Muntaḫab al-tavārīḫ - The Muntakhabu-’rukh, Volume 3

His name is Sharīf, and he is the son of Khẉāja ‘Abdu-ṣ-Ṣamad the painter. He is a youth lately come to man's estate, and he is unrivalled in beauty of penmanship and in painting. It is well known that his father wrote in full, and in a good and legible hand, on one side of a poppy seed, the Sūratu-l-lkhlāṣ,⁴³⁰ and on the other side of it the argument of the chapter; and they say that his son, Sharīf, bored in one poppy seed eight small holes, and passed wires through them, and that he drew, on a grain of rice, a picture of an armed horseman, preceded by an outrider, and bearing all the things proper to a horseman such as a sword, a shield, a polo-stick, et cetera.

Sharīf has a pleasant nature. He has composed a dīvān and the following verses were selected by him from his works and given to me (for insertion in this work).

“They who wander by night in the grief of longing after thee
cause me to weep,
For they travel over the road by the rays of that light of
Thine.
³¹¹ Clemency is Thine, but I am all sin.
When Thou pardonest such a one as me all will sin.”

“I sift the sparks of my lamentations in the sieve of respect
Lest, perchance, their harsh sound should strike thy ear.”

“By the blessing of love I am at perfect peace with both
worlds,
Do thou become my enemy and see with what friendliness
I shall treat thee.”

“The spacious field of my breast is so full of love
That, in spite of my earnest desire, there is no room for
more.”

“Prosperity is no assistance in our path
We have recognized the Friend in another form.”

A Maṯnavī.

“I have a grief for which may all joys be sacrificed;
May God guard my grief from the evil eye.
When my heart admitted the fire which burnt within me
Even resignation became a stranger to it.”

“If she has taken my heart O God, carry to her nostrils
The odour of separation, which was mingled with my
heart's blood.”

“Why should I sing of my genius or boast of my intellect?
The fact that I am generous⁴³¹ disproves my boast.”

“O intellect, how long empty-handed in the market of love
Wilt thou ask the price of the goods and blush for what
thou hast to offer in exchange?”

A quatrain. ³¹²

“I have a love which is my religion and my faith.
I have a pain which is chief over all my possessions.
Should love be parted from me it will die
Saying, ‘Sharīf-i-Fārisī is my soul.’”

“To have in the breast beauty of the heart is such a wonder
That it is pointed out like the new moon, when it can only
just be seen.”

“The price of gratitude, that unsaleable commodity, has risen
Because no caravan arrives from the land of grief.”

“Cast not away the heart which thou hast stolen,
Carry a treasure, although it may seem heavy.”

“O zephyr, bear this message to love, ‘Take courage, for we
are gone,

No more will the dust of thy street be turned into mire by
tears’.”

“I am silent from jealousy, not from pride of love,
For no speech, save of thee, passes on my tongue.”

He was the son of Mullā ‘Abdu-r- Razzāq, and full brother to Ḥakīm Abū-l-Fatḥ^432a and Ḥakīm Humām.^432b He had many accomplishments and virtues, among them being poetry, penmanship and studiousness, and he was endowed with the qualities of an inclination to holy poverty and humility.

When he first came to court the emperor ordered him to be put ³¹³ on duty with his brothers, and, when the guard turned out to salute the emperor, as he did not know how to put on a sword he appeared in the midst disordered in his dress. Some of the young wits expressed their surprise at this, but he said, ‘Soldiering does not suit men like me,’ and told that story of the Amīr Tīmūr, Ṣāhib Qirān,^432c who, in one of his battles, drew up his army in a certain position, and ordered that the laden camels, and the footmen, and all beasts with their burdens should take up a position of safety behind the troops, and that the ladies should remain in rear of the army. At this moment the learned men⁴³³ asked where their place should be, and Tīmūr replied, ‘Behind the ladies.’ When this story was repeated to Akbar as a rare piece of wit on the part of Qarārī he ordered that he should be sent to Bengal. He went thither, and there rendered up his soul to God^433a during the rebellion against Muẓaffar Khān's authority.^433b The following verses are productions of his genius:—

“What fear is there if the whole world should become lovers
of Lailā,
So long as Lailā's heart inclines only towards Majnūn?”

“For the sake of my grief Heaven confers on me a nature
like that of the Friend^433c
If I make of my darkly-clad lot a mouthful of fire.”

“What accusation shall I make against Death? I have
received an arrow from thy eye
Which would have killed me, even though I did not die
for a hundred years.”

“I am illumined, as a candle, by the fire of thy love,
I humbly burn, even in my tomb.”

“An ocean of fire is raging from my burning heart.
Tell Noah to flee, for my flood sheds fire around.”

“My grief is this, that however much I am persecuted by
thee
³¹⁴ The delight of being persecuted by thee leaves my heart
before I have well experienced it.”

“Of her cruelty all that I ask is more wounds for my
wounded heart,
I am not solicitous for her favour; all I desire is her
cruelty.
I am distracted by the pain of separation; O love, for ages
Have I desired to be distracted but for a moment by the
delight of seeing thee!”

“God forbid that our hearts should be beyond the need of
the sight of her,
For we are entirely guiltless, and she is beyond all need.”

“I am rejoiced at the duration of our separation, for now I
shall be able
To approach her and make advances as though I were a
stranger.”

A quatrain.

“If I be seethed in the caldron of God's wrath,
If I be placed in the flames of hell,
This will be better than that my sins should, of mere favour,
be forgiven
While I am left to burn in the fire of shame.”

A quatrain.

“If the love of my heart should find a buyer
I should do something that would reveal my true self.
I should so shake out my prayer-carpet of abstinence
That from each thread of it a hundred idolators' sacred
threads would fall.”

“If I drive from my heart regret for my union with thee
It will be better than that I should increase the regret of
my heart by meeting with thee”⁴³⁵

He was in the service of the Khān-i-Kalān,^435b and was unequalled in these days for the carving of toothpicks, comb, and such articles. He once wrote the following couplet in a fair hand on the pointed end^435c of a toothpick.

“The affairs of Qausī have been thrown into confusion by
the ringlets of his love;
His affairs are ever twisted in a hundred places like the
ringlets of his love.”

He came from the glorious city of Makkah and at once entered the emperor's service and received an appointment near his person. One day before the court he said to the emperor, “Men are much harassed by this new regulation of the dāgh-u-maḥallī^436a which Your Majesty has invented,’ and from that time forth he was debarred from court and never again girded his loins in service. For some time he wandered about in the Biyāna district as a qalandar^436b and then came to Fatḥpūr, where he suffered from haemorrhoids and hectic fever. A quack whom he consulted cut the veins of his fundament, and he died under the treatment. He was of an extremely cheerful disposition.

The following verses are by him:—

“The lover has much of the merchandise of complaints, it
will be better
That he open not his pack until the market day of the
resurrection.”

“O thou who hast never wandered from thy place in my
heart,
I marvel that thou should'st have found a place in the
hearts of all!”

“Though I be dying and no other comes to bid her farewell,
Hasten, camel driver, for her litter departs!”

“What ointment of thy favour is there on my heart,
That melts not my soul more than all the brands of regret?”

He had some poetical genius. The following couplet is his:—

“Love's madness gives me not so much grace that my soul
May know how it is to come forth and be laid as an offering
at her feet.”

He came from Transoxiana to Āgra in the time of Bairam Khān, and there studied. I have seen no poetry of his but the following ode:—

“The hermitage in which I follow my devotions is a corner
of the wine-shop,
The ecstatic shriek^437b which I hear is the shout of the
drunkards;
My patched robe of devotion and piety has been pawned for
wine.
The gurgling of the wine flask is for me the murmur of
prayer and praise.
Qandī was journeying, destitute, towards the temple of
Makkah,
When a lovely being waylaid him and he turned aside to
the idol-temple.”

This is the poetical name of Mīr ‘Alā-u-d-daulah,^437c the author of the Taẕkiratu-sh-Shu‘arā which is the source from which this treatise has been compiled. It is superfluous to describe him and to quote his poems here even if it were not the case that the author is a poor judge of poetry and is ill qualified to make selections. It is better that I should recount my own deficiencies than that I should leave it to be done by others. Most of the couplets which I have written in imitation of others will bear out what I say.

He is acquainted with several branches of learning, and he received the title of Afẓal Khān. He came to Hindūstān from the Dakan and was enrolled for some time among the doctors of the sacred law. On the occasion on which Mīrzā Muqīm and Mīr Ḥabash were put to death^438a by the sentence of Mullā ‘Abdu-'llāh of Lāhor on a charge of heresy and of cursing the companions of Muḥammad^438b he fled in terror^438c from this country to the Dakan and departed thence for the next world. The following verses are his:—

“I tell love's secret to none but my own heart,
For my heart hears the word which I speak, and tells it not
again.”

“I placed my head on her feet, but she was vexed with me.
When I seized her skirt she snatched it away and passed
from me.”

“How long will the jealous watcher oppose my passing
through that door?
He girds up his loins in enmity against me. O Lord, let
him not gird up his loins!”

“Whenever the enemy comes to war against thee with helmet
on head,
When thou in battle smitest his helmet with thy sword,

(The sword) cleaves his helmet as a pen divides the
columns on the paper, and, with the red blood,
Draws a ruled column on the page of the field of battle.”

He is of Caghatāī descent and was for a long time in Sind. He used to be constantly arguing and wrangling with Mullā Niyāzī.^439a He came from Bakar,^439b and was for some time in Āgra. He writes poetry after the style of the men of Transoxiana. The following verses are his:—

“I attempted to close the road against my tears by thinking
on thy ringlets,
But water is not to be bound with a chain.”

“Thy face is the fountain of love, and drops of sweat
Like bubbles appear everywhere on it.
Look on the bud of my bleeding heart and see
How it has been cleft once and again by my love's sword,
and is smiling.”

“Sit for a moment, of thy grace, in the eyes of Kalāmī,
For there is to be found a purified corner, and water will be
in thy sight.”

He is a youth lately arrived at man's estate and has recently come to Hindūstān. His disposition is not without sprightliness. The following couplet is his:—

“My whole body would turn to blood and flow out at my eyes
If I knew that weeping would be of any avail.”

He is an epitome of many accomplishments. He was for some time with the Khānzamān. The following couplet is from his poems:—

“My tongue made mention of my heart-subduing sword,
May it be well with the speech that I uttered.”^440a

He was descended from one of the holy men of Sabzavār. He had a pretty wit, and was for some time in service at court. The following verses are his:—

“When the stranger comes towards thee to see thee
I stand between thee and him, that haply he may not see
thee.”

“I speak not of thee to the stranger
Lest desire for thee should find a place in his heart.”

“When the lewd mention with lubricity the names of their
lights-o'-love
I ever fear lest, by some error, thy name should be men-
tioned.”

In A.H. 995 (A.D. 1587) in Lāhor, a wall, blown down by some ill wind, fell on his head, and the coin of his life was whirled away by the breeze. As he was unrivalled as a singer and chanter this chronogram was composed on the event:—

“Alas, that by the efforts of the unjust sky
A nightingale of sweet song is gone from the garden!
He was so smitten on the loins by a whirling stone
That he was wounded and went from our midst.
I asked of wisdom the date of his death,
And received the answer, ‘The Pīrzāda has gone from
the world.’”⁴⁴¹

He is Mīrzā La‘l Beg, the son of Shāh Qulī Sulṭān of Badakh-shān. He is a young man of exceeding nobility of disposition, and is distinguished by the delicacy of his beauty, and as well known for the purity of his nature as for his beauty of form. He is remarkable for his good manners, his humility, his amiable disposition, his courtesy, and his modesty, and he is one of the intimate associates of the emperor. At the present time a farmān has been issued from court to him in the Dakan ordering him to leave the service of Sulṭān Murād^441b and to join the court at Lāhor. He is very well read in history, and in travels. The author is bound to him by bonds of mutual acquaintance and great regard.

He sometimes occupies himself with poetry, and the following couplet from his poems remains in the author's memory:—

“Since I have become as the dust of the road in thy path I
fear
Lest thou should not pass by me, but should take another
way.”

He was a good boon companion, and had by heart so many of the verses of the great masters of poetry that he could in one night recite a thousand verses on any subject. He also imitated the great poets well. He was for some time with Mīrzā Niẓamu-d-dīn Aḥmad in Gujarāt, and by his efforts received a fixed sum of money granted for the purpose of enabling him to travel, and embarked on a sea-voyage. The following couplets are by him:—

“That face like the pomegranate flower became like a par-
terre of roses from the glow of wine,
O rose-sellers, good news! Roses are plentiful.”

“In the breeze of the rose-garden I smelt but the odour of
thee.
I passed by no rose but it wafted to me the odour of my
love.”

“If my heart becomes a flame of fire, what then? It will
wither away.
If the rose of my fate blossom from paradise, what then?
It will fade.”

“Each sigh that I heaved over thee in regret
Has become a palm-tree to adorn the meadow of my
repentance.”

He was the grandson of Mir Sayyid Sharīf-i-Jarjānī,^442b (may his tomb be hallowed). In the exact sciences, in various branches of philosophy, in logic, and in metaphysics he excelled all the learned men of the age. He went from Shīrāz to the glorious city of Makkah, and there studied the Traditions⁴⁴³ under Shaikh Ibn Ḥajar and received a teaching diploma. Thence he went to the Dakan, and from the Dakan he came to Āgra, where he attained a higher position than most learned and erudite men of former or recent times. He employed himself in giving instruction in arts and sciences until, in the year H. 974 (A.D. 1566-67), as has already been said,^443a he departed to Paradise. His body, which was at first interred near that of Mīr Khusrav^443b (God's mercy be on him), was taken to Mashhad, and Mīr Muḥsin Riẓavī^443c found the following chronogram for his death:—

“When Mīr Murtaẓā left this world
It was as though knowledge departed from the race of Adam.
To give the date of his departure Muḥsin
Said, ‘A paragon has departed from the world.’”^443d

The following couplet is one of the productions of the Mīr's noble genius:—

“Ease of heart is not to be obtained from material possessions.
The seed of ease of the heart is in the dispersal of material
possessions.”

It is probable that the source of this couplet is that passage in the Lawā'iḥ⁴⁴⁴ in which it is said that some have believed that contentment consisted in the accumulation of material possessions and consequently remain in distraction to all eternity, while others, knowing for certain that the accumulation of material possessions is one of the causes of distraction, have washed their hands of all things.

This is the poetical name of Mīr Maḥmūd the Munshī, who was for twenty-five years chief secretary to the empire of Hindūstān. His daughter married Naqīb Khān.^444b He had some poetical talent, and wrote poetry like a secretary. The following quatrain is one which he wrote at the beginning of the dīvān of Bairam Khān:—

“Of being and of a place of existence there was in the begin-
ning no trace,
For all things came into being by virtue of the two letters
of the command ‘Be.’
Since these two letters were the key of existence
They have become the opening couplet of the preface to the
dīvān of things seen.”^444c

The following is another quatrain of his, an enigma on the name ‘Qāsim’:—

“There is a capricious one the dust of whose door-step is my
lodging,
From whom I have gained naught but cruelty and oppres-
sion.
When I see her face over the corner of the roof
Her eye shoots the arrow of cruelty at my heart.”

This is a couplet of his:—

“Perfume not the jasmine with musk,
Draw not a line of ambergris around the sun.”

He wrote the following quatrain to describe a horse which had been given to him by the emperor Humāyūn:—

“O King with an army like that of Jamshīd, monarch of
boundless power,
I have a horse which is exceedingly lean and weak;
When I mount him, at every two or three steps which he
takes
He falls, saying, ‘Now you carry me for two or three steps.’”

The source of this quatrain is certainly that well-known couplet, by whom I know not:—

“He goes one or two steps and then says,
‘Now do you carry me for an hour or so?’”

Following the idea expressed in the following couplet by a master of poetry,

“O lovely one with heart of stone and body of silver,⁴⁴⁵
Whose lip is comfort and whose glance is destruction”

he wrote the following ode in two metres:—^445a

“O thou whose lovely face is the envy of the jasmine,
Whose comely stature is the cypress of the meadow

323 Whose laughing lip is a load of sugar,
Whose row of teeth is a string of pearls from ‘Adan,
Whose musky locks are a net of calamity,
Whose narcissus-like bewitching eye is seduction's self;
Thy fawn's eyes are hunters of men,
Thy glance, drawing blood from the heart, shoots sharp
arrows,
Thy ringlets work naught but magic,
The glances of thy eyes seek but to draw blood from the
heart,
The down newly sprung draws on the jasmine of thy cheek
a life-giving line of musk,
Of thy grace cast a glance towards Maḥwī
O lovely one with heart of stone and body of silver!”

Shaikh Faiẓī also, in the days of his ignorance and while he was yet a boy, practised the same metrical trick, and wrote the following ode in four metres:—⁴⁴⁶

“O thou, whose goodly figure resembles a moving cypress,
Whose arched eyebrow is bent like a bow,
The curl of whose locks is a snare of love's madness,
Whose dark ringlet is the desire of Paradise,
Thy bewitching lip is the water of life,
The lovely down on thy cheek is the Khiẓr of these days,
Thy fawn's eyes are calamity's self,
Even a raging tiger would fall before the eyes of such a
fawn,
The wretched Faiẓī is bound in the bonds of thy locks,
All the world is smitten with thy dark ringlets.”

One day, about the time when this hasty essay was being written, Shaikh Faiẓī saw in my hand the Taẕkirah of Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah. He snatched it from me, and, tearing out the leaf containing an account of himself, tore it to pieces, just as the book of his life was torn to pieces.⁴⁴⁷ I also, in those days when I had not repented of such vain conceits, composed the opening couplet of an ode in four metres, a mere piece of trash which is not worthy of mention. I hope that the generous recording angels have blotted it from the record of my deeds with the water of forgetfulness.

He sometimes exercises his mind with poetry, and as a poet stands in the same class as Mīr Maḥmūd the Munshī, but is rather superior to him.^447b The following verses are by Muḥsin:— ³²⁴

“I do not desire her to be kind to me before strangers,
For I fear lest a stranger should see her and be captivated
by her.”

“One of stature like the cypress and with a mouth like a
rose-bud has stolen my heart,
In the flower of my youth she has disgraced me before the
world.”

“O thou, the plant of whose graceful form is fresh with
the water of life,
The cypress is overcome with shame before thy stature.”

I prefer the word shādāb (‘well-watered’) to Khurram, (‘fresh’) in the first hemistich.

The following is an enigma by him on the word rūḥ (‘the soul’):—

“O thou whose wavy locks waylay souls whom thou chidest,
O thou, the painful longing for whom pours balm on broken
hearts,
Is it the reflection of thy lip that is seen in water,
Or is it a rose-petal fallen into a cup of wine?”

The following is another enigma, on the name of Ḥusain Shāh:—

“How pleasant to me is the habitation in my eyes of that
moonlike beauty!
How pleasant is the acceptable aspect of her moonlike face!
Muḥsin has placed his head on her feet,
For her face like the sun, and yet like the moon, is pleasant.”⁴⁴⁸

325 He was Qāsim Khān of Badakhshān, one of the well-known Amīrs of the emperor Humāyūn. He was well acquainted with the art of poetry and wrote poetry well. He wrote a maṯnavī of six thousand couplets in imitation of the Yūsuf-u-Zulaikhā (of Jāmī)^448b from which the following few couplets descriptive of the beloved are extracted:—

“The priceless jewelled band which bound her hair
Has fallen on her neck, feeling its own worthlessness beside
her hair,
She has not hung earrings of bright rubies in her ears
For there are hung distracted hearts.
Fortune, of its great favour, has not adorned
The neck of her dress with pearls like her teeth;
For as an ornament of the bosom of her goodly dress
Drops of blood fall from her face.^448c

When gold saw itself spurned by her feet
It fell in showers round her feet like fine muslin.
The whiteness of her neck, like a camphor candle,
Rises from the bosom of her dress like a cord of light.
The whiteness of her arm exceeds that of silver,⁴⁴⁹
Her fore-arm is as a chaplet of roses hung on jasmine
From those two sweet chaplets of hers
Her sleeves are filled with jasmine.
Her palm is as though she had taken a rose-petal in her hand.
Each finger is like the bud of a lily set upon it.
Her breast and shoulders, which deprive the mind of sense,
Seem to have taken a harvest of roses into their embrace.
As I am making entries in the register of her beauty (I
may say)
That the pure whiteness of her bosom exceeds that of milk;
Her two nipples of incomparable beauty,
Are as bubbles on the surface of milk.
Her waist transcends the bounds of description
For here the utmost delicacy is to be seen.”

He has also written a poem Lailā-u-Majnūn of which this couplet of his is quoted:—

“An old man of an honourable tribe
Whose beard is like a white rose a yard in length.”

The following quatrain, he used to say, occurred to his mind in a dream:—

“O breeze, bring me some news from the street of my beloved!
Bring to my dying body good news of my life.
It is hard for me to arrive there.
Do me this favour and betake thyself thither swiftly.” ³²⁶

“The cup-sickness of the wine of grief has made me heavy-
headed;
Come, cup-bearer, and free me from the griefs of the world.”

“Cup-bearer, how long shall we dilate on
What we have suffered from fate?
Fill the cup, that we may for an hour free our hearts of
grief.”

Towards the end of his life he gave up the profession of arms, resigned his appointment, and retired into the corner of seclusion. How well would it have been with him had he also given up the writing of poetry!⁴⁵⁰ His death occurred in Āgra, in A.H. 979 (A.D. 1571-72).

He was the son of Muḥtaram Beg, one of the well-known Amīrs of the emperor Humāyūn. He was a man of pleasing qualities, and was fond of poetry, and sometimes wrote it. The following couplet is his:—

“In the evening when thou throwest the veil from thy face
The sun, unable to bear the dazzling sight, sets.”

He was slain in Kashmīr in A.H. 996^450b (A.D. 1588) in the battle in which the imperial forces under Qāsim Khān, Mīr-i-Baḥr,^450c were defeated in a night attack made by Ya‘qūb, the son of Yūsuf Khān of Kashmīr.

He was a Ṭabāṭabā'ī^451a Sayyid, and as a boy was educated with Kāmrān Mīrzā.^451b He was for nearly fifty years in India, and it was in Hindūstān that he departed this life in the year A.H. 982 (A.D. 1574-75). The following two couplets are his:—

“How long, O sky, wilt thou keep me whirling around like ³²⁷
a mote in a sunbeam?
How long wilt thou keep me in exile and destitute?”

“I said, ‘with a sigh I will drive out grief from my heart.’
My grief is not lessened by sighs. Ah! What shall I
do?”

He was of the Sayyids of Astarābād. He came to Hindūstān and died in A.H. 979 (A.D. 1571-72). He is remembered by many verses which he has left, a few of which are the following:—

“She showed her face from behind the curtain. Ah, this is
indeed the dawn!
This is the perfection of God's omnipotence in his handi-
work.
Not even on one night has the star of my desire risen in
thy face;
This is indeed my ill fate and my evil fortune.
See that thou hanker not after delight of the heart, and
ease
In the dust-bin of this world, for this is the house of toil.

Yesterday Murādī passed away to the dust and his love
said,
‘This is one who has been killed in the path of love by the
stone of cruelty.
O flood of grief, wash not from my eyes the dust of his
road,
For it is to me a memorial of one who, (while he lived),
was as the dust under my feet.’”

“It was the blackness⁴⁵² of her locks which was all the foun-
dation of my faith,
I am no true Musalmān if I turn my face away from her.
³²⁸ Though the dog of thy street is more highly regarded
than I,
Yet I am not a whit behind him in the path of fidelity.”

“The lovely ones, who have made their ringlets ornaments
around their faces,
Have taken the people in these snares.”

“Absent from that rosy-faced one, my heart is contracted
like a rosebud,
A madman am I, smitten with love's madness, fighting with
shadows.”

“When fate drew that line of dusky down on my love's face,
It drew beside it the line of my dependence on her.”

He came originally from Marv. Some men regard him, for his qaṣīdahs, as the Salmān⁴⁵³ of the age, but this is a great mistake, for his conceits suffer, to an extraordinary degree, from the defects common to the poets of Transoxiana, and are all frigid. He came twice to Hindūstān and left the country again. The following are some of his most pointed verses:—

“Since all the cash that Majnūn had to show for his life was
his grief for his beloved,
May God pardon him in consideration of this cash, for he
loved much.”

“For loving I have found myself much blamed,
I thought love an easy matter, but it proved to be difficult.”^453a

“Since the meadow each night has lit in the garden the lamp
of the rose.
The tulip's petal has burst into flame and both the petal
and the black scar on it have been consumed.”

He had a subtle tongue in satire, and one of his witty satires was this fragment, which he composed on the occasion of his last visit to India:—

“The land of Ind is a sugar-field, ³²⁹
Its parrots all sell sugar,
Its black Hindūs are like flies
In their turbans and long coats.”^453b

His name was Mīrzā Qulī. He left a dīvān and was a master of poetical style. His taste in poetry was such that if he had lived till now most of the raw poetasters of to-day would have grown sick of trafficking in verse, and from the time in which he flourished until now none of our later versifiers can be mentioned beside him. He was for many years in the service of Naurang Khān,^454a and wrote several brilliant encomiastic odes on him. It is said that on account of some suspicion against him something was at last, by order of Naurang Khān, put into his cup, and that he was thus sent from the world. His death took place in Mālwa. The following verses are by him:—

“Thou surely knowest that love for thee does not depart
with life
That thou walkest thus proudly over the dust of those killed
(by love).”

“Thou art neither my friend nor a stranger, and I know not
What name is given to such intercourse as this.”

“My heart is restless within my body which has been slain
by love;
I know not what more it expects from my beloved,
It describes as ‘proving’ the cruelty which it suffers from
thee,
And by this artifice persuades itself to patience for a while.”

“My life is about to leave me and I am well pleased with
this, for my heart
Has now some hope of a remedy for its many years of
pain.”

“In thy absence I do not die, lest thy heart should say
‘This weakling who has not experienced my cruelty could ³³⁰
not endure my absence for a day or two.’”

“Although she came to ask how I fared I died,
In jealous wonder as to who it was from whom she asked
the way to my house.”

“I die and have pity for those who live, for thou
Art accustomed to committing such cruelty as thou hast
done unto me.”

Some people read rashk (‘jealousy’) for raḥm (‘pity’) in this last couplet. The distinction between the two is for such as have a nice discrimination in the matter of words.

The following verses also are by him:—

“I, with my wounded heart, am a half-dead victim of the
chase, whom
The hunter in his pity quickly slays.”

“My beloved desires my death for her ease, and I
With shame bear the burden of my weary life.”

“I have made thee, as my beloved, a byword, and
I rejoice
In thy shame, for thou now wilt cast no glances on men.”

“What ill fortune is Mailī's, to experience nothing but
cruelty at her hands!
She is but a child, who cannot distinguish between cruelty
and fidelity.”⁴⁵⁶

“I am alone with my broken heart, and I gladly entrust it
to thee:
Of what use will it be to me, that I should keep it?
O my enemy! I am at my last breath, give her to me for a
moment
That I may restore her to thee with a hundred thousand
pangs.”

“In spite of her slights I would not arise at once from her
feast
For if I remain I hope to be glad for a moment at least:
After long years I am sitting, on some pretence, at her
feast
³³¹ And she speaks to me of my rival, hoping that I will
leave.”

Come not to ask how I fare, since there is no hope of my
recovery.
The desire to see me die is no sign of love.
So ardently do I desire speech with thee
That I cannot keep silence, despite my wretched plight
Thou art with my rival and Mailī pretends to ignore it,
With an ignorance which is not less than a hundred regret-
ful glances.”⁴⁵⁷
“I feign to be free from my longing for her,
That this wile of love may make her less scornful of me.”

“A hundred times have I been grieved by her and again made
peace with her,
But that moon-like beauty recks not whether I be at peace
or at war with her.”

“What has happened that thou passest by Mailī with fierce
shyness?
Perchance thou art in fresh pursuit of other game.”

“O Mailī, that one with the wonder-working breath of ‘Isā^457a
comes to thy pillow.
One who had been dead for a hundred years
Would rise up in joy at her coming.”

“I expected thee, faithless as thou art, to abide by thy
compact,
In the great simplicity of my heart I expected this.”

“If anybody has brought about a meeting between my love
and me
Her anger with me has certainly made him ashamed of
what he has done for me.
The good news of a meeting with her, which the stranger
in ridicule gave me,
Has made me, in my simplicity, expectant of its fulfilment.”

“So long as there remains between us, even in secret, any
talk of ‘me and thee’
A stranger is at our feast, sitting between thee and me.⁴⁵⁸
Thou through modesty enterest not into speech, and I, in
bashfulness, refrain
³³² Wondering how the jealous wretchers represent what we
would say.”

“She came upon me by accident, and pretended that she had
remembered her promise;
She hung her head, and pretended that she did so in
modesty.”

In the following verse he has imitated the compiler of the Muntakhab.^458a

“The sky desired to vex the people, and consequently
Availed itself of the ill-will of her who torments us.”

He was supposed to be the king of words. He lived the life of a darvīsh in the Dakan,^458c and his eyes were seldom free from tears. It is said that at the time of the massacre⁴⁵⁹ of the foreigners by the Dakanīs he followed the direction of those foreigners who inhabit the land of non-existence. The following verses are extracted from his works:—

“The edge of the sword of testimony has brushed away the
dust of dissension,
Fire-worshipper, Christian, and Muslim are all killed by
one dagger.”

“The inmost parts of the cold-hearted are cut to pieces,
And salt is then sprinkled on the wounds in their hearts.”

“Thou, with thy sweet smile, art balm to wounded hearts,
But thy eyelashes are a sharp lancet to the liver.^459a
The wine of love is not suited to the capacity of intellect,^459b
Thou that pretendest to knowledge art no tiger of our
forest.”

“The cloud of the eye waters thy narcissus,^459c
The sight of thee arouses no suspicion of cruelty.”

“The sword of her cruelty drips with blood, I fear that ³³³
Malik
Will go in search of his reward to the house of the slayer.”

“The treasury of my imagination is so full of the treasure
of the thought of reunion with her that my eyes will not
close.”

“When the army of well-being^459d comes impudently against
thee, O Malik,

Saddle the horse of strife and hurl thyself against the
centre⁴⁶⁰ of the army.”

“How long will one expect the fulfilment of promises from
every deceiver?
One has one's eye on the door and one's ear open for the
footfall of every comer.
Enemies gladly give this much ease to one's pain,
But woe be to him who expects fidelity from them.”

“What breeze has been dressing thy head
That thy hyacinthine locks are scattered over the rose of
thy cheek?
Eternity without beginning is sworn to thy moon-like face.
Eternity without end is attached to thy waving locks.
Sugar melts at the sight of thy smiling face,
Salt is attracted by thy sweet smile of love.
The temple bell is melody to the bead-tellers
In that land where the idol is lord.”

I saw the complete copy of Malik's works which Shaikh Faiẓī brought from the Dakan. All his poetry is after the fashion of that of the poets of this age and he has not departed from their set forms. No odour of love, of sympathy, or of any fresh subject ³³⁴ has touched his verse, and therefore I have confined myself to quoting these brief extracts. To what extent he understood the set terms used in poetry may he estimated from the following couplet, which is the opening couplet of his dīvān:—^460a

“O Thou whose praise is the ladder to all discourses,
The mention of whom is the pulpit of all assemblies!”

His rhymes are a delight to his enemies, not to mention the complete lack of dignity in his diction. In my humble opinion the following couplet is the best poetry he has written:—

“I stepped aside to take a thorn from my foot,
And her litter vanished from my sight.
For one moment I was negligent and it travelled a hundred
years' journey⁴⁶¹ from me.”

He had good taste in poetry. He was for some time in the service of Mīrzā ‘Azīz Kūka.^461b The following couplet is his:—

“My heart, thou sayest that a hundred discords have arisen
on account of that graceful figure and lofty stature
(of hers);
Thou sayest truly: from that one of lofty stature I have
experienced many calamities.”

Many have written verses on this theme, but they have travelled round about one another without progressing, and their verses are insipid. One writes as follows:—

“Thou sayest that calamity and strife have arisen in the
world from her footsteps.^461c
Thou sayest truly. Verily calamities are from above.”^461d

Another has written:—^461e

“Thou sayest that tumults have arisen on all sides in the
city on account of thy graceful figure.

Thou sayest truly. Thou hast a wonderful⁴⁶² figure, my
moon-like beauty.”

One might say that all these poems are the tumults that are to arise at the last day.

(The following verses are by Mudāmī):—

“My colour is sometimes as the flame of a candle in an orange-
coloured lantern,
Or perchance like an autumn leaf blown on to the tulip
from the north.”

335 “When the account of his grief was finished,
He sealed it by dropping on it a tear.”

He was one of the jovial poets of the age. He left a dīvān, properly arranged in alphabetical order. The following verses are by him:—

“In the condition of fidelity the dog of thy street has submit-
ted to me.
Success has become subservient to me and the world wags
in accordance with my desire,
All lovers have their glances fixed on thy beauty,
O king of beauty, thy face is my full moon.”

“I planted in my heart the plant of desire for her,
But this rose-cutting has yielded me nothing but grief.”

“I had some hope that I might one day hold her ringlets in
my hand,

Alas, that my precious life has been wasted in this hopeless⁴⁶³
desire!”

He also wrote the following qaṣīdah in imitation of Khẉāja Salmān, and tacked on to it^463a the name of Qāẓī Yaḥyā of Qazvīn, the grandfather of Naqīb Khān:—^463b

“Once more the sky shivers with December's cold,
The sun has veiled his head in clouds fearing the wrath of
the thunderbolt;
The sky once more rains arrows (of hail and snow) on the
earth;
The earth has made water itself a breastplate against the
arrow of Sagittarius;
The sea-monster, fearing the biting blasts of December,
Has placed on his head a helmet of bubbles hard as iron.
Once more, by reason of the abundance of snow and the ³³⁶
intensity of the cold,
The earth has fallen a-trembling like a sea of mercury.

The dark surface of the earth is whitened, covered with an
army of snow.
No black spot is to be found in the heart of the world,
For the surface of the earth is so contracted
That the crow can find no place for his foot thereon.⁴⁶⁴
On the lawns of the garden, instead of blossoms and ver-
dure,
In the ice and the snow which have fallen only ermines^464a
are to be found.
Once more trembling has fallen on the trees in the meadow.
Like me have they become thus restless from lack of liveli-
hood.^464b
In this cold air my body quivers like a willow,
In its weakness it is sometimes at fever heat, sometimes in
agony.
This morning a voice from heaven conveyed good news to
my ear.
Saying, ‘How long wilt thou suffer torments from the hard-
ships of these days?
Take refuge from the tyranny of vicissitudes at that
threshold
Which is as high as the threshold of the sky,
The threshold of the trustee of the sacred law, an account
of a particle of whose virtues
Would not be contained in a hundred volumes or in a thou-
sand books,
Like ‘Alī and like Muḥammad in his qualities, Yaḥyā by
name;
Since his perfection is manifest why should I distinguish
him by titles?’”

Mullā Maqṣūd died in Āgra in A.H. 977 (A.D. 1569-70). His father, Mullā Faẓlu-'llāh, also was one of those who deserve the title of man, and was held in reverence. He wrote the following ³³⁷ fragment:—

“Faẓlī! Enfold not thyself in the robe of existence as a
bud is enfolded in its sheath,
Wrinkle not thy forehead and trail not thy skirt in blood;
Be like the full-blown rose, and like the|cypress
Be free from the griefs of this world and humble not thy-
self before the base sky.

He was moderately fond of study and was in the college at Dihlī. He was afterwards, by the emperor's order, appointed qāẓī of Sirhind,^465a and received his poetical name of Miḥnatī from the emperor. In Sirhind he passed away from this house of toil,^465b the world.

The following verses are by him:—

“I found in my path the print of her foot,
Why should I not press my cheek against it?
I have found her place.”

“The folk have lost their hearts in meditating on her waist,
slender as a hair;
I too, among them, have lost my broken heart.”

His descent is indicated by his poetical name. He had a poetical turn of mind. The following verses are his:—

“I know that in secret your glances are cast on me in my
affliction,
I know that thy pretended neglect of me is due only to
fear of strangers.”

“Her eyes draw me in my affliction to perform her behests;
She casts towards me a glance suffused with wrath.”⁴⁶⁶

He was the maternal uncle of the emperor, and was one of the sons of his holiness Shaikh Jām (may his tomb be hallowed). He was afflicted with insanity and mania to an extraordinary degree, so that he murdered his wife without any cause and was put to death on that charge in A.H. 971 (A.D. 1563-64), as has been mentioned in the record of the reign.^466b The following chronogram has been found for the date of that event:—

“The great Khẉāja, by name Mu‘aẓẓam,
Slew his wife, and was himself slain
By the wrath of the emperor, Jalāl-i-dīn Akbar.

When I asked of him the year of his death
That man of auspicious qualities said, while he still lived,
‘Without the world-illumining face of that lovely one
I suffered at length by the greater martyrdom’.”⁴⁶⁷

This chronogram appears to have been composed by Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah, the author of the Taẕkiratu-sh-Shu‘arā.^467a The following opening couplet was composed by Khwāja Mu‘aẓẓam:—

“It is impossible for me, my soul, to recount to thee my
heart's anguish,
I suffer from this anguish to an extent which cannot be
told.”

In quoting this opening couplet of the Khwāja's I have simply followed Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah. Otherwise, in spite of the following opening couplet by a master of poetry, I should have said that the Khẉāja's couplet was mere trash. The couplet of the master^467b is as follows:—

“Since I heard that I could call thy ruby lip my soul
A fire which I cannot describe has stricken my heart.”

He is the son of Shaikh Pīr of Āgra, who wrote seven scripts well, and whom I met in Peshāwar in the reign of Salīm^467d Shāh. His son also was a capable youth and passably proficient in the ³³⁹ art of composing enigmas and in penmanship. He also played chess, both two-handed and four-handed, well. These few verses are quoted as an example of his style:—

“What profit is mine from the many colours of the flowers
of spring

Since my heart in thy absence finds no solace in any colour?
Even those who bear witness to the grief which, in my
misery, I suffer, are afflicted with grief;
They are my blood-red tears, my pale cheeks, and my
wakeful eyes.”
“O thou, from whose cheek the moonlight has borrowed its
brightness,
And in envy of whose beauty the sun burns!”

“Each arrow that thou shootest, my moonlike beauty with
bow-like eyebrow,
Is as deeply embedded in my bones as the marrow of them.
The arrow which that beauty with bow-like eyebrows has
shot at any heart
Has been a salve to its hidden wounds.”

He was a handsome man who was born in Kābul and brought up in Hindūstān. In penmanship he was the pupil of Ashraf Khān. He died in Gujarāt at the time of the siege of Sūrat^468a in A.H. 980 (A.D. 1572-73) in the prime of his youth. Ashraf Khan composed a hemistich which formed a chronogram giving the date of his death, and Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah completed the stanza, as follows:—

“Muḥammad Yūsuf, that residence of beauty,
Went from the world shedding tears from his eyes.
³⁴⁰ An honoured man gave this chronogram for the date of his
death.
‘Where is Yūsuf of Egypt, O ye honoured ones?’”^468b

This rhyming of ma‘rūf and majhūl is very strange.⁴⁶⁹ The following ode, ‘The Master of the House,’ is by the above-mentioned Muḥammad Yūsuf:—

“Happy is he who has taken up his abode in the wine-shop,
And is seated by the tun with a cup and a measure,
It is he who has given to the beloved her languishing
glances heavy with wine.
I am drunk with the languishing glances of those two
narcissus-like eyes.
The owl found no well-peopled spot in this transitory world
And hence chose for its dwelling the corner of a ruin.
I said (to my love), ‘Take up thy abode in my eyes,’ but
she answered coquettishly,
‘Does anybody build a house in a channel through which
floods flow?’
The comb has disordered thy locks,
May the hand of him who made that comb for thy locks
be broken.”

The following couplet is by him:—

“In thy absence I attempted in vain to take rest,
Disappointed by thy absence I took such rest as I could.”

He is a pleasing poet. He was at Agra in the service of Bairam Khān and designed an epic Book of Kings,^469b and completed the versification of several of the incidents to be included in it, ³⁴¹ particularly the battle against Sikandar Sūr,⁴⁷⁰ which contained an account of the valour of Muḥammad Ḥusain Khān.^470a He presented it to the Khān at Patyālī,^470b and the Khān made some corrections in it and told him the whole story of the fight in proper order, from beginning to end. Manẓarī in one night, as it was the Khān's wish, corrected those three or four hundred couplets and read them at his levée the next morning, and received a notable reward. The following couplet occurs in that poem:—

“The sound of his trumpet deafened the sky.
The chief was perplexed by his sudden attack.”

The following opening couplet by him is very well known, and is often illuminated:—^470c

“In thy absence I am always destitute,
I am one who never enters thy thoughts.”

The following ghazal is by him:—

“See the down growing on the moonlike cheek of that
lovely silver-bodied one.
Both down and cheek are signs of the disturbances of the
age of the moon.^470d
See a chain of dark ambergris drawn across the face of the
moon;
See a ringletlike violets on a cheek like a moist rose-petal;
See her heart-ravishing eyes and her lashes that shoot
arrows,
See perils upon perils in the road of love.”

This last couplet is the best. As for the rest it is evident that he toiled hard at them to no purpose but to weary our ears.

In Hindūstān he was known as Ḥaidarī, and he wrote good qaṣīdahs in praise of Mīr Muḥammad, Khān-i-Kalān.^471a His ³⁴² discourtesy led him constantly into quarrels with everybody, and on this account he suffered much molestation.

The following verses are by him:—

“Majnūn did not know that a lover is disgraced in the world,
I am disgraced by love and devoted to being a lover.”

“The new moon of ‘Īd appears like a key
To open the lock of the wine-shop of the cupbearer on the
evening of ‘Īd.”

“The lovely one with the green veil^471b has once more appeared
from behind the curtain,
The bud laughs like the dawn, and the sun appears.”

“I have on my breast, from my beloved's sword,
Lines^471c like those ruled on paper with a ruler.”

He was in the service of the Khān-i-A‘ẓam.^471e He had a jovial disposition. After the conquest of Gujarāt he returned to his own country. The following verses are by him:—

“Happy is he whom she rates as her dog!
Although I am not so rated she sometimes thinks on me.”

“We are lovers, and the end of the street of calamity is our
refuge,
The world is full of the turmoil and din of our shouts.

We dwell wherever grief and toil are heaviest,
Our place is wherever affliction and anguish are greatest.
Despite all the misery which we endure in our grief for her
She who is anxious concerning our hereafter desires our
death.
³⁴³ We wander in the desert of grief for her, and the only shade
that we have
Is that of our black lot which accompanies us in such days
as these.
Thou didst say to Muqīmī coquettishly, ‘I care for nobody.’
Aye, aye; with thy beauty how shouldst thou care for me?”

He was the son of Qāẓī Abū-l-Ma‘ālī of the place of pilgrimage.^472a He was a melancholy youth who had adopted the Ṣūfī doctrine of annihilation^472b and was after the fashion of his father. He died of haemorrhoids in Lāhor.

He composed an opening couplet in imitation of an opening couplet by Shaikh Sa‘dī (may his tomb be hallowed).

(Shaikh Sa‘dī's couplet).
“Infidels, what do you expect from a lifeless graven image?
Worship awhile that Idol which has life.”

(The poet's couplet).
“The dead are envious when thou stretchest out thy hand
for thy sword
Saying, ‘Death by that sword is the privilege of him who
is alive!’”

Shortly after his arrival in Hindūstān he was in the service of the Khānkhānān, son of Bairam Khān, and then went on a pilgrimage to the glorious city of Makkah. In the composition of quatrains he has no equal. The following quatrains are his:—

“So long as the ringlet falls over the moonlike face.
So long as the down on the cheek is as an army to the king
of beauty.
Even if my house is built of bricks from the sun
The days of me in my wretchedness will pass in black
misery.”
“Once I knew not sorrow of the soul and the heart,
Once I knew not what it was to weep tears of fire; ³⁴⁴
Now thou hast left neither name nor trace of me,
O love! I did not know that thou wert thus.”

Maḥwī, who has wandered far from the street of wisdom,
Has become a greater wanderer than a thousand Majnīms.
I saw from afar that lost one, wandering far from thee,
In a wilderness where the wind entered, into his blood.”

He has composed a dīvān. He now holds a post in the imperial service in his own country. The quality of his poetry may be estimated from the following couplets, which are, however, a very small selection:—

“The good fortune of thy beauty has prospered thy affairs,
Else thou wouldst not have known how to manage affairs
successfully.”

There is also this opening couplet by a master of poetry (from which Maẓharī's couplet is evidently copied).

“Thou hast not understood what a firm covenant is,
Thou hast not understood what it is to be constant.”

(The following verses are by Maẓharī):—

“May I be a sacrifice for that mirror which the enslaver of
my heart
Keeps in her room, turned towards the rose-walks of the
garden.”

“Maẓhar, be in the world as those that have no share in it,
And as for the rose, be, like the nightingale, satisfied with
singing to it.
Satisfy thyself with the beauty of the world by looking on it,
³⁴⁵ Be, like the strangers, a guest who is content to gaze.”

He was unique in this age for his high lineage and his acquired and inherited accomplishments. After many years of such acquaintance as can exist between men at a distance from one another, I was so fortunate as to have a chance meeting with him in the neighbourhood of the town of Bārī⁴⁷⁵ in the year in which the victorious army set out for the conquest of the fortress of Citor; but owing to the shortness of the time at our disposal our interview and conversation, in spite of the great desire which I had to prolong them, did not last an hour, and he went on and I returned, but when I first set eyes on him I became aware of the nobility of his character. Although, considering his dignity, this mention of him among a string of poets is scarcely gracious, yet, as he sometimes amused himself with poetry, this opening couplet is quoted as a memorial of him:—

“If, in the day of my grief for thee, I should choose to exer-
cise patience,
Since I have no choice in the matter say what I should do.”

He composed a dīvān, and also a tarjī‘-band^475b satirizing Kucik Beg, the accountant of Bairam Khān, the letters of which a hundred storms like that which occurred in the days of Noah would not wash from the pages of this age. The following few couplets are by him:—^475c

“O thou, in whose glorious days time glories,
Khān, son of a Khān, chief, and high officer of kings,
Bairām!

The steed of perception cannot traverse the valley of thy
understanding.
The noose of imagination cannot reach the battlements of
the palace of thy glory.
I have a word to say: I will expound it unto the Nawwāb.
I have a difficulty: I will represent it to his servants.
³⁴⁶ Thou hast given the high post of accountant
To Kucik Beg. Say for what reason, O boast of mankind.
Thou art perhaps ignorant of his reprehensible acts,
Although inquiry into the characters of servants is a duty
incumbent on governors.
He was an infamous boy, and conceited, a wine-bibbing
libertine.
A lad ever hankering after gold, soft, and self-willed.
His business was the service⁴⁷⁶ of Khẉāja Amīr Beg the
Vazīr.
Factor to the family of His Highness Mīrzā Bahrām.^476a
Other things are known about him from a certain source.
But I feel ashamed to reveal them before his honour the
Khān.
To cut a long story short and|to make and end quickly I will
come to my tale.
And I will tell a tale regarding that mutilated^476b wretch.
Wherever he has been his conduct has been such
That he has brought upon himself the hatred of all, both
gentle and simple.

Oh on thy leprous body,’ thus pray to God,
Both morning and evening, all the inhabitants of the
heavens,
May there fall fever, colic, haemorrhoids, consumption, and
dropsy,
Measles, intestinal worms, epilepsy, and delirium.
Then when thou haltest weak and feeble, seeking a cure,
May all the physicians prescribe for thee the following diet,
Simiae vomitum, decem dierum catuli stercora, ³⁴⁷
Ursi penem, felis caudam, et stercora sicca quibus calefiunt
hypocausta.
Happy will that day be when thou art griped by colic, for
which
The great physicians will prescribe an enema,
And the forefoot of an ass, the foot of a camel, the horn of
a goat.
The scalp of a bear, the head of a mule, and the teeth of a
hog.’”

He could also be abusively satirical in prose as the following story will show. One day when weary⁴⁷⁷ he was seated on an old felt cushion and said to me before the court, ‘Dog, dost thou eat filth before me?’ I said, ‘Surely it is lawful for any^477a dog to eat filth before you.’ However, as Nuvīdī had but one eye I have closed my eyes to his baseness,^477b and if I have recounted his faults it was only because the road was opened to me by the author of the original Taẕkirah,^477c Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah; and although the recording of obscene language and the reckoning up of faults is not the custom of the author of this Selection, yet in this instance, with the object of indulging the love of a jest and keeping up the merriment of the entertainment, I have blindly and exactly copied the passage from the original; and I hope that the clear-sighted men of this time will regard what they have seen as unseen and what I have done as though it had never been done, and will wink at my fault and my shame, and pass by it and pardon me, for ‘Satire in speech is as salt in food’ is a proposition accepted by all learned and well-informed men, and although some people, falsifying the text, read, instead of ‘Satire,’ ‘Syntax⁴⁷⁸ in speech,’ the Maqāmāt^478a of Ḥarīrī clearly show that the first, and not the second, is the correct reading.

The following few verses are from Nuvīdī's dīvān, but I am not certain whether they are by this Nuvīdī, or by another^478b poet with the same poetical name:—

“I still have thy arrow, which I have had in my heart for
an age,
I still have the plant of desire for thee which I received
from thee;
³⁴⁸ I still have the fetter which at the very first
I, poor and distraught,
Received from that Lailā-like beauty with the musky
tresses.^478c
Though my eyes have become dim from weeping,
I retain the picture^478d of thee
In that same form which has ever been reflected in the
mirror of my heart.
Take my hand, love, for an age.
My foot has been held in the valley of love's madness in
the mire caused by my tears, as it was always held.
I, Nuvīdi, still have that heart like a bird struck by the
arrow of her glance

Which I had long ago, rolling in dust and blood like a bird
half slain.

Another ode.

“Longing for thy ringlet has made me restless,
I am at death's door. O come to my help!
I could endure thy cruelty all my life, but
Thy sitting with a stranger I cannot endure.
I restrain myself from weeping at the end of thy street
For I fear that the flood of my tears would sweep me away
from the end of thy street.
Not for the twinkling of an eye does the restless longing
for thy ringlet
Permit me to sleep during the night of absence from thee.
Nuvīdī, since my heart has become united⁴⁷⁹ with grief for
thee,
The confusion of all material things has left my remem-
brance.”

Another ode.

“Though I die miserably from the ceaseless grief which is
mine
I will make to the stranger no complaint of my misery.
If in love's delirium I declared to thee
The grief of my heart, pardon me, in thy mercy.
Nuvīdī wished to declare the grief of his heart to thee, ³⁴⁹
But when he saw thy face he forgot his grief.”

Another ode.

“Before thy arrow is drawn from my wounded heart
My grief-worn life will leave me a hundred times.
Thy heart-piercing arrow has entered my wounded breast
With ease, but will with difficulty be drawn thence.
To the end of her street I, helpless in my weakness.
Go a hundred times, hoping to see her come out but once.
O Nuvīdī, from within thy patched woollen robe
If thou art a Musalmān why does the idolator's sacred
thread appear?”

A couplet.

“Thou hast no thought for the next world, nor for this,
Nuvīdī, I know not how thou art employed.”

He is Maulānā ‘Alī Aḥmad, the son of Maulānā Ḥusain Naqshī of Dihlī, the seal-cutter, who was a learned man, saintly in religion, and was the instructor of the eldest prince.^480a Both father and son attained the greatest proficiency in this art (of seal-cutting), but especially the Maulānā named above (‘Alī Aḥmad) whose own engraved seal is the exemplar of the age. Coins of which the dies have been cut by him are taken as talismans and relics to ‘Irāq, Khurāsān and Transoxiana. He is endowed with the accomplishments of learning and with such perfections as a man can possess, but this lesser accomplishment and mercenary art (of seal-cutting) has obscured all his great natural gifts, and for this reason he has not received that training and that position ³⁵⁰ in military affairs and in the service of the state to which he is entitled. Had he attained the honourable rank which was his due he would have been in no way inferior to any of the more famous Amīrs.^480b He is deeply read in astronomy and natural philosophy, is an ardent seeker after knowledge, and is marvellously proficient in all scripts, and in prose composition and orthography he is unrivalled.

Had he been a man of one pursuit many examples of his flowing verse would have been left on the page of time. He sometimes exercises his brilliant intellect and keen perception in the composition of verse, and has chosen a poetical name in consonance with his occupation. Since from the early days of my youth to the time of writing this selection, which is the period of my middle age,⁴⁸¹ or rather of my old age, I have been bound to him, to a greater degree than can be imagined, by the bonds of intimacy, confidence, friendship, and companionship, it is not unfitting that I should quote with appreciation, and at some length,^481a some of his profitable pieces of verse and prose. The following couplets are from his poems:—

“Until the down grew above thy life-giving lip
Masīḥ alone was there. Now that it has grown Khiẓr is in
company with Masīḥ.”^481b

“The censor yesterday broke the wine-jar, and poured forth
the fiery water which it contained.
He gave my dust to the wind, and poured my blood on the
dust.”

“The wind brought news to my sad heart of my beloved.
Alas, no trust can be placed in the word of the wind.”

“Sleep comes on me each night like a robber, my eyes become
moist.

But, when sleep sees that my heart still wakes in its grief
for me, sleep quickly flees.”

In imitation of this couplet I composed the following:—

“Fired by a hundred hopes I send a messenger to that cruel
one,
I flee to God for refuge from the hour in which he will
return from her without hope.”

351 (The following couplet is Nishānī's):—

“Since my bosom was wounded by the arrow of thy cruelty
I have not treated it with ointment, nor have I dressed the
wound.”

At the time when Gujarāt was conquered he engraved a coin-die for the emperor, and submitted it to him with the following chronogram:—

“O king! The coinage of Gujarāt is now struck in thy
name,
May the shadow of thy justice be over the head⁴⁸² of that
country.
Happy will be that moment when thou wilt ask of me the
date (of its conquest)
And I shall reply, ‘May the coinage of Gujarāt be auspi-
cious!’”^482a

The following couplets are also by him:—

“It is a matter of life and death with me, and the beloved
has not come.
My life, which is valuable to me, has become of no account.”

“I have a wounded heart and the lovely ones bear salt (wit)
on their lips;
This wound of mine will not be healed till eternity.”

“Outward form and inward truth are not united in every king,
Akbar the emperor is the king both of outward form and
inward truth.
He is the emperor at whose court, when he holds it,
King after king falls down in fear before the doorkeeper's
staff.”

“The heart in my bosom is not broken by the stone of calami-
ties
For the glass of my (heart) is made of a diamond.”

When the imperial camp was on its way to Kashmīr for the first time⁴⁸³ and I, having taken leave, went to Basāwar,^483a my birth- ³⁵² place, Nishānī wrote the following verses, and sent them to me from that country (Kashmīr). God knows whether he wrote (the same verses) with the same warmth of feeling to several others, and pleased them also, but until another claimant appears I have made the verses my own.

A Maṯnavī.

“Whilst thou art far from me, O moon that illuminest my
heart,
I sleep not at night and have no ease during the day,
My tears, rose-red with blood, trickle adown my cheek
Like tulips blooming in a field of saffron;
My eyelashes are tinged with the blood of my heart
Like branches of red coral showing their heads above the
ocean.

Owing to thy absence the blood lodged in my heart, every
moment.
Rises to my neck like liquid in a bottle;
Every breath burns with the fire of grief
And at each respiration throws forth from my bosom a
flaming banner.
Now my eyes contend with the blood of my heart
And shed, instead of tears, sparks of fire.
These are not eyelashes that encircle my eyes,
They are the soot of my heart's fire around its chimney.
O thou of angelic disposition, from this sad journey
Which has carried the lives of my dear friends away on the
breeze
Such languor has become the lot of my body and my heart
That I pay no heed to my body or my heart.
My body is disturbed by the pains of fever,
³⁵³ My heart within it is like fire in a furnace.”

In reply to that boastful poem⁴⁸⁴ of Shaikh Faiẓī's, which begins:—

“Thanks be to God that the love of beautiful ones is my
guide.
I am of the religion of Brahmans and of the faith of the
fire-worshippers.”

He wrote a qaṣīdah, from which the following couplets are excerpted:—

“Thanks be to God that I am a follower of the faith of the
prophet,
The love of the prophet and of the race of the prophet is
my guide.
I am disgusted with Brahmans, prayer-gongs, and Ahri-
man,^484a
I am a denier of the faith of monk, priest, and fire-angel,^484b

I believe in the day of resurrection, and in the resurrection
of the dead,
I am hopeful of Paradise, of ḥūrīs, and of Kauṯar.⁴⁸⁵
O envious one, glance not towards me with contempt
Although in outward semblance I may appear contempt-
ible.
I am a fierce flame, pass not near me.^485a
Since thou art not the Friend^485b set not thy foot on my fire.
Under my seal is the face of the whole earth.
I in this age am like the seal, with my head hidden within
the collar of my robe.^485c
From east to west I am tempered with perfection,
From pole to pole I am the axis of every country.
The convex surface of the sky of excellence, even in the
eyes of my enemy,^485d
Will never fit the concave surface which is bounded by my
ego.
Though I dwell on the earth like an imaginary point
I am still the centre round which the spherical sky
revolves.
The hand of fate has drawn, with the compass of time,
The circles of the seven heavens around my book. ³⁵⁴
Although I am less than the fixed point which is the
centre
I am nevertheless more boundless than the circumference.
If my enemy performs a thousand of the magical tricks of
Sāmirī^485e

I, like the serpent of the Speaker,⁴⁸⁶ will overpower him in
a minute.”

He wrote the following couplet in praise of the prophet:—

“The seal of thy finality has broken the seals of old
And has introduced in its device a new and fresh design.”

The following verses are selected from one of his poems concerning one of the great ones among those of our kind, ingenious in oppression:—^486a

“How long wilt thou boast saying, ‘In magic
I am a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī’?^486b
Every breath of mine is one of the miracles of ‘Īsa,
A flame of light from the bush of Moses.^486c
In eloquence I am the phoenix of the age,
The teacher of all the eloquent.
Each breath of mine deprives magic itself of patience (in
enduring its inferiority).
Each speech of mine is magic that would deceive angels.
I am the king of the kingdom of omniscience,
I am the wise man of the region of sublime realities;
I am the jeweller who values the chain of rhetoric,
I am the assayer of the coin of eloquence.
All this am I. To-day, in this contest,
Thou dost but take a flame of fire on thy tongue.
Boast not that thou art the discoverer of spiritual truths,
Thou art no candle, let not the machinery of thy tongue be
too well greased.
O thou who art formed of flame, of jewels of fine water,

Make no boast, since thou hast not even dust in thy pouch.
Although thy mind has knocked at the door of sense
No new conceit has fallen on our ears.
That which thou sayest has been said by others,
The pearls which thou stringest have been strung by others.
For the house of verse which thou hast adorned
Thou hast borrowed both the water and the clay from
others.
The painted ceiling which is in this house ³⁵⁵
Has its colours from a stranger's pencil.
Thy wit is like that of a gardener
Who lays out his garden with plants taken from others.
The verdure in that garden is from another lawn,
Each beautiful flower that blooms there is from another
garden;
Each bud of it, though it be life-cherishing,
Is sprung from the heart's blood of another than thee;
The unfruitful willow which rears its head
Has drawn its leaves from that seed already decorated with
designs of trees.⁴⁸⁷
Its freshness is from no rain which thou hast bestowed on
it,
But is from the sweat of the brow of thy friends.
How long wilt thou burn with desire for the money of
others?
How long wilt thou glue thy eyes to the property of
others?
Collect not the cash of those who foster eloquence,
Fill not thy pouch with the gold of others.
Turn thy thoughts from the drink of others,
Drink water from thine own fountain.
If thou be Khiẓr, where is thy water of life?
If thou be sugarcane, where is thy sweet branch?
Like a date-palm thou raisest thy head to the sky,
But thou givest no fruit but dry date-stones.

The cypress whose head brushes the sky,
Is void of all flavour of fruit.
Why all this vaunting of thine own eloquence?
Why all this ridicule of a heart-broken one like me?
If I from shame open not my mouth
Do not attribute my silence to folly.
My breast does not contain a stone as does a ripe date,
I am like the oyster-shell, full of pearls, but close my
lips.
If I release my tongue from its bonds
The eloquent will refrain from opening their lips.
Do not cast gibes at me as Satan did at Adam.
Consider my state and refrain from speech.
I am a Sāmirī, and can, by the power of my spells
And magical power, bring into existence a puppet form.
I can throw Venus and the moon into turmoil,
I can throw Hārūt's⁴⁸⁸ magic scroll into his well.
I am all this,—a magician who is magic's self,
From whose words magic has been spread abroad.
I, who am famous for my words of magic,
Am myself the sky, the moon, and Venus.
Sāmirīs are in every curl of my hair,
Babylons are in the well of my magic.

The wealth which springs from this work is mine, to my ³⁵⁶
heart's desire,
The coin of this kingdom is struck in my name.
Learn from my speech the beauties of style.
Have no false shame: lay hold of a master's skirt.
He who comes as a true disciple to his master
Gathers in both worlds the treasure of happiness.
Not one line of thy verse is correct.
Thy verses are the laughing-stock of the eloquent.
Although nobody has told thee this to thy face
And nobody rakes up thy faults before thee,
Yet thy detractors, in thy absence,
Delight the meetings of eloquent men;
When thy verses are quoted among them
They pick out thy errors one by one.
They praise thy poetry to thy face
And curse and abuse thee behind thy back.
Thou art a friend of none and hast none for thy friend.
Thou hast, alas, no bosom friend to sympathize with thee,
To show thee what thy faults are
Or what it is (in thy verse) that thy auditors criticize.”

When I was writing this memoir and asked Nishānī for some of his verses as a memorial of him he wrote me the following letter:—

“Having made the jewels of the mines of holy poverty and humility and the gems of the oceans of despondency and restlessness, which the jewellers of the workshop of yearning and the ocean rangers of the handicraft of taste have washed with the limpid water of sincerity and threaded on the string of supplication, a sacrifice to the joy-giving footsteps of that incomparable one of this age, that miracle of the mercy of Providence, whose heart, with its knowledge of hidden mysteries, is as a world-displaying cup⁴⁸⁹ to prudent searchers after truth, and the mirror of whose mind is the astrolabe of the astronomers of the Path, I humbly represent to those who are admitted to his heavenly assembly, that gathering where angels sit, swearing by God and ³⁵⁷ by the honour of God (He is blessed and exalted!), that by the blessing of the consideration which has been bestowed by that incomparable and unequalled Being on the leisure time of this humble one, by asking him to collect his scattered scribblings, I desire to give a hundred praises for the favour which he has shown to me. I am writing for his servants two fragments, one of prose composition, and the other of maṯnavīs, et caetera, and have half finished the work. Please God, I shall pack them up and despatch them to-morrow or the day after. For the present I have sent several couplets from that maṯnavī in the opening couplet of which the hemistich, ‘I am a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī,’⁴⁹⁰ occurs. Pray be pleased to correct it and to set aside what may be fit for reproduction. May you remain in health.”

Among his letters was the following regarding the emperor's seal with its die containing the names of his majesty's great ancestors as far as the lord of the (fortunate) conjunction (Tīmūr), which he wrote and sent to me.^490a

“O outstripper of the swift runners of the subtleties of sciences in difficulties arising in the assemblies of the noble and the learned, shooter of the arrows of boundless knowledge from the bows of perfections against the globes of the hearts of high and low, striker of the disavowing ordinances with the swords of brilliant proofs, and opener of the doors of the obscurities of truths with the keys of convincing arguments; how art thou in this age, on every day of which people of penetration have known the signification of ‘on that day shall a man fly from his brother and his mother and his father?’^490b Verily the object of the gaze of the aspirations of the people of this age is the defects of others. Verily the brethren of this age are searchers after the faults of others, and they do not regard their own faults; and this is owing to the hardness of their hearts, and the dulness of their hearing, and the ³⁵⁸ dimness of their sight. ‘Their hearts and their ears hath God sealed up and over their eyes is a covering.’⁴⁹¹ How, therefore, should they know their own affairs, much less those of their brethren? And they are excused for they are led astray into this error. And tell me of thyself, of thy soul which is angelic in its disposition, in its goodness and purity, and, like the sun, diffusing rays and bright light, incomparable in natural and acquired talents, comprehending the truths both of creation and of creation's God; an epitome of precious and world-wide perfections; may God most High preserve it from all ills which can affect the body and all calamities which can befall the soul, with a perpetual and ineffable protection; and may the raised dust of detriment not settle on the skirt of its perfection. My employment from the 1st Ẕī-l-Ḥijjah^491a to the end of Rabī‘u-l-awwal^491b has been the engraving of the seal of the just king, the perfect Khalīfah^491c on which are engraved his sublime titles and the names of his exalted ancestors as far as Amīr Tīmūr, the lord of the (fortunate) conjunction.^491d The seal is wide and round and contains eight circles, one in the middle, and the rest clustered around it.”^491e

The following is a copy of a letter which he wrote from Lāhor to Shaikh Umam Ya‘qūb of Kashmīr:—

“It is not my heart alone that is the abode of longing for
thee.
In desire for thee all the members of my body have become
hearts.”

Why should I complain of the power⁴⁹² of the spells of this old enchanter^492a sitting on a throne, wearing a patched robe, and dwelling in a lofty temple, who has, by the power of his magical incantations, brought the whole universe, from the fish^492b to the moon, into his blue glass bottle, and, having closed the mouth of that bottle with wax from the candle of the moon, has sealed it ³⁵⁹ with so many thousand seals that the foot of flight has no power to step from within it, and there is no hope of the hand of any helper from without reaching those within?

I have uttered many cries but no one comes to my assis-
tance.
It is as though there were nobody in this turquoise vault.^492c

Perforce, therefore, I remain in the bonds forged for me from eternity, and place my head on the threshold of discipleship. And, since the country and the king are alike in this condition in relation to fate, it is evident that mankind in general, much less a solitary individual, can have but little power to move hand or foot in those bonds, or release himself from durance in its prison; unless it be a perfect religious leader and perfected guide, aided in various ways and by different means by divine guidance and divine inspiration. Such a man might, striving with the strength of divine assistance, and the aid of boundless struggles and ecstacies, free himself from this most dangerors of places, this most difficult of situations. But, in truth, in these days there is, save that incomparable one of the age, whose nature is endowed with auspicious attributes, angelic qualities, and holy signs of God's handiwork, who is a revelation of the marks of the mercy of Providence (His power is honoured), no perfect knower of God illuminated and adorned by the qualities described above.^492d

I hope that your holiness will, by your exalted⁴⁹³ regard, free this hopeless prisoner in the bonds of the body and of outward forms, who is a unit not beyond the pale of human kind, from all bonds contrary to the laws of the prophet and intrusive upon the faith of the chosen one (on him be the most excellent of benedictions and the most perfect of blessings) and that you will sometimes, when you have leisure to think thereon, call him to mind in prayer for his attainment of his outward and inward desires, for his happiness both in things seen and things unseen, and for the accomplishment of his objects both in matters pertaining to the world and in matters pertaining to God; for there can be for him no other means but this of arriving at God and at the firm rope of the manifest religion. He hopes that God (He is praised and exalted), will, of His favour and perfect clemency, protect ³⁶⁰ and guard your holiness, with your dear sons and your honoured friends, from all the snares of the world and misfortunes of the age, and will preserve you over those who love you truly and those who follow you sincerely.”

He was that Jamāl Khān, son of Shaikh Mangan of Badāon, who has already been mentioned. He was a young man of perfect orthodoxy and well known for the beauty of his form and his disposition. It may be said that love for him was the cause of the author's settling in Badāon. Had he not been transitory as the rose he would have left behind him many examples of his poetry, but death gave him not the opportunity of acquiring accomplishments.

The following verses are his:—

“Hear this well-weighed saying from one who was nurtured
on love,
‘He who dies of love is better than he who lives without
love.’”

“My dark-eyed beauty, thou hast smitten me with a wound,
whilst thou wert riding
I take delight in this love, for thou hast mortally wounded
me.”

In imitation of that opening couplet by the Khān-i-Kalān,⁴⁹⁴ which begins—

“In my youth the harvest of my life was neglected in
ignorance.”

He wrote—

“Each Sulaimān who did not estimate himself less than an
ant
Has at last gone away, as dust on the wind, and his wisdom
of Sulaimān^494a has passed away.”

She was but a woman.^494c She lived in Āgra and was the mistress^494d of Mahistī of Hirāt. The following opening couplet is by her:—

361 “I have found the day of grief and the night of pain to give
little ease,
I have experienced much grief in these days.”

Although the poets of the age have all attempted to answer this couplet none of them has equalled it:—

What manhood is this, that cannot cope with a woman?
Her son, Ja‘far by name, is now an Aḥadī in Kashmīr and
has been appointed to the service of the Mir-ī-Baḥr. He
is an able youth.

He came to Hindūstān and died here. He was proficient in poetry, and in the composition of enigmas. The following couplet is his:—

“O thou in whose absence my heart runs through fire, shed-
ding its blood
Without thee I am sometimes visible in water (tears),
sometimes hidden in fire.”

The following couplet is an enigma on the name Abab:—

“Thy heart has not solved my difficulty.
Fie upon thy heart, for my heart has become water.”

He has recently arrived at court, and is in the service of the Khānkhānān.^495a The following couplet is his:—

“That fate which wrote the record of the sins of the wine-
bibber
Wrote also in the margin the good news of the Lord's
pardon.”

He gives himself out to be one of the descendants of his holiness Shaikh Ḥājī Muḥammad of Khabūshān, but his conduct belies his claim. He is now in the service of the youngest prince.^{496 362} The following verses are by him:—

“I am Nau‘ī the wine-bibber, and after my death
My blisters will fester like the sun.”

“Nau‘ī's sorrow arises not from pain and grief
But from the exiguity of his stomach.”

“Again has my desire taken the road,
That road in which even Khiẓr fears to walk,
The flowers of the plains about it are thorns of eyelashes
The stones in that road are the skulls of men.”

He was a native of the pleasant city of Najār, but he comes of a base stock. He was quarrelsome and impudent, and confirmed by his behaviour the general belief regarding the character of poets. He was well skilled in the arts of poetry and prosody, in the composition of enigmas, in history and all other minor branches of knowledge, and has written treatises on these subjects. On the first occasion on which he paid his respects at court to the late emperor he stepped towards him at the levée with his left foot. As his late majesty was very punctilious in such details of etiquette he said, ‘The Mullā is left-handed,’^496b and commanded him to be led out and again brought forward. After the command had been given for him to be seated he began to talk lewdly, obscenely, and foolishly, and fell into an argument with Mullā Bīkasī.⁴⁹⁷ To Mīr ‘Abdu-l-Ḥayy the Ṣadr,^497a who took the part of the Mullā he ³⁶³ said, ‘What shall I do? I am friendless. The face of a friendless man is blackened’;^497b and when Khwāja Husain of Marv,^497c on whom rested some slight suspicion of infamy, supported the other two he said, ‘Khwāja, what occasion was there for your assistance?’ ^497d His late majesty, much vexed and annoyed by this churlish behaviour, rose and left the darbār, but, in spite of his annoyance so great was his clemency that he would not consent to Niyāzī's being injured or harassed in return for his evil and beastly conduct. The reason for Niyāzī being turned out of Transoxi-ana was an ode which he wrote, of which the closing verses run as follows:—

“That is not the crepuscule that appears in the sky; it is my
rosy-coloured wine
I am a debauchee swilling the lees, and the goblet of the
sky is my cup.
Since Niyāzī has become the king of the age in the king-
dom of eloquence
The name of Jāmī has been obliterated, and that of Niyāzī
is in its place.”

It is said that he was one day reciting this ode of his in a gathering at Thatha and there happened to be there a copy of the dīvān of his holiness the Maulavī.^497e It was opened at random and on the page at which it opened this opening couplet was written:

“Regard the sky as a cup which is upside down, empty of
the wine of delight
To look for wine from a cup which is upside down is the
mark of a fool.”

Niyāzī olim Fusunium poetam in somnio vidit et putavit se in barbâ ejus minxisse. Poeta quidam hos versiculos recitavit,

“Niyāzī Fusunium in somnio vidit.
Et barbam ejus aquâ ex amphorâ aspersit.
Si autem minxit Fusunio opprobrio ne tribuatis,
Canis, si minxit in rubo, minxit.”

³⁶⁴ The following verses are by Niyāzī:—

“O silver-bodied one, thy locks curl over thy flaming cheek
For when a hair falls on the fire it twists and curls.”

“Since I cannot go round the head of that tyrannical beauty,
I bring her image to my sight and ever go round about it.”

“It is not from the breeze that her shift is in motion,
The grace of her body has given life to the shift.”

He died in Thatha.

This is the poetical name of Mīr Muḥammad Ma‘ṣūm Ṣafavī, the orthodox and noble son of Mīr Sayyīd Ṣafā‘ī, who was one of the great Sayyids and respected elders of the city of Bhakkar. Mīr Muḥammad Ma‘sūm is at present enrolled among the amīrs of the empire, and holds some appointment in the imperial service in Sind and Qandahār. He is very strict in religion, in piety, praise and prayer, and in reading the Qur'ān, and somebody once said to him, ‘One cannot do without a director in these duties. You should get a director and receive instruction from him, and you can then take your leave of him.’ Nāmī replied, “I have at present two or three directors, what need have I of another? My first director was his majesty, for this reason, that when I came⁴⁹⁹ from my dear native land to the capital I was so filled with the pride and aspirations of youth, which are the sources of extravagant hopes and desires, that I could not bring myself to consider the acceptance of anything so humble as a commandership of a thousand, or even of two thousand. When I arrived at court I tasted the sticks of the ushers and mace-bearers who ³⁶⁵ keep order, and had to endure insults, and when, after a long period of expectation, his majesty honoured me by bestowing on me a command of twenty men, all my extravagant claims took wings to themselves, and I, recognizing my proper rank and place, resigned myself to God's will, and bowed my head in acquiescence, and was at peace; and there is that proverb, “Although I struggled much to become somebody I became nothing, now I let myself alone in order that I may become whatever I am to become.”

“I am not grieved that my affairs have not turned out well
but have turned out ill,
‘It will be, it will be’ never comes to pass. Say
‘Be not,’ and see what comes to pass.”

No other religious director could possibly have given me better direction than this. My second director was Mīr Abū-l-Ghaiṯ of Bukhārā,⁵⁰⁰ who in rank and dignity was many degrees greater than I, for until the time when I made his acquaintance, if my horses missed their corn and grass for one day I would be so vexed and angry that I would turn my head away from everybody, and not speak a word to any one; but after I fell into the company of the Mīr I observed that sometimes, for three or four consecutive days, there was neither corn nor grass in his stables, nor the smoke of any fire in his kitchen, and in spite of this state of things, he was so cheerful, merry, and jovial that no suggestion of his indigence and actual want was conveyed to anybody, and nobody was in a position to talk about his affairs. Wealth and want were always alike to him.

Take refuge from the shocks of fate among those Ṣūfīs
Who grieve for existence and rejoice at non-existence.

366 I then began to console myself by the thought that if times were so hard with this great man and yet made no difference to him. I had a much better reason for being cheerful and happy, seeing that I had not a hundredth part of his state and pomp to keep up. My third director is a slave-girl bestowed upon me by the emperor. Quum enim, instantibus vel diaboli insidiis vel desi-deriis naturalibus, me sentio, sive oculorum micantium sive libi-dinis indulgentiae causâ, ad stuprum tractum, statim domum reversus cum eâ rem habeo, unde quiescit cor menm; et, corpore aquâ loto, mundus fio. And a director has no greater duty than that of restraining a person from unseemly and unbecoming acts.

The Mīr is a most diligent student and has correct taste in poetry and in the composition of enigmas. He is high-minded and sublime in disposition. He has composed a dīvān, and a maṯnavī^500a in the metre of the Yūsuf-u-Zulaikhā (of Niẓāmī). The following few couplets are productions of his brilliant imagination:—

“How sweet it is to think that when I am beside myself with
love thou wilt come to ask my condition.
And I shall explain it at length to thee in the speech in which
no tongue has part.”

“When she saw my tears she concealed her smile
It is clear that my tears are not without their effect.”

“In love there is an intoxication which revives tired lovers.
In absence there is a subtle delight which even union lacks.”

“My moon-like beauty gave her message to the messenger
with a laugh.
The trace of that laugh still lingers in the message which she
sent.”

He sent the following qaṣīdah in praise of the prophet from Aḥmadābād to me in Āṭak:—

“The scar of love which has been on my heart from eternity.
Has been changed, by the blessings which even thy absence ³⁶⁷
can bestow, to naught but pain.
The flood of fire which my heart in its pain heaved up.
Has thrown confusion into the temperament of the earth and
the age.
The remembrance of my grief for thee gives me a taste of
sweet sorrow
The flavour of thy absence from me gives me an idea of the
sweet savour of death.
Happy is he who has set his foot in the path of love.
For he enjoys delights without sight, and a love without arts.
If thou find thy way to the Laboratory of Creation thou shalt
see
Both creation in action and love transformed to deeds.
My disquiet has drawn me from love to madness,

Until at length I have become, through thee, a byword for
madness.
I have poured from my heart so much hot blood that it has
cast
All my life, entirely, and utterly, into a fiery slough.
My love for thee has thrown a thousand knotty difficulties in
my path
But has not yet solved even one of the difficulties caused by
thy absence.
On the one hand the fear of death offers the intoxication of
absence from thee.
On the other the delight of reunion with thee offers me the
fruition of all my hopes.
Though the dead have not risen the tumult of the resurrec-
tion has arisen.
From the fire which has flamed up from my heart.⁵⁰²
The eyes of a whole world are suffused with blood by that
eyelash of thine.
A whole people is sleeping in dust by reason of that collyrium-
tinged eye of thine.
In both worlds have I lighted the fire of madness.
³⁶⁸ But I have not given in my ode a hint of the secrets of thy
love.
That heart which I had, steeped in the love of thee
Is melted into blood and poured out on my body.
From my grief in thy absence I have at the end of each eye-
lash a cloud which rains sparks.
I have in my breast a hundred heaps of fire which burn in
thy absence.
The eyes of the age have no employment but to gaze upon thee
The eyes of principalities and powers are smitten with love
in thy service.
I desire to be released from the hell of separation from thee
By him who wipes out infidelity, who protects the faith, and
who guides peoples in the right way.

The king of Najaf, ‘Alī, the saint, the king who passes not
away⁵⁰³
He it is whom the cash of all the prophets has gained for the
world.
He is the moon from whom the sun receives his light,
He is a lion beneath whose feet the lion of the heavens lies in
the mire.
His protection has thrown up a fortress around the people of
the world
From which, except by death and by the gate of death, no one
can pass.
If the arm of the sky should feel, even in a dream, the strength
of thy grasps, it would pluck from its joint^503a its withered
hand.
When thy majestic shout reaches a mountain range
It reverberates, coiling like a whip lash about the mountain
masses.
If one dot of the qāf^503b of thy power could be weighed against
Qāf (Causasus)
The dot would take the place of Qāf, and the scale of Qāf ³⁶⁹
would fly up as high as Saturn.
If thy hand should check the reins of eternity without end
It would fall a thousand stages behind eternity without be-
ginning.
The tree of the sky is but one leaf from the garden of
thy power.
The garden of the world is but half a mound from the cul-
tivated area of thy munificence.
Thy age has so sweetened the disposition of the world
That it is no longer possible to distinguish between poison
and honey.

If thy auspicious glance should fall by chance on an onion.
The world beside it appears less than an onion.
In this thy age thy Ẕū-l-faqār⁵⁰⁴ explains to thy enemy and
thy ‘Yea, verily’ to thy petitioner the meaning of ‘Nay’
and ‘Yea.’
If through thy mind there pass but the semblance of wrath.
Death trembles like a willow from fear.
The sky of thy might has such width that the sun
Would not wonder could be find shelter behind it as behind
a lofty mountain.
If thy dagger lend its tongue to the sword of discipline
Woe be to the sky with its crooked dealings, its fraud and
its many deceits.
Since eloquence is decked as a bride for thy praise,
I have decked her with striped garments of flowery speech.
Woe to thee Nāmī, and woe to those who shall arise with thee,
When the black book of your acts is opened before you at
the resurrection!
I am hopeful of obtaining a mediator like the sun
³⁷⁰ On that day on which there shall no longer remain any
shadow of hope,
Him who is the rain from the cloud of God's mercy, the cup-
bearer of the Day of Resurrection.
The greatest protection of the faith, and the lord even of
death.”

Quatrains.

“One should sit alone with one's self in the assembly,
One should commune ever with one's self,
One should be both the nightingale and the rose of the
meadow.^504a
One should be distraught with one's own affairs”

“Thou hearest the shout of departure from all
Thou hearest the cry ‘Come on’ both before and behind
All have made a night march to a distant halting place
Whilst thou hast slept by the road and hearest but the sound
of the bell.”

“O thou who desirest a glimpse of that Face,
Thou needest eyes other than those in thy head.
Dost thou wish to miss none of those Glances?
Thou must have eyes in the heart, and within them yet other
eyes.”

“The love of thee is not to be bought by every buyer
The price of one hair of thine is this world and the next.
Thy love is not a rose which blooms in streets and markets,
Nor is it such musk as is found in the perfumer's shop.” ³⁷¹

“Those complainest of the defilements of the world.
Find not fault with others, for thou, too, art one of the throng.
Preserve thine own skirt from defilement
Nāmī, for the two or three days which thou hast to spend on
this midden.”

“In loving lovely ones one must accustom one's self to madness,
One must lead one's soul to the endurance of separation.
One must become as a bottle filled with blood,
And then pour one's heart out at one's eyes.”

“In our religion thou must ever be constant
And keep the faith while in the circle of infidelity.
This is the path of love of our beloved,
To stand ever with the sacred thread of idolatry round the
neck, and yet remain a Musalmān.”

“A rose-garden of beauty is the cheek of my enslaver.
When it displays itself before my wounded heart

I weep seas upon seas and worlds upon worlds of blood,
I blossom with gardens upon gardens and meadows upon
meadows of roses.”

372 “On the day on which I arise, crying out for grief at her
absence
The hand of my heart is twisted in the skirt of separation.
With those tears which are mingled with my heart's blood.
I shed on my skirt the blood of two thousand hearts.”

“In the ocean of my heart a sea of blood is in turmoil,
A hundred hells of pain are burning within me.
I shall strike fire into the structure of the world
From this madness which burns within me.”

“Seek not a sweetheart lest thy whole heart turn to blood,
Lest thou be not hers until thou art completely changed.
Lest thou become distracted, arranged, and mad,
Lest thou depart completely from the fashion of the age.”

“Although the seekers after His beauty are many
Not every eye is worthy to catch a glimpse of the Face of the
Friend;
Not all idolatry is worthy of the sacred thread,
Nor is every head worthy of adorning the gibbet.”

“Every moment my heart arranges its thoughts of thee,
And makes a thousand guesses as to where thou art.
³⁷³ I fear, my love, that the bird of my soul
Will one day fly from its cage in the desire to be with thee.’

“O thou who hast laden thy camel,
And hast fallen asleep, forgetful of the march,
Wake, and set in the road the foot of search,
For all have gone and thou too art of this caravan.”

“To-day the breeze has a scent of fidelity,
As though it knew something of love.
It has thrown my poor mad heart into a turmoil
Perchance it has somewhere found cause to be disturbed.”

“At times I weep; at times I cease from weeping,
Lest haply from somewhere I should hear thy voice,
Not for a moment am I free from thoughts of thee,
I sometimes fear that I may forget to draw my next breath.”

“The eyes should know the meaning of grief,
The heart's pain should be set forth in weeping,
In the breast should be sparks of fire instead of a heart,
The heart,⁵⁰⁷ instead of tears, should be in the eyes.”

“Every year, when the rose comes again into the garden, ³⁷⁴
Joy and gladness come into the world;
On the rose's page it is easy to read her faithlessness.
For the nightingale breaks into lamentations.”

“One quarter of my life was spent in ignorance,
One quarter of it was spent thou knowest how,
One quarter of it was spent in folly and idleness,
And one quarter was spent in grief and repentance.”

“My heart is wounded in a hundred ways by grief for thy
absence.
In thy absence I feel that the tumult of the day of resur-
rection is before me.
I draw in my breath, but exhale it not again,
For between my lip and my heart are more than a thousand
hells.”

“Every tear which I have shed from my eyes
I have first mixed with the poison of my grief for her
absence.
I fear that at the resurrection a hell will arise
From these tears which I have shed in her absence.”

“How long wilt thou fill thy heart with wrath on account of
one thing or another?
³⁷⁵ How long wilt thou make thy breast no more than a coffer of
gold?
Thy business is not to make thy heart turbid;
Thy business is to make it as clear as a mirror.”

In graceful wit and clearness of intellect he is the equal of Shīkībī of Iṣfahān. He is now in the service of the Khānkhānān, and is enrolled in that band of poets who are entitled gentlemen of the suite. In imitation of that qaṣīdah by Shaikh Niẓāmī of Ganja (may God rest his soul,) which begins,

“I am king of the kings of learning, by means of the excel-
lence of my grace of language
The earth and the age have taken on themselves the likeness
of the sky,”

he wrote the following qaṣīdah:—

“I can scarcely contain myself in my excellence when the
wine of my songs in its vat
Rends the clothes on my body, when sublime realities seethe
within me.
Waylay me not with foolish stories, for, with the fire of high
resolve.
I desire to raise⁵⁰⁹ steam from my brain and my eyes through-
out the night.
I have become the trusted adviser of those who hasten towards
reunion (with the Beloved)
For I never return a boastful answer.
I am the dog of the threshold, but all night I gnaw my collar,
For the desire of hunting seizes me, not the intention of watch-
ing.”

The following verses also are by him:—

“Although for an age I have girt up my loins in thy service
what rank have I gained?
I should have become a Brahman had I so often girt myself ³⁷⁶
with the sacred thread.”

“I travel on a deadly road, not knowing to what end it may
lead.

How shall the foot which has travelled this road ever again
return to one's skirt?”
‘See the effects of my (burning) sigh, which has not yet
reached my lips,
And yet a thousand blisters from my heart are on the tip of
my tongue.”

His name was Mīr Muḥammad Sharīf. His brother was Mīr Qudsī of Karbalā, who wrote the following couplet:—

“Wonder not if I know not the taste of gladness,
I, Qudsī, have never known gladness in my life.”

Navā'ī came to India and at once entered the service of the emperor. He has recently died. The following verses are by him:—

“I am sitting in a corner, grieving over thy faithlessness
And resigning myself to the hardship of separation from
thee.
For all thy wrath I will not move from my place.
What shall I do?
For I have no confidence in thy familiarity.
Thou art not, in the way of kindliness and fidelity that
candle
At the light of which the eyes light up with joy.”

“I reached no place, I traversed no road,
But thou didst traverse my heart and reach my heart.”

“Sit down with friendly glances, and rise not up in wrath,
³⁷⁷ Thou camest late to inquire for me, rise not soon to go.”

He was a man of considerable attainments, and was highly regarded as a poet. His death occurred in the city of Ujjain in the province of Mālwa in A.H. 973 (A.D. 1565-66) while he was on his way to perform the pilgrimage. The following verses are by him:—

“If my rose-coloured tears have marked the ground with
purple stains
They cannot be removed, for these are the flowers of true
love.”

“The new moon on the night of ‘Īd wished to become the
knocker on thy door;
It conceived from afar the desire, which was never ful-
filled.”

“What delight there is in seeing thy face each moment
What joy there is in coming, each moment, to thy street.
Such a bond connects me with thee
That it cannot be cut by a hundred swords.
Nuvīdī, what hast thou gained from her ruby lip
Save the biting of the finger of regret.”

The lustre of his poetry is vouched for by his trade, which is that of an appraiser of jewels. He has a mind well adapted to poetry and has composed a dīvān, which is well known.

The following verses are his:—

A quatrain.

“She is a capricious beauty whose lips are full of wiles,
All the clear-sighted are smitten with love's madness by
her;
Is that a red turban which she has bound on her head? ³⁷⁸
Or is it the cord of my soul steeped in blood?”

“The scar of my love's cruelty, which is on my breast—
Ah, call it not a scar! It has long been dear to me.”

“How can I write an account of my condition on the page?
For the page is at once moistened by my tears.

The pigeon brought me thy letter and I live. I should have
died
Had not that bird of auspicious pinion brought me that
letter.
I shall write at length to her of Naẓmī's state
But where will that careless cypress-like beauty cast an eye
on the letter?”

“In the bath I saw Parī Khānum with a face like a fairy,
Nay, I saw a spark of fire sitting in the water.”

“From thy theft of my heart and thy subsequent avoidance of
me it is clear
That the sole object of thy friendship with me was the theft
of my heart.”

“The down which sprouts on the rose of my beloved's cheek
Is a violet which sprouts on a bed of tulips.”

He was a relation of Shihābu-d-dīn Aḥmad Khān^512a and his name was Muḥammad Sharīf. Alas, that such a noble^512b name should be borne by such a vile fellow! For he was more heretical than any person who, in this brief age, was known by the same name.⁵¹³ He was not a Basākhẉānī pure and simple nor a Ṣabāḥī^{513a 379} pure and simple, but was betwixt and between these two sects damned by God and cursed by the people, and believed in cycles^513b and held the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, nay, he contended and strove for these doctrines. One day in Bhimbar,^513c which is a city on the border of the highlands of Kashmīr, he came to my lodging in order to ask me to accompany him into Kashmīr. He saw some slabs of rock, weighing over thirty-five tons^513d each, lying about, and said sorrowfully. ‘These unfortunates are awaiting the time when they shall put on human form.’ In spite of all these vile beliefs he has written qaṣīdahs in praise of the holy Imāms (may the acceptance of God be on them all), but these must have been written when he was young. In penmanship, letter-writing and accounts he had wonderful skill, and although he was not studious he had devoted some attention to Arabic works on history and had acquired familiarity with their style. The following few couplets are by him:—

“In order that my lamentations in thy absence may not betray
my secret,
I pray that my weakness may utter no sound in the night of
my sorrow.”

“How will shame allow me to raise my head when thou seest
me?
For my love for thee has made thy name the talk of all
tongues.

The torment of the stranger's hard-heartedness has cast fire
into my heart
For though thou afflictest him a hundred times he turns not
to thee.”

“Beneath the wound of thy sword I flinch not intentionally;
It may be that I give thee some knowledge of my
weakness.”

“She reminds me of the restlessness which I suffer in her
absence,
One would think that once in the days of my youth she had
asked me how I did.”⁵¹⁴

“For each one of the fair that I see I experience such ecstasies
of love,
³⁸⁰ That the fire of desire for her leaps into flame in my soul.”

“Every hour thou accusest me of some fresh fault,
As thou seekest only to vex me I wonder not at this.”

“I wish not to be questioned at the day of judgment,
For I fear that I should have to tell what I have suffered in
my love for thee.”

“Thou vexest none but me, and I am glad
That thou hast such dealings with none but me.”

“In the night of absence from thee I suffer grief in a hundred
forms,
In the midst of the sighs and lamentations which my mouth^514a
utters.”

“One can see from without the burning of my heart in my
body,

As one sees the flame of a candle in a lamp covered with a
shirt.
I fell as one dead when I bade thee farewell,
That thou mightest know that in thy absence I have no desire
to live.”

The following few couplets are from a qaṣīdah which he wrote in praise of the Imām Ḥusain (on him be peace):—

“Whenever, from the fierceness of love's fire, I burst into flame
like a candle,
The flame ever and anon beats against me like a moth.
Since my love has assured himself of my fidelity and love he
employs himself in cruelty.
Would that I had never submitted myself to the violence of a
test!
If I should become a partaker of the bounty of thy heart
It will be possible for me to convey a hundred tales in
one word.
So common has the content of opulence become in the age of
thy magnanimity
That the soulless body turns with loathing from the prospect ³⁸¹
of life eternal
When the weight of thy commands affects the nature of the
wind
Even the light breeze oppresses the earth with the weight of
a mountain.
There is no king like me to-day in the kingdom of eloquence,
Whoever doubts this let him test the truth of what I say by
this Bismi‘-llāh⁵¹⁵ which I utter.
O ye, beloved of the virgin of reality, when my thoughts
soar
They display their beauty through the windows of heaven.”
From another qaṣīdah,
“If cruelty is done by thee my heart cheerfully submits to it.

It may be that God will yet give thee a feeling heart.
I die of jealousy when I consider that love for thee
Gives to each heart which it enters pain eternal.
By night when I light my heart with thoughts of thee
The burning glow of my heart is a lamp to the seven
heavens.”

He wrote this qaṣīdah in praise of her holiness the lady who is the shining one of paradise and the chief of women,⁵¹⁶ (may God accept her), but when it came to me in this form I found it to be one of his blasphemous compositions, and I have therefore not considered it right to quote any of the encomiastic couplets. Sharif's death occurred in A.H. 1002 (A.D. 1593-94). He left many valuable books behind him, but they were lost in the deep sea and found their way to the ocean which surrounds the world.

He was possessed of some attainments. He came to Hindūstān and died here. The following verses are his:—

382 “The land of Ind is full of darkness, like the night of separa-
tion.
Whoever has come hither regrets and repents it.
Vidā‘ī, seek no gain from the land of India, but leave it.
It is gain enough if thou carry thy life in safety from
India.”

In imitation of the couplet which runs:—

“Happy is that time when, gazing on thy face, I am beside
myself.
From time to time I come to myself, and again and again
I am beside myself.”

He wrote:—

“It is not from wine at thy feast that I am beside myself.
The cup kisses thy lip, and it is from jealousy that I am
beside myself.”

His name is Ibn ‘Ali, and he was in the emperor's service. The following verses are by him:—

“Thy brow is not furrowed from coquetry.
The ocean of thy beauty is rising in billows, and this is the
reason of those furrows.
Thou art still intoxicated with the wine of coquetry
As is evident, my dark beauty, from thy arrogance.
Why, like the candle, should I bring the fire of my heart to
my tongue?
Since its fire is clearly to be seen in the fiery sighs which I
heave.
What need is there of the new moon on the night of 'Īd
To thee, from the opening in whose sleeve the new moon is
apparent?”

“Her two ruby lips have between them the water of life. ³⁸³
True it is that whenever two who are friends to the death
come together there is ever a life between them.”^517a

“As no dust settles on the mirror so my heart is vexed by
nobody.
For I have ceased to hope for manhood from the people of
this age.”

“Happy is that state of intoxication which leads me enrap-
tured to thee
And is so deep that I cannot be removed from thy street.”

“In my unrest I am ever seized by the desire of visiting the
street of that moonlike beauty.
But the thought of her infidelities arrests me by the
way.”

“Her ringlet trembles on her cheek with the zephyr of my
sigh
As the smoke of the candle trembles in the passing breeze.”

His name is Mīr ‘Abdu-'llāh⁵¹⁸ and he is an excellent penman. He is the pupil of Shāh Ghiyāṯ and Maulānā Rāqimī, and writes seven scripts. He is enrolled among the aḥadīs. Through his mother he is related to Mīrzā Niẓāmu-d-dīn Aḥmad. He sometimes turns his attention to poetry. The following verses are his:—

“Now that I have experienced the sweetness of love's
sorrow
I enjoy a thousand bursts of weeping for every laugh of
mine.”

A quatrain.

“Where is love? For my inner self is dark as the darkest
night:
The secrets of God are hidden from my understanding.
It may be that love will lead me to them, but, if not,
³⁸⁴ Then is the end of my journey far indeed from my lame
efforts.”

Another quatrain.

“If a poet form the intention of eulogizing thy greatness.
His thoughts are imprisoned in his mind by the weightiness
of the subject.
In thy reign strife has so disappeared from our midst
That the flame sympathizes with the cotton in its con-
stancy.”^518a

He was a facetious and jovial man. Leaving ‘Irāq he went on a pilgrimage to the Ḥijāz and thence travelled for India by sea. The sailors ran the ship into a whirlpool and disappeared in the sea of annihilation, but he, reaching the shore of safety, entered the dominions of (Ibrāhīm) Quṭb Shāh⁵¹⁹ of the Dakan. There he engaged in a wrestling bout with one of the wrestlers of that country, and threw him. The wrestler's comrades, actuated by envy and rancour, put some poison into Vaṣlī's cup. The catastrophe of his death occurred in A.H. 977 (A.D. 1569-70). The following verses are quoted as a memorial of him:—

“My heart goes warily along its road, and I fear
That some sorrow is following it.”

“My darling, thou art become so harsh-tempered
That no one can surpass thee in harshness of temper.”

He was originally known as Mīr Wā‘iẓ (‘the preacher’) and was a native of Badakhshān. He held stirring meetings for preaching. The following verses are his:—

“Though my head become the dust of thy path and be carried ³⁸⁵
away on the breeze
It is impossible that the thought of thy face should leave my
memory.”

“My heart is disturbed, as are thy tresses in the breeze;
Thou hast not undone even the smallest^519a knot in my string
of difficulties.”

“All at once I have become the whirlwind of the valley of
grief,
On account of my evil passions I am become a vagabond in
the world.”

“The tale of my grief and woe has passed all bounds,
Love has come upon me and has made me his own from head
to foot.”

He was for some time in Kashmir, and then come to Lāhor and was with Zain Khān Kūka.^520a The following verses are his:—

“Knock at the door of the heart in the middle of the night,
for when the day appears
All other doors are opened, but this door is shut.”

“The real dearth of fidelity is this, that the lovely ones of this
age.
Set out the well-spread table and then drink the heart's
blood of the guest.”

He is Mīrzā Barkhurdār,^520b who has the title of Khān-i-‘Ālam. He is the son of Hamdam Beg⁵²¹ who was one of the famous amīrs of his late majesty. Hamdamī is well known for his bravery and his goodness of disposition. He used to occupy himself with poetry. The following couplet is his:—

“See my heart, which has on every part of it a fresh scar
caused by love's madness;
It is an ocean of grief and everywhere in it there is a ³⁸⁶
whirlpool of blood.”

In imitation of that ghazal of Āṣafī's, which begins:—

“My slayer closes her eyes at my dying gasps
Until my heart longs with regret to catch her gaze.”

He wrote, by the emperor's order, the following:—

“The arrow of that slayer came and passed through my
heart,
And the scar remains on my heart till the day of resurrec-
tion.”

Shaikh Faiẓī, at the time when this ghazal was under discuss-sion at Āgra, wrote the following:—

“Place thy foot on it (my heart),^521a “O slayer, as I gasp in
death,
That thus I may have an opportunity of kissing thy foot.”

At this time (Faiẓī) produced many ghazals of this sort from his dīvān and dressed them up to suit the emperor's taste.^521b

He is descended from his holiness Shaikh Jām, (may God hallow his tomb). He was very pious, chaste, and pure, and had an angelic disposition. He has compiled a dīvān consisting of five thousand couplets. The following verses are some of the products of his genius:—

A quatrain.

“O Rose to whose skirt no hand can reach
We love Thy name and are intoxicated by Thy perfume!
This is the marvel, that Thou art present and yet absent^522a
from our midst
³⁸⁷ Thou art invisible, yet all that is visible is from Thee!”

An ode.

“It is the singer of the morning, joy-diffusing, that awakens
desire in our hearts
The nightingale of early morn is welcomed as an intimate to
the assembly of the Rose.
Become by the height of love's good fortune the humā^522b of the
lote-tree of Paradise
For the garden and the scenery of this village (the world)
oppress, the spirits.
Wash thy mouth with the water of repentance from the dregs
of thy sins,
For thy life has been spent in transgression and the time for
restraint has come.
Put on the breastplate of worship, for, ambushed by thy
life's way,
The robber of thy time stands to meet thee,
With his blood-shedding sword in his hand.

Make not this inn with two doors a palace for thine
abiding
For strife makes rents in its walls and the wind of death is
keen.
Hasan Hajrī in beauty of verse and in the way of perfection
Is the disciple of the wise man of Shīrāz and of the saint of
Tabrīz.”⁵²³

“Sweet is the season of winter, especially in the spring-time
of youth
If the rose of joy blossoms from the cup of wine.”

“Happy was that night when the street of the tavern was our
resting place,
And the splendour of the cup-bearer's form was the lamp of
the assembly.
The breeze of re-union with the Beloved gave us fresh life,
Or it would have been difficult to live under the hand of
separation.”

“In the morning, the time for the rose and the splendour of
the tulip,
The voice of the ringdove brought subtle truths to our ears.” ³⁸⁸

“My lodging is in the street of disgrace,
Its door is removed and its wall is mined.”

“Yesterday I had a desire for the holy temple and made my
way to the rose garden,
I went and walked around^523a my loved one's lodging.”

“The rose, perchance, came to the rose-garden from beneath
my beloved's arm
For it has the sweet perfume of her shift.”

“Whose spell-casting eyes have once more fluttered my heart?
Whose ringlets, diffusing ambergris, have once more become
the chain for my madness of love?”

“I fear that my hard-hearted love will wreck the affairs of my
soul.
Oh, may nobody have a love so hard-hearted as mine!”

“Who am I, fallen in the dust at her door? A helpless one,
A hopeless one, a friendless one, a destitute one.”

“Ah, vagrant heart, thou hast chosen thy place in the dust at
her door!
Thou hast found a good place for thyself.”

“If thou desirest faithful friends.
I swear by thy fidelity that none is more faithful than I.”

“Desirous of being with thee for an age I have sought to be
with thee,
When I found that I could not be with thee I accustomed
myself to thy absence.”