From Dihlī to Kinbāya

Account of the reason for the sending of the gift to China, of those who were sent with me and of the gift itself. The king of China had sent to the Sultan a hundred mamluks and slave girls, five hundred pieces of velvet cloth, including a hundred of those which are manufactured in the city of Zaitun [Ch'üan-chou] and a hundred of those which are manufactured in Khansā [Hangchou], five maunds of musk, five robes adorned with jewels, five embroidered quivers, and five swords, with a request that the Sultan would permit him to rebuild the idol-temple which is near the aforesaid mountains called Qarājīl [Himalaya]. ¹ It is in a place known as Samhal, |2 to which the Chinese go on pilgrimage; the Muslim army in India had captured it, laid it in ruins and sacked it. ² The Sultan, on receiving this gift, wrote to the king saying that the request could not be granted by Islamic law, as permission to build a temple in the territories of the Muslims was granted only to those who paid a poll-tax; to which he added 'If thou wilt pay the jizya we shall empower thee to build it. And peace be on those who follow the True Guidance'. He requited his present with an even richer one - a hundred thoroughbred horses saddled and bridled, a hundred male slaves, a hundred Hindu singing- and dancing-girls, a hundred pieces of bairamī cloth, which are made of cotton and are unequalled in beauty, 774each piece being worth a hundred dinars ³ — a hundred lengths of the silk fabrics called juzz, in which the silk material |3 of each is dyed with four or five different colours ⁴ - four hundred pieces of the fabrics known as ṣalāḥī, ⁵ a hundred pieces of shīrīn-bāf, ⁶ a hundred pieces of shān-bāf,, ⁷ five hundred pieces of mir'iz woollens, ⁸ one hundred of them black and a hundred each in white, red, green, and blue, a hundred lengths of Greek linen, a hundred pieces of blanket-cloth, a serācha, six pavilions, ⁹ four candelabra in gold and six in silver enamelled, four golden basins with ewers to match, and six silver basins, ten embroidered robes of honour from the Sultan's own wardrobe and ten caps also worn by him, one of them encrusted with pearls, ten embroidered quivers one of them encrusted with pearls, ten swords one of them with a scabbard encrusted with pearls, dasht-bān, ¹⁰ that is gloves, embroidered with pearls, and fifteen eunuchs.