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232 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. our belief, the Arabian Saints, all were said to be adulterers. and highway robbers, and all the Muhammadans were declared worthy of reproof, till at length His Majesty belonged to those of whom the Qorán says (Sur. 61, 8): They seek to extinguish God's light with their mouths: but God will perfect his light, though the infidels be averse thereto. In fact matters went so far, that proofs were no longer required when anything connected with the Islám was to be abolished.
After Makhdum ul mulk and Shaikh 'Abdunnabí had left for Makkah (987), the emperor examined people about the creation of the Qorán, elicited their belief, or otherwise, in revelation, and raised doubts in them regarding all things connected with the prophet and the imams. He distinctly denied the existence of Jins, of angels, and of all other beings of the invisible world, as well as the miracles of the prophet and the saints; he rejected the successive testimony of the witnesses of our faith, the proofs for the truths of the Qorán as far as they agree with man's reason, the existence of the soul after the dissolution of the body, and future rewards and punishments in as far as they differed from metem psychosis.
In this year, Shaikh Mubárik of Nágor said in the presence of the emperor of Bír Bar, 'Just as there are interpolations in your holy books, so there are many in ours (Qorán); hence it is impossible to trust either.
Some shameless and ill-starred wretches also asked His Majesty, why, at the approaching close of the Millennium, he did not make use of the sword, the most convincing proof,' as Shah Ismá'il of Persia had done. Bat His Majesty, at last, was convinced that confidence in him as a leader was a matter of time and good counsel, and did not require the sword. And indeed, if His Majesty, in setting up his claims, and making his innovations, had spent a little money, he
