KING JALI'AD OF AND HIS WAZIR SHIMAS;
FOLLOWED BY THE HISTORY OF KING WIRD KHAN,
SON OF KING JALI'AD, WITH HIS WOMEN AND
WAZIRS.[FN#55]



There was once in days of yore and in ages and times long gone
before, in the land of Hind, a mighty King, tall of presence and
fair of favour and goodly of parts, noble of nature and generous,
beneficent to the poor and loving to his lieges and all the
people of his realm. His name was Jali'ad and under his hand were
two-and-seventy Kings and in his cities three hundred and fifty
Kazis. He had three score and ten Wazirs and over every ten of
them he set a premier. The chiefest of all his ministers was a
man called Shimas[FN#56] who was then[FN#57] two and twenty years
old, a statesman of pleasant presence and noble nature, sweet of
speech and ready in reply; shrewd in all manner of business,
skilful withal and sagacious for all his tender age, a man of
good counsel and fine manners versed in all arts and sciences and
accomplishments; and the King loved him with exceeding love and
cherished him by reason of his proficiency in eloquence and
rhetoric and the art of government and for that which Allah had
given him of compassion and brooding care[FN#58] with his lieges
for he was a King just in his Kingship and a protector of his
peoples, constant in beneficence to great and small and giving
them that which befitted them of good governance and bounty and