He was one of the sons of that saint of the Lord and traveller in the path of the Eternal God, Shaikh Ruknu-d-dīn ‘Alā'u-d-daulah of Samanān (may God sanctify his tomb!). In those branches of knowledge which exercise the reasoning faculty, he was the pupil of Maulānā ‘Iṣāmu-d-dīn and Mullā Ḥanafī, and in the study of the holy law he was the disciple of the last and best of the sages and traditionists Shaikhu-bnu-Ḥajar-i-ānī (may God have mercy on him!). His facility in verse, his ele­gance in literary style, his rhetorical flourishes, his fine delivery, ¹⁷⁷ his polish and copiousness of diction, and his wit, were unrivalled. He composed a dīvān, and his poetry, though not in the first rank, is of respectable quality. The following couplets are by him:—

“O, thou in whose absence the tears drop from my eye-
lashes,
While the thought of sleep* is banished from my eyes!
Thou didst display thyself to me in such wise as thou wert
not,
Alas! that thou wert not such as thou didst seem.”

It seems likely that this couplet is an imitation of the following quatrain:—

“We say that maybe we are of the faithful,—but we are
not.
And that we are of the truthful and sincere,—but we are
not,
We are adorned outwardly, but inwardly we are otherwise,
Alas! that we are not what we seem to be!”

The following couplets are also by Marvī:—

“With me thy brow is wrinkled like the rosebud,
With others thy lips open in smiles, like the pistachio.”

“I wish that the love which I bear to thee,
Should be known to me, and to thee, and to God.”

The following couplets in praise of Muḥammad are from the translation of the Singhāsan Batīsī,* of which His Majesty ordered this poet to make a translation, which was never completed:—

“The sweet-voiced nightingale of the garden of revelation*
Whose eyes were anointed with the antimony of us base
crows,
Who in his unquestionable abrogation of the Psalms of
David,
Has drawn his pen through the copies of the Pentatench
and the Gospels,
To his high court is prophecy entrusted,
To him, the chief of the prophets and the seal of apostle-
ship.”

A Quatrain.

“I am he whose kingdom is the realm of words,
¹⁷⁸ The money-changer of wisdom is the appraiser of my
threaded gems.
The exordium “Be!” is but one leaf of my writings;
The secrets of the two worlds are on the tip of my pen.”

In the year H. 979 (A.D. 1571-72) he obtained permission to depart from Hindūstān and to go to his native land, and Shaikh Faiẓī, who was his pupil, found the date of his departure in the words “may his shadow be extended!”* He went to Kābul and was received with consideration and honour by Mīrzā Muḥam-mad Ḥakīm, but when he presented his pīshkash* of merchandise, goods, valuables, and precious articles from India, he rose from his place and took the list of his presents from the hands of the registrar of complimentary presents and detailed and explained the quantity, quality and name of each description of cloth, even going so far as to give the price of each. The Mīrzā was much displeased at this breach of decorum, and, rising from an assembly with which he was disgusted, ordered that all who pleased should fall on the spoil and carry off what they could, so that in the space of an hour everything disappeared. The Kh'āja shortly after this died in Kābul.