This quatrain recalls one by the Mullā.[991] Kīchīk Mīrzā made the circuit of the ka‘ba towards the end of his life.
Badka (Badī‘u’l-jamāl) Begīm also was older[992] than the Mīrzā. She was given in the guerilla times to Aḥmad Khān of Ḥājī-tarkhān;[993] by him she had two sons (Sl. Maḥmūd Khān and Bahādur Sl.) who went to Herī and were in the Mīrzā’s service.
(b.) His appearance and habits.
He was slant-eyed (qīyik gūzlūq) and lion-bodied, being slender from the waist downwards. Even when old and white-bearded, he wore silken garments of fine red and green. He used to wear either the black lambskin cap (būrk) or the qālpāq,[994] but on a Feast-day would sometimes set up a little three-fold turban, wound broad and badly,[995] stick a heron’s plume in it and so go to Prayers.
When he first took Herī, he thought of reciting the names of Fol. 164b.the Twelve Imāms in the khut̤ba,[996] but ‘Alī-sher Beg and others prevented it; thereafter all his important acts were done in accordance with orthodox law. He could not perform the Prayers on account of a trouble in the joints,[997] and he kept no fasts. He was lively and pleasant, rather immoderate in temper, and with words that matched his temper. He shewed great respect for the law in several weighty matters; he once surrendered to the Avengers of blood a son of his own who had killed a man, and had him taken to the Judgment-gate (Dāru’l-qaẓā). He was abstinent for six or seven years after he took the throne; later on he degraded himself to drink. During the almost 40 years of his rule[998] in Khurāsān, there may not have been one single day on which he did not drink after the Mid-day prayer; earlier than that however he did not drink. What happened with his sons, the soldiers and the town was that every-one pursued vice and pleasure to excess. Bold and daring he was! Time and again he got to work with his own sword, getting his own hand in wherever he arrayed to fight; no man of Tīmūr Beg’s line has been known to match him in the slashing of swords. He had a leaning to poetry and even put a dīwān
together, writing in Turkī with Ḥusainī for his pen-name.[999]
Many couplets in his dīwān are not bad; it is however in one and the same metre throughout. Great ruler though he was,Fol. 165. both by the length of his reign (yāsh) and the breadth of his dominions, he yet, like little people kept fighting-rams, flew pigeons and fought cocks.
(c.) His wars and encounters.[1000]
He swam the Gurgān-water[1001] in his guerilla days and gave a party of Aūzbegs a good beating.
Again,—with 60 men he fell on 3000 under Pay-master Muḥammad ‘Alī, sent ahead by Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā, and gave them a downright good beating (868 AH.). This was his one fine, out-standing feat-of-arms.[1002]
Again,—he fought and beat Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā near Astarābād (865 AH.).[1003]