And inasmuch as the invoker of blessing upon all mankind, ‘Abdul Qádir ibn Mulúk Sháh Badáoni (may God erase his name from the book of sins) in the beginning of the year 999* in accordance with the fateful order of his excellency the Khalífah of the time, the shadow of the Deity, Akbar Sháhí* when he had finished his selection from the History of Kashmír* which, by the soul-inspiring order of that world-conquering Emperor whose throne is the heaven, one of the incomparable doctors of India had translated from the Hindí into Persian, yielded to a liking which he had for this science from youth to maturity, and as it was seldom that he had not been occupied in reading and writing it, either of his own free will and accord or in obedience to orders, it used often to occur to him to write as well an epitome of the affairs of the Emperors of the metro­polis of Dehli, from the time of the commencement of Islám to the time of writing, in a concise manner,——

All the world is but a village that (city of Mecca) is the central point* (of Islám).

that it might be a memorandum comprising a portion of the events of each reign in brief form, and a memorial for my friends, and a conspectus for the intellectual, and although it might not be a book to be relied upon, or a notable composition, still in accordance with the saying ——

“These ancient pages of the sky whose beauty the stars are, ^6.
Are an ancient hiṣtory of many Emperors whose armies excel the stars in number,”

it may be that from the perusal of this book a messenger from the world of spirits and invisible mysteries may cast a ray of light upon the receptive mind, and thus being a cause of abstraction and seclusion, may wean the soul from the love of this transitory world, and may aid the compiler of these pages in the prosecution of his task, and his hopes may not be blighted; and inasmuch as each day some new grief used to appear, and some vexatious annoyance used to shew itself, helps being few and hindrances many; moreover by reason of fresh toils and temporal changes it was difficult to remain in one place.

“Each day would bring a different place, each night a different roof.”

And besides all this, my sustenance was by no means assured, hanging as it were between heaven and earth, and my heart utterly distracted by separation from kindred and friends; accord­ingly that commission was only accomplished by fits and starts,* until a kind and complaisant man of wealth, orthodox and reli­giously disposed, and happily furnished with this world's goods, who was very devoted to me, and for whom I too entertained an indescribable ạffection, having completed the writing of the Táríkh i Niámí* which is a bulky volume, and which is here being completed by me—removed the furniture of life to the sublime abode of Paradise.

“He has departed—I too follow him.
Each one at last must go the self same way.”

At this juncture, when Time departing from its usual custom, has treated me in the matter of leisure with some sort of liberal­ity, it has come about that I have been able to steal a morsel of ^7. the chequered* hours of my life from his grasp, so that I renewed my intention and confirmed my purpose, and on this ground that there is no bygone event which has not left something for the present,

“If the peasant thoroughly clears under the sheaves of wheat
He leaves the sparrow's portion on the ground,”

I have selected and transcribed accurately a portion of the circumstances of some of the autocrat Emperors of Hindustan from the Táríkh i Mubárak Sháhí* and the Niámu-t-Tawáríkh of Niámí* which is as it were a drop in the ocean and a bubble of the turbulent floods, and have also added somewhat of my own, and have kept before me the desirability of conciseness and have imposed upon myself the necessity of avoidance of all affectation of style and metaphor, and have named this model composition Muntakhabu-t-Tawáríkh.* I hope that this imperfect collation and composition, whose object is the perpetuation of the auspi­cious names of the Emperors of Islám, and the transmission of a memorial thereof in this changing world until the final consum­mation, may lead to the pardon of the author in the world to come, and not be an augmentation of the crimes laid to his charge.

“And do thou, O Nightingale, as thou roamest through this garden,
With all thy sweetness, abstain from blaming the defects of the crow.”

Since the object of my ambition is to write correctly, if I should by accident let fall from my pen the instrument of my thoughts, or commit in my thoughts, which are the motive agent of my ^8. pen, any slip or error, I hope that He (may He be glorified and exalted) in accordance with his universal mercy which is of old, will overlook and pardon it.

By speaking evil do not change my tongue,
And do not make this tongue of mine my wrong.*

And since the first of the Emperors of Islám who were the cause of the conquest of Hindustán—(after Mahomed Qásim,*

cousin and son-in-law of Hajjáj-ibn-Yúsuf aqfí,* who in the year, 93 A.H., (711 A.D.), conquered the countries of Sind, Multán and Gujrát, and, by the order of Walíd ibn-‘Abdul Malik Marwání* who on an important occasion wrote to him from Damascus and summoned him to his presence, starting from Oodypur in India, and wrapping himself in a raw hide, while on his journey yielded up his life to God, and after him the affairs of Islám in that country lost all order) were Náṣiru-d-din Subuktigín* whose son was Sulán Maḥmúd Ghaznaví who every year used to make incursions into India with the object of plundering and engaging in religious warfare, and in the reign of whose sons Lahore be­came the seat of Government, so that Islám never again lost its hold on that country—accordingly I deemed it right to commence this history with an account of that monarch whose end was glorious, so that it may be fortunate from the first, and lauded at the last—and God is the best of helpers and defenders.