Various diseases, the names of which it would be difficult to know, attacked their constitutions; and every day hosts upon hosts of people, having played out their existence, bade farewell to one another; and how many thousands soever were told off for that country, it cannot be stated that a hundred ever returned to their homes:—

“What a fatal thing, O God, may a place become!”

Things came to such a pass that the living were unable to bury the dead, and threw them head-foremost into the river. Every hour, and every minute, news came to the ear of the Khán Khánán of the death of Amírs, and yet, for all that, he did not himself become infected. And, on account of the arrogance of his disposition, no one had the power to remove the cotton-wool of ignorance from his ears, and make him leave the place:—

“If I give advice to my heart in love, it is taken ill.
I will leave it in her street to hit its head against the wall.”

After a time the constitution of the Khán Khánán, Mun'im Khán, began to deviate from its usual course of equilibrium, and, at over eighty years of age, after completing the first ten days of the month Rajab* of the year nine hundred and eighty-three (983) he rendered his account to the Guardian of Paradise, or to the Guardian of Hell (God knows!); and all that rank and glory, and that grandeur and perfection became a mere dream and fantasy:—

	“Since thou canst not place any confidence in thy life, What matters it whether it be one, or one hundred years?
(P. 218)	Since there is no perpetuity in life, What matters power,* or servitude?”

Since he had no heirs, the officials seized all that wealth and gains (which had taken so many years to accumulate) for the imperial treasury, ‘Announce to the wealth of a miser reverse of fortune, or an heir:—

“How well has a clever speaker said,
Gold attracts gold, and treasure treasure!”

Then, in accordance with the well-known saying—‘In a place with­out trees a Palma Christí* is [looked on as] a shady and fruitful tree’ the Amírs, on this principle, looked to Sháham Khán Jaláír as their leader:—

“The death of the great has made me great.”

But, when the news reached the Court, the Emperor appointed the Khán Zamán, in the room of the Khán Khánán, to the Command in Bengál, and presented him with a gold-embroidered cloak, and vest of gold, and jewelled sword-belt, and a horse with a guilded saddle. Then whether at his own request, or for the peace of the kingdom, it was settled that Mírzá Sulaimán should go by sea on a pilgrimage to Ḥijáz: and having signed a draught for him of 50,000 rupees upon the imperial treasury, and given him another sum of 20 rupees from the local treasury of Gujrát, the Emperor gave him leave to depart. And Qulíj Khán he appointed as his escort, to see him off safely from the port of Súrat. During this same year he reached Makkah and Al Madínah, and by the help of God's grace and faithfulness he returned by way of 'Iráq, and was, as was right, reinstated in the sovereignty of Badakhshán:—

“Thou hast never seen that road, therefore they never showed it thee,
Else, who has ever knocked at that door, and they opened not to him.”

On his return he gave one of his daughters to Muzaffar Ḥusain Mírzá, commandant of Qandahár, who at that time had come to Láhór, and had attached himself to the Court; and another daughter he gave to another man.

In this year the late* Ḥusain Khán (for whom, of all men of supe­rior understanding, the Author had an old and strong attachment, and the most perfectly sincere friendly relations) through infirmity caused by the appearance (P. 219) of that stage and mark, which is the destroyer of pleasures, and the vanquisher of the warrior, after the buffeting of all those troubles, which had passed over him, through apparent madness, but real wisdom, left Kánt-u-Golah with a band of his friends and intimates (who, whether in the flood of fire, or in the billows of the sea, had never in any wise deserted him), and, passing through the confines of Badáún and Sambhal, and crossing the river Ganges, arrived in the Dúáb. Then, after plun­dering, the mawásán* and disaffected of that neighbourhood (who, deeming the payment of rent unnecessary, never used to return any answer to their feudal lord, so that you may guess what happened to the helpless, duped, non-plussed, dishonoured tax-collectors) took a moon-light flit to the base of the northern mountains. This was a place he had all his life a hankering after, and kept it, as a mine of silver and gold in full view: continually concocting in the cruci­ble of his guileless breast (which was large enough to contain a world) visions of golden and silver idol-temples* and bricks of gold and silver. Then, without having received any orders authorizing him to do so, he turned to Basant-púr (an elevated and well-known place in the hill-district), and invested the place. Malik-ush-Sharaq, the tax-collector of T'hánésar* shut the door of the fort: and the other tax-collectors in like manner, in a fright, having run into their holes, spread a false report that he was in rebellion, and sent a petition to that effect to the Court. The Emperor enquired of Sa'íd Khán Moghúl (who was a connection and very old friend of Ḥusain Khán, and who had just come from Multán) whether this report was true; this he firmly denied. But when the Emperor asked him to give, on the part of Ḥusain Khán, a bond in writing for the cattle and goods which Ḥusain Khán had carried off from the agriculturists he utterly declined to do so, and all that former love and friendship changed into an affection of being utterly unac­quainted with him:—

“These deceitful friends, whom you see,
Are but flies about a sweetmeat.
Before you they are truer to you than the light,
Behind your back they are more evanescent than a shadow.”

(P. 220) At last he sent Sayyid Háshim, son of Muḥammad Bárha, and the sons of Mír Sayyid Muḥammad, the Judge of Amráhah (before he dismissed him to Bakkar), with a body of the Amírs to operate against* him. While he was fighting in the hill-district of Basant-púr he received a severe musket-wound under the shoulder-blade, besides losing a host of his veterans. Accordingly, without having accomplished anything, he turned back, and getting into a boat he went on the river Ganges towards Patyálí (which was the native place of his kith and kin). He got as far as Gaḍha Maktésar where they came on him, disabled by his wound, and, in accordance with their orders, brought him to Ágrah, and deposited him in the house of Çádiq Muḥammad Khán (between whom and Ḥusain Khán there had existed from the beginning of the conquest of India, or rather from Qandahár—times onward, the kindliest feeling, and most sincere friendship) Shaikh Bínáí, the physician, being sent for by the Emperor's command, came to try and heal him. But on his representing that the wound was of a frightful character the Em­peror sent for Ḥakím 'Ayn-ul-mulk. And the Author, having re­ceived the Emperor's permission, went with the physician to see him, in order to keep up my old relations with him. I found him, and while a moment, by reason of my sorrow, seemed to me like days, I composed these words of friendship, sorrowful and mingled with tears:—

“Wherever I and the loved-one met together,
For fear of the malevolent we bit our lips.
Without the intervention of ear or lip, by means of heart and eye,
Many a word was there, that we said and heard.”

Meanwhile the imperial surgeons came to operate on him. They thrust a probe into the wound to the depth of a span, and probed it mercilessly. But that man of fortitude swallowed the agony, like a sweet draught, and neither frowned (P. 221), nor shewed any sign of pain, but smiled without dissimulation:—