Arabic & Persian
Ashraf Khan Khattak
Ashraf Khan, eldest son of Khushhal Khan, was born in 1634 and became chief of the Khattaks in 1681 when his father stepped down. His brother Bahram intrigued against him, and he was betrayed to the Mughals and sent to the fortress of Bijapur in the Deccan.
He died in captivity in 1693, aged about sixty, and Raverty says his poems were written in his leisure hours. They are chiefly poems of exile and longing, signed with a pen-name that the translator renders as 'the Separated'.
Poems (17)
- I: The promise of the kiss, the beloved ever…
- II: When, in the shape of a shield, the…
- III: With the scar of sorrow, he will his…
- IV: What shall I say unto any one regarding…
- V: Like as absence from the beloved hath made…
- VI: Account as wind or as dust, the world's…
- VII: In love for thee, O never let my…
- VIII: O thou, who pridest thyself on the plenitude…
- IX: Since I am ever hopeful of meeting thee…
- X: When He, of His omnipotence, first the pen…
- XI: Whoever dwelleth in this abode of calamity and…
- XII: Whoever have fattened on the fleeting wealth of…
- XIII: For the soul's journey, the white steed became…
- XIV: Of the pangs of separation I became deserving…
- XV: Come, my love! let us, in one home…
- XVI: The wise, for this reason, unto the world's…
- XVII: Completely false and lying are they all, from…