A few days after Ḥasan-i-yaq`ūb reached Kand-i-badām on āburnāthe Samarkand road, he went to near the Khūqān sub-division (_aūrchīn_) with ill-intent on Akhsī. Hearing of it, we sent several begs and braves to oppose him; they, as they went, detached a scouting party ahead; he, hearing this, moved against the detachment, surrounded it in its night-quarters[236] and poured flights of arrows (_shība_) in on it. In the darkness of the night an arrow (_aūq_), shot by one of his own men, hit him just (_aūq_) in the vent (_qāchār_) and before he could take vent (_qāchār_),[237] he became the captive of his own act.
"If you have done ill, keep not an easy mind, For retribution is Nature's law."[238]
This year I began to abstain from all doubtful food, my obedience extended even to the knife, the spoon and the table-cloth;[239] also the after-midnight Prayer (_taḥajjud_) was [Sidenote: Fol. 25b.] less neglected.
In the month of the latter Rabī` (January 1495 AD.), Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā was confronted by violent illness and in six days, passed from the world. He was 43 (lunar) years old.
He was born in 857 AH. (1453 AD.), was Sl. Abū-sa`īd Mīrzā's third son and the full-brother of Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā.[240]
He was a short, stout, sparse-bearded and somewhat ill-shaped person. His manners and his qualities were good, his rules and methods of business excellent; he was well-versed in accounts, not a _dinār_ or a _dirhām_[241] of revenue was spent without his knowledge. The pay of his servants was never disallowed. His assemblies, his gifts, his open table, were all good. Everything of his was orderly and well-arranged;[242] no soldier or peasant could deviate in the slightest from any plan of his. Formerly he must have been hard set (_qātīrār_) on hawking but latterly he very frequently hunted driven game.[243] He carried violence and vice to frantic excess, was a constant wine-bibber and kept many catamites. If anywhere in his territory, there was a handsome boy, he used, by whatever means, to have him brought for a catamite; of his begs' sons and of his sons' begs' sons he made catamites; and laid command for this service on [Sidenote: Fol. 26.] his very foster brothers and on their own brothers. So common in his day was that vile practice, that no person was without his catamite; to keep one was thought a merit, not to keep one, a defect. Through his infamous violence and vice, his sons died in the day of their strength (_tamām juwān_).