“To beg* for what aid I come to this door,
That I have become richer in heart and hand?

I asked for little, but my stock increased
Then, though I sat down, my footsteps advanced.”

The following couplets are from his projected* manavī, Bilqīs­u-Sulaimān :—

“I set myself again to place
The slit of my pen opposite to the window of my heart:
There comes from that window and enters this window*
That very light which serves as a guide to the soul,
Although from this court of injustice
The throne of the Sulaimān of my words* has gone on the
breeze,
Yet it occurred to me to consider a plan
Whereby, by means of spells, I might bind the demons in
chains,*
Bind them, by what means I have, to the throne of my
rhetoric,
And adorn that (throne) from the treasures of my mind.”

The following is an enigma which he composed on the name of Qādirī,:—*

“I will leave the mark from love's brand
Since it is a memorial in my heart, and is the only scar
there.”

When he was absent as an envoy in the Dakan I sent him two letters from the lower slopes of the Kashmīr mountains, inform­ing him of the Emperor's disfavour towards me and of his re­fusal to admit me to his presence in order that I might pay my respects. In the petition which Faiẓī sent to court he recom­mended me to the Emperor's favour and Shaikh Abū-l-Faẓl was ordered to embody that petition in the Akbarnāma in order that it might be read as an example of what such documents should be. The following is a copy of that petition, which was dated on the 10th day of the month Jamādī'u-l-Awwal, A.H. 1000 (February 23, 1592), and despatched from Aḥmadnagar to Lāhor:—

‘Refuge of the world! There lately came to me from Badāon two relatives of Mullā ‘Abdu-l-Qādir, in a very disturbed state of mind, weeping, weeping and tortured by anxiety. They told me that Mullā ‘Abd-l Qādir had for some time been sick, and had been unable to keep his promise to attend at court, that some ³⁰⁴ of the Emperor's officers had carried him off with force and vio­lence, * and that they did not know what the end of the matter would be. They also said that the long duration of his sickness had not been reported to your majesty. Cherisher of the broken spirited! Mullā ‘Abdu-'l-Qādir has much aptitude, and he has studied what the Mullās of Hindūstān usually study in the ordin­ary branches of learning. He acquired accomplishments under my honoured father, and I, your slave, have known him for nearly thirty-eight years. In addition to his acquirements in learn­ing he has some skill in poetry, and good taste in prose composi­tion, both Arabic and Persian. He has also acquired some know­ledge of Indian astrology, and of accounts, in all their branches. He is acquainted with Indian and foreign music, and by no means ignorant of chess, both the two-handed and the four-handed game,* and has some practice in playing the bīn.* In spite of all these acquirements he is endued with many virtues. He is not avaricious, has a contented mind, is not vacillating, is truthful, straightforward, respectful, unambitious, humble-spirited, meek, moderate in his requests, almost entirely devoid of the dissimula­tion so common at court, and entirely faithful and devoted to the Imperial Court. When the imperial forces were sent against Kūmbhulmer* he, having requested permission to accompany them, went thither in the hope of offering his life to your majesty, and was in action and was wounded, and when the fact was re­ported he received a reward. Jalāl Khān Qūrcī* first presented him at court, and said, when presenting him: “I have discovered for your majesty an Imām* with whom you will be well pleased. Mīr Fatḥu-'llāh* also acquainted your sacred majesty, to some extent, with his affairs, and my respected brother* is also aware of his circumstances; but it is well known that ‘a grain of luck is better than a load of merit.”

Since your majesty's court is the court of the just, your slave, acting as though he were present in person at the foot of the august throne, when he saw a helpless man suffering persecu­tion, has represented the case to your majesty. Had he not rep­resented it at this time he would, in a manner, have been guilty ³⁰⁵ of insincerity and want of proper regard for the truth. May God (who is praised) deign to keep the slaves of your majesty's court constant in the path of truth, justice, and righteous dealing under the heavenly shadow of your majesty, their Emperor; and may He long maintain your majesty as their shelter, the cherisher of the miserable, the bestower of favours, the coverer of faults, with boundless wealth, glory, greatness and majesty, by the honour of the pure ones who dwell in the courts of God and the enlightened ones who rise betimes to praise him. Amen. Amen.

If any should ask me what rules of humanity and faithfulness I observe in so harshly reviling one who had so much goodwill for me and so much sincere friendship, and especially how it is that I, forgetful of the command, ‘Mention not your dead but in connection with good,’ have thus written of a man after his death, and have become one of those who disregard their obliga­tions, I reply, ‘All this is true, but what could I do?’ The claims of the faith and the safeguarding of one's compact with God are above all other claims, and ‘Love is God's and hatred is God's’ is an established precept. Although I was for full forty years in the company of Faiẓī, yet after the gradual change in views, the corruption of his nature, and the disordering of his disposi­tion and especially in his mortal sickness, our relations were changed, and as our association together became mere hypocrisy we were freed each of the other. All of us have our faces set towards that court where all disputes shall be decided. “On that day the intimate friends shall be enemies to one another, except the pious.”*

Among the property left by Faiẓī were four thousand six hundred valuable bound books, all corrected, of which it might have been said with but little exaggeration that most of them were either in the handwriting of the authors or had been writ­ten in the authors' time. These became the property of the Emperor, and when they were presented before him he caused them to be catalogued in three sections, giving the first place to books of verse, medicine, astrology, and music; the middle place to works on philosophy, religious mysticism,* astronomy, and geometry; and the lowest place to commentaries, the traditions,* books on theology, and on all other subjects connected with the sacred law.*

Faiẓī wrote a hundred and one books, the Nal-u-Daman* and others, which he used to reckon. When he was near death he wrote, at the earnest solicitation of some of his friends, some couplets in praise of the Prophet (may God bless and assoil him, and of his ascent,* and incorporated them in the Nal-u-Daman. The following couplets are taken from the conclusion of that work:—

“O King of Kings,* who seekest after wisdom,
Wealthy as the sea and glorious as the sky,
The world is a banquet linked with joy,
Thy reign is the wine, which stupefies the heavens;
I am the minstrel singing melodies drawn from the veins
of my heart,*
My pen is the sounding organ.
If from this banquet, in which thy conversation is the cup-
bearer,
I arise, my song will still remain.
The drinkers circulate the tale
That there is no* singer, and yet the assembly is full of
song.

To-day, with my honey-sweet music
I am Bārbud,* thou the Khusrav of the age.
Though I have polished my pen on the heavens
I am standing before thee on one leg.*
Look now on the arrangement of my mystical characters
And now on my long years spent in thy service.
This poem, which bears on its tongue the name of love
Takes thy name* to heaven.
I am the inebriating wine of true wisdom,
If I ferment no blame is mine.
I am the bell of thy caravan
And must surely be excused if I give forth sounds.
The reward of my handiwork is this (appreciative) eye,
Which I reckon among the gifts of God.
A hundred nightingales, drunk with love, have arisen,
singing
That the rose of Persia has blossomed in India.
I have arrayed in splendour virgin thoughts
In the Ganja of my genius and the Dihlī of my mind.*
Before this, when my poems were all the current coin I
had
Faiẓī was the name written on my signet;
Now that I am chastened by (spiritual) love
I am Fayyāẓī* of the ocean of superabundance.*
In thy reign, incomparable King,
Have I plucked from the bush of time the rose of good
fortune.