17 Abu’l Fazi ibn Mubarak (1551-1602) was Akbar’s vizier, and wrote an official history of his reign in three volumes, the Akbanama [Book of Akbar]. He was a great scholar and had a considerable influence on Akbar’s religious tolerance; he was a principal architect of the new faith Akbar promulgated, but he also commanded his armies during the Deccan wars featured in the present story. He also collaborated with Jesuits in the education of the Emperor’s second son, Murad Mirza (1570-1599), the Mourad of the present story.
18 Faizi was the pen-name of Abu Al-Faiz ibn Mubarak (1547-1595), Abu’l Fazi’s elder brother. He became Akbar’s court poet in 1588. Most of his work has been lost.
19 Todor Mal was Akbar’s finance minister, but had previously been a distinguished soldier.
20 Jerome Xavier, one of the Jesuit missionaries to Agra reported in 1598 that a Muslim merchant had arrived in Akbar’s court claiming to have lived in Xambalu, the capital of the mighty empire of Xathai, for many years. It was Xavier’s interrogation of that fantasist, who claimed that there were Christians in Xambalu, that inspire Benoît de Goës to set forth from Agra in search of the non-existent Empire of “Cathay”—which most geographers identified with China—in 1602: the author of the present story has shifted the relevant sequence of incidents back in time, since numerous events featured in subsequent chapters occurred prior to 1599.
21 “La Belle Paule,” thus nicknamed by François I during a visit to Toulouse, became the subject of a curious booklet entitled Paulographie by Gabriel de Minut, a supplement to his general treatise De la beauté [On Beauty] (1587), citing her an ideal model. She was Paule de Viguier (1518-1610), the wife of a counselor in the Parlement de Toulouse.
22 Hakim Ali ibn Kamal (?-1609), also known as Hakim-e-Gilani, was a Persian physician, one of several at Akbar’s court
23 The Battle of Legnica was fought on 9 April 1241. A combined force of Poles, Moravians and Germans under the command of Henry II, nicknamed Henry the Pious were defeated by Mongol forces under the command of Kadan, although Medieval chroniclers often confused him with another Mongol leader, Kaidu, and that confusion is repeated by the fictional Du Jarric. Henry probably only had a handful of knights with him along with an untrained rabble of indeterminate size, and although the Mongols feigned a retreat for tactical reasons, the issue was probably never in doubt. Christian chroniclers, however, naturally reported the event according to their prejudices and propagandistic inclinations.
24 “Baphomet” was a device invented by the torturers commissioned to extract confessions of sorcery from members of the Order in order to justify the seizure of their wealth by the financially-embarrassed King of France, Philippe le Bel, in the early 14th century. It subsequently became a central feature of occult lore and legend. The essay appended to the present novel offers a different account of it.
25 On this point and the events of the next few chapters, the present story deviates deliberately and drastically from history. The historical Murad was actually Akbar’s second son, Selim being the eldest and Daniyal the youngest. Murad was with the Mogul forces that attacked Ahmednagar in 1595, but they failed to take it, and it was actually captured by forces commanded by Daniyal in 1599. Murad died in Lahore in 1599 after being replaced by Abu’l Fazi in command of an army fighting to suppress a revolt in Gujarat in 1598.
26 Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana (1556-1627), usually known as Rahim, and now most famous as a poet, was one of the ministers of Akbar’s court
27 Historically, the female warrior Chand Bibi (1550-1599) was Regent of Ahmednagar from 1596-99, having defended the city successfully against Akbar’s forces in 1595. She was assassinated by her own troops during the siege led by Daniyal following slanderous rumors that she had made or intended to make a treaty with Daniyal.
28 The Baboul or Babul tree, more commonly known as the gum Arabic tree, is Vachellia nilotica. Its bark was long used in herbal medicines.
29 There is a reference to the codgiour palm in the oft-reprinted Histoire générale des voyages assembled by Abbé Prévost in 1751, where Magre presumably found it, but it appears to be idiosyncratic to that collection.
30 A coss was an East Indian measure of distance approximately equivalent to a kilometer.
31 The original has “Almaner” here but sometimes substitutes Amalner subsequently, which is the name of an actual Indian city, but certainly not the one featured in the present story, bearing no resemblance to it. I have preserved Almaner to emphasize the difference.
32 The historical Bahadur Shah, Chand-Bibi’s nephew, was a child when she was appointed as regent to reign on his behalf, not the mature man featured in the present story.
33 The Tartar Kwaji Aeïas is named as Akbar’s director of finances in India and its Native Princes (1878) by Louis Rousselet and Charles Randolph Buckle, but that version of the name seems to be idiosyncratic to that volume.
34 Miran Mubarak Shah was the ruler of Khandesh, who sought an alliance with Akbar in the 1560s, obtained it when one of his daughters entered the Emperor’s harem, and remain closely associated with him thereafter.
35 This entire episode is fictitious, but appears to be based on a paragraph in Du Jarric relating to the siege of “Syr.” The reference is probably not to a city, although there are references to a city of Asir, but to the fortress of Asirgarh, the so-called “key to the Deccan,” which Akbar besieged, eventually capturing it in 1601 (a date inconsistent in the present story with the dates of earlier events, such as the death of Abu’l Fazi.) According to Du Jarric, Syr was surrendered because its commanders were bought off with gold, but Magre’s lurid account of the climax of the siege is infinitely preferable in the currency of melodrama.
36 A kshatrya or kshatriya is a member of the second Hindu caste, below that of Brahmins, the warrior caste.
37 The game of Tchandal Mandai, similar to but not identical to chess, is mentioned as having enjoyed a brief fashionability at Akbar’s Court in Victor DuBled’s Histoire anecdotique et psychologique des jeux de cartes, dés, échecs [An Anecdotal and Psychological history of Games of Cards, Dice and Chess] (1919).
38 The revolt headed by Akbar’s eldest son, Salim, occurred in 1599, while Akbar was busy fighting the Deccan wars.
39 The historical Khusrau, Salim’s son and Akbar’s grandson, was born in 1587. Although there does not seem to be any historical foundation for the plot device employed here by which Akbar might have thought of nominating him as his heir, he was Akbar’s favorite grandson, and he was still in his teens in 1605 when he led an revolt against his father, who was by then the Emperor Jahangir. Daniyal died in April 1604, more than a year before Akbar’s death in October 1605, so he would not have figured in a discussion of the succession during the final year of Akbar’s life.
40 Pierre d’Assézat is named alongside Jean de Balanquier in the list of Toulosan magistrates from which Magre presumably took both names.
41 The historical Abu’l Fazi was assassinated on 12 August 1599 while returning from the Deccan by the Rajpuut chief Vir Singh Deo, also known as Vir Singh Bundela, on the orders of Salim, who knew that the minister was opposed to his accession to the throne.
42 Rai Raian is named in a History of Hindostan translated into English from Persian by Alexander Dow in 1802 as Akbar’s “secretary of state.”
43 Man Singh I (1550-1614), the Rajah of Amber, was one of Akbar’s most trusted generals.
44 Miran’s beard was black when he was in Almaner, but this scene is probably set some four of five years later.
45 The historical Salim, as Jahangir, did indeed restore the punishment of impalement, and had all the supporters of Kusrau’s revolt impaled, with Khusrau looking on, before he had Khusrau blinded.
46 The Sufi saint Salim Chisti (1478-1572). Akbar thought so highly of him that he had a city, Fatehpur Sikti built near his home and moved his Court there for a while.
47 The Sasanian Emperor Khosrow I (501-579), known as the Philosopher King, whose reign began in
531, immediately welcomed many refugees from the Eastern Roman Empire who had fled when the Emperor Justinian closed down the neoplatonist schools in Athens in 529.
48 Author’s note: “Not Saint-Omer, as is often written.”
49 Author’s note: “A part of the castle of Alamut was named Meimoun-Diz, the fortress of happiness.”
50 Author’s note: “Certain overly grave minds please themselves removing from history events that present themselves dressed from head to toe in legendary fantasy. Facts are often flat and boring, but at other times sublime and poetic, without anything being added to them. In his interesting work on chivalry, Monsieur Victor-Émile Michelet says that deriving ‘Assassin’ from ‘Hashishin’ is like deriving ‘cheval’ from ‘equus,’ and he seems to think the usage of hashish unworthy of Hassan Sabbah. The etymology I give is proven abundantly by Sylvestre le Sacy, Hammer and several other historians. In any case, many Persian, Hindu and Chinese secret societies have employed and still employ today beverages based on hashish, opium and many other plants in order to favor the emergence of the astral double and attain the first degrees of ecstasy.” The reference is to Les Secrets de la chevalerie (1930) by Victor-Émile Michelet (1861-1938), a symbolist poet, prose writer and a leading contributor to the later phases of the French occult revival, with whom Magre had much in common, and must have been acquainted.
51 The assertion that the alleged Templar heresy was linked with hypothetical ancestors of the Johannite Church that had been founded by the French priest Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Malaprat (1773-1838) in 1804, through the mediation of someone named Theoclet, although invented by Fabré-Malaprat, was more widely popularized in by declaration made by Pope Pius IX (1792-1878) while fulminating against various contemporary heretics. It was enthusiastically taken up by various participants in the Occult Revival, but evidence of the existence of any such sect or any such thesis prior to the nineteenth century is exceedingly difficult to find.
52 Author’s note: “I cannot explain the admiration with which history books are filled for what is called there ‘the great mystical movement of the crusades.’ Behind French chivalry there were the dregs of the Occident that ran to pillage the Orient. Saint Bernard depicted accurately the crusaders whose enthusiasm he had stimulated: ‘What was charming in the crowd, the torrent, that flowed to the Holy Land is that you saw nothing therein but scoundrels and the impious; but Christ made a champion of an enemy.’”
53 Author’s reference: “Pierre [actually Claude] Mansuet, Histoire critique [et apologétique] de l’Ordre des Chevaliers du Temple [1789]”
54 Author’s reference: “[Jules] Michelet, Histoire de France, [19 vols, 1867]”
55 Author’s note: “In spite of the explanation he gives, he remains horrorstruck by the magnitude of the impiety.”
56 Author’s reference: “Frédéric Nicolai. Essai sur les accusations intentées aux Templiers et sur the secret de cet ordre [1783].”
57 Author’s reference: “[Anon] Histoire de l’abolition de l’Ordre des Templiers, 1779.”
58 Author’s note: “A word derived from the Greek, the meaning of which is ‘the baptism of the spirit,’ (Hammer).” The reference, presumably taken from a secondary source, is to the Austrian Orientalist Baron Joseph Hammer (1774-1856; known as von Hammer-Purgstall after 1835), specifically his intensely peculiar Mysterium Baphometus Revelatum, the sixth volume of his Fundgruben des Orients [Mines of the Orient] (1818). Magre also appears to have taken some inspiration from Hammer’s imaginative history of the Assassins. The word Baphomet is more commonly supposed either to have been derived from Medieval Latin, or as a corruption of “Mahomet,” and various adaptations of it have been gleaned from documents contemporary with the crusades, in Latin and in Occitan, but its meaning therein remains stubbornly unclear. It was, however, taken up by the extravagant pioneer of the French occult revival who called himself Éliphas Lévi, who applied it to the “goat of the Sabbat,” a key symbol in his writings, and many of those who followed in his tracks did likewise. Some modern Johannites, having adopted the assimilation of the Templars to their imaginary history, have suggested that the archetype of the idol might have been the head of the apostle John.
59 Author’s reference: “Histoire de l’abolition de l’Ordre des Templiers.”
60 Author’s reference: “[Jean-Emmanuel] Le Couteulx de Canteleu, Les Sectes et les sociétés secrètes, [1863]”
61 Author’s reference: “Story recounted by Éliphas Lévi and reproduced by Stanislas de Guaita.”
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Marvelous Story of Claire d’Amour
The Call of the Beast
Priscilla of Alexandria
The Angel of Lust
The Mystery of the Tiger
The Poison of Goa
Lucifer
The Blood of Toulouse
The Albigensian Treasure
Melusine
The Brothers of the Virgin Gold
English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2017 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2017 by Mike Hoffman.
Visit our website at www.blackcoatpress.com
ISBN 978-1-61227-698-4. First Printing. December 2017. Published by Black Coat Press, an imprint of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, P.O. Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416. All rights reserved. Except for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The stories and characters depicted in this novel are entirely fictional. Printed in the United States of America.
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