Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ was a very wicked, tyrannical and heartless person.[1158]
Maulānā Shāh Ḥusain Kāmī[1159] was another. There are not-bad verses of his; he wrote odes, and also seems to have put a dīwān together.
Hilālī (New-moon) was another; he is still alive.[1160] Correct and graceful though his odes are, they make little impression. There is a dīwān of his;[1161] and there is also the poem (mas̤nawī) in the Fol. 181b.khafīf measure, entitled Shāh and Darwīsh of which, fair though many couplets are, the basis and purport are hollow and bad. Ancient poets when writing of love and the lover, have represented the lover as a man and the beloved as a woman; but Hilālī has made the lover a darwīsh, the beloved a king, with the result that the couplets containing the king’s acts and words, set him forth as shameless and abominable. It is an extreme effrontery in Hilālī that for a poem’s sake he should describe a young man and that young man a king, as resembling the shameless and immoral.[1162] It is heard-said that Hilālī had a very retentive memory, and that he had by heart 30 or 40,000 couplets, and the greater part of the Two Quintets,—all most useful for the minutiae of prosody and the art of verse.
Ahlī[1163] was another; he was of the common people (‘āmī), wrote verse not bad, even produced a dīwān.
(l. Artists.)
Of fine pen-men there were many; the one standing-out in nakhsh ta‘līq was Sl. ‘Alī of Mashhad[1164] who copied many books for the Mīrzā and for ‘Alī-sher Beg, writing daily 30 couplets for the first, 20 for the second.
Of the painters, one was Bih-zād.[1165] His work was very dainty but he did not draw beardless faces well; he used greatly to lengthen the double chin (ghab-ghab); bearded faces he drew admirably.
Shāh Muz̤affar was another; he painted dainty portraits,Fol. 182. representing the hair very daintily.[1166] Short life was granted him; he left the world when on his upward way to fame.
Of musicians, as has been said, no-one played the dulcimer so well as Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh Marwārīd.