Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c10.20

c10.20

and scientists, which made it a most renowned centre of learning, as it was at the same time fast becoming a great civic centre adorned with beautiful works of architecture and sculpture, with public buildings and private palaces, with mosques, porches, fountains, aqueducts, baths and reservoirs. The city rose to be as famous as a Bologna or a Padua of Mediæval Europe. Of the many learned men of genius and eminence who shared the munificence of the Sulṭān, one was 'Utbī who composed the *Tārīkhi-Yamīnī*, which was an account of the descendants of Subuktigīn. Another was 'Uzeerī Rāzī, a native of Persia, who on one occasion received a present of 14,000 dirhams from the Sulṭān for a short panegyric. Asadī Ṭūsī, a native of Khurāsān and a poet of great fame, was the master of Firdausī. The Sulṭān often requested him to undertake the *Shāh-Nāmah*, but he excused himself on the ground of his old age. However, when Firdausī fled from Ghaznī, he entreated Asadī to supply a part of the *Shāh-Nāmah* consisting of 4000 couplets. Munuchiḥr, a noble of Balkh, was also famous for his wit and poetry, and lived at the royal court.¹ 'Unṣurī, the greatest poet of his age, a great philosopher, scientist and linguist, whom we have already mentioned in connection with the University of Ghaznī, was a great panegyrist of Maḥmūd, writing quite a crop of odes and