932 AH. OCT. 18th 1525 TO OCT. 8th 1526 AD. 477
(z. The great diamond.)
In Sultan Ibrahim's defeat the Raia of Gualiar Bikramajlt the Hindu had gone to hell.
Fo1- 26S6
(Author's note on Bikramajlt.) The ancestors of Bikramailt had ruled in Gualiar for more than a hundred years.2 Sikandar (Litdi) had sat down in Agra for several years in order to take the fort; later on, in Ibrahim's time, 'Azim Humayun Sarwani 3 had completely invested it for some while; following this, it was taken on terms under which Shamsabad was given in exchange for it.<
Bikramajlt's children and family were in Agra at the time of Ibrahim's defeat. When Humayun reached Agra, they must have been planning to flee, but his postings of men (to watch the roads) prevented this and guard was kept over them. Humayun himself did not let them go [bdrghdli quimds). They made him a voluntary offering of a mass of jewels and valuables amongst which was the famous diamond which Alau'u'd-din must have brought^ Its reputation is that«very appraiser has estimated its value at two and a half days' food for the whole world. Apparently it weighs 8 misqd/s.6 Humayun offered it to me when I arrived at Agra ; I just gave it him back.
(aa. Ibrahim's mother and entourage?)
Amongst men of mark who were in the fort, there were Malik Dad Kardni, Mill! Siirduk and Flruz Khan Miwdti. They, being convicted of false dealing, were ordered out for capital punishment. Several persons interceded for Malik Dad Kardni and four or five days passed in comings and goings before the
1 Bikramajlt was a Tuniir Rajput. Babur's unhesitating statement of the Hindu's destination at death may be called a fruit of conviction, rather than of what modern opinion calls intolerance.
2 120 years (Cunningham's Report of the Archaeological Survey ii, 330 el sea.).
3 The Tarikh-i-sher-shahi tells a good deal about the man who bore this title, and also about others who found themselves now in difficulty between Ibrahim's tyranny and Babur's advance (E. & D. iv, 301).
4 Gualiar was taken from Bikramajlt in IS 18 AD.
5 i.e. from the Deccan of which 'Alau'u'd-din is said to have been the first Muhammadan invader. An account of this diamond, identified as the Koh-i-nur, is given in Hobson Jobson but its full history is not told by Yule or by Streeter's Great Diamonds of the World, neither mentioning the presentation of the diamond by Humayun to Tahmasp of which Abu'1-fazl writes, dwelling on its overplus of payment for all that HumayQn in exile received from his Persian host (Akbar-nama trs. i, 349 and note; Asiatic Quarterly Review, April 1899 H. Beveridge's art. Babur's diamond; was it the Koh-i-nur ?).
6 320 ratis (Erskine). The rati is 2.171 Troy grains, or in picturesque primitive equivalents, is 8 grains of rice, or 64 mustard seeds, or 512 poppy-seeds, uncertain weights which Akbar fixed in cat's-eye stones.
