Account of the sacred buildings, which the Emperor has constructed for the pleasure of God. * Because there is a secret understanding between God and the Emperor concerning sacred and public works, he has constructed such sacred buildings as strike the sky with wonder. With a pure motive he began his series of buildings with the Royal Juma Masjid (Masjid-i Jāma-i Hazrāt).* He ordered a fourth court (maqṣūra), with lofty pillars to be added to the pre-existing three courts; it was to be so high that the fourth heaven may call it a second Mecca. In a day, stones like the sun were brought from the sky, and the (structure of) stones rose from the earth to the moon. Verses from the Qurān were engraved on stone as if it was wax; on one side the inscription ascended so high that you would think the word of God was going up to heaven; on the other side it came down in such a way as to symbolize the descent of the Qurān to earth. Through the elevation of this inscription a conversation, which will never end, has been started between heaven and earth. After this wide and high edifice had been finished from top to bottom, other mosques were built in the City, so strong that when the nine roofs of the thousand-eyed sky fall down in the universe-quake of resurrection, not an arch of these mosques will be injured. Next the columns of the old mosques, whose walls were kneeling and bowing in prayer and whose roofs were about to fall, were made to stand up so that they once more became the ‘pillars of faith’ and prayers were said in them. The four walls (of the mosques) were strengthened and so brilliantly plastered inside and outside that their light outdid the colour of the azure sky.

Of the extension of the Jami and the subsequent construction of the Mīnār. * When by the grace of God* the decayed mosques had been so firmly repaired, that like the sacred Ka‘bah they became safe from destruction, the Emperor’s noble ambition prompted him to build a peer to the high Mīnār-i-Jāmi, a structure unrivalled throughout the world. The dome of sky was to be bestowed on the (new) Mīnār, for it could not rise higher than that. First, he ordered the courtyard of the mosque to be extended as much as possible, so that the ‘fraternity of Islam’, which is fortunately too large for the whole world, may yet be contained in this world within a world. Next, in order to make the Mīnār strong, and to carry it so high that the dome of the old Mīnār might look like an arch of the new, he ordered its circumference to be twice that of the old Mīnār. On a sign from the Emperor, the planets, who are the shop-keepers of the sky, began to move their chariots. Mercury became busy in buying iron and stone and the moon began to drive the Taurus. Yes, when the ‘House of God’ is being built, the stars have to carry stones on their heads! And if they refuse to stir from their places, the Mīnār itself will rise up to them and strike their heads with stones. People were sent to search for stones on all sides. Some struck the hills with their claws, and as they were anxious to find stones, they tore up the hill-side to pieces like lovers.* Others were keener than steel in overturning infidel buildings. They sharpened their iron instruments, went to wage a holy war againstt he castles of the (old) rāīs, and fought a ferocious battle against the stones with their muscles of steel. Wherever an idol temple had kneeled down in prayer, the ‘arguments’ of the strong-tongued spade removed the foundations of infidelity from its heart, till finally the temple placed its head in thanksgiving on the ground.* The stone slabs bore ancient inscriptions made by the ‘Preceptor of Angels’;* but as the pen of Destiny had ordained that all these stones would have the good news—‘Indeed he builds the mosques of Allāh’—written upon them, they thrust the point of their pickaxes into the hard hearts (of the buildings) and threw (the stones) to the ground. Then the iron of the shovels, having turned into a magnet in contrariety to its nature, drew the stones to itself, and labourers with bodies of steel brought these stones from temples a hundred farsangs away. The stony back of the mosque had a large mass of stones put upon it; stones, such as the sky could not have drawn to itself, were taken to the sky; and rocks, such as the mountains could not hold on their backs, were brought upon the backs of the animals.

The stone-cutters of Hind, who excel Farhād in their art, took out their hatchets and smoothed the stones so artistically, that if imagination had put its feet upon them, it would have certainly slipped. The masons of Delhī, who consider Ni‘mān Manar a novice in the art of building, used their professional skill and joined stone to stone so that there was no danger of any secret crevice or cavity remaining between them. The doors and walls of the mosque, which formerly performed their tayammum* with the dust, have now been raised so high that they perform their ablutions with water from the clouds. This has happened in the year A.H. 711. To carry it higher, human life must be based on a foundation firmer than that of the Mīnār; only then could the tower, which has risen out of the earth, be carried to the sky. And though I wish to see it finish, my life will have to be long before I am able to witness its completion and send my blessings to its pious founder. Besides my sight cannot reach its end; I am one of those who come and see and depart.

Construction of the strong fort of the City, in which a second wall o?? Alexander* appeared on the face of the globe:—* The fort of Delhī, the deputy of the sacred Ka’ba, had fallen down. Owing to the ravages of time, it was in a condition of dilapidation worse than that which has overtaken taverns* in the reign of the august Emperor. Like a man dead drunk, it had fallen down in place and out of place, quite unable to keep its stones together. Sometime it placed its head on the ground before the common people of the public highway; on other occasions, it had bowed down in salutation to the worthless ditch. Its towers had once been so high that a man’s hat fell down if he attempted to look at them; but now, from continued ill-treatment, they lay down to sleep on the earth. When the ‘Alāī era of public works arrived (May it last for ever!), the Emperor ordered stones and bricks of gold to be taken out of the flourishing exchequer and spent in defraying the expenses of the fort.* Skilful masons applied themselves to the work and a new fort was quickly built in place of the old. The new fort with its strong forearm and seven towers shakes hands with the coloured Pleiades, squeezes the powerful Mars under its arm-pit, and uses the high sky as a sort of waistband. It is a necessary condition that blood be given to a new building; conse­quently, many thousand goat-bearded Mughals have been sacrificed for the purpose. When the edifice—many congratulations to its founder— was completed, the Guardian of the Universe took it under His protec­tion. How will any trouble or insurrection find its way to the place of which God is the guardian?

Construction of other forts, which, owing to the Emperor’s favour, now raise their heads to the sky:—* When the masons of the Imperial capital had been recompensed for the buildings in the City, the Emperor ordered that wherever in any part of the Empire there was a fort, which had been affected by the moist winds of the rainy season, or was about to doze or go to sleep, or had opened wide its cracks and cast away its teeth (from old age), or grew yellow flowers in the rainy season, or was laughing through its walls or falling on its neck, or had the snakes of Zuḥḥāk* living in its ears (corners), or bred rats in its arms (wings), it was to be repaired; so that instead of crevices frequented by scorpions and snakes, its towers rose stronger than the constellation of Scorpio, and as high as the Saggitarius and the Pleiades.

Of the new buildings in the country, villages and cities, which fill the whole Empire with ‘tasbih’ (praises of God) and ‘aan’ (call to prayer). * All mosques which lay in ruins—the vaults of some had fallen to the ground, the walls of others had crumbled down after having been repeatedly patched and repaired, the (interior of) some was compelled by the wind to perform an ablution (tayammum) with dust every day, the pillars of others had daily bathed in the rain and then laid themselves down—were built anew by a profuse scattering of silver. Prayers were said regularly in all, with blessings on their pious founder.

Account of the Royal Tank (Hauẓ-i-Sulāni), which holds the water of immortality in solution. * The Royal Tank, known as the ‘Shamsī Tank’,* will (now) shine like the sun till the dawn of resurrection. But (formerly) the sun every day made it a mirror for seeing its own face, and it reflected back the light of the sun. But as the latter shone hotly upon it, it slowly sank down out of respect for the sun. ‘If your water should go down,’ the sun asked in its rage, ‘who is it then that will bring you flowing water?’ And the tank dried up from fear. This year the revolving sky flared up all of a sudden, and the water of the tank evaporated so thoroughly that its bottom cracked and broke into pieces. In his contempt for the ‘king of the planets,’ the ‘Emperor of the world’* ordered the sand and mud to be removed from the bottom of the tank. And as the sun from on high had been drying up its water, a dome, such as put that luminary into falling fits, was built over it. Then rain came on, and the ‘eyes’ of the clear-hearted tank, which had dried up at the sun, were again filled with water. Strange the sympathy of the tank, that it should weep (at the helplessness) of the sun! But such is the custom of noble persons. Immediately sweet water became available in the City and a tumult rose up from the City wells. But though it had rained once through the kindness of Heaven, the bottom of the tank was too dry to become moist with a single draught. All clear water, that fell from the cloud, sank into the earth like the treasure of Qārūn.* * There can be no doubt that Delhī is a city, which even the Nile and the Euphrates cannot provide with sufficient drinking water. And so the people of the City were faced with the same destruction that had threatened the followers of Moses. The Emperor—whose sharp sword has thrown the Pharaohs of infidelity into the Nile, or, to put it differently, whose Nile-like sword has been drowned in the yellow blood of Jewish tempered* tunic-weavers—in this general scarcity of water, when even the Jamna had become dry, raised up his ‘white hand’, like Moses, to pray to God for water. Immediately, in proof of the text,—‘And we made the clouds to give shade over you’—the shadow (of his hand) fell over a little dry earth. The spades and the pickaxes in the hands of the excavators became like the staff of Moses. Two or three springs appeared on the four sides of the embankment (chautra). ‘So there flowed from it twelve springs; each tribe knew its drinking place.’ In a few days the water reached the edge of the embankment; and having met it (the embankment) after a long time, the water shook hands with it and hugged it with a hearty embrace, just as the sea embraces the land. Khusrau has written these lines in praise of the tank and its dome: ‘The dome in the centre of the tank is like a bubble on the surface of the sea. If you see the dome and the tank rightly, you will say that the former is like an ostrich egg, half in water and half out of it.’*