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 THE POPULARITY OF TIROZ SHAH 157 lems who could not otherwise afford the usual dowries, and provided state hospitals for the sick of all classes, native and foreign. Kindly to the Hindus, he yet sternly forbade public worship of idols and painting of portraits, and taxed the Brahmans, who had hitherto been exempt from the poll-tax imposed upon non-Mos- lems. A devout Mohammedan himself, he kept the fasts and feasts and public prayers, and in the weekly litany the names of his great predecessors were com- memorated as well as his own and that of the caliph who had sanctioned his authority. When an old man he went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the legendary hero Salar Mas'ud at Bah- raich, humbly shaved, as an act Of piety. He never did GOLD COIN OF FIKOZ SHAH, A. H. 788 ,, . .,, . . (A.D. 1386). anything without consulting the Koran, and even selected a governor in accordance with a fal, or lucky omen in the sacred book. Making every allowance for the exaggeration of the court chron- icler, his panegyric, written after the Sultan's death, is probably not misplaced: " Under Firoz all men, high and low, bound and free, lived happily and free from care. The court was splendid. Things were plentiful and cheap. Nothing untoward happened during his reign. No village remained waste, no land unculti- vated." His old age was troubled by the loss of his great vizir, who died in 1371; three years later the death of the crown prince Fath Khan shook the aged Sultan