“Guzasht shawkát-i-Maḥmúd, u dar fasána na-mánd
Juz ín qadar, ki na-dánist qadr-i-Firdawsí.”

“Gone is the greatness of Maḥmúd, departed his glory,
And shrunk to ‘He knew not the worth of Firdawsí’ his story.”

Following the plan which we have adopted in the first part of this History, we shall speak but briefly of Sulṭán Maḥmúd himself, and concentrate our attention on the literary and scientific activity of which, by virtue rather of compulsion than attraction, his Court became for a while the focus. Of military genius and of statecraft his achievements afford ample evidence, so that he pushed back the Buwayhids, absorbed the realms of the Ziyárids, overthrew the Sámánids, invaded India in twelve successive campaigns in twice that number of years (A.D. 1001-24), and enlarged the comparatively narrow borders of the kingdom which he had inherited until it ex­tended from Bukhárá and Samarqand to Guzerat and Qinnawj, and included Afghánistán, Transoxiana, Khurásán, Ṭabaristán, Sístán, Kashmír, and a large part of North-Western India. He finally died in A.D. 1030, and within seven years of his death the kingdom which he had built up had practically passed from his House into the hands of the Seljúqid Turks, though the House of Ghazna was not finally extinguished until A.D. 1186, when the kings of Ghúr wrested from them their last Indian possessions and gave them their coup de grâce.

Sulṭán Maḥmúd has often been described as a great patron of letters, but he was in fact rather a great kidnapper of literary men, whom (as we have already seen in the case of Firdawsí) he often treated in the end scurvily enough. Of the scientific writers of that time none were greater than Avicenna (Abú 'Alí ibn Síná), the physician-philosopher who, himself the disciple of Aristotle and Galen, was during the Middle Ages the teacher of Europe, and al-Bírúní, the historian and chronologist. These two men, of whom the former was born about A.D. 980 and the latter about seven years earlier, together with many other scholars and men of letters, such as Abú Sahl Masíḥí the philosopher, Abu'l-Ḥasan Khammár the physician, and Abú Naṣr 'Arráq the mathe­matician, had found, as we learn from the Chahár Maqála (Anecdote xxxv, pp. 118-124 of my translation), a happy and congenial home at the Court of Ma'mún b. Ma'mún, Prince of Khwárazm, whose territories were annexed by Sulṭán Maḥmúd in A.D. 1017. * Shortly before this date Sulṭán Maḥmúd sent to Ma'mún by the hand of one of his nobles, Ḥusayn b. 'Alí b. Míká'íl, a letter to the following effect:—

“I have heard that there are in attendance on Khwárazmsháh several men of learning, each unrivalled in his science, such as So-and-so and So-and-so. You must send them to my Court, so that they may have the honour of being presented thereat. We rely on being enabled to profit by their knowledge and skill, and request this favour on the part of the Prince of Khwárazm.”

Of course this letter, in spite of its comparatively polite tenour, was in reality a command, and as such Ma'mún Avicenna escapes the clutches of Sulṭán Maḥmúd. understood it. Summoning the men of learning referred to in the letter, he addressed them as follows:—“The Sulṭán is strong, and has a large army recruited from Khurásán and India; and he covets 'Iráq [? Khwárazm]. I cannot refuse to obey his order, or be disobedient to his mandate. What say ye on this matter?” Three of them, al-Bírúní, Khammár, and 'Arráq, moved by the accounts they had heard of the Sulṭán's generosity, were willing to go; but Avicenna and Masíḥí were unwilling, and, with the connivance of Ma'mún, privily made their escape. Overtaken by a dust-storm in the desert, Masíḥí perished; while Avicenna, after experiencing terrible hard­ships, reached Abíward, whence he made his way successively to Ṭús, Níshápúr, and ultimately Gurgán, over which the enlightened and accomplished Qábús b. Washmgír Shamsu'l-Ma'álí (killed in A.D. 1012) then held sway. Now, of the learned men whom Sulṭán Maḥmúd had demanded, it was Avicenna whom he especially desired to secure; so, on learn­ing of his escape, he caused a portrait of him to be circulated through the lands. Avicenna, having succeeded in restoring to health a favourite kinsman of Qábús, was summoned before that Prince, who at once recognised him from the portrait, but, instead of surrendering him to Maḥmúd, main­tained him honourably in his service until the philosopher-physician went to Ray and entered the service of 'Alá'u'd-Dawla Muḥammad, whose minister he became. During this period, as we learn from Anecdote xxxvii (pp. 125-128 of my translation) of the Chahár Maqála, he managed, in spite of his manifold official duties, to write daily, in the early morning, some two pages of his great philosophical work, the Shifá.

Let us turn now for a moment to al-Bírúní's adventures at the Court of Ghazna, as described in Anecdote xxiii Al-Bírúní and Sulṭán Maḥmúd. (pp. 92-95 of my translation) of the Chahár Maqála. One day the Sulṭán, while seated in his four-doored summer-house in the Garden of a Thou­sand Trees in Ghazna, requested al-Bírúní to forecast, by his knowledge of the stars, by which door the King would leave the building. When al-Bírúní had complied with this com­mand, and had written his answer secretly on a piece of paper which he placed under a quilt, the Sulṭán caused a hole to be made in one of the walls, and by this quitted the summer­house. Then he called for al-Bírúní's prognostication, and found to his disgust that on it was written, “The King will go out by none of these four doors, but an opening will be made in the eastern wall by which he will leave the building.” Sulṭán Maḥmúd, who had hoped to turn the laugh against al-Bírúní, was so angry that he ordered him to be cast down from the roof. His fall was, however, broken by a mosquito-curtain; and, on being again brought before the Sulṭán and asked whether he had foreseen this, he produced from his pocket a note-book in which was written, under the date, “To-day I shall be cast down from a high place, but shall reach the earth in safety, and arise sound in body.” There­upon the Sulṭán, still more incensed, caused him to be confined in the citadel, from which he was only released after six months' imprisonment at the intercession of the prime minister, Aḥmad ibn Ḥasan al-Maymandí, who, taking advantage of a favourable moment, said to Maḥmúd, “Poor Abú Rayḥán [al-Bírúní] made two such accurate predictions, and, instead of decorations and a robe of honour, obtained but bonds and imprisonment!” “Know, my lord,” replied the Sulṭán, “that this man is said to have no equal in the world save Avicenna, but both his predictions were opposed to my will; and Kings are like little children—in order to receive rewards from them, one should speak in accordance with their opinion. It would have been better for him on that day if one of those two predictions had been wrong. But to-morrow order him to be brought forth, and to be given a horse caparisoned with gold, a royal robe, a satin turban, a thousand dínárs, a slave, and a handmaiden.” By such tardy reparation, as in the similar case of Firdawsí, did Sulṭán Maḥmúd seek to atone for acts of meanness and injustice committed in a fit of causeless ill-temper or unreasoning suspicion.

Another notable man of letters, Abu'l-Fatḥ al-Bustí, celebrated for his skill in Arabic verse and prose composition, was carried off by Sulṭán Maḥmúd's father Subuktigín when he captured the city of Bust from its ruler Báytúz.

Abu'l-Fatḥ al-Bustí. This eminent secretary and poet afterwards passed into the service of Maḥmúd, but finally died at Bukhárá in exile in A.H. 400 (A.D. 1009). * He was extraordinarily skilled in word-plays and all other artifices of literary composition. His most celebrated poem, which, as al-Maníní informs us, was greatly appreciated and often learned by heart in his time, and which is still recited in Cairo coffee-houses by the muḥaddithún, or professional story-tellers, begins:—

Ziyádatu'l-mar'ⁱ fí dunyáhu nuqṣán^u, Wa ribḥu-hu ghayru maḥḍi'l-khayri khusrán.² * “A man's increase in worldly wealth doth ofttimes loss betide,
And all his pains, save Virtue's gains, but swell the debit side.”