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123 alabaster, granite, jade and coloured tiles sheathed the structural fabric of these monuments. The task of cutting, fitting and fixing mosaic faience panels took several years. Members of the royal family, especially. Shah Rukh, his gifted wife Gohar Shad Agha and Sultain Hussain Bayaqra personally supervised these constructions. In 1417 Gohar Shad Agha ordered the construction of two structures of great size and elegance. One was a Mussalah (a place for public worship) located outside the city. The other was a madrasa. Hussain Bayaqra, in his turn, adorned his capital with hospitals, and other public buildings. Immediately adjacent to the Mussalah of Gohar Shad Agha he built a madrasa almost one hundred and fifty feet high, forming a startling pattern against the sky. His minister and keeper of the royal seal, Ali Sher Nawai, also contributed a good deal to the embellishment of Herat. Through the efforts of these people Herat became one of the most beautiful cities of the East. This is why some of historians call this period "The Renaissance of Asia". Pashto Literature. Literature in both the Persian and Pash- to languages had their origins during the early Muslim centuries Pashtu was in current use during the Ghaznavid and Timurid periods. Unfortunately, most of the literature is lost and only fragments of the earliest poems have survived in Arabic transla- tions. The Putteh Khazana (Secret Treasure) published in Khandahar in 1729 A.D., included Pashto poems of the eighth and ninth centuries Amir Kror, called Jehan Pehlavan, a ruler of Ghor in the second half of the eighth century, is said to have composed poems in Pashto and later in the ninth century Sheikh Raza Lodi,