In many separate branches of knowledge, such as poetry, the composition of enigmas, prosody, rhyme, history, philology, medicine, and prose composition Shaikh Faiẓī had no equal in his time. At first he used to write under his well-known poetical name of Faiẓī, but later, imitating the title of his younger brother, whom the Emperor describes in writing as ‘Allāmī,* and in order to glorify himself, he chose a poetical name in the same measure, viz. Fayyāẓī,* but it did not suit him, and one or two months later, having packed up the baggage of this life, he took it from the world with the most bitter regret. He was a mas­ter * of malevolent activity, idle jests, conceit, pride, and malice, and one epitome of hypocrisy, baseness, dissimulation, love of pomp, arrogance, and ostentation. All Jews, Christians, Hindūs, and fire-worshippers, not to speak of Nizārīs and Sabāḥīs, held him in the very highest honour for his heresy, his enmity to the followers of Islām, his reviling of the very fundamental doctrines of our faith, his contemptuous abuse of the noble companions (of the Prophet) and those who came after them, and of holy Shaikhs, both dead and living, and of his unmannerly and contemptuous behaviour towards all learned, pious, and excellent men, both in ³⁰⁰ secret and openly, and both by day and by night. Not content with this he used, despite the sacred faith of Muḥammad (may God bless and assoil him and his family), to regard all forbidden things as lawful, and all the injunctions of the sacred law as un­lawful, and, with a view to washing away the stain of his ill-repute, which the waters of a hundred oceans (poured over it) till the day of judgment will not wash away, he used, in the height of his drunkenness, and while he was ceremonially im­pure, * to write a commentary* on the Qur'ān, written entirely in words which contained no dotted letter, and his dogs* used to trample on it in all directions. At last, after all his denial of the truth, his obstinacy, his pride, and his heresy, he hastened to the place to which he belonged, and went in such sort that I pray that nobody may see or hear of the like. When the Em­peror went to visit him when he was at his last gasp, Faiẓī barked like a dog in his face, and the Emperor used to relate this story in open darbār, his face was swollen and his lips had become black, so that the Emperor asked Shaikh Abū-l-Faẓl what caused this blackness of the lips and suggested that Faiẓī had rubbed misī* on his teeth, as the people of India use to do, but Abū-l-Faẓl replied that this was not so, and that the blackness was caused by the blood which Faiẓī had been vomiting. But, with­out a doubt, the sufferings which he had already endured were very little considered with reference to his vice, his abuse of the faith, and his revilings of his holiness the last of the Prophets (may God bless him and his family, all of them). Many abusive chronograms were discovered for the date of his death. One was as follows:—

“When Faiẓī the atheist died an eloquent man uttered (as
the date of his death) the words,
‘A dog has gone from the world in an abominable state.’”*

Another said:

“The date of the death of that carrion Faiẓī is fixed by the
words ‘The four religions of fire.”*

Another found the following chronogram:—

“Faiẓī the inauspicious, the enemy of the Prophet, ³⁰¹
Went, bearing on him the brand of curses,
He was a miserable and hellish dog, and hence
The words ‘what dog-worshipper has died’* give the date
of his death.”

In the same strain was the chronogram:

“The laws of apostasy have been overthrown.”*

And another wrote: “Faiẓī was an apostate.”*

And to the same effect is the following:—

“Since he could not choose but go, there is no help but that
The date of his death shall be found in the words, ‘He is
for ever in fire.’”*

He wrote poetry for a period of exactly forty years, but it was all imperfect. He could set up the skeleton of verse well, but the bones had no marrow in them, and the salt* of his poetry was entirely without savour. His taste in lewd raving, in boast­ful verse,* and in infidel scribblings, is well known, but he was entirely devoid of any experience of the love of truth, of the knowledge of God, and of any idea of a painful longing for God, and “a favourable reception is the lot of enemies.” Although his dīvān and his manavī contain more than twenty thousand cou­plets there is not among them one couplet that is not as much without fire as his withered genius, and they are despised and rejected to such an extent that no one, even in lewdness, studies his verse, as they do those of other base poets.

And this is stranger still, that although he has spent the whole revenue of his jāgīrs in having his misleading lies written and copied, and has sent copies of them to all his friends, both far and near, nobody has ever taken a copy in his hand a second time.

Thy poetry has doubtless taken a lesson from the dignity
of the veil,
For it displays no desire to come out of its private corner
in the house.

The following few couplets are taken from his selected poems which he wrote as memorials of himself, and entrusted to Mirzā Niāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad and others:—

“Cover not thy eyelashes* when thy eyes travel, like feet,
(the road of love)
For stout wayfarers march with naked feet.”
³⁰² “Why dost thou cut my hand, thou sword of love? If
justice is to be done
Cut out the tongue of the slanderer of Zulaikhā.”
“When we cast our bounteous glance on those who sit in
the dust
We distribute even to ants brains like those of Solomon.”
“The flood of my tears will hardly turn thy heart of stone;
To turn this mill-stone the flood of Noah is required.”

“O love, overthrow not the Ka‘bah, for there, for a moment,
Those exhausted in the faith of love sometimes take rest.”
“O love, have I leave to remove from the shoulder of the
sky
To my own shoulder the banner of thy power?”
“How long shall I stake my heart on the blandishments of
the fair?
I will burn this heart and obtain a new heart.
Faiẓī, my hand is empty, and the road of courtship is be-
fore me,
Perhaps I shall be able to pledge my dīvān for this world
and the next.”

The following is the opening couplet of a boastful ode, of which he was very proud:—

“Thanks be to God that the love of beautiful ones is my
guide.
I am of the religion of Brahmans and of the faith of the
fire-worshīppers.”

The following couplet is also by him:—

“In this land there is a sugar-lipped multitude
Who have mixed salt with their wine and are drunk in-
deed.”
(Poet) say thyself in what part of this poetry there is any
savour.

The following couplets are from the Manavī Markaz-i-Adwār ³⁰³ which he wrote in imitation of the Makhzan-i-Khiyāl* and which did not turn out fortunately for him:—*