Untitled

.
, ISKAFI'S
FELICITOUS QUOTATION "
polishes his wit, enkindles his fancy, and ever raises the level of
his dir,tion, whereby a Secretary becomes famous. >
Now if he 'be well acquainted with the Quran, with one verse
therefrom he may discharge his obligation to a whole realm, as
did Iskafi 1 . i
'
i ANECDOTE II.
Iskafi' 1 was one of the secretaries of the House of Saman
(may God have mercy on him), and knew his craft right well,
so that he could cunningly traverse the heights, and emerge
trtiimp,hant from the most difficult passes. He discharged the
duties of secretary in the Chancellery of Nuh ibn Mansur 2 but
,
they did not properly recognize his worth, or bestow on him
favours commensurate with his pre-eminence (aj. He therefore
fled from Bukhara to Alptagin at Herat. Alptagin, a Turk, wise
and discerning, made much of him, and confided to him the
Chancellery, and his affairs prospered. Now because there had
sprung up at the 'court a new nobility who made light of the old
nobles, Alptagin, though he patiently bore their presumption
[for a while], was finally forced into rebellion, by reason of soma
slight put upon him at the instigation of a party of these new
nobles. Then Amir Nuh wrote from Bukhara to Zabulistan that
Subuktigin should come with that 3
army, and the sons of Si'mjuY
from Nishapur, and should oppose and make war on Alptagin.
An4 this war is very celebrated, and this momentous battle most
famovis.
So when these armies reached HeraJ, the Amir Nuh sent
'Ah' ibn Muhtaj 4
al-Kashanf, wfto was the Chief Chamberlain
(Fidjibiil-Bdb), to Alptagin with a letter [fluent] like water and
[scathing] like fire, all filled with threats and fraught with
menaces which left no, room for peace and no wav for conciliation,
such as an
a angry master might write from a distance to his
d'isobedient servants on such an occasion and in such a crisis,
the whole letter, filled with such expressions as " I will come,"
"I will, take," "I will slay." When the Chamberlain Abu'l-Hasan
'All ibn Muhtaj al-Kashanf submitted this letter and delivered this
message, withholding nothing, A?ptagin, who was already vexed,
1
Abu'l-Qasim 'All ibn Muhammad al-Iskafi. See Yatfma, vol. iv, pp. 29-33,
and iii,*4-
2
. Tlys seems to be an error (though it stands thu in all three copies) for Mansur
ibn Ni,ih (Mansur I), who reigned A.H. 350-366; for Nuh ibn Mansur (Nuh II) reigned
A.H. 366-387, and Alptagin died in A.H. 352 or 354. Concerning the Dtwdnu'r-
Rasd'il see v*n Kremer's Sulturgesch., i, pp. 174, 200; and A. de B. Kazimirski's
Menotttckehri, pp. 36 and 43. According to Ibnu'l-Athir (Bulaq ed. of A.H. 1303,
vol. viii, p*. 179), Alptagin's revolt took place in A.H. 351, when Iskafi was already
deq,d. See **
p. V of the Persian notes and Note IV at end of this volume.
3 See Defremery's Hist, des Samanides, pp 260-261.
4
Concerning this general, see Defremery's Hist,
.
I,
15