900 AH.— OCT. 2ND. 1494 to SEP. 21ST. 1495 A.D. 45
(a. Death of SI. Mahmud Mirza.)
in the month of the latter Rabi' (January 1495 AD.), SI. Mah- mud Mirza was confronted by violent illness and in six days, passed from the world. He was 43 (lunar) years old.
b. His birth and lineage.
He was born in 857 AH. (1453 AD.), was SI. Abu-sa'id Mirza's third son and the full-brother of SI. Ahmad Mirza.1
c. His appearance and characteristics.
He was a short, stout, sparse-bearded and somewhat ill- shaped person. His manners and his qualities were good, his rules and methods of business excellent ; he was well-versed in accounts, not a dinar or a dirham^2 of revenue was spent without his knowledge. The pay of his servants was never disallowed. His assemblies, his gifts, his open table, were all good. Every- thing of his was orderly and well-arranged;3 no soldier or peasant could deviate in the slightest from any plan of his. Formerly he must have been hard set (qatirar) on hawking but latterly he very frequently hunted driven game.4 He carried violence and vice to frantic excess, was a constant wine-bibber and kept many catamites. If anywhere in his territory, there was a handsome boy, he used, by whatever means, to have him brought for a catamite ; of his begs' sons and of his sons' begs' sons he made catamites ; and laid command for this service on Foi. 26. his very foster brothers and on their own brothers. So common in his day was that vile practice, that no person was without his catamite ; to keep one was thought a merit, not to keep one, a defect. Through his infamous violence and vice, his sons died in the day of their strength {tamam juwan).
1 Cf. f. 6b and note. If 'Umar Shaikh were Mahmud 's full-brother, his name might well appear here.
2 i.e. " Not a farthing, not a half -penny."
3 Here the Mems. enters a statement, not found in the Turki text, that Mahmud 's dress was elegant and fashionable.
n:h:l:m. My husband has cleared up a mistake (Mems. p. 28 and Mints.
i, 54) of supposing this to be the name of an animal. It is explained in the A.N. (i, 255. H.B. i, 496) as a Badakhshi equivalent of iasqawal : tasqawal var. tashqawal, is explained by the Far hang-i-azfari, a Turki-Persian Dict, seen in the Mulla Firoz Library of Bombay, to mean rah band kunanda, the stopping of the road. Cf. J.R.A.S. 1900 p. 137.
