Note 98 — The Fifteenth New Year’s Feast after the Auspicious Accession

On Monday, the 15th, I rode to see the summer quarters of Tūsī-marg98 (?). Arriving in two matches at the foot of the kotal, on Wednesday, the 17th, I reached the top of the pass. For a distance of 2 koss very elevated ground was crossed with difficulty. From the top of the kotal to the Īlāq (summer quarters) was another koss of high and low land. Although here and there flowers of various colours had bloomed, yet I did not see so many as they had represented to me, and as I had expected. I heard that in this neighbourhood there was a very beautiful valley, and on Thursday, the 18th, I went to see it. Undoubtedly, whatever praise they might use in speaking of that flowery land would be permissible. As far as the eye reached flowers of all colours were blooming. There were picked fifty kinds of flowers in my presence. Probably there were others that I did not see. At the end of the day I turned my reins in order to return. That night an account was given in my presence of the siege of Ahmadnagar. K͟hān-Jahān told a strange tale, which I had also heard before, and it is written on account of its strangeness. At the time when my brother Dāniyāl was besieging the fort of Ahmadnagar, one day the garrison laid the gun Malik-maidān99 (king of the plain) against the Prince’s camp, and fired it. The ball reached nearly to the Prince’s tent; from that place it bounded (ricocheted), and went to the lodging of Qāẓī Bāyazīd, who was one of the Prince’s companions, and fell there. They had tied up the Qāẓī’s horse at a distance of 3 or 4 gaz. As the ball touched the ground, the horse’s tongue100 was torn out by the root and fell on the ground. The ball was of stone, weighing 10 maunds as current in Hindustan, or 80 Khurasar maunds. The said gun is so large that a man can sit comfortably in it.