He is one of the amīrs who have been long in the imperial service, and is well known for his ability, scientific knowledge, and wit. If anybody were praised to him for his learning and accomplishments he would at once say to him, “My love and friendship are conditional on this, that you pay no heed to what the base and vulgar say of me, for such people are a hindrance to ²⁰⁷ friendship and a cause of strife.” His verses are, as it were, disconnected fragments of chaff, but he has nevertheless com­pleted a dīvān.

“O thou whose practice is to vex me, and whose rule of
conduct is injustice!
I cry out against this injustice and against this rule.”

Pass by this bitterness, for in this tardy world no one who
ill-treats the poor prospers.”

“A rival is on the road to salute thee,
O God! Grant that he leave not the road with his life.”

Quatrain.

“I have suffered from separation as even Jacob* never
suffered,
I have suffered for love what even Majnūn never suffered,
This calamity which thine absence has brought upon me
Was never dreamt of by Farhād nor heard of by Vāmiq.”

His name is ‘Alī Akbar and he has made the fact that he bears the same name as the emperor, an excuse for addressing to him treatises on heresy, in which, agreeably to the system of the Nuqawīs,* he sets forth both the emperor and himself as that promised person who was to appear, in accordance with the numerical values of the letters composing the word shakhṣ,* in the year H. 990,* and he quotes the words of Maḥmūd in support of this view:—the curse of God be upon them all! He has versified the Kāfiyyah* and a treatise on Ṣūfī-ism, in which occurs the following ridiculous couplet* which is made to scan merely by filling in vowels:—

He has apparently, at the latter end of his life, repented of poetry.