He sets on fire[132] the throne of K͟hūrs͟hīd,
He longs for the place of Jams͟hīd.”
Short-sighted men in Allahabad had urged me also to rebel against my father. Their words were extremely unacceptable and disapproved by me. I know what sort of endurance a kingdom would have, the foundations of which were laid on hostility to a father, and was not moved by the evil counsels of such worthless men, but acting according to the dictates of reason and knowledge I waited on my father, my guide, my qibla,[133] and my visible God, and as a result of this good purpose it went well with me.
In the evening of the day of K͟husrau’s flight I gave Rāja Bāso, who is a trusty zamindar of the hill-country of Lahore, leave to go to that frontier, and, wherever he heard news or trace of K͟husrau, to make every effort to capture him. I also appointed Mahābat K͟hān and Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbars͟hāhī to a large force, which was to pursue K͟husrau in whatever direction he might go. I resolved with myself that if K͟husrau went to Kabul, I would follow him and not turn back till he was captured. If not delaying in Kabul he should go on to Badakhshan and those regions, I would leave Mahābat K͟hān in Kabul and return myself (to India). My reason for not going to Badakhshan was that that wretch would (in that case) certainly ally himself with the Ūzbegs, and the disgrace would attach to this State.
On the day on which the royal troops were ordered to pursue K͟husrau, 15,000 rupees were given to Mahābat K͟hān and 20,000 to the ahadis, and 10,000 more were sent with the army to be given to whom it might be necessary to give it on the way.
On Saturday, the 28th, the victorious camp was pitched at Jaipāl,[134] which lies seven kos from Lahore. On the same day K͟husrau arrived with a few men on the bank of the Chenāb. The brief account of what had happened is that after his defeat those who had escaped with him from the battle became divided in opinion. The Afghans and Indians, who were mostly his old retainers, wished to double back like foxes into Hindustan, and to become a source of rebellion and trouble there. Ḥusain Beg, whose people and family and treasure were in the direction of Kabul, suggested going to Kabul. In the end, as action was taken according to the wish of Ḥusain Beg, the Hindustanis and the Afghans decided to separate themselves from him. On arriving at the Chenāb, he proposed to cross at the ferry of S͟hāhpūr, which is one of the recognized crossings, but as he could find no boats there he made for the ferry of Sodharah, where his people got one boat without boatmen and another full of firewood and grass.
The ferries over the rivers had been stopped because before K͟husrau’s defeat orders had been given to all the jagirdars and the superintendents of roads and crossings in the subah of the Panjab that as this kind of dispute had arisen they must all be on the alert. Ḥusain Beg wished to transfer the men from the boat with firewood and grass to the other, so that they might convey K͟husrau across. At this juncture arrived Kīlan,[135] son-in-law of Kamāl Chaudharī of Sodharah, and saw a body of men about to cross in the night. He cried out to the boatmen that there was an order from the king Jahāngīr forbidding unknown men from crossing in the night, and that they must be careful. Owing to the noise and uproar, the people of the neighbourhood gathered together, and Kamāl’s son-in-law took from the boatmen the pole with which they propel the boat, and which in Hindustani is called ballī, and thus made the boat unmanageable. Although money was offered to the boatmen, not one would ferry them over. News went to Abū-l-Qāsim Namakīn, who was at Gujarat, near the Chenāb, that a body of men were wanting to cross the river by night, and he at once came to the ferry in the night with his sons and some horsemen. Things went to such a length that Ḥusain Beg shot arrows at the boatmen,[136] and Kamāl’s son-in-law also took to shooting arrows from the river-bank. For four kos the boat took its own way down the river, until at the end of the night it grounded, and try as they would they could not get it off. Meantime it became day. Abū-l-Qāsim and K͟hwāja K͟hiẓr K͟hān, who by the efforts of Hilāl K͟hān had assembled on this (? the west) side of the river, fortified its west bank, and the zamindars fortified it on the east.
Before this affair of K͟husrau’s, I had sent Hilāl K͟hān as sazāwal to the army appointed for Kashmīr under Saʿīd K͟hān, and by chance he arrived in the neighbourhood (of the ferry) that same night; he came in the nick of time, and his efforts had great effect in bringing together Abū-l-Qāsim K͟hān Namakīn, and K͟hwāja K͟hiẓr K͟hān in the capture of K͟husrau.
On the morning of Sunday, the 24th of the aforesaid month, people on elephants and in boats captured K͟husrau, and on Monday, the last day of the month, news of this reached me in the garden of Mīrzā Kāmrān. I immediately ordered the Amīru-l-umarā to go to Gujarat and to bring K͟husrau to wait on me.
In counsels on State affairs and government it often happens that I act according to my own judgment and prefer my own counsel to that of others. In the first instance I had elected to wait on my revered father from Allahabad in opposition to the advice of my faithful servants, and I obtained the blessing of serving him, and this was for my spiritual and temporal good. By the same course of conduct I had become king. The second instance was the pursuit of K͟husrau, from which I was not held back by taking time to ascertain the (auspicious) hour, etc., and from which I took no rest until I captured him. It is a strange thing that after I had started I asked Ḥakīm ʿAlī, who is learned in mathematics, how the hour of my departure had been (i.e. whether propitious or not), and he replied that in order to obtain my object if I had wished to select an hour, there could not have been for years one selected better than that in which I mounted.