The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.381

v3.c20.381

Against his overweening pride must be set the grovelling servility with which he received at his court the great-great-grandson of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir of Baghdād, the miser Ghiyās-ud-dīn, whom he received with more than royal honours, whom he compelled, much against his will, to place his foot upon his neck, and on whom he lavished wealth with astonishing profusion; his abasement before Hāji Sa‘īd Sarsarī, envoy from the phantom Abbasid Caliph al-Mustakfī of Egypt, whose name appeared on the currency of his kingdom and of whose envoy’s utterances he spoke as though they were divine revelations; and the extravagant veneration for the temporal, as well as the spiritual authority of the Caliphate which led him to strike from the formal Friday sermon the names of all his predecessors but such as had been formally recognised by one of the Caliphs.