1.886,] Qhaznavis in Mdioard-un-Nahr and part of Khurasan. 105 
** To mine eye, on wliich thy goodness still is painted, thou art dear ; 
To mine heart, v/hich oft from misery’s blows hath fainted, thou art dear ; 
To a soul forlorn, to sorrow born. 
Which Heaven has grudged to cheer, 
That looking round, few friends hath found, 
Oh, chieftain thou art dear,” 
Without waiting or perhaps expecting a reply to this e:ffusion, he 
makes for Mery, there unsuccessfully soliciting assistance from Abii 
Ja far; thence to Abiward, in 394, where Abu Hasr, a gene^;al of Mah¬ 
mud’s lends him active support, and the two attack and are beaten by 
the Shah of Khwarazm. ISText with a few followers, who seem to have 
stood faithfully to him through every calamity, he makes for Isfarayin, 
only to find that city closed against him. Then crossing the Oxus once 
more, he is met by the cavalry from Bukhara and narrowly escapes 
with his life. At this crisis he falls back on his Grhuzz-Turk friends 
again, the military governor of Samarkand joining him with 3,000 men, 
and the citizens sending him 300 “ picked Turks and a supply of money.” 
So that he is sufficiently formidable to first alarm, and subsequently 
defeat, the forces of flak, near the village of Burband in Sha’ban 394 ; 
the Ghuzz coming in for abundant loot. Flak is now roused, assembles 
an army and inflicts upon him a crushing defeat, the Gfiuzz having 
meanwhile gone off with their loot. This defeat seems to have been 
a final one, Muntasir retreating to Balkh from which place his flight, like 
the hunted hare, was in a long continued circle. From Balkh he fled to 
Kohistan.* Hasr the Ghaznavi general, Arslan Jazib the prince of Tus, 
and Tughanjak Prince of Sarkhas hurrying after him, he continues his 
course to Jumand and Bastam, where Shams-ul Muali, of Gurgan, with 
2,000 body-guards, takes up the running to Bibar and Nisa. Beguiled 
by false promises he is induced once again to attempt Bukhara and 
arrives at Shah Hamad his few attendants wearied with long marches 
and their long continued run of ill-luck. Deserted by his worn out 
followers, with no supplies, or other means of further resistance, he re¬ 
treated to the encampment of a nomad Arab tribe, and sought shelter 
in the tents of one Mali Rue the “ moon-faced ” chief of the tribe. In 
A1 ’Utbi’s words, “ when the night arrived the vile Arabs of this Arab 
made a sudden attack upon him and spilt his noble blood upon the 
first day of the month Rabi-ul-awwal, in the year 395, and they buried 
his remains in marshy ground of the irrigated country of Mardam.” 
Moon-face,” it is satisfactory to note, was afterwards put to death 
for his brutality by Mahmud, whose sympathies were aroused for the 
unfortunate Muntasir. 
* The troops both of Mahmud and ITak were on the look out for him. 
N 
