According to the assertions of the Herati (which are, however, not founded in fact), Dost Mohammed Khan took the fortress, not by the bravery of the Kabuli, but by the treason of the garrison; they insist, too, that the beloved prince Sultan Ahmed was poisoned, and that his son Shanauvaz, who is almost deified by the Herati, did not obtain information of the treachery before a great part of the Paltan (soldiers) had already forced their way into the fortress. The struggle carried on by the besieged prince with his angry father-in-law was of the bitterest description, the sufferings borne and inflicted were dreadful, but worst of all were the sacking and plundering that took place unexpectedly some days after the actual capture, when many fugitive Herati returned with their property into the city. Four thousand Afghan soldiers, chosen expressly for the purpose from different tribes and regiments, rushed at a given signal, and from different sides of the city, upon the defenceless habitations, and are said not only to have carried off clothing, arms, furniture, whatever in fact met their eye, but forced every one to strip himself almost to a state of nudity, and to have left the half-naked tenants behind them in their thoroughly denuded and emptied houses. They tore away even from the sick their bedding and clothing, and robbed infants of cradles, nay, of the very swathing clothes, valueless but to them! A Mollah, who had been robbed of all his books, told me that he had lost sixty of the finest MSS.; but the loss he most deplored was that of a Koran bequeathed to him by his grandfather. He entreated the plunderer to leave him this one book, from which he promised that he would pray for his despoiler. 'Do not trouble thyself,' said the Kabuli; {281} 'I have a little son at home who shall pray for thee from it. Come, give it me.' [Nazir Naïm the Vizir]