ABSTRACT
Unlike the Hasht bihisht, Khusraw composed the Nuh sipihr (Nine Skies), a historical masnavı¯, at the behest of a king, one with a colorful, albeit shortlived, career. Following the death of ‘Ala¯’ al-Dı¯n Khaljı¯ and the usual bloody succession battle, his son, Muba¯rak Kha¯n, henceforth known as Qut.b al-Dı¯n Muba¯rak Sha¯h, acceded to the throne in 1316. In contrast to his father, the new king was pleasure-loving, liberal with prisoners and suppliants, and openhanded with crown monies. In fact, his merrymaking was so pronounced that one sixteenth-century historian averred that during the king’s entire reign of four years and four months, he “did nothing but spend all his time in dissipation and in satisfying his desires and in making lavish gifts.”1 This account, although vivid, is not wholly accurate. The sultan enjoyed playful pursuits, but he also possessed a martial spirit. Shortly after his inauguration, he mounted a campaign to the Deccan to subdue refractory Hindu-controlled regions there, just as his father had done: “When he had decorated his head with his father’s crown/his desire became, like his father’s, to conquer the world.”2 In expeditions that were led in part by the king’s favorite slave (and, by most accounts, his lover), a Hindu convert named Khusraw Kha¯n, the royal army captured Deogir, a flourishing, wealthy city which, under the leadership of Harpa¯l Deo, had assumed independence from Delhi, and also Tilang, ruled by one of the most powerful rajahs in southern India, who had likewise ceased to pay tribute.3
