322 
H. Beveridge —Rajah Kdns. 
[No. 2, 
deatli of the famous saint Nur Qutb Alara. He is buried at Pandua, 
and the date of his decease is fixed by the chronogram, Shams-ul 
Hidayat, as 851 A. H. or 1447 A. D.* General Cunningham has also 
used this argument in volume XV of his Archceological Reports , page 
175. If the inscription at page 83 of that volume refer to Nur 
Qutb Alam, he died even later than 851, viz., in 863. However 851 is 
enough for our purpose, and is in all probability the correct date.f 
According to the Riyaz, the saint was of the same age as Sultan 
Ghyassuddin, and was his fellow-student under Shaikh Hamiduddin of 
Nagore.J And the Riyaz adds that Sultan Ghyassuddin reverenced 
the saint all his life. But this is inconsistent with the supposition that 
Ghyassuddin died in 799. Qutb Alam must have been very young then, 
and he had not succeeded his father Ala-ulhaq, who was also a distin¬ 
guished saint, and who died in 800. Ghyassuddin according to one 
account reigned 16 years, and before that he had been for many years 
in rebellion against his father. He cannot then have been young when 
he died, and it is extremely unlikely that liis fellow-student survived 
him for more than fifty years. 
According to the evidence of coins Ghyassuddin was reigning in 
812, and, as the editor of the Catalogue of Muhammadan coins in the 
British Museum observes, there is no good reason for supposing that 
the coin was a posthumous issue. Further, we have the apparently 
indisputable evidence of the Chinese annals, quoted by General Cun¬ 
ningham, to the effect that Ghyassuddin did not die till 814, when he 
was succeeded by his son Saifuddin. It is true that there is the diffi¬ 
culty, not noticed by General Cunningham, that there are coins of 
Saifuddin Hamza dated 799.§ But it is easier to believe in contem¬ 
poraneous than in posthumous issues, and we find that Ghyassuddin 
himself issued such coins in the lifetime of his father. It is to be 
remembered that Ghyassuddin appears to have lived latterly at Sonar- 
# J. A. S. B. XLII, 262. 
t 851 is the date given by Mr. Blochmann, and he supports it by the chronogram, 
but it is curious that in the Ain II, 220, the date of Qutb Alam’s death is given as 808. 
In Ravenshaw’s Gaur p. 52 the date of NurQutb’s death is given as 851, but at p. 50 
it is stated that according to a book belonging to the endowment Nur Qutb died in 
828 (1245). The same book also gives the date of his father’s death as 786. It 
must be confessed that 828 is a more likely date for a contemporary of Ghyassuddin 
than 851. [Mr. Beveridge wrote this in April. Three months later, having gained 
further information, he was able to fix the date of Nur Qutb Alam’s death as 818 
A. H. Mr. Beveridge’s reasons will be fonnd in the note which immediately follows 
this article. Ed.] 
t Mr. Blochmann says that this is in Jodhpur and not in Birbhum, l.c. 260/». 
§ See B. M. Catalogue 28. 
