Arabic & Persian
Ahmad Shah Abdali
Ahmad Shah, of the Saddozi family of the Abdali tribe, was freed from captivity in Kandahar by Nadir Shah and crowned king of Afghanistan in 1747, when Raverty says he was about twenty-three. He founded the Durrani monarchy, conquered Kashmir and the Panjab, and entered Delhi, and died in June 1773.
Raverty's notice speaks of the Shah as a Molawi who held regular assemblies of learned men and had time for literature. The poems chosen here are mainly poems of love and longing, with two on divine themes.
Poems (12)
- I: To this degree is the heart affected by…
- II: Lay thine hand very gently upon me, O…
- III: May God annihilate thee, thou fly of human…
- IV: Alas! alas! for the dreadful, rolling rock of…
- V: Would that the crows were not assembled in…
- VI: O heart-ravisher! there will be none other in…
- VII: Alas! alas! for sweet life, that passeth thus…
- VIII: O would that there were not, in the…
- IX: Why weepest thou thus to-day again, O my…
- X: What an hour of bliss it was, when…
- XI: I cry unto Thee, O God! for I…
- XII: If I shall say anything of the beloved…