History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c14.31

c14.31

The Qasāid or odes of Badr-i-Chāch, though they do not contain much historical matter, help us to explain certain points in connection with the reign of Muhammad Tughluq. The poet whose real name was Badr-al-Dīn or ‘Full moon of religion’ was a native of Chāch or Shash which is modern Tashqand. He enjoyed the patronage of Muhammad Tughluq and in recognition of his poetical gift received from him the title of Fakhr-al-Zamān. Sir Henry Elliot has translated (III, pp. 567—573) certain odes, but no complete translation is available. There are three copies of the *Diwan* of Badr-i-Chāch in the Khudābakhsh library of which a detailed notice is given in Maulvī Muqtadir’s catalogue. The MS. No. 140 is the best of all, though it is slightly damaged and worm-eaten. It contains ample explanatory notes on the margin. The colophon of the MS. contains an inscription to the effect that the MS. was admitted into the royal library in the time of Emperor Farrukh-Siyar. Badr-i-Chāch helps us in determining certain disputed dates and gives some account of the patent of the Khalifah, the recall of Qutlugh Khan from the Deccan in 745 A.H., and the conquest of Nagarkot. The poet describes the Sultan as obedient to the laws of the Prophet and loyal to the Khalifah and feels pride in attending his court. His muse was not shocked by the barbarities of the Sultan which moved his contemporary Barani. Badr-i-Chāch is well known for his difficult style, gorgeous imagery and frigid conceits which is in Prof. Browne’s words a common characteristic of the Persian poetry produced by men of the Turkish race or writing under Turkish influence and patronage.³ The poet sometimes writes in a rancorous vein, and in a satire on a certain rival poet Nāsir-al-Din he so far forgets the dignity of his lofty vocation as to speak ill of his wife, and says that he does not know even the alphabet, a way of reviling peculiar to mediæval wits. The poet finished his work in the month of Zi-al-Q'adah 745 A.H., i.e., seven years before the death of his patron and the date of his death is expressed in the following verse⁴ :—