The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c27.113

v3.c27.113

The character of Ahmad was simpler than that of his versatile and accomplished brother, Fīrūz, whose learning, with its taint of scepticism, was replaced in Ahmad by superstition, with a tinge of fanaticism. The uncouth enthusiasm of the long-haired zealot, Gīsū Darāz, which had disgusted the cultured and fastidious Fīrūz, delighted the devout and simple mind of his brother. But Ahmad, though scantily endowed with wit and learning, despised neither, and his court, if less brilliant than that of Fīrūz, was not destitute of culture. Of the men of learning who enjoyed his patronage the foremost was the poet Āzarī of Isfarāyīn in Khurāsān, who was encouraged to undertake the composition of the *Bahman-nāma*, a versified history of the dynasty, now unfortunately lost. From fragments preserved in quotations it seems to have been an inferior imitation of the *Shāhnāma* of Firdausī. Āzarī returned to his own country before Ahmad’s death, but in remote Isfarāyīn continued the history until his own death in 1462. It was carried on by various hands until the last days of the dynasty, and some of the poetasters who disfigured the work with their turgid bombast, impudently claimed the whole as their own.