Note 300 — Chapter II

“I visited Roza in the evening, took another copy of the Cufic inscription upon Mahmoud’s tomb, and had a long conversation with the Moollahs of the shrine. They assert that the tomb was constructed in its present state immediately after Mahmoud’s death; that it remained intact during the Ghuzneevide and Ghooride dynasties, but that when Ghenghiz Khan, in his pursuit of Jellaladeen, threatened Ghuznee, the inhabitants heaped the tomb over with earth and ruins to preserve it from desecration, and deserted the place. They further pretend that the tomb thus remained buried until the time of Sultan Abdool Rizak, the grandson or great-grandson of Timour, to whom the spot was revealed in a vision, and who excavated and repaired the place, and dedicated to it rich endowments of lands. The endowments remained, they say, till the time of Nadir, when they were resumed by the government, and since that time the establishment at the tomb has been dependent for support upon a few gardens attached to the village, and the voluntary offerings of devotees. The Moollahs uphold that the gates are really those of Somnauth, and that the inscriptions on the tomb date from the time of the son of Mahmoud; but this I hold to be morally impossible, for although the Cufic may possibly be of the form used in that age (which, however, I doubt), the inscription in the Nuskh character on the reverse of the sarcophagus, which details the precise date of the Sultan’s death, is obviously of a much later age. From many circumstances, I feel positively certain that the tomb does not boast a higher antiquity than that of Sultan Abdool Rizak, who built the present walls of Ghuznee, and who is himself buried in a rude mausoleum on the outskirts of the village of Roza. The gates, therefore, are certainly not those of Somnauth; but it is of course the interest of the Moollahs to keep up the delusion, and to affect for the spot the odour both of sandal and sanctity. I was much struck by the crowds of pilgrims, Mussulman officers in our ranks, who thronged the tomb during my visit there to make the Ziarut.”—[Major Rawlinson’s MS. Journal.]