1873.] H. Bloghmann —Geography and History of Id eng al. 
257 
Tughra characters. The stone outside measures 4 ft. 9 in. by 10 in., and its 
letters are just as beautiful. 
No. 8. 
The SiTcandar Shah Inscription , Adinah Mosque , Ilazrat JPanduah , 
A. H. 770, (vide PI. V, No. 3).* 
n 
^UsXmaJ) Ai) 
W ^ 
)) &A*.*>>AU j <£.1<W L ^ _ t- ^ 
This.mosque was ordered to be built in the reign of the great king, the 
wisest, the justest, the most liberal of the kings of Arabia and Persia, who trusts in 
the assistance of the Merciful, Abul Mujaliid Sikandar Sha h,the king, son 
of 11 y a s Shah, the king,—may his reign be perpetuated till the day of promise ! 
He wrote it on the 6th Rajab of the year 770. [14th February, 1369.] 
Neither inscriptions nor coins give Sikandar Shall a full julus name ; 
he only has a kunyah , Abul Mujahid. Perhaps it would be going too far in 
speculations, if I were to say that Ilyas naturally called his son Sikandar ; 
hut a Muhammadan, on hearing the name of Ilyas, will immediately think 
of the ah i hayat , ‘ the water of life’ ; and as Sikandar is the legendary 
successor of Ilyas (the Prophet Elias) in search of the precious commodity, 
the name of the father may have suggested that of the son. 
As stated,above, the histories assign Sikandar Shah a reign of nine 
years and some months. Stewart says that he died in 769, a year obtained 
by adding nine years and a fraction to 760, which he assumes to have 
been the year in which Ilyas Shah died. The above Panduali inscription 
extends Sikandar’s reign to the latter half of 770, and the coins figured by 
Mr. Thomas in his £ Initial Coinage’ (J. A. S. B., 1867, PI. II, Nos. 12, 14, 
and 13) give the dates 761, 782, and 783. But Mr. Thomas also states 
that among the large number of Sikandarshahis that passed through his 
hands, he found coins of almost every year between 750 and 792, with 
the exception of the years 755, 762, 767, 768, 769, 774, 775, 777, and 778. 
It thus becomes clear that Sikandar Shah struck coins as prince. Mr. 
Thomas also quotes A’zam Shahi coins ol 772, 775, 776, the years when 
Sikandar’s coinage is most interrupted, and again from 790 to 799. Fur¬ 
ther, we have to remember that the poet Hafiz sent the well known ghazal 
# I have elsewhere remarked on the numerous grammatical mistakes in Bengal 
Arabic Inscriptions. They consist chiefly in wrong articles, mistakes in gender, in 
oblique cases, and in wrong constructions of the Arabic numerals. In order not to 
disfigure the text, I shall no more indicate such errors by a (sic). 
33 
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