{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/spa/spa06.htm","path":"isl/spa/spa06.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/spa/spa06.htm","text":"Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans, by H.G. Raverty, [1868]\nM\u012aRZ\u0100 KH\u0100N, AN\u1e62\u0100R\u012a, was a descendant, probably a grandson, of P\u012br Ros\u2019h\u0101n, the founder of the Ros\u2019h\u0101n\u012b\u0101n sect, which made a great noise among the Afgh\u0101ns, about the year 1542-3 of our Era. He appears to have commenced writing poetry in the year a.h. 1040; and these effusions were afterwards brought together in the form of a D\u012bw\u0101n or Collection of Odes, bearing his name. Some parties contend that his real name was Fat\u00b4\u1e25 Kh\u0101n, and that he was of the Y\u016bsufz\u012b tribe of the Afgh\u0101ns, and that the term M\u012brz\u0101 is an assumed name, usually taken by Oriental poets. M\u012b\u1e5bz\u0101, however, is a Persian word, signifying a prince or a nobleman, and also a secretary or writer, and would never be assumed by an Afgh\u0101n, it being a distinctive appellation applied to persons of Persian descent, by the Afgh\u0101ns. This statement, however, is also fully disproved, from the fact, that several old copies of his poems, which I have examined or have in my possession, end in these words: \"Here ends the D\u012bw\u0101n of M\u012b\u1e5bz\u0101 Kh\u0101n, An\u1e63\u0101r\u012b.\"\n\u1e32\u0101sim \u00c6al\u012b, Afr\u012bd\u012b, an Afgh\u0101n poet of Hind\u016bst\u0101n, in one of his odes, states, that M\u012brz\u0101 Kh\u0101n was of the family of B\u0101yaz\u012bd, or B\u0101z\u012bd, An\u1e63\u0101r\u012b, who assumed the name of P\u012br Ros\u2019h\u0101n, or Saint of Light, as already mentioned. B\u0101z\u012bd himself (of whom it will be necessary to give a brief account, as M\u012b\u1e5bz\u0101's subsequent misfortunes were chiefly owing to his being a descendant of that impostor) was, altogether, a remarkable man; and the An\u1e63\u0101r\u012b tribe, to which he belonged, is an offshoot of an Arab tribe of Mad\u012bnah, mentioned in the \u1e32ur\u2019\u0101n, which received the prophet Mu\u1e25ammad\nafter his flight from Makkah; and hence the name An\u1e63\u0101r\u012b, from the Arabic word an\u1e63\u0101r, signifying aiders, or assistants. People of this tribe are to be found, even now, scattered over Afgh\u0101nist\u0101n, the Panj\u0101b, and some parts of India.\nB\u0101z\u012bd's religion, which he instituted in the year a.d. 1542-3, spread rapidly amongst the Bar Pus\u2019ht\u016bn, or Eastern Afgh\u0101ns, till, at length, he was able to assemble armies, and oppose the Mughal government. He held the same tenets as the \u1e62\u016bfis (of whose mysticisms some account has been given in the Introductory Remarks), but having been a disciple, for some time, of the notorious Mull\u0101 Sul\u012bm\u0101n\u2014known in the East as J\u0101landhar\u012b Sul\u012bm\u0101n, from the town of J\u0101landhar, in the Panj\u0101b, where he dwelt\u2014B\u0101z\u012bd became initiated in the tenets of the Jog\u012bs, a sect among the Hind\u016bs, and became a fast convert to the creed of the Metempsychosis, or Pythagorean system of the transmigration of souls. On these doctrines, however, he engrafted some of his own, the most remarkable of which was, that the most complete manifestations of the Divinity were made in the persons of holy men. * The great opponent of B\u0101z\u012bd was Akh\u016bnd Darwezah, the greatest and most venerated of all the saints of Afgh\u0101nist\u0101n, who, in derision of the title of P\u012br Ros\u2019h\u0101n, or Apostle of Light, which B\u0101z\u012bd had himself assumed, conferred on him the name of P\u012br T\u0101rik, or Apostle of Darkness, by which name he is now chiefly known.\nM\u012brz\u0101, was a great traveller, and was well known from Her\u0101t to Agra, throughout the Afgh\u0101n country, and also in India; for he himself had numerous disciples in the mountainous parts of Afgh\u0101nist\u0101n\u2014from Suw\u0101t and B\u0101jawrr, north of Pes\u2019h\u0101war, as far as \u1e32andah\u0101r and Her\u0101t. He dwelt for a long period in the R\u0101jp\u016bt state of R\u0101jw\u0101rr\u0101 or R\u0101jp\u016bt\u0101nah, in Hind\u016bst\u0101n, the R\u0101j\u0101 of which country, although a Hind\u016b, ever treated him with great\nveneration and liberality. The Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, also, in whose reign M\u012brz\u0101 flourished, allowed him a regular stipend. The Emperor, however, was a great bigot, and, as is well known, was entirely in the hands of the priesthood; and, consequently, on more than one occasion, at the instigation of some of them more ignorant and bigoted than others, M\u012brz\u0101 was summoned by the monarch, to answer accusations of heresy and blasphemy, preferred against him at their instigation. The Emperor, with all his bigotry, appears, however, to have had some scruples of conscience; and, generally, had some plausible excuse to save M\u012brz\u0101 from their clutches, and himself from a bad name. The only reply the Mulls, or priests, could draw from the monarch, who is famous for personally administering justice, was, that they should enter into disputation with the accused, and if anything contrary to the\nlip orthodox laws of Mu\u1e25ammad could be drawn from him, he would then consent to punish M\u012brz\u0101, but not otherwise. Notwithstanding M\u012brz\u0101's enemies were thirsting for his blood, still they could not succeed in drawing him into the snare they had spread for him; and the poet, very prudently, retired from the scene, fearing lest, at some time or other, they might be more successful in their machinations, and bring him to destruction; for, according to the well known Oriental proverb\u2014\"Kings and rulers have neither eyes nor ears; and between truth and falsehood they are incapable of discerning; for the words of a few designing men being sufficient to make the innocent guilty, the unfortunates are plunged into the calamity of destruction.\" Mira, on this account, generally confined himself, when in India, to the territories of the independent or tributary Hind\u016b princes, by whom he was honoured and respected.\nThe poems of M\u012brz\u0101 contain many Arabic and Persian words, which most Oriental poets freely use; but his Pus\u2019hto is very ancient, particularly in words used amongst the hill tribes of\n[paragraph continues] Eastern Afgh\u0101nist\u0101n, in his day, and which are not generally understood by the people of the present time, together with some words purely Sanskrit; but these latter usually occur in the last words of a line, when at a loss for a rhyme, in which very great licence is taken and allowed, by poets, in all Oriental countries, without such words being common to the language, or used in conversation by the people. Some of the philosophers of the present day, in their blind rage for comparative philology\u2014the hobby they ride for the time being\u2014based merely on their own superficially theoretical, and not practical knowledge of Oriental languages and subjects\u2014would probably consider this use of some pure Sanskrit words as conclusive and undeniable evidence to prove the Pus\u2019hto or Afgh\u0101n language, of the Sanskrit family of tongues. They seem to forget that all those parts of Central Asia, now called Afgh\u0101nist\u0101n, from Kab\u016bl eastward, were, even in the days of Alexander, peopled by a Hind\u016b race, remnants of whom, existing even at the present day, lived as Helots among the Greeks, to their various Mu\u1e25ammadan conquerors, of whom the Afgh\u0101ns are the most recent, the Afgh\u0101n tribes of the Pes\u2019h\u0101war district, and its northern vicinity more particularly, having arrived in those parts as recently as the beginning of the sixteenth century. They, as will also be seen from the languages of many other conquering tribes, adopted, for convenience sake, some few words of the people they conquered. However, the Sanskrit in M\u012brz\u0101's poems may be accounted for, from the fact of his long residence amongst Hind\u016b people.\nThe poetry of M\u012brz\u0101 is deeply tinged with the mysticisms of the \u1e62\u016bfis, and, to some extent, with the religious tenets of his ancestor P\u012br Ros\u2019h\u0101n. His effusions are, certainly, more difficult than that of any other poet, from the fact of their being (as I think will be allowed) more sublime, and grander in conception.\nIt is said that M\u012brz\u0101, in the latter years of his life, married and\nsettled in the T\u012b-r\u0101h district, lying immediately to the south of the famous Khaibar Pass, and ignored the Ros\u2019h\u0101n\u012b\u0101n faith, which in his more youthful days he had adopted, and manifested great repentance for every thing he had written or said, contrary to the shar\u00e6, or orthodox canons of the Mu\u1e25ammadan creed. On this account, he soon became great with the ecclesiastics of Pes\u2019h\u0101war\u2014a city, in those days, as famous as Bokh\u0101r\u0101 itself for theological learning\u2014and thenceforth was held in high estimation by them. His descendants, on this account, are still greatly respected by the Mu\u1e25ammadans of those parts, whether Afgh\u0101ns or others.\nNothing is known, for certain, regarding the death of M\u012brz\u0101; for he passed a great portion of his life in Hind\u016bst\u0101n, and must have ended his days in that country. * His descendants still dwell in the T\u012b-r\u0101h district, amongst the clan of M\u012b-\u0101n Khel, and have the repute of being quiet and well behaved. There is generally one of the family who follows the life of an ascetic; and is allowed, by the simple people, to have the power of working miracles.\n52:* Elphinstone: Caubul.\n55:* A person named M\u012brz\u0101, son of N\u016br-ud-D\u012bn, one of the sons of P\u012br Rosh\u0101n, lived in Sh\u0101h Jah\u0101n's reign, and was killed at the battle of Dawlat\u0101b\u0101d.","title":"Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans: M\u012brz\u0101 Kh\u0101n, An\u1e63\u0101r\u012b: Introduction","type":"page"}