120 Badaoni and his Works, [No. 3, 



Stayed till 973. He then removed to Patiyala (D^J). and was intro- 

 duced to Husaiii Khan, the Jagirdar of the town. This man was at 

 once the Bayard and the Don Quixote of Akhar's Court. He belonged 

 to the chiefs who under Humayun had re-conquered India ; hence he 

 was in high favor with Akbar, who had raised him to the dignity of a 

 Commander of Three thousand (Am Second Book, Ain 30, No. 53). 

 But he was a pious monomaniac ; he thought of nothing else but 

 treasures and gold bars concealed in the Hindu temples of the Sawalik 

 Range, and he undertook predatory expeditions, from which he re- 

 turned poorer than he had been before. His enthusiasm was ever in 

 advance of that of his men who, badly equipped as they were, had 

 not only to suffer hunger and thirst, but never found the gold bars 

 for which they and their master got their heads broken. When 

 Governor of Labor, he used to eat bread made of oatmeal — ' his fare 

 was not to be better than that of his prophet.' He would not indulge 

 in the luxury of a chdrpdi, or bedstead — ' had not saints slept on the 

 ground ?' It was known that he had never committed an unchaste deed. 

 Property he had none. The contingent which he ought to have kept as 

 a Commander of Three Thousand was never in proper order ; and though 

 Akbar had added the town of Shamsabad to his jagir, his liberality 

 towards the poor and pious left him no money to get horses for his 

 men. On one occasion (II, p. 94), he lost for this reason the com- 

 mand of an expedition. Sometimes he had not a horse for himself ; 

 or his servants had to bring him a horse, because he had given away 

 his last and only horse as a present. " Money kept at home," said 

 he, "is a thorn in my side." A poet said of him — Khan i miiftis, 

 ghulam i bdsdmdn — ' A poor lord with rich subjects.' When, in 983, 

 he died from a wound which he had received on his last expedition 

 in search of Hindu gold bars, he was one lac and a half in debt ; but his 

 creditors tore up the receipts, partly because he had no assets, partly 



some works, is misleading ; for ^JjlOJ has the wazn of ^JlsULo u — u — , and 

 Baddimi would be l ^Ls\A*> ) u . For Ujl^J, we find an old spell- 

 ing &y\<>i } with a nasal n after the Alif. The spelling ^jJ|0>o, with a yd after 

 the alif, is quite modern. 



The town was famous as the ' abode of saints.' The ' Chronicle of Badaon ' 

 published in Urdu by the Rohilcund Library Society, gives the names of fifty- 

 one * worthies.' 



