MIRZA ZU-L-QARNAIN, A CHRISTIAN GRANDEE. Ill 



larly, who belong to this Mission, and all the Christians of it, must pray in a special 

 manner to God Our Lord for the safety and welfare of Mirza and all those of his house- 

 hold ; we must ask God to save him many years for his greater glory and the good 

 of this Christianity. 



,( Agra, in May of the year 1628. 



I. H. S. 

 Francisco Corsi." 



There must exist in printed books, accounts of travellers, letters of merchants 

 and factors, or even in the Muhammadan historians a number of interesting entries 

 about Mirza Zu-1-Oarnain. We shall quote those we have come across, and we hope 

 that more will be found. 



Between 1627 and 1632, Zu-1-Qarnain was in charge of a Province in Bengal, the 

 capital of which was 200 miles from Agra and 300 from Hugli. He had about 200 

 Christians in his service, a number sufficiently large to justify the presence of a chap- 

 lain. Fr. Joseph de Castro had followed him. Fr. Francisco Morando was there 

 also some time. 



Father de Castro wrote from ' Mogol ' on August 8th, 1632, to Father Joseph 

 Baudo, S.J., Turin, that he had been with the Mirza those last three years. The 

 Mirza had all that time been Governor of some Provinces of 'Bengala,' but the capital 

 is nowhere mentioned in de Castro's letters. 



In 1632 the difficulties between the Portuguese of Hugli and Shah Jahan came 

 to a crisis. One of Shah Jahan's grievances was that they had sent him no 

 embassy of congratulation on his accession to the throne. Hugli was invested on 

 June 24th, 1632, and taken at the end of September of the same year. Fully 4,000 

 Christian prisoners arrived from Hugli at Agra in July 1633. 



Meanwhile Zu-1-Qarnain and the Christians of Agra were also to taste the gall 

 and wormwood of persecution. 



On November 24th, 1632, Father de Castro wrote from Agra to the General of the 

 Society that he had arrived from Bengala eight days before. The King had recalled 

 the Mirza, and received him with much honour, so that the Fathers hoped he would 

 receive some other honourable commission. On the other hand, the events then 

 taking place in Bengal were ominously shaping the situation at Agra, and it was 

 feared that the King, who had from the beginning of his reign shown himself hostile 

 to the Christians, was preparing worse days for them. 



The Muhammadan historians are not altogether silent about some of these events. 

 As it is quite rare for them to go out of their way to notice Christians, we must not 

 lose anything of what they have to say of Zu-1-Qarnain. 



The ' Amal Salih, a big MS. history dealing with the reign of Shah Jahan, 

 narrates under the 5th year of the reign (1632) that Zu-1-Qarnain, whom it calls 

 Zu-1-Qarnain Feringhi, came from Bahraich in Oudh, where he was Faujdar, and 

 paid his respects to Shah Jahan, presenting five elephants as his nazr. Bahraich was 

 then a likely place to get elephants from. The MS. adds that Zu-1-Oarnain had been 



