When he said to the stony-hearted Ilmās Beg “In spite of my old age and the weakness due to fasting I came so far,* even yet will not your cruel brother's heart induce him* to get into a boat and come to me?” Ilmās Beg answered “my brother is unwilling to receive the Sulān empty handed* and with reserve.
“If thou goest empty handed to visit a Sheikh,
Thou wilt get no profit, nor wilt thou even see him.”
179. He is busy selecting elephants and valuables and goods to present,
and is quite occupied in that service*
and he has been preparing
food for breaking your fast, and to do honour to the arrival of his
guest, and is now awaiting the honoured coming of the Sulān, so
that he may be distinguished among his peers by the honour
derived from the royal visit.” The Sulān all this time was occupied
in reading the sacred volume; they reached the river's bank
by the time of afternoon prayer and he took his seat in the place
they had made ready for him to sit in, and ‘Alāu-d-Dīn having
got every thing ready*
came with a great gathering to pay his
respects to the Sulān and fell at his feet.*
The Sulān smiling,
with affection and kindness and love smote him a gentle blow on
the cheek, and addressing him with great shew of fondness and
clemency and warm-heartedness, began to give him words of
counsel, and was talking to him affectionately and lovingly,
reassuring him in every possible way, and seizing the hand of
Malik ‘Alāu-d-Dīn was drawing him near. At this moment when
the Sulān laid hold of his beard, and, kissing him, was shewing
him marks of his special favour, and*
had given his hand into his,
‘Alāu-d-Dīn seizing the Sulān's hand firmly, wrenched it, and gave
a signal to a party of men who were confederate and had sworn
together to murder the Sulān. Then Maḥmūd Sālim who was
one of the scum of Sāmāna, aimed a blow with his sword at the
Sulān and wounded him; on receiving that wound the Sulān
made for the boat crying out as he ran: “Thou wretch ‘Alāu-d-
Liberality is the alchemy* of the copper of faults;
Liberality is the remedy for all pain.
It is said that by the day when Sulān ‘Alāu-d-Dīn reached Badāon sixty thousand sowārs had joined his standard, Malik Raknu-d-Dīn Ibrāhīm seeing that he had not the power to resist him went to Multān to Arkali Khān, with certain chosen Amīrs who remained faithful after the massacre (of Jalālu-d-Dīn), and the whole of the kingdom fell under the dominion of ‘Alāu-d-Dīn.
The kingdom is God's and greatness is His. The massacre of 181. Sulān Jalālu-d-Dīn took place in the seventeenth of the month of Ramaẓān in the year 694 H. (A.D. 1294) and the duration of his reign was seven years and some months.
Verses.Hast thou seen the acts of the tyrant heaven and its star,
Mention it not; what is the heaven, its revolution, or its
arched vault?
How is it that the revolving heaven has cast the sun of the
kingdom headlong into the dust,
Dust be on the head of his sun of glory.
Sulān Jalālu-d-Dīn had a taste for poetry, and Amīr Khusrū after the death of Mu‘izzu-d-Dīn Kaiqubād, came into the service of the Sulān Jalālu-d-Dīn, and was honoured by being selected as an intimate companion, and was made Qur'ān-keeper to the Sulān, he was presented every year with the robes of honour which were reserved for the Amīrs of the Sulān* and were tokens of special distinction and peculiar trust.
In this same category were Amīr Ḥasan and Muīd Jājarmī and Amīr Arslān Kātibī and Sa‘d-i-Maniqī and Bāqī-i-Khaīb and Qāẓī Mughī of Hānsī, who is one of the most learned men of the time of Jalālu-d-Dīn and wrote a Ghazal in nineteen metres* of which this is the opening:—
Two pearly ears, a stately form, two lovely cheeks, with
fresh youth dight,
Thy glory is the fairy's pride, a fairy thou, at glory's
height.
And the rest of the learned men used to keep the Sulān's assembly embellished and adorned with the jewels of poems, and delicate points of learning and philosophy, and the following few verses are the offspring of the Sulān's genius:—
182. I do not wish those flowing locks of thine to be entangled
I do not wish that rosy cheek of thine (with shame) to burn.
I wish that thou one night unclothed may'st come to my
embrace
Yes, loud I cry with all my might, I would not have it
hidden.
And at the time when he was besieging Gwāliār he built a pavilion and a lofty dome* and wrote this quatrain as an inscription for that building:—
Quatrain.I whose foot spurns the head of heaven,
How can a heap of stone and earth augment my dignity?
This broken stone I have thus arranged in order that
Some broken heart may haply take comfort from it.
And Sa‘d Maniqī and the other poets he ordered to point out to him the defects and beauties of this composition. They all praised it exceedingly and said! It has no fault, but he replied: You are afraid of hurting my feelings, I will point out its defect* in this quatrain:
It may be some chance traveller may pass by this spot
Whose tattered garment is the satin mantle of the starless
sky;*
Perchance from the felicity of his auspicious footsteps
One atom may fall to my lot: this will suffice me.