Account of the Capture of Múltán.

Abúl Futáh, Prince of Multán, was notoriously characterized as one of malignant craftiness, deceit­ful treachery, dubious fidelity, and detestable incli­nation. He set up a claim over the people of the Khutbah, (i. e., the chief sovereignty) of Multán, to deal with them according to his will and plea­sure, and cast the people into the lubricity of his error, and the ruin of his folly. They signified the case to the Sultán, whose reverence for Islám* and jealousy for the faith stirred up and excited him to a sufficient examination into this crime, and into the subject matter of this error. And in this point he sought God’s direction, and consigned all his thoughts to this religious consideration, and pre­pared for the affair. And he assembled a numerous company and brave army of the first men of the faith and obedience of Islám. And when that artist Spring had delineated her paintings upon the tracts of mountain and plain, and the emperor Sun had clothed all the districts of the earth with precious dresses and embroidered robes, taken from the treasury of his glorious palace, he raised the cry, “To Múltán!” And because the river torrents and superfluous rains had filled the ferry­ing places of the Jíhún with divers full channels and overflowing torrents, and the road was thus obstructed and affording room for excuses, he sent to Andbal, who was King of India, a person to request of him that he would permit a passage through the midst of his kingdom that the army of Islám might pass. He, however, placed the hand of repulse upon the face of the Sultán’s request, and took the road of stubbornness and obstinacy. For this cause the Sultán was enraged, and conceived the design of a double conquest, and began to assign two voices to sing one theme, and was resolved that before he concluded his first in­tentions he would by the shout of victory give to the winds the substance of that King’s kingdom and the nest of his empire. So he commanded that they should extend the hand of plunder, and levelling, and destruction, and burning unto his villages and cities. And they cast Jaibal or Andbal forth from one strait unto another, and from one path to another; and they stripped all the provinces of his country, and cut off the roads and resources of his kingdom, until they expelled him to the province of Kashmír. And when Abúl Futáh, Prince of Multán, witnessed that with Jaibál, who was his high mountain and blocking pass, that hope had departed, he learnt that he had entered a well* (whence he could not extricate him­self ), and that it was impossible for flying hares to compete as travellers with foxes, and that he ought not to frame an imagination of the possibility of resistance (Verse)

“The experienced knows when the moonlight flashes upon the sword striking hand, that the sword is not distant from his breast more than the measure of a cubit.”

He therefore packed up his treasures and his hoards, and transported them on the back of camels to Sarandib, and relinquished Multán. The Sultán, when he had arrived at those provinces, and had made a full discovery of the articles and attributes of the point, seeing that all were involved in this mad error and vain folly, confined those citizens who were inhabitants and natives, in the fort, and treated them with rigour, and pinched and cor­rected them with the food of punishment, (fining) them twenty thousand loads of a thousand direms, and placed upon their neck the redemption money of foes, and the tax of the rebellious. The account of his stand for religion and for the illustration of the knowledge of the (orthodox) demonstrations passed to all cities, and even arrived at Egypt. And the dread of his sword was of effectual advan­tage in the land of Hind and Sind, and the main source of heresy, and infidelity, and perversity in those parts was intercepted and cut off, and some verses of Abu-Tamání-Táíní are suitable to this event, and correspond with this period (Verse)

“Thy victory and thy cavalry hath yesterday made thee glorious.
“This is but a trifle, but the Khutbah is not a trifle,
“(Which thou didst vindicate) when the skin of the sky was not green,
“And the aspect of winter not cheerful,’ &c., &c.