Note 50 — Chapter II · ÁHMEDÁBÁD KINGS. a.d. 1403–1573.

Mahmúd Begada greatly impressed travellers, whose strange tales of him made the king well-known in Europe. Varthema (1503–1508) thus describes his manner of living: ‘The king has constantly 20,000 horsemen. In the morning when he rises there come to his palace 50 elephants, on each of which a man sits astride, and the said elephants do reverence to the king, and, except this, they have nothing else to do. When the king eats, fifty or sixty kinds of instruments, drums trumpets flageolets and fifes play, and the elephants again do him reverence. As for the king himself, his mustachios under his nose are so long that he ties them over his head as a woman would tie her tresses, and he has a white beard that reaches to his girdle. As to his food, every day he eats poison (Hudibras’ Prince whose ‘daily food was asp and basilisk and toad’), not that he fills his stomach with it, but he eats a certain quantity, so that when he wishes to destroy any great person he makes him come before him stripped and naked, and then eats certain fruits which are called chofole (jáiphal, nutmeg), like a muscatel nut. He also eats certain leaves called tamboli (pán or betel leaf; like the leaves of a sour orange, and with these he eats lime of oyster shells. When he has chewed this well he spurts it out on the person he wishes to kill, and so in the space of half an hour the victim falls to the ground dead. The Sultán has also three or four thousand women, and every night that he sleeps with one, she is found dead in the morning.’ Barbosa (a.d. 1511) goes further (Stanley’s Trans. 57), saying that so soaked was the king with poison that if a fly settled on his hand it swelled and immediately fell dead. This was the result of his early training. For, on Varthema’s companion asking how it was that the king could eat poison in this manner, certain merchants, who were older than the Sultán, answered that his father had fed him upon poison from his childhood. (Badger’s Varthema, 110.) Of the origin of Mahmúd’s surname Begada two explanations are given: (1) ‘From his mustachios being large and twisted like a bullock’s horn, such a bullock being called Begado; (2) that the word comes from the Gujaráti be, two, and gad, a fort, the people giving him this title in honour of his capture of Junágaḍh (a.d. 1472) and Chámpáner (a.d. 1484).’ (Bird’s History of Gujarát, 202; Mirăt-i-Ahmedi Persian Text, 74.) Varthema’s account of the poison-eating is probably an exaggeration of the Sultán’s habit of opium-eating to which from his infancy he was addicted. The Mirăt-i-Sikandari (Persian Text, 751) speaks of the great physical power of Mahmúd and of his wonderful appetite. Mahmúd’s daily food weighed forty sers the ser being 15 bahlulis a little over half a pound. He used to eat about three pounds (5 sers) of parched gram to dessert. For breakfast, after his morning prayer, Mahmúd used to consume a cupfull of pure Makkah honey with a second cupfull of clarified butter and fifty small plantains called sohan kelas. At night they set by his bed two plates of sambúsás or minced mutton sausages. In the morning Mahmúd seeing the empty plates used to give thanks: ‘Oh Allah,’ he said, ‘hadst thou not given this unworthy slave rule over Gujarát, who could have filled his stomach.’ His virile powers were as unusual as his appetite. The only woman who could bear his embraces unharmed was a powerful Abyssinian girl who was his great favourite. Of the wealth and weapons kept in store the Mirăt-i-Sikandari gives the following details regarding the great expedition against Junágaḍh (Persian Text, 94): The Sultán ordered the treasurer to send with the army gold coins worth five krors, 1700 Egyptian Allemand Moorish and Khurásáni swords with gold handles weighing 2½ to 3 pounds (4–5 sers), 1700 daggers and poignards with gold handles weighing 1 to 1½ pounds (2–3 sers), and 2000 Arab and Turki horses with gold-embroidered housings. All this treasure of coin and weapons the Sultán spent in presents to his army (Ditto, 94–95). ↑