[This “Picture-gallery” is a collection of anecdotes and stories relating to various dynasties. It was compiled by Ahmad bin Muhammad bin 'Abdu-l Ghafúr al Ghaffárí al Kazwíní, commonly known as Kází Ahmad al Ghaffárí. Nigáristán, the name of the work, expresses by the abjad the date of its compilation, A.H. 959 (A.D. 1552). Twenty-eight standard works are mentioned in the Preface of the work as the sources from which the stories have been extracted.* There is a copy of the work in Sir H. Elliot's library, and also some miscellaneous extracts from other copies. There are other works which bear the same name.]
It is related of Sultán Mahmúd of Ghazní that one day in his youth he went to take a walk in the gardens, and was accompanied by Ahmad Hasan Maimandí, who was one of his most favoured servants. As he passed by a rivulet, his eye fell upon a person who was loitering there, and he asked his companion who the man was? “A carpenter,” he replied. The Sultán again asked him what his name was, and he replied, “Ahmad.” “You seem to be acquainted with the man,” says the Sultán. “No,” answered he, “I never saw him before.” “Then, how is it,” observed the Sultán, “that you came to know his profession and name?” “I knew his name,” he replied, “by his readiness to answer your Majesty when your Majesty called me by my name; and as to his profession, I saw him walk round that dry old tree, and look carefully at it.” The Sultán, on hearing these words, said, “You would indeed be a most sagacious fellow if you could tell me what that man has eaten to-day.” “Honey, or the juice of some fruit,” said Ahmad. The Sultán then called the man and asked him, first, “Do you know this boy (Ahmad Hasan)?” The reply was that he had never seen him before. Mahmúd then enquired of the man who he was, what was his name, and what he had eaten that day? The answer was exactly what Ahmad had already given. Greatly wondering, the Sultán turned towards Ahmad and asked him how he knew that the man had eaten honey? to which he thus replied: “I knew it because he kept wiping his mouth, and the bees were swarming around him.”
It is recorded in many authentic histories that when the Sultán succeeded in capturing the fort of Bhím-nagar, on the confines of India, which was believed to be of incomparable strength, and commonly reported to contain immense wealth, he obtained as booty no less than seventy thousand millions of dirhams, seven hundred thousand and four hundred mans of gold and silver vessels, rare vestments of different kinds, the exact value of which appraisers found it impossible to calculate; and vast quantities of precious stones and pearls, beyond all computation. An edifice (khána) fell into the Sultán's hands, which measured 30 cubits by 15, the sides and covering of which were entirely made of pure silver.
In 330 A.H. (941-2 A.D.), a comet made its appearance, the tail of which reached from the eastern to the western horizon. It remained in the heavens eighteen days, and its blighting influence caused so severe a famine, that wheat, the produce of one jaríb of land, was sold for three hundred and twenty miskáls of gold. “When the value of a spike of corn was esteemed as high as the Pleiades, conceive what must have been the value of wheat.”
The famine in the land was so sore that man was driven to feed on his own species, and a pestilence prevailed with such virulence that it was impossible to bury the dead who fell victims to it.*