When Shams ed-dóulah made war upon Helál,[289] son of Bader, son of Hasnávíah, who came from the capital of the right faith (Mecca), he defeated the army of Bâghdad. The Shaikh went from Rái to Kazvín,[290] and from thence to Hamdan.[291] Shams ed-dóulah was cured of a colic by the remedies of the Shaikh, whom he then raised to the dignity of a Vizír. The chiefs of the army conspired against the life of Abu Ali; he fled, and remained concealed during forty days. Meanwhile, the malady of Shams ed-doulahreturned; the Shaikh, having come forth from his place of concealment, delivered the Sultan from his illness, and was again raised to the Vizirat. After the death of Shams ed-doulah, the throne was filled by Bahá ed-dóulah, the son of Táj ed dóulah.[292] The Umrahs requested Abu Alí to accept the Vizírat, but he refused his consent. About this time, Aláded-dóulah, the son of Jâfer Kakyuah,[293] sent from Iśfahan an invitation to the venerable Shaikh to join him; but the Shaikh declined to come, and concealed himself in the house of Abu Táleb, a dealer in perfumes. Without the example of any other work before his eyes, he composed his work, entitled Shafá, “remedy,” treating the whole of physics and metaphysics.[294]
Tájed doulah, having assumed the name of Alaved-dóulah, kept the Shaikh, by this assumption, employed in a continual succession of affairs. When Alawed dóulah conquered the country of Tájed ud dóulah, he brought the Shaikh to Iśfahán.[295] Towards the end of his life, a disease of the bowels seized the Shaikh, and gained strength, on account of his active life in the service of Alawed dóulah, and of the expeditions of his enemies. The patient was carried in a covered chair. When Aladed-dóulah came to Hamdán, the Shaikh felt that nature had exhausted her strength, and could not resist the force of the malady; on that account, having desisted from applying any remedy, he took a bath, and having distributed his property in alms to the poor, the indigent, and the necessitous, he turned his mind to God and the elect of the divinity; at last, on a Friday, in the month of Ramzán, of the year 427 of the Hejira (1035 A. D.), he passed from this deceitful world to the residence of happiness.[296] A great man said:
“From the globe of black clay to the summit of Venus,
I traversed all the difficulties of the world;
Every tie which was fastened around me, on account of deceit and illusion,
Was loosened—except that of death.”
The extraordinary and astonishing actions performed by Abu Alí have been described in the book about the application of remedies in several histories[297], few of which are reproduced in these pages; and so much only with the intention to prove shortly to the candid reader, that Shaikh Abu Alí never came to Kachmir, about which intelligent and ingenious men in all countries agree.
“There is no house which may not be the house of God.”
[232] माया शक्ति.
[233] रजस् “foulness,” according to the interpretation of Colebrooke and Wilson.