīn al-Dawla wa-Amīn al-Milla] against them, and his blows upon the farthest and nearest of them, and was certain that they had no strength against the weight of his tread and the harshness of his hand, he sent to him the chief of his kinsmen and intimates, humbly begging for a truce in which he would abide by his command, give freely of his wealth and riches, and devote himself to aiding him whenever he summoned him. [He undertook] to send him at the outset fifty elephants, each of which counted as many in bulk of body and lightness of foot, and to send with them wealth of great importance and high value, along with matching gifts from the products of those lands and the goods of those regions; and to provide every year, in rotation among the ranks of his army, two thousand men in the service of his court, going and returning; besides a fixed tribute he would bind himself to pay year by year, to which whoever inherited his place and took his stead in guarding the kingdom would also hold. The Sultan deemed it right to grant his request, for the glory Islam gained by his offering obedience and paying the jizya out of hand. He sent to him someone [175a] to demand the delivery of the money and the dispatch of the elephants. He paid what he had promised, fulfilled what he had stipulated, and sent those of his own picked men whom he had undertaken to dispatch to his court, for the whole of the service and the upholding of the custom of obedience. Thus the truce was concluded, the tribute flowed, and caravans followed one another between the lands of Khurāsān and the country of Hind under the guarantee of safety and the protection of care and good treatment.