He was one of the great sages of the age and was distin­guished among the men of his time and his contemporaries for his piety, devotion, and trust in God. In early life he observed many austerities and strove much in the way of holiness, and was so zealous in enforcing the commands and prohibitions of the holy law that if anybody was present while he was giving religious instruction wearing a golden ring, or silk cloth­ing, or red hose, or red or yellow garments, he at once made him remove them, and if anyone appeared with long breeches, descending below the heel, he immediately had them torn to the proper length. If, while walking through the streets, he heard the noise of any singing he would start violently. In his zeal for God he was so devoted to singing that he was scarcely for a moment of the day at ease without being employed in listening to the chanting of hymns, psalms, mystic melodies, and music. ⁷⁴ In short he followed many and various rules of life. For some time during the reigns of the Afghān Emperors he used to keep company with Shaikh ‘Alā'ī,* and in the beginning of the Em­peror's reign, when the Naqshbandī order were in great esteem, he adapted himself to their rule, and for some time he was attached to the Hamadānī Shaikhs, and at last when the ‘Irāqīs were in great favour at Court he spoke as one of their religion.* “Converse with men according to their understanding,” was his practice, and so he continued to do. He was always employed in giving religious instruction, and was well-versed in poetry, enigmas, and in all other arts and branches of learning, but especially in the theology of the Ṣūfīs, and, unlike most other learned men of India, he practised their system thoroughly. He also had Shāibī by heart, and used to give instruction in the law of inheritance. He also had by heart the glorious Qur'ān, according to each of the ten methods of reading it.

He never went to the houses of nobles, but was a very pleasant companion, and had a great stock of wonderful anecdotes. To­wards the end of his life, when his sight failed him and he was unable to read, he went into retirement and wrote a commentary similar to the Tafsīr-i-Kabīr,* contained in four large volumes, and named it the Mamba‘u-Nafā'isi-'l-‘Uyūn.* The strange thing is that in the exordium to that commentary he wrote certain passages which seem to contain pretensions to the establishment of new principles in religion, and the innovations contained therein are those which are well known. At the time when he was enabled, by God's grace, to complete that commentary he used constantly to recite, with a view to reminding himself of what he owed to God, the Qaṣīda-yi-Fāriẓiyya in ta,* which con­tains seven hundred couplets, the Qaṣīda-yi-Burda, by Ka‘b bin Zuhair,* and other epodes which he had committed to memory, until, on the seventeenth of Ẕī-Qa‘da, A.H. 1001 (Aug. 15, 1593), he passed away from this world in Lāhor. He was a mullā whose like, as regards the scope of his attainments, has never been seen, and the pity is that his love of the world with its pomps, con­cealed under the garment of holy poverty, left no room for the love of the faith of Islām. The author, in his youth, spent some ⁷⁵ years in Āgra under his tuition, and owes him much, but can no longer feel himself fettered by his indebtedness to him, owing to his numerous acts of worldliness and impiety, his devotion to wealth and pomp, his time serving, his deceit and double-dealing, and his zeal for innovations in the faith. “Answer, God; and either we, or ye, follow the direction, or are in a mani­fest error.”*

In short, the saying of the common people, that the son brings curses on his father, is exemplified in his case, just as it hap­pened in the case of Yazīd,* in respect of whom some impudently and presumptuously say, “Curses be on Yazīd and on his father!”