History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c6.196

c6.196

With this evidence before us we have to decide whether the Sultan's death was caused by lightning or it was the result of a conspiracy planned by the crown prince. It appears that Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya had knowledge of the Sultan's coming down. Barani who must have been in the know leaves us cruelly in the dark and evades the difficulty by recording an equivocal remark in metaphorical language.⁸⁶ The India Office MS. of Barani's *Tarīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī* has صاعقه بلا از آسمان منزل شد which means that the lightning of a calamity from heaven fell upon the earth. The Buhar text expresses the same idea in the words صاعقه بلا از آسمان بزمین نازل شد Other texts also have more or less the same expression. Sir Wolseley Haig has pointed out the error of the translator of the extracts from Barani in Elliot and Dowson's History of India as told by its own historians.⁸⁷ The original passage which has been cited in a foot note is thus rendered: ‘A thunderbolt from the sky descended upon the earth and the roof under which the Sultan was seated fell down, crushing him and five or six other persons so that they died.’⁸⁸ This mistranslation has been followed by Ranking in a note to his translation of the *Muntakhab-ut-tawārīkh*.⁸⁹ Sir Wolseley suggests with great force that if Barani had intended to say that the building was actually struck by lightning, he would have written بلائے صاعقه آسمانی (the calamity of a thunderbolt from the sky). The word صاعقه is merely a simile, comparing the calamity in its suddenness to a thunderbolt, but Barani would probably have been well content to be misunderstood.⁹⁰ The text of the Asiatic Society of Bengal has صاعقه بلائے آسمانی which means a thunderbolt of a calamity from heaven.⁹¹ One thing deserves to be noted. The brevity with which Barani records the Sultan's death creates a suspicion which is further increased by his complete omission of Shaikh Aulia's story, the reason for which probably is that Barani was one of the most ardent disciples of the Shaikh⁹² and did not like to cast a slur upon the character of his patron saint whom he adored with all the intensity of his orthodox nature. He would be the last person to suggest that the Shaikh was implicated in a criminal conspiracy. If the canopy had been struck by lightning, Barani could have recorded the event straightway without employing figurative language. Hajji-ad-Dabīr writes that lightning fell, but his statement is a mere paraphrase of Barani. He falls into the same error, if error it can be called, as the translator of Barani's extracts in Elliot and Dowson's History of India. The author of the *Matlūb-al-Tālibīn* referring to this incident writes برق از آسمان افتاد which clearly means that lightning fell from heaven, but being a biographer and relative of the Shaikh he would naturally feel inclined to suppress anything that would implicate his canonised kinsman in a conspiracy to murder the Sultan.⁹³ A careful reading of the text makes it clear how Muhammad Bulāq gets out of the difficulty. He accepts Nizam-al-Din's version regarding the Sultan's threat to expel the Shaikh from Dihli on his arrival there, but to magnify the greatness of the Shaikh he leaves out the rest, and suggests that the threat was followed by the fall of lightning from heaven.