The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c19.24

v3.c19.24

The romantic story of his death, related by some chroniclers, has usually been repeated by European historians, but is devoid of foundation. It is said that when the Caliph Walīd sent for Sūryadevī and Parmaldevī, the daughters of Dāhir, he first selected the elder for the honour of sharing his bed, but the damsel protested that she was unworthy, for Muhammad had dishonoured both her and her sister before sending them to his master. Walīd, transported with rage, wrote with his own hand an order directing that the offender, wherever he might be when the message reached him, should suffer himself to be sewn up in a raw hide and thus dispatched to the capital. When the order reached the young hero it was at once obeyed. He caused himself to be sewn up in the hide, the contraction of which as it dried would crush him to death, enclosed in a box and sent to Damascus. The box was opened in the presence of the Caliph and Sūryadevī, and Walīd pointed proudly to the corpse as evidence of the obedience which he was able to exact from his servants. Sūryadevī, having read him a homily on the duty of investigating all complaints made to him before issuing orders on them, confessed that her accusation was false, that Muhammad had scrupulously respected her honour and that of her sister, but that she had had no other means of avenging her father’s death. Walīd condemned both sisters to a horrible death. We need not stop to inquire whether they were immured alive, or whether they were dragged through the streets of Damascus by horses until they expired. Both accounts are extant, but the end of the young conqueror, though tragic enough, was not due to an act of romantic and quixotic obedience to a distant and ungrateful master.