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The late Sultan Mahmood requiring a page to fill a vacancy in his suite, directed the appointment to be given to the most intelligent pupil. The present secretary was the fortunate one; and by his abilities, his suavity and discretion, has risen to the highest office near the person of majesty." I. Tartar Empire of the Turks in the north and centre of Asia 500-700
Mahmood, a Mahomedan, went eastward and found a superstition worse than his own, and fought against it, and smote it; and the sandal doors which he tore away from the idol temple and hung up at his tomb at Gazneh, almost seemed to plead for him through centuries as the soldier and the instrument of Heaven.
When this temple was taken, Mahmood entered a great square hall, having its lofty roof supported with 56 pillars, curiously turned and set with precious stones. In the centre stood the idol, made of stone, and five feet high. The conqueror began to demolish it. He raised his mace, and struck off the idol's nose.
However, the Sultan found it the most favourable subject-matter of his incipient reformation; and his consequent attempt and the omens of its ultimate issue are interestingly recounted in the pages of Sir Charles Fellows, the panegyrist both of Mahmood and his people. "The Turk," he says, "proud of his beard, comes up from the province a candidate for, or to receive, the office of governor.
The two first, being employed in erecting the most splendid of all the imperial palaces, were often in contact with the Sultan. The expulsion of Protestantism lay near their hearts, and they resolved to make use of the strong arm of Mahmood to effect it.
The Turks came into collision with his lieutenants, and defeated one of them in a bloody action; and though he took full reprisals, and for a while cleared the country of them, yet in the reign of his son they succeeded in wresting from his dynasty one-half of his empire, and Hindostan, the acquisition of Mahmood, became henceforth its principal possession.
His richest prize was the great temple of Sunnat, or Somnaut, on the promontory of Guzerat, between the Indus and Bombay. It was a place as diabolically wicked as it was wealthy, and we may safely regard Mahmood as the instrument of divine vengeance upon it. But here I am only concerned with its wealth, for which grave writers are the vouchers.
I was taken to the slave-market, and was purchased by a rich Armenian. He caused me to be instructed, gave me masters, and when I was thirteen years of age he sold me to the Sultan Mahmood." "Of whom I bought her," said Monte Cristo, "as I told you, Albert, with the emerald which formed a match to the one I had made into a box for the purpose of holding my hashish pills."
At Mutra he found five great idols of pure gold, with eyes of rubies; and a hundred idols of silver, which, when melted down, loaded a hundred camels with bullion. These stories, which sound like the fables in the Arabian Nights, are but a specimen of the wonderful fruits of the victories of this Mahmood.
Another project, that of driving the Afghans from Mahmood Khan's fort, commanding the direct road between the cantonments and the Balla Hissar, and of occupying it with a British force, was so far advanced that the time for the attempt was fixed, and the storming party actually warned, when some petty objection intervened and the enterprise was abandoned, never to be revived.
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