only fall within the period of Mirza Haidar's regency, but they are good evidence that he regarded Humayun as his sovereign, while at the height of his own power in Kashmir, although no coins are known which show that he so regarded him previous to his recovery of Kabul.[1] Neither the coins nor the documentary history of the period, however, are completely worked out, and until the tales that both have to tell are exhausted, it would perhaps be premature to conclude that, even prior to the subjugation of Afghanistan in 1545, Mirza Haidar may not have afforded testimony, in one form or another, that he regarded himself and his puppet king as, alike, dependants of the Chaghatai Emperor.
Thus, whatever faults the Mirza may have had, disloyalty to his chiefs can hardly be accounted one of them. He served his first master, Sultan Said Khan, with devotion till the end of the Khan's reign, and when forced by the barbarities of his successor, Rashid Sultan, to seek safety for his life with the Chaghatais in India, he served them likewise with good faith, as long as he lived.
Besides Abul Fazl's and Firishta's, the notices of Mirza Haidar's life, among the writings of Asiatic authors, appear to be few. Several quote his history, and even copy from it extensively, but only two, as far as I have been able to ascertain from translations, make any mention of his personality. Jauhar, in his Memoirs of Humayun,[2] does no more than briefly allude to his master's faithful lieutenant. The author of the Tarikh-i-Daudi, cited above, calls him "a youth of a magnanimous disposition," but vouchsafes no more.[3] Amin Ahmad Rázi, however, has devoted a few sentences to him in his geographical work, the Haft Iklim, an important extract from which was translated into French by Quatremère, and published in 1843.[4] Ahmad Rázi tells us that Mirza Haidar "was endowed with an excellent character and a rare talent for elegant composition in verse, as well as in prose. To these
- ↑ The date of Humayun's recovery of Kabul varies somewhat in the accounts of different native authors, but Mr. Erskine adopted that of 10 Ramzán 952, or 15th November, 1545 (Hist. ii., p. 8325), so that it is possible that these coins may have been struck, as Mr. S. L. Poole suggests, to commemorate that event. (Loc. cit.)
- ↑ The Tazkirát ul Wakiát, trans. by Major Ch. Stewart, 1832, mentioned on p. 17.
- ↑ See Elliot's Hist. India, iv., p. 497.
- ↑ Notices et Extr., etc., xiv., pp. 474–89.
