The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.372

v3.c20.372

The death of Ghiyās-ud-dīn Tughluq occurred in February or March, 1325, and Shaikh Nizām-ud-dīn soon followed him, dying on April 3¹. Almost at the same time died the greatest of all the poets of India who have written in Persian, Yamīn-ud-dīn Muhammad Hasan, known as Amīr Khusrav, at the age of seventy-two. He was of Turkish origin, his father having been a native of ‘the green-domed city’ of Kash, in Turkistān, who, driven from his home early in the thirteenth century by the horde of the Mughul, Chingīz Khān, had found an asylum in India. The poet was born at Patiāla in A.H. 651 (A.D. 1253) and entered the service of ‘Alā-ud-dīn Khaljī as court poet, but later in his life became the disciple of Shaikh Nizām-ud-dīn Auliyā, abandoned the court and worldly ambitions, and lived in religious retirement, but still wrote poetry. He was a most prolific writer and estimated the number of couplets which he had written at more than 400,000 but less than 500,000, dividing his poems into four classes, youthful effusions; poems of early middle age, written when he was putting off childish things and turning his thoughts to religion; poems written when he had attained the dignity of a religious teacher; and the poems of his old age. Each of the four classes bears, as might be expected, the impress of his views on this world and the next during the period of his life in which it was produced, but in the second class there are to be found poems sufficiently courtly to be acceptable to the vanity of a royal patron.