INTRODIICTORY NOTICE. 409
number of people whom I appointed to these employments amounted to four hundred and sixty persons. The Sultan had ordered me to expend daily in food at the tomb twelve measures of meal and an equal weight of meat. That appeared to me too scanty an allowance ; whilst, on the other hand, the total revenue in grain allowed by the king was considerable. So I expended daily thirty-five measures of meal, an equal weight of butcher-meat, and quantities in proportion of sugar, sugar-candy, butter, and pawn. In this way I used to feed not only the people of the establishment, but all corners. There was great famine at the time, and this distribution of food was a great alleviation of the sufferings of the people, so that the fame of it spread far and wide."
Towards the end of his residence in India he fell for a time into great disfavour, the cause of which he relates in this way :-
There was at Dehli a certain learned and pious shaikh called Shihab-uddin the son of Aljam the Khorasani, whom Sultan Mahomed was desirous of employing in his service, but who positively refused to enter it. On this the king ordered another doctor of theology, who was standing by, to pull out the shaikh's beard, and on his declining the office, the ruffian caused the beards of both to be plucked out ! Shaikh Shihaabuddin retired from the city and established himself in a country place some miles from Dehli, where he amused himself by forming a large cave, which he fitted up with a bath, supplied by water from the Jumna, and with other conveniences. The Sultan several times sent to summon him, but he always refused to come, and at length said in plain words that he would never serve a tyrant. He was then arrested and brought before the tyrant himself, brutally maltreated, and finally put to death.
Ibn Batuta's curiosity had induced him to visit the shaikh in his cavern before this happened, and he thus incurred the displeasure and suspicion of the Sultan. Four slaves were ordered to keep him under constant surveillance, a step which was generally followed before long by the death of the suspected individual. Ibn Batuta, in his fear, betook himself to intense devotion and multiplied observances, among others to the repetition of a
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