Someone's trash is someone else's treasure. Tamerlane (1336-1405) a Mongol conqueror, killed hundreds of thousands of people on his expedition to capture the entire world, i.e. Asia, Middle East, Near East, Africa and even Moscow. He had a grandson, Sharok.
Once, on a hot summer day, Sharok, having visited a mausoleum being built, was trotting his horse in the suburb of Herat, Afghanistan, and naturally became very thirsty. When he reached a cool spring pond, present Hose-e Bagh-e Morad, he dismounted his horse.
It happened that a girl was carrying her clay water jug. Sharok asked the girl to pass her jug. So did the girl. As Shahrok raised the jug to his lips for drinking, the girl reached out the heavy clay jug to apparently lifting the heavy container for the emperor to comfortably drink, but the girl, in fact, jerked away the vessel and let it spill on the hot ground. Perplexed, Sharok, the emperor, simply watched the girl. Now, the water carrier rushed to the spring again and refilled the jug. He returned to the emperor and handed it over to him.
As soon as Sharok started to drink, the girl again jerked it away. This action was repeated for three times when Sharok lost his temper and grabbed the girl by her raven-black hair and angrily shouted, "Do you know what you're doing? Do you know who I am?" and gave her his name and position. The girl, staring at him, bravely said, "You idiot. You have lost your mind. You've been traveling under this hot sun for hours. You are sweating like sh... Your body is burning like a flame. It has lost plenty of water. If I let you drink the cold water, in the first place, you could have collapsed dead like many other idiots who did so. That's the reason, your majesty, I stopped you drinking. Understood.?"
Sharok, took a stock of the brave girl. He was immensely impressed by the amazing look of the girl. He decided to ask her father for her hand in marriage. As soon as he reached his court, he ordered his courtiers to locate the girl and arrange for a marriage.
When, the high ranking courtiers proposed to the girl's father, the man replied, "I'm a poor salaried herdsman, taking village cows out for grazing. The emperor is way above my head. Tell your majesty to marry one of his noblemen's daughter."
Shahrok and his nobles decided to find a middleman of the same rank as the herdsman, so they sent another herdsman, on behalf of the emperor, to the girl's father, Safar, for proposition. The girl's father and the new representative reached an agreement which was, on the part of the emperor, to pass 100 head of cows to the girl's father and built him a huge platform for the herdsman to perch on it and watch his cows grazing in the filed below. Actually, there a small plateau in Herat called 'Takt-e Safar'!
Later we read that the girl, who became a very respectable queen with a lot of achievements in charity as well as building great mosques, even now standing, was executed by another grandson of Tamelane at the age of 80!
