It is said that Sultan Sikander Lodi possessed occult knowledge, which included knowledge of the most private and hidden details of his courtiers’ households. It is reported as well that when he sent his armies on campaigns to far off places, he accurately described to them all the signs and landmarks of the settlements and cities upon which he himself had never set eyes. Some attribute these powers to Sikander Lodi’s saintliness. Others reject these claims of saintliness about a rabidly prejudiced man, and maintain that these powers originated in a magical source, and were transferred to the Sultan of Delhi by the doings of one Abdul Momin, a spurned lover from the old city.

The masons had dug up the crudely shaped bronze lamp during the reconstruction of Abdul Momin family home, and handed it over to him.

Abdul Momin’s mind had been preoccupied the last few weeks. There was a time when he derived comfort from the thought that the small size of his family’s landholdings would leave him unaffected by court politics, while allowing him the freedom to indulge in his scholarly pursuits. For a good while he had enjoyed that status.

He was half way through copying and annotating the Persian divan of his maternal uncle, but the work increasingly seemed impossible now, as two raging passions for the same person were beginning to drive him into dark despair. While every line of the couplets opened up in his mind’s eye the face of the object of his affection, Miraatul Nisa, and every reference to the beloved became an allusion to the girl of whom he had caught only a fleeting glance, his heart raged at the pointed insolence with which she had turned away her gaze from him at their meeting, and the disdain with which she had thereafter rejected all his attempts at communication.

Torn between his longing for Miraatul Nisa, and the rage that filled his mind at her rejection of him, Abdul Momin was beginning to realise that the social status that afforded him safety from the violent politics of Delhi also forced him to keep his amorous aspirations to scope of size.

As it drew close to sunset, Abdul Momin returned to his room and again saw the bronze lamp which he had put away in a niche. On an impulse he sat down to clean it.

As he poured oil in the lamp and lit it, the flame in the bronze vessel began to pour out a suffocating darkness that overpowered his senses. Then two shapes that were only part human — for no humans could have such terrible visages — leapt forth from that darkness, and stood before Abdul Momin in postures of humility and submission. Then they started speaking to him, assuring him of their servitude, and offering to make him privy to the events not recorded by his senses or intellect.

It was the girl’s father who brought the petition to the Sultan’s court. For the last several weeks his daughter had been abducted every night by invisible powers and returned to her home before dawn. No trace of the culprit had been found, nor had any measures proven successful in stopping his depredations. The girl was in a poor state. As she could not see the face of her tormentor for the darkness, she was unable to identify him.

The author of the Makhzan-i- Afghani, who has provided the details of this episode, writes that the Sultan first commissioned the Kotwal of Delhi to investigate the matter. The kotwal deputed his best spies and archers around the house but they were unsuccessful in stopping the abduction. They witnessed nothing. Next the Sultan ordered his vizier to look into the mysterious case. At the vizier’s suggestion the girl secreted away a vial filled with saffron in her clothes, and poured it over Abdul Momin’s clothes as he lay sleeping. But Abdul Momin immediately perceived the girl’s intention of identifying him from the stains, and solicited the jinn’s advice on what course he should take. The jinn flew away and returned after spreading saffron on the clothes of the Sultan and a good number of the inhabitants of the city.

Fearful that the invisible force at play might now harm him, the sultan decided to employ subterfuge.

“[Sikander Lodi] then, upon the most sacred assurances, made it known throughout the town, that if the author of this affair would reveal himself, he should receive all that he could desire: and [Abdul Momin] being at length persuaded that an evil deed would, in the end, be attended with evil consequences, presented himself, with the lamp, before the Sultan; and informing him of the circumstances as they were, received the fulfilment of his wishes.

“This lamp, they say, was the source of the Sultan's knowledge, wonderful actions, and information about any hidden matters; the jinn explaining to him all that he could wish for.” (pp. 67-68, History of the Afghans, Part I. Translated from the Persian Makhzan-i-Afghani of Naimatullah by Bernhard Dorn, 1929]

Musharraf Ali Farooqi is an author, novelist and translator. He can be reached through www.mafarooqi.com and on Twitter at @microMAF