He is Mīr Sayyid ‘Alī, the painter, a versatile man, each page of whose paintings is a masterpiece, and who may be described as a second Mānī* in India. The story of Amīr Ḥamzah in sixteen* volumes was illuminated and completed under his supervision. Each volume of it fills a box, and each page of it measures a yard wide by a yard long, and on each page is a picture.

He has completed a dīvān, in which the following verses occur:—

“As the morning broke the thorn boasted of its fellowship
with the rose
And thus pierced with its nail the broken heart of the
nightingale.”

“The beauty of idols is the Ka‘bah to which I journey;
love is the desert by the way,
The railing of rivals* is the acacia thorn of that desert.”

“From head to foot we are covered with swellings from the
wounds of love for thee,

We are the merchants of love and these wounds are our
merchandise.”

“I am a quarry half-slaughtered, fallen far from the street
of the Friend,
I stumble along on my way striving to see the face of the
Friend.”

“I wished to describe my circumstances to that ill-natured
one,
She is ever in company with others, what shall I say to
her?