The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

by Emperor of Hindustan Babur

FOOTNOTES

[1] From Atkinson’s Sketches in Afghanistan (I.O. Lib. & B.M.).

[2] See p. 710 (where for “Daniels” read Atkinson).

[3] See Gul-badan Begim’s Humayun-nama Index III, in loco.

[4] Cf. Cap. II, PROBLEMS OF THE MUTILATED BABUR-NAMA and Tarīkh-i-rashīdi, trs. p. 174.

[5] The suggestion, implied by my use of this word, that Babur may have definitely closed his autobiography (as Timur did under other circumstances) is due to the existence of a compelling cause viz. that he would be expectant of death as the price of Humayun’s restored life (p. 701).

[6] Cf. p. 83 and n. and Add. Note, P. 83 for further emendation of a contradiction effected by some malign influence in the note (p. 83) between parts of that note, and between it and Babur’s account of his not-drinking in Herat.

[7] Teufel held its title to be waqi‘ (this I adopted in 1908), but it has no definite support and in numerous instances of its occurrence to describe the acts or doings of Babur, it could be read as a common noun.

[8] It stands on the reverse of the frontal page of the Haidarabad Codex; it is Timur-pulad’s name for the Codex he purchased in Bukhara, and it is thence brought on by Kehr (with Ilminski), and Klaproth (Cap. III); it is used by Khwafi Khan (d. cir. 1732), etc.

[9] That Babur left a complete record much indicates beyond his own persistence and literary bias, e.g. cross-reference with and needed complements from what is lost; mention by other writers of Babur’s information, notably by Haidar.

[10] App. H, xxx.

[11] p. 446, n. 6. Babur’s order for the cairn would fit into the lost record of the first month of the year (p. 445).

[12] Parts of the Babur-nama sent to Babur’s sons are not included here.

[13] The standard of comparison is the 382 fols. of the Haidarabad Codex.

[14] This MS. is not to be confused with one Erskine misunderstood Humayun to have copied (Memoirs, p. 303 and JRAS. 1900, p. 443).

[15] For precise limits of the original annotation see p. 446 n.—For details about the E. Codex see JRAS. 1907, art. The Elph. Codex, and for the colophon AQR. 1900, July, Oct. and JRAS. 1905, pp. 752, 761.

[16] See Index s.n. and III ante and JRAS. 1900-3-5-6-7.

[17] Here speaks the man reared in touch with European classics; (pure) Turki though it uses no relatives (Radloff) is lucid. Cf. Cap. IV The Memoirs of Babur.

[18] For analysis of a retranslated passage see JRAS. 1908, p. 85.

[19] Tuzuk-i-jahangiri, Rogers & Beveridge’s trs. i, 110; JRAS. 1900, p. 756, for the Persian passage, 1908, p. 76 for the “Fragments”, 1900, p. 476 for Ilminski’s Preface (a second translation is accessible at the B.M. and I.O. Library and R.A.S.), Memoirs Preface, p. ix, Index s.nn. de Courteille, Teufel, Bukhara MSS. and Part iii eo cap.

[20] For Shah-i-jahan’s interest in Timur see sign given in a copy of his note published in my translation volume of Gul-badan Begim’s Humayun-nama, p. xiii.

[21] JRAS. 1900 p. 466, 1902 p. 655, 1905 art. s.n., 1908 pp. 78, 98; Index in loco s.n.

[22] Cf. JRAS. 1900, Nos. VI, VII, VIII.

[23] Ilminski’s difficulties are foreshadowed here by the same confusion of identity between the Babur-nama proper and the Bukhara compilation (Preface, Part iii, p. li).

[24] Cf. Erskine’s Preface passim, and in loco item XI, cap. iv. The Memoirs of Baber, and Index s.n.

[25] The last blow was given to the phantasmal reputation of the book by the authoritative Haidarabad Codex which now can be seen in facsimile in many Libraries.

[26] But for present difficulties of intercourse with Petrograd, I would have re-examined with Kehr’s the collateral Codex of 1742 (copied in 1839 and now owned by the Petrograd University). It might be useful; as Kehr’s volume has lost pages and may be disarranged here and there.

The list of Kehr’s items is as follows:—

1 (not in the Imprint). A letter from Babur to Kamran the date of which is fixed as 1527 by its committing Ibrahim Ludi’s son to Kamran’s charge (p. 544). It is heard of again in the Bukhara Compilation, is lost from Kehr’s Codex, and preserved from his archetype by Klaproth who translated it. Being thus found in Bukhara in the first decade of the eighteenth century (our earliest knowledge of the Compilation is 1709), the inference is allowed that it went to Bukhara as loot from the defeated Kamran’s camp and that an endorsement its companion Babur-nama (proper) bears was made by the Auzbeg of two victors over Kamran, both of 1550, both in Tramontana.[27]

2 (not in Imp.). Timur-pulad’s memo. about the purchase of his Codex in cir. 1521 (eo cap. post).

3 (Imp. 1). Compiler’s Preface of Praise (JRAS. 1900, p. 474).

4 (Imp. 2). Babur’s Acts in Farghana, in diction such as to seem a re-translation of the Persian translation of 1589. How much of Kamran’s MS. was serviceable is not easy to decide, because the Turki fettering of ‘Abdu’r-rahim’s Persian lends itself admirably to re-translation.[28]

5 (Imp. 3). The “Rescue-passage” (App. D) attributable to Jahangir.

6 (Imp. 4). Babur’s Acts in Kabul, seeming (like No. 4) a re-translation or patching of tattered pages. There are also passages taken verbatim from the Persian.

7 (Imp. omits). A short length of Babur’s Hindustan Section, carefully shewn damaged by dots and dashes.

8 (Imp. 5). Within 7, the spurious passage of App. L and also scattered passages about a feast, perhaps part of 7.

9 (Imp. separates off at end of vol.). Translated passage from the Akbar-nāma, attributable to Jahangir, briefly telling of Kanwa (1527), Babur’s latter years (both changed to first person), death and court.[29]

[Babur’s history has been thus brought to an end, incomplete in the balance needed of 7. In Kehr’s volume a few pages are left blank except for what shews a Russian librarian’s opinion of the plan of the book, “Here end the writings of Shah Babur.”]

10 (Imp. omits). Preface to the history of Humayun, beginning at the Creation and descending by giant strides through notices of Khans and Sultans to “Babur Mirza who was the father of Humayun Padshah”. Of Babur what further is said connects with the battle of Ghaj-davan (918-1512 q.v.). It is ill-informed, laying blame on him as if he and not Najm Sani had commanded—speaks of his preference for the counsel of young men and of the numbers of combatants. It is noticeable for more than its inadequacy however; its selection of the Ghaj-davan episode from all others in Babur’s career supports circumstantially what is dealt with later, the Ghaj-davani authorship of the Compilation.

11 (Imp. omits). Under a heading “Humayun Padshah” is a fragment about (his? Accession) Feast, whether broken off by loss of his pages or of those of his archetype examination of the P. Univ. Codex may show.

12 (Imp. 6). An excellent copy of Babur’s Hindustan Section, perhaps obtained from the Ahrari house. [This Ilminski places (I think) where Kehr has No. 7.] From its position and from its bearing a scribe’s date of completion (which Kehr brings over), viz. Tamt shud 1126 (Finished 1714), the compiler may have taken it for Humayun’s, perhaps for the account of his reconquest of Hind in 1555.

[The remaining entries in Kehr’s volume are a quatrain which may make jesting reference to his finished task, a librarian’s Russian entry of the number of pages (831), and the words Etablissement Orientale, Fr. v. Adelung, 1825 (the Director of the School from 1793).[30]

[27] That Babur-nama of the “Kamran-docket” is the mutilated and tattered basis, allowed by circumstance, of the compiled history of Babur, filled out and mended by the help of the Persian translation of 1589. Cf. Kehr’s Latin Trs. fly-leaf entry; Klaproth s.n.; A.N. trs. H.B., p. 260; JRAS. 1908, 1909, on the “Kamran-docket” where are defects needing Klaproth’s second article (1824).)

[28] For an analysis of an illustrative passage see JRAS. 1906; for facilities of re-translation see eo cap. p. xviii, where Erskine is quoted.)

[29] See A.N. trans., p. 260; Prefaces of Ilminski and de Courteille; ZDMG. xxxvii, Teufel’s art.; JRAS. 1906.)

[30] For particulars about Kehr’s Codex see Smirnov’s Catalogue of the School Library and JRAS. 1900, 1906. Like others who have made statements resting on the mistaken identity of the Bukhara Compilation, many of mine are now given to the winds.)

[31] See Gregorief’s “Russian policy regarding Central Asia”, quoted in Schuyler’s Turkistan, App. IV.

[32] The Mission was well received, started to return to Petrograd, was attacked by Turkmans, went back to Bukhara, and there stayed until it could attempt the devious route which brought it to the capital in 1725.

[33] One might say jestingly that the spirit in the book had rebelled since 1725 against enforced and changing masquerade as a phantasm of two other books!

[34] Neither Ilminski nor Smirnov mentions another “Babur-nama” Codex than Kehr’s.

[35] A Correspondent combatting my objection to publishing a second edition of the Memoirs, backed his favouring opinion by reference to ‘Umar Khayyam and Fitzgerald. Obviously no analogy exists; Erskine’s redundance is not the flower of a deft alchemy, but is the prosaic consequence of a secondary source.

[36] The manuscripts relied on for revising the first section of the Memoirs, (i.e. 899 to 908 AH.-1494 to 1502 AD.) are the Elphinstone and the Ḥaidarābād Codices. To variants from them occurring in Dr. Kehr’s own transcript no authority can be allowed because throughout this section, his text appears to be a compilation and in parts a retranslation from one or other of the two Persian translations (Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī) of the Bābur-nāma. Moreover Dr. Ilminsky’s imprint of Kehr’s text has the further defect in authority that it was helped out from the Memoirs, itself not a direct issue from the Turkī original.

Information about the manuscripts of the Bābur-nāma can be found in the JRAS for 1900, 1902, 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1908.

The foliation marked in the margin of this book is that of the Ḥaidarābād Codex and of its facsimile, published in 1905 by the Gibb Memorial Trust.

[37] Bābur, born on Friday, Feb. 14th. 1483 (Muḥarram 6, 888 AH.), succeeded his father, ‘Umar Shaikh who died on June 8th. 1494 (Ramẓān 4, 899 AH.).

[38] pād-shāh, protecting lord, supreme. It would be an anachronism to translate pādshāh by King or Emperor, previous to 913 AH. (1507 AD.) because until that date it was not part of the style of any Tīmūrid, even ruling members of the house being styled Mīrzā. Up to 1507 therefore Bābur’s correct style is Bābur Mīrzā. (Cf. f. 215 and note.)

[39] See Āyīn-i-akbarī, Jarrett, p. 44.

[40] The Ḥai. MS. and a good many of the W.-i-B. MSS. here write Aūtrār. [Aūtrār like Tarāz was at some time of its existence known as Yāngī (New).] Tarāz seems to have stood near the modern Auliya-ātā; Ālmālīgh,—a Metropolitan see of the Nestorian Church in the 14th. century,—to have been the old capital of Kuldja, and Ālmātū (var. Ālmātī) to have been where Vernoe (Vierny) now is. Ālmālīgh and Ālmātū owed their names to the apple (ālmā). Cf. Bretschneider’s Mediæval Geography p. 140 and T.R. (Elias and Ross) s.nn.

[41] Mughūl u Aūzbeg jihatdīn. I take this, the first offered opportunity of mentioning (1) that in transliterating Turkī words I follow Turkī lettering because I am not competent to choose amongst systems which e.g. here, reproduce Aūzbeg as Ūzbeg, Özbeg and Euzbeg; and (2) that style being part of an autobiography, I am compelled, in pressing back the Memoirs on Bābur’s Turkī mould, to retract from the wording of the western scholars, Erskine and de Courteille. Of this compulsion Bābur’s bald phrase Mughūl u Aūzbeg jihatdīn provides an illustration. Each earlier translator has expressed his meaning with more finish than he himself; ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm, by az jihat ‘ubūr-i (Mughūl u) Aūzbeg, improves on Bābur, since the three towns lay in the tideway of nomad passage (‘ubūr) east and west; Erskine writes “in consequence of the incursions” etc. and de C. “grace aux ravages commis” etc.

[42] Schuyler (ii, 54) gives the extreme length of the valley as about 160 miles and its width, at its widest, as 65 miles.

[43] Following a manifestly clerical error in the Second W.-i-B. the Akbar-nāma and the Mems. are without the seasonal limitation, “in winter.” Bābur here excludes from winter routes one he knew well, the Kīndīrlīk Pass; on the other hand Kostenko says that this is open all the year round. Does this contradiction indicate climatic change? (Cf. f. 54b and note; A.N. Bib. Ind. ed. i, 85 (H. Beveridge i, 221) and, for an account of the passes round Farghāna, Kostenko’s Turkistān Region, Tables of Contents.)

[44] Var. Banākat, Banākas̤, Fīākat, Fanākand. Of this place Dr. Rieu writes (Pers. cat. i, 79) that it was also called Shāsh and, in modern times, Tāshkīnt. Bābur does not identify Fanākat with the Tāshkīnt of his day but he identifies it with Shāhrukhiya (cf. Index s.nn.) and distinguishes between Tāshkīnt-Shāsh and Fanākat-Shāhrukhiya. It may be therefore that Dr. Rieu’s Tāshkīnt-Fanākat was Old Tāshkīnt,—(Does Fanā-kīnt mean Old Village?) some 14 miles nearer to the Saiḥūn than the Tāshkīnt of Bābur’s day or our own.

[45] hech daryā qātīlmās. A gloss of dīgar (other) in the Second W.-i-B. has led Mr. Erskine to understand “meeting with no other river in its course.” I understand Bābur to contrast the destination of the Saiḥūn which he [erroneously] says sinks into the sands, with the outfall of e.g. the Amū into the Sea of Aral.

Cf. First W.-i-B. I.O. MS. 215 f. 2; Second W.-i-B. I.O. MS. 217 f. 1b and Ouseley’s Ibn Haukal p. 232-244; also Schuyler and Kostenko l.c.

[46] Bābur’s geographical unit in Central Asia is the township or, with more verbal accuracy, the village i.e. the fortified, inhabited and cultivated oasis. Of frontiers he says nothing.

[47] i.e. they are given away or taken. Bābur’s interest in fruits was not a matter of taste or amusement but of food. Melons, for instance, fresh or stored, form during some months the staple food of Turkistānīs. Cf. T.R. p. 303 and (in Kāshmīr) 425; Timkowski’s Travels of the Russian Mission i, 419 and Th. Radloff’s Réceuils d’Itinéraires p. 343.

N.B. At this point two folios of the Elphinstone Codex are missing.

[48] Either a kind of melon or the pear. For local abundance of pears see Āyīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann p. 6; Kostenko and Von Schwarz.

[49] qūrghān, i.e. the walled town within which was the citadel (ark).

[50] Tūqūz tarnau sū kīrār, bū ‘ajab tūr kīm bīr yīrdīn ham chīqmās. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2, nuh jū’ī āb dar qila‘ dar mī āyid u īn ‘ajab ast kah hama az yak jā ham na mī bar āyid. (Cf. Mems. p. 2 and Méms. i, 2.) I understand Bābur to mean that all the water entering was consumed in the town. The supply of Andijān, in the present day, is taken both from the Āq Būrā (i.e. the Aūsh Water) and, by canal, from the Qarā Daryā.

[51] khandaqnīng tāsh yānī. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2 dar kīnār sang bast khandaq. Here as in several other places, this Persian translation has rendered Turkī tāsh, outside, as if it were Turkī tāsh, stone. Bābur’s adjective stone is sangīn (f. 45b l. 8). His point here is the unusual circumstance of a high-road running round the outer edge of the ditch. Moreover Andijān is built on and of loess. Here, obeying his Persian source, Mr. Erskine writes “stone-faced ditch”; M. de C. obeying his Turkī one, “bord extérieur.”

[52] qīrghāwal āsh-kīnasī bīla. Āsh-kīna, a diminutive of āsh, food, is the rice and vegetables commonly served with the bird. Kostenko i, 287 gives a recipe for what seems āsh-kīna.

[53] b. 1440; d. 1500 AD.

[54] Yūsuf was in the service of Bāī-sunghar Mīrzā Shāhrukhī (d. 837 AH.-1434 AD.). Cf. Daulat Shāh’s Memoirs of the Poets (Browne) pp. 340 and 350-1. (H.B.)

[55] gūzlār aīl bīzkāk kūb būlūr. Second W.-i-B. (I.O. 217 f. 2) here and on f. 4 has read Turkī gūz, eye, for Turkī gūz or goz, autumn. It has here a gloss not in the Ḥaidarābād or Kehr’s MSS. (Cf. Mems. p. 4 note.) This gloss may be one of Humāyūn’s numerous notes and may have been preserved in the Elphinstone Codex, but the fact cannot now be known because of the loss of the two folios already noted. (See Von Schwarz and Kostenko concerning the autumn fever of Transoxiana.)

[56] The Pers. trss. render yīghāch by farsang; Ujfalvy also takes the yīghāch and the farsang as having a common equivalent of about 6 kilomètres. Bābur’s statements in yīghāch however, when tested by ascertained distances, do not work out into the farsang of four miles or the kilomètre of 8 kil. to 5 miles. The yīghāch appears to be a variable estimate of distance, sometimes indicating the time occupied on a given journey, at others the distance to which a man’s voice will carry. (Cf. Ujfalvy Expédition scientifique ii, 179; Von Schwarz p. 124 and de C.’s Dict. s.n. yīghāch. In the present instance, if Bābur’s 4 y. equalled 4 f. the distance from Aūsh to Andijān should be about 16 m.; but it is 33 m. 1-3/4 fur. i.e. 50 versts. Kostenko ii, 33.) I find Bābur’s yīghāch to vary from about 4 m. to nearly 8 m.

[57] āqār sū, the irrigation channels on which in Turkistān all cultivation depends. Major-General Gérard writes, (Report of the Pamir Boundary Commission, p. 6,) “Osh is a charming little town, resembling Islāmābād in Kāshmīr,—everywhere the same mass of running water, in small canals, bordered with willow, poplar and mulberry.” He saw the Āq Būrā, the White wolf, mother of all these running waters, as a “bright, stony, trout-stream;” Dr. Stein saw it as a “broad, tossing river.” (Buried Cities of Khotan, p. 45.) Cf. Réclus vi, cap. Farghāna; Kostenko i, 104; Von Schwarz s.nn.

[58] Aūshnīng faẓīlatīdā khailī aḥādis̤ wārid dūr. Second W.-i-B. (I.O. 217 f. 2) Faẓīlat-i-Aūsh aḥadis̤ wārid ast. Mems. (p. 3) “The excellencies of Ush are celebrated even in the sacred traditions.” Méms. (i, 2) “On cite beaucoup de traditions qui célèbrent l’excellence de ce climat.” Aūsh may be mentioned in the traditions on account of places of pilgrimage near it; Bābur’s meaning may be merely that its excellencies are traditional. Cf. Ujfalvy ii, 172.

[59] Most travellers into Farghāna comment on Bābur’s account of it. One much discussed point is the position of the Barā Koh. The personal observations of Ujfalvy and Schuyler led them to accept its identification with the rocky ridge known as the Takht-i-sulaimān. I venture to supplement this by the suggestion that Bābur, by Barā Koh, did not mean the whole of the rocky ridge, the name of which, Takht-i-sulaimān, an ancient name, must have been known to him, but one only of its four marked summits. Writing of the ridge Madame Ujfalvy says, “Il y a quatre sommets dont le plus élevé est le troisième comptant par le nord.” Which summit in her sketch (p. 327) is the third and highest is not certain, but one is so shewn that it may be the third, may be the highest and, as being a peak, can be described as symmetrical i.e. Bābur’s mauzūn. For this peak an appropriate name would be Barā Koh.

If the name Barā Koh could be restricted to a single peak of the Takht-i-sulaimān ridge, a good deal of earlier confusion would be cleared away, concerning which have written, amongst others, Ritter (v, 432 and 732); Réclus (vi. 54); Schuyler (ii, 43) and those to whom these three refer. For an excellent account, graphic with pen and pencil, of Farghāna and of Aūsh see Madame Ujfalvy’s De Paris à Samarcande cap. v.

[60] rūd. This is a precise word since the Āq Būrā (the White Wolf), in a relatively short distance, falls from the Kūrdūn Pass, 13,400 ft. to Aūsh, 3040 ft. and thence to Andijān, 1380 ft. Cf. Kostenko i, 104; Huntingdon in Pumpelly’s Explorations in Turkistān p. 179 and the French military map of 1904.

[61] Whether Bābur’s words, bāghāt, bāghlār and bāghcha had separate significations, such as orchard, vineyard and ordinary garden i.e. garden-plots of small size, I am not able to say but what appears fairly clear is that when he writes bāghāt u bāghlār he means all sorts of gardens, just as when he writes begāt u beglār, he means begs of all ranks.

[62] Madame Ujfalvy has sketched a possible successor. Schuyler found two mosques at the foot of Takht-i-sulaimān, perhaps Bābur’s Jauza Masjid.

[63] aūl shāh-jū’īdīn sū qūyārlār.

[64] Ribbon Jasper, presumably.

[65] Kostenko (ii, 30), 71-3/4 versts i.e. 47 m. 4-1/2 fur. by the Postal Road.

[66] Instead of their own kernels, the Second W.-i-B. stuffs the apricots, in a fashion well known in India by khūbānī, with almonds (maghz-i badām). The Turkī wording however allows the return to the apricots of their own kernels and Mr. Rickmers tells me that apricots so stuffed were often seen by him in the Zar-afshān Valley. My husband has shewn me that Niz̤āmī in his Haft Paikar appears to refer to the other fashion, that of inserting almonds:—

“I gave thee fruits from the garden of my heart,

Plump and sweet as honey in milk;

Their substance gave the lusciousness of figs,

In their hearts were the kernels of almonds.”

[67] What this name represents is one of a considerable number of points in the Bābur-nāma I am unable to decide. Kīyīk is a comprehensive name (cf. Shaw’s Vocabulary); āq kīyīk might mean white sheep or white deer. It is rendered in the Second W.-i-B., here, by ahū-i-wāriq and on f. 4, by ahū-i-safed. Both these names Mr. Erskine has translated by “white deer,” but he mentions that the first is said to mean argālī i.e. ovis poli, and refers to Voyages de Pallas iv, 325.

[68] Concerning this much discussed word, Bābur’s testimony is of service. It seems to me that he uses it merely of those settled in towns (villages) and without any reference to tribe or nationality. I am not sure that he uses it always as a noun; he writes of a Sārt kīshī, a Sārt person. His Asfara Sārts may have been Turkī-speaking settled Turks and his Marghīnānī ones Persian-speaking Tājiks. Cf. Shaw’s Vocabulary; s.n. Sārt; Schuyler i, 104 and note; Nalivkine’s Histoire du Khanat de Khokand p. 45 n. Von Schwarz s.n.; Kostenko i, 287; Petzbold’s Turkistan p. 32.

[69] Shaikh Burhānu’d-dīn ‘Alī Qīlīch: b. circa 530 AH. (1135 AD.) d. 593 AH. (1197 AD.). See Hamilton’s Hidāyat.

[70] The direct distance, measured on the map, appears to be about 65 m. but the road makes détour round mountain spurs. Mr. Erskine appended here, to the “farsang” of his Persian source, a note concerning the reduction of Tatar and Indian measures to English ones. It is rendered the less applicable by the variability of the yīghāch, the equivalent for a farsang presumed by the Persian translator.

[71] Ḥai. MS. Farsī-gū’ī. The Elph. MS. and all those examined of the W.-i-B. omit the word Farsī; some writing kohī (mountaineer) for gū’ī. I judge that Bābur at first omitted the word Farsī, since it is entered in the Ḥai. MS. above the word gū’ī. It would have been useful to Ritter (vii, 733) and to Ujfalvy (ii, 176). Cf. Kostenko i, 287 on the variety of languages spoken by Sārts.

[72] Of the Mirror Stone neither Fedtschenko nor Ujfalvy could get news.

[73] Bābur distinguishes here between Tāshkīnt and Shāhrukhiya. Cf. f. 2 and note to Fanākat.

[74] He left the hill-country above Sūkh in Muḥarram 910 AH. (mid-June 1504 AD.).

[75] For a good account of Khujand see Kostenko i, 346.

[76] Khujand to Andijān 187 m. 2 fur. (Kostenko ii, 29-31) and, helped out by the time-table of the Transcaspian Railway, from Khujand to Samarkand appears to be some 154 m. 5-1/4 fur.

[77] Both men are still honoured in Khujand (Kostenko i, 348). For Khwāja Kamāl’s Life and Dīwān, see Rieu ii, 632 and Ouseley’s Persian Poets p. 192. Cf. f. 83b and note.

[78] kūb artūq dūr, perhaps brought to Hindūstān where Bābur wrote the statement.

[79] Turkish arrow-flight, London, 1791, 482 yards.

[80] I have found the following forms of this name,—Ḥai. MS., M:nūgh:l; Pers. trans. and Mems., Myoghil; Ilminsky, M:tugh:l; Méms. Mtoughuil; Réclus, Schuyler and Kostenko, Mogul Tau; Nalivkine, “d’apres Fedtschenko,” Mont Mogol; Fr. Map of 1904, M. Muzbek. It is the western end of the Kurāma Range (Kīndīr Tau), which comes out to the bed of the Sīr, is 26-2/3 miles long and rises to 4000 ft. (Kostenko, i, 101). Von Schwarz describes it as being quite bare; various writers ascribe climatic evil to it.

[81] Pers. trans. ahū-i-safed. Cf. f. 3b note.

[82] These words translate into Cervus marāl, the Asiatic Wapiti, and to this Bābur may apply them. Dictionaries explain marāl as meaning hind or doe but numerous books of travel and Natural History show that it has wider application as a generic name, i.e. deer. The two words būghū and marāl appear to me to be used as e.g. drake and duck are used. Marāl and duck can both imply the female sex, but also both are generic, perhaps primarily so. Cf. for further mention of būghū-marāl f. 219 and f. 276. For uses of the word marāl, see the writings e.g. of Atkinson, Kostenko (iii, 69), Lyddeker, Littledale, Selous, Ronaldshay, Church (Chinese Turkistan), Biddulph (Forsyth’s Mission).

[83] Cf. f. 2 and note.

[84] Schuyler (ii, 3), 18 m.

[85] Ḥai. MS. Hamesha bū deshttā yīl bār dūr. Marghīnānghā kīm sharqī dūr, hamesha mūndīn yīl bārūr; Khujandghā kīm gharībī dūr, dā’im mūndīn yīl kīlūr.

This is a puzzling passage. It seems to say that wind always goes east and west from the steppe as from a generating centre. E. and de C. have given it alternative directions, east or west, but there is little point in saying this of wind in a valley hemmed in on the north and the south. Bābur limits his statement to the steppe lying in the contracted mouth of the Farghāna valley (pace Schuyler ii, 51) where special climatic conditions exist such as (a) difference in temperature on the two sides of the Khujand narrows and currents resulting from this difference,—(b) the heating of the narrows by sun-heat reflected from the Mogol-tau,—and (c) the inrush of westerly wind over Mīrzā Rabāt̤. Local knowledge only can guide a translator safely but Bābur’s directness of speech compels belief in the significance of his words and this particularly when what he says is unexpected. He calls the Hā Darwesh a whirling wind and this it still is. Thinkable at least it is that a strong westerly current (the prevailing wind of Farghāna) entering over Mīrzā Rabāt̤ and becoming, as it does become, the whirlwind of Hā Darwesh on the hemmed-in steppe,—becoming so perhaps by conflict with the hotter indraught through the Gates of Khujand—might force that indraught back into the Khujand Narrows (in the way e.g. that one Nile in flood forces back the other), and at Khujand create an easterly current. All the manuscripts agree in writing to (ghā) Marghīnān and to (ghā) Khujand. It may be observed that, looking at the map, it appears somewhat strange that Bābur should take, for his wind objective, a place so distant from his (defined) Hā Darwesh and seemingly so screened by its near hills as is Marghīnān. But that westerly winds are prevalent in Marghīnān is seen e.g. in Middendorff’s Einblikke in den Farghāna Thal (p. 112). Cf. Réclus vi, 547; Schuyler ii, 51; Cahun’s Histoire du Khanat de Khokand p. 28 and Sven Hedin’s Durch Asien’s Wüsten s.n. būrān.

[86] bādiya; a word perhaps selected as punning on bād, wind.

[87] i.e. Akhsī Village. This word is sometimes spelled Akhsīkīs̤ but as the old name of the place was Akhsī-kīnt, it may be conjectured at least that the s̤ā’ī mas̤allas̤a of Akhsīkīs̤ represents the three points due for the nūn and tā of kīnt. Of those writing Akhsīkīt may be mentioned the Ḥai. and Kehr’s MSS. (the Elph. MS. here has a lacuna) the Z̤afar-nāma (Bib. Ind. i, 44) and Ibn Haukal (Ouseley p. 270); and of those writing the word with the s̤ā’ī muṣallas̤a (i.e. as Akhsīkīs̤), Yāqūt’s Dict, i, 162, Reinaud’s Abū’l-feda I. ii, 225-6, Ilminsky (p. 5) departing from his source, and I.O. Cat. (Ethé) No. 1029. It may be observed that Ibn Haukal (Ouseley p. 280) writes Banākaṣ for Banākat. For As̤īru’d-dīn Akhsīkītī, see Rieu ii, 563; Daulat Shāh (Browne) p. 121 and Ethé I.O. Cat. No. 1029.

[88] Measured on the French military map of 1904, this may be 80 kil. i.e. 50 miles.

[89] Concerning several difficult passages in the rest of Bābur’s account of Akhsī, see Appendix A.

[90] The W.-i-B. here translates būghū-marāl by gazawn and the same word is entered, under-line, in the Ḥai. MS. Cf. f. 3b and note and f. 4 and note.

[91] postīn pesh b:r:h. This obscure Persian phrase has been taken in the following ways:—

(a) W.-i-B. I.O. 215 and 217 (i.e. both versions) reproduce the phrase.
(b) W.-i-B. MS., quoted by Erskine, p. 6 note, (postīn-i mīsh burra).
(c) Leyden’s MS. Trs., a sheepskin mantle of five lambskins.
(d) Mems., Erskine, p. 6, a mantle of five lambskins.
(e) The Persian annotator of the Elph. MS., underlining pesh, writes, panj, five.
(f) Klaproth (Archives, p. 109), pustini pisch breh, d.h. gieb den vorderen Pelz.
(g) Kehr, p. 12 (Ilminsky p. 6) postin bīsh b:r:h.
(h) De. C, i, 9, fourrure d’agneau de la première qualité.

The “lambskins” of L. and E. carry on a notion of comfort started by their having read sayāh, shelter, for Turkī sā’ī, torrent-bed; de C. also lays stress on fur and warmth, but would not the flowery border of a mountain stream prompt rather a phrase bespeaking ornament and beauty than one expressing warmth and textile softness? If the phrase might be read as postīn pesh perā, what adorns the front of a coat, or as postīn pesh bar rah, the fine front of the coat, the phrase would recall the gay embroidered front of some leathern postins.

[92] Var. tabarkhūn. The explanation best suiting its uses, enumerated here, is Redhouse’s second, the Red Willow. My husband thinks it may be the Hyrcanian Willow.

[93] Steingass describes this as “an arrow without wing or point” (barb?) and tapering at both ends; it may be the practising arrow, t‘alīm aūqī, often headless.

[94] tabarraklūq. Cf. f. 48b foot, for the same use of the word.

[95] yabrūju’ṣ-ṣannam. The books referred to by Bābur may well be the Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā and the Ḥabību’s-siyār, as both mention the plant.

[96] The Turkī word āyīq is explained by Redhouse as awake and alert; and by Meninski and de Meynard as sobered and as a return to right senses. It may be used here as a equivalent of mihr in mihr-giyāh, the plant of love.

[97] Mr. Ney Elias has discussed the position of this group of seven villages. (Cf. T. R. p. 180 n.) Arrowsmith’s map places it (as Iti-kint) approximately where Mr. Th. Radloff describes seeing it i.e. on the Farghāna slope of the Kurāma range. (Cf. Réceuil d’Itinéraires p. 188.) Mr. Th. Radloff came into Yītī-kīnt after crossing the Kīndīrlīk Pass from Tāshkīnt and he enumerates the seven villages as traversed by him before reaching the Sīr. It is hardly necessary to say that the actual villages he names may not be those of Bābur’s Yītī-kint. Wherever the word is used in the Bābur-nāma and the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, it appears from the context allowable to accept Mr. Radloff’s location but it should be borne in mind that the name Yītī-kīnt (Seven villages or towns) might be found as an occasional name of Altī-shahr (Six towns). See T.R. s.n. Altī-shahr.

[98] kīshī, person, here manifestly fighting men.

[99] Elph. MS. f. 2b; First W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 4b; Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 4; Mems. p. 6; Ilminsky p. 7; Méms. i. 10.

The rulers whose affairs are chronicled at length in the Farghāna Section of the B.N. are, (I) of Tīmūrid Turks, (always styled Mīrzā), (a) the three Mīrān-shāhī brothers, Aḥmad, Maḥmūd and ‘Umar Shaikh with their successors, Bāī-sunghar, ‘Alī and Bābur; (b) the Bāī-qarā, Ḥusain of Harāt: (II) of Chīngīz Khānīds, (always styled Khān,) (a) the two Chaghatāī Mughūl brothers, Maḥmūd and Aḥmad; (b) the Shaibānid Aūzbeg, Muḥammad Shaibānī (Shāh-i-bakht or Shaibāq or Shāhī Beg).

In electing to use the name Shaibānī, I follow not only the Ḥai. Codex but also Shaibānī’s Boswell, Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā. The Elph. MS. frequently uses Shaibāq but its authority down to f. 198 (Ḥai. MS. f. 243b) is not so great as it is after that folio, because not till f. 198 is it a direct copy of Bābur’s own. It may be more correct to write “the Shaibānī Khān” and perhaps even “the Shaibānī.”

[100] bī murād, so translated because retirement was caused once by the overruling of Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aḥrārī. (T.R. p. 113.)

[101] Once the Mīrzā did not wish Yūnas to winter in Akhsī; once did not expect him to yield to the demand of his Mughūls to be led out of the cultivated country (wilāyat). His own misconduct included his attack in Yūnas on account of Akhsī and much falling-out with kinsmen. (T.R. s.nn.)

[102] i.e. one made of non-warping wood (Steingass), perhaps that of the White Poplar. The Shāh-nāma (Turner, Maçon ed. i, 71) writes of a Chāchī bow and arrows of khadang, i.e. white poplar. (H.B.)

[103] i.e. Rābī‘a-sult̤ān, married circa 893 AH.-1488 AD. For particulars about her and all women mentioned in the B.N. and the T.R. see Gulbadan Begīm’s Humāyūn-nāma, Or. Trs. Series.

[104] jar, either that of the Kāsān Water or of a deeply-excavated canal. The palace buildings are mentioned again on f. 110b. Cf. Appendix A.

[105] i.e. soared from earth, died. For some details of the accident see A.N. (H. Beveridge, i, 220.)

[106] Ḥ.S. ii,-192, Firishta, lith. ed. p. 191 and D’Herbélot, sixth.

It would have accorded with Bābur’s custom if here he had mentioned the parentage of his father’s mother. Three times (fs. 17b, 70b, 96b) he writes of “Shāh Sulṯan Begīm” in a way allowing her to be taken as ‘Umar Shaikh’s own mother. Nowhere, however, does he mention her parentage. One even cognate statement only have we discovered, viz. Khwānd-amīr’s (Ḥ.S. ii, 192) that ‘Umar Shaikh was the own younger brother (barādar khurdtar khūd) of Aḥmad and Maḥmūd. If his words mean that the three were full-brothers, ‘Umar Shaikh’s own mother was Ābū-sa‘īd’s Tarkhān wife. Bābur’s omission (f. 21b) to mention his father with A. and M. as a nephew of Darwesh Muḥammad Tarkhān would be negative testimony against taking Khwānd-amīr’s statement to mean “full-brother,” if clerical slips were not easy and if Khwānd-amir’s means of information were less good. He however both was the son of Maḥmūd’s wāzir (Ḥ.S. ii, 194) and supplemented his book in Bābur’s presence.

To a statement made by the writer of the biographies included in Kehr’s B.N. volume, that ‘U.S.’s family (aūmāgh) is not known, no weight can be attached, spite of the co-incidence that the Mongol form of aūmāgh, i.e. aūmāk means Mutter-leib. The biographies contain too many known mistakes for their compiler to outweigh Khwānd-amīr in authority.

[107] Cf. Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā vi, 266. (H.B.)

[108] Dara-i-gaz, south of Balkh. This historic feast took place at Merv in 870 AH. (1465 AD.). As ‘Umar Shaikh was then under ten, he may have been one of the Mīrzās concerned.

[109] Khudāī-bīrdī is a Pers.-Turkī hybrid equivalent of Theodore; tūghchī implies the right to use or (as hereditary standard-bearer,) to guard the tūgh; Tīmūr-tāsh may mean i.a. Friend of Tīmūr (a title not excluded here as borne by inheritance. Cf. f. 12b and note), Sword-friend (i.e. Companion-in-arms), and Iron-friend (i.e. stanch). Cf. Dict. s.n. Tīmūr-bāsh, a sobriquet of Charles XII.

[110] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. qūbā yūzlūq; this is under-lined in the Elph. MS. by ya‘nī pur ghosht. Cf. f. 68b for the same phrase. The four earlier trss. viz. the two W.-i-B., the English and the French, have variants in this passage.

[111] The apposition may be between placing the turban-sash round the turban-cap in a single flat fold and winding it four times round after twisting it on itself. Cf. f. 18 and Hughes Dict. of Islām s.n. turban.

[112] qaẓālār, the prayers and fasts omitted when due, through war, travel sickness, etc.

[113] rawān sawādī bār īdī; perhaps, wrote a running hand. De C. i, 13, ses lectures courantes étaient....

[114] The dates of ‘Umar Shaikh’s limits of perusal allow the Quintets (Khamsatīn) here referred to to be those of Niz̤āmī and Amīr Khusrau of Dihlī. The Maṣnawī must be that of Jalālu’d-dīn Rūmī. (H.B.)

[115] Probably below the Tīrāk (Poplar) Pass, the caravan route much exposed to avalanches.

Mr. Erskine notes that this anecdote is erroneously told as of Bābur by Firishta and others. Perhaps it has been confused with the episode on f. 207b. Firishta makes another mistaken attribution to Bābur, that of Ḥasan of Yaq‘ūb’s couplet. (H.B.) Cf. f. 13b and Dow’s Hindustan ii, 218.

[116] yīgītlār, young men, the modern jighit. Bābur uses the word for men on the effective fighting strength. It answers to the “brave” of North. American Indian story; here de C. translates it by braves.

[117] ma‘jūn. Cf. Von Schwarz p. 286 for a recipe.

[118] mutaiyam. This word, not clearly written in all MSS., has been mistaken for yītīm. Cf. JRAS 1910 p. 882 for a note upon it by my husband to whom I owe the emendation.

[119] na’l u dāghī bisyār īdī, that is, he had inflicted on himself many of the brands made by lovers and enthusiasts. Cf. Chardin’s Voyages ii, 253 and Lady M. Montague’s Letters p. 200.

[120] tīka sīkrītkū, lit. likely to make goats leap, from sīkrīmāk to jump close-footed (Shaw).

[121] sīkrīkān dūr. Both sīkrītkū and sīkrīkān dūr, appear to dictate translation in general terms and not by reference to a single traditional leap by one goat.

[122] i.e. Russian; it is the Arys tributary of the Sīr.

[123] The Fr. map of 1904 shows Kas, in the elbow of the Sīr, which seems to represent Khwāṣ.

[124] i.e. the Chīr-chīk tributary of the Sīr.

[125] Concerning his name, see T.R. p. 173.

[126] i.e. he was a head-man of a horde sub-division, nominally numbering 10,000, and paying their dues direct to the supreme Khān. (T.R. p. 301.)

[127] ghūnchachī i.e. one ranking next to the four legal wives, in Turkī aūdālīq, whence odalisque. Bābur and Gul-badan mention the promotion of several to Begīm’s rank by virtue of their motherhood.

[128] One of Bābur’s quatrains, quoted in the Abūshqa, is almost certainly addressed to Khān-zāda. Cf. A.Q. Review, Jan. 1911, p. 4; H. Beveridge’s Some verses of Bābur. For an account of her marriage see Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry) cap. xxxix.

[129] Kehr’s MS. has a passage here not found elsewhere and seeming to be an adaptation of what is at the top of Ḥai. MS. f. 88. (Ilminsky, p. 10, ba wujūd ... tāpīb.)

[130] tūshtī, which here seems to mean that she fell to his share on division of captives. Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ makes it a love-match and places the marriage before Bābur’s departure. Cf. f. 95 and notes.

[131] aūgāhlān. Khurram would be about five when given Balkh in circa 911 AH. (1505 AD.). He died when about 12. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 364.

[132] This fatrat (interregnum) was between Bābur’s loss of Farghāna and his gain of Kābul; the furṣatlār were his days of ease following success in Hindūstān and allowing his book to be written.

[133] qīlālīng, lit. do thou be (setting down), a verbal form recurring on f. 227b l. 2. With the same form (aīt)ālīng, lit. do thou be saying, the compiler of the Abūshqa introduces his quotations. Shaw’s paradigm, qīlīng only. Cf. A.Q.R. Jan. 1911, p. 2.

[134] Kehr’s MS. (Ilminsky p. 12) and its derivatives here interpolate the erroneous statement that the sons of Yūnas were Afāq and Bābā Khāns.

[135] i.e. broke up the horde. Cf. T.R. p. 74.

[136] See f. 50b for his descent.

[137] Descendants of these captives were in Kāshghar when Ḥaidar was writing the T.R. It was completed in 953 AH. (1547 AD.). Cf. T.R. pp. 81 and 149.

[138] An omission from his Persian source misled Mr. Erskine here into making Abū-sa‘īd celebrate the Khānīm’s marriage, not with himself but with his defeated foe, ‘Abdu’l-‘azīz who had married her 28 years earlier.

[139] Aīsān-būghā was at Āq Sū in Eastern Turkistān; Yūnas Khān’s head-quarters were in Yītī-kīnt. The Sāghārīchī tūmān was a subdivision of the Kūnchī Mughūls.

[140] Khān kūtārdīlār. The primitive custom was to lift the Khān-designate off the ground; the phrase became metaphorical and would seem to be so here, since there were two upon the felt. Cf., however, Th. Radloff’s Récueil d’Itinéraires p. 326.

[141] qūyūb īdī, probably in childhood.

[142] She was divorced by Shaibānī Khān in 907 AH. in order to allow him to make lawful marriage with her niece, Khān-zāda.

[143] This was a prudential retreat before Shaibānī Khān. Cf. f. 213.

[144] The “Khān” of his title bespeaks his Chaghatāī-Mughūl descent through his mother, the “Mīrzā,” his Tīmūrid-Turkī, through his father. The capture of the women was facilitated by the weakening of their travelling escort through his departure. Cf. T.R. p. 203.

[145] Qila‘-i-z̤afar. Its ruins are still to be seen on the left bank of the Kukcha. Cf. T.R. p. 220 and Kostenko i, 140. For Mubārak Shāh Muẓaffarī see f. 213 and T.R. s.n.

[146] Ḥabība, a child when captured, was reared by Shaibānī and by him given in marriage to his nephew. Cf. T.R. p. 207 for an account of this marriage as saving Ḥaidar’s life.

[147] i.e. she did not take to flight with her husband’s defeated force, but, relying on the victor, her cousin Bābur, remained in the town. Cf. T.R. p. 268. Her case receives light from Shahr-bānū’s (f. 169).

[148] Muḥammad Ḥaidar Mīrzā Kūrkān Dūghlāt Chaghatāī Mūghūl, the author of the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī; b. 905 AH. d. 958 AH. (b. 1499 d. 1551 AD.). Of his clan, the “Oghlāt” (Dūghlāt) Muḥ. ṣāliḥ says that it was called “Oghlāt” by Mughūls but Qūngūr-āt (Brown Horse) by Aūzbegs.

[149]

Baz garadad ba aṣl-i-khūd hama chīz,

Zar-i-ṣāfī u naqra u airzīn.

These lines are in Arabic in the introduction to the Anwār-i-suhailī. (H.B.) The first is quoted by Ḥaidar (T.R. p. 354) and in Field’s Dict. of Oriental Quotations (p. 160). I understand them to refer here to Ḥaidar’s return to his ancestral home and nearest kin as being a natural act.

[150] tā’ib and t̤arīqā suggest that Ḥaidar had become an orthodox Musalmān in or about 933 AH. (1527 AD.).

[151] Abū’l-faẓl adds music to Ḥaidar’s accomplishments and Ḥaidar’s own Prologue mentions yet others.

[152] Cf. T.R. s.n. and Gul-badan’s H.N. s.n. Ḥaram Begīm.

[153] i.e. Alexander of Macedon. For modern mention of Central Asian claims to Greek descent see i.a. Kostenko, Von Schwarz, Holdich and A. Durand. Cf. Burnes’ Kābul p. 203 for an illustration of a silver patera (now in the V. and A. Museum), once owned by ancestors of this Shāh Sult̤ān Muḥammad.

[154] Cf. f. 6b note.

[155] i.e. Khān’s child.

[156] The careful pointing of the Ḥai. MS. clears up earlier confusion by showing the narrowing of the vowels from ālāchī to alacha.

[157] The Elph. MS. (f. 7) writes Aūng, Khān’s son, Prester John’s title, where other MSS. have Adik. Bābur’s brevity has confused his account of Sult̤ān-nigār. Widowed of Maḥmūd in 900 AH. she married Adik; Adik, later, joined Shaibānī Khān but left him in 908 AH. perhaps secretly, to join his own Qāzāq horde. He was followed by his wife, apparently also making a private departure. As Adik died shortly after 908 AH. his daughters were born before that date and not after it as has been understood. Cf. T.R. and G.B.’s H.N. s.nn.; also Mems. p. 14 and Méms. i, 24.

[158] Presumably by tribal custom, yīnkālīk, marriage with a brother’s widow. Such marriages seem to have been made frequently for the protection of women left defenceless.

[159] Sa‘īd’s power to protect made him the refuge of several kinswomen mentioned in the B.N. and the T.R. This mother and child reached Kāshghar in 932 AH. (1526 AD.).

Here Bābur ends his [interpolated] account of his mother’s family and resumes that of his father’s.

[160] Bābur uses a variety of phrases to express Lordship in the Gate. Here he writes aīshīknī bāshlātīb; elsewhere, aīshīk ikhtiyārī qīlmāq and mīnīng aīshīkīmdā ṣāḥib ikhtiyārī qīlmāq. Von Schwarz (p. 159) throws light on the duties of the Lord of the Gate (Aīshīk Āghāsī). “Das Thür ... führt in eine grosse, vier-eckige, höhe Halle, deren Boden etwa 2 m. über den Weg erhoben ist. In dieser Halle, welche alle passieren muss, der durch das Thor eingeht, reitet oder fahrt, ist die Thorwache placiert. Tagsüber sind die Thore beständig öffen, nach Eintritt der Dunkelheit aber werden dieselben geschlossen und die Schlüssel dem zuständigen Polizeichef abgeliefert.... In den erwähnten Thorhallen nehmen in den hoch unabhängigen Gebieten an Bazar-tagen haufig die Richter Platz, um jedem der irgend ein Anliegen hat, so fort Recht zu sprechen. Die zudiktierten Strafen werden auch gleich in diesem selben locale vollzogen und eventuell die zum Hangen verurteilten Verbrecher an den Deckbalken aufgehängt, so dass die Besucher des Bazars unter den gehenkten durchpassieren müssen.”

[161] bu khabarnī ‘Abdu’l-wahhāb shaghāwaldīn ‘arẓa-dāsht qīlīb Mīrzāghā chāptūrdīlār. This passage has been taken to mean that the shaghāwal, i.e. chief scribe, was the courier, but I think Bābur’s words shew that the shaghāwal’s act preceded the despatch of the news. Moreover the only accusative of the participle and of the verb is khabarnī. ‘Abdu’l-wahhāb had been ‘Umar Shaikh’s and was now Aḥmad’s officer in Khujand, on the main road for Aūrā-tīpā whence the courier started on the rapid ride. The news may have gone verbally to ‘Abdu’l-wahhāb and he have written it on to Aḥmad and Abū-sa‘īd.

[162] Measured from point to point even, the distance appears to be over 500 miles. Concerning Bābā Khākī see Ḥ.S. ii. 224; for rapid riding i.a. Kostenko iii, cap. Studs.

[163] qūshūqlārnī yakhshī aītūrā īkān dūr. Elph. MS. for qūshūq, tūyūk. Qūshūq is allowed, both by its root and by usage, to describe improvisations of combined dance and song. I understand from Bābur’s tense, that his information was hearsay only.

[164] i.e. of the military class. Cf. Vullers s.n. and T.R. p. 301.

[165] The Hūma is a fabulous bird, overshadowing by whose wings brings good-fortune. The couplet appears to be addressed to some man, under the name Hūma, from whom Ḥasan of Yaq‘ūb hoped for benefit.

[166] khāk-bīla; the Sanglākh, (quoting this passage) gives khāk-p:l:k as the correct form of the word.

[167] Cf. f. 99b.

[168] One of Tīmūr’s begs.

[169] i.e. uncle on the mother’s side, of any degree, here a grandmother’s brother. The title appears to have been given for life to men related to the ruling House. Parallel with it are Madame Mère, Royal Uncle, Sult̤ān Wālida.

[170] kīm dīsā būlghāī, perhaps meaning, “Nothing of service to me.”

[171] Wais the Thin.

[172] Cf. Chardin ed. Langlès v, 461 and ed. 1723 AD. v, 183.

[173] n.e. of Kāsān. Cf. f. 74. Ḥai MS., erroneously, Samarkand.

[174] An occasional doubt arises as to whether a t̤aurī of the text is Arabic and dispraises or Turkī and laudatory. Cf. Mems. p. 17 and Méms. i, 3.

[175] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. aftābachī, water-bottle bearer on journeys; Kehr (p. 82) aftābchī, ewer-bearer; Ilminsky (p. 19) akhtachi, squire or groom. Circumstances support aftābachī. Yūnas was town-bred, his ewer-bearer would hardly be the rough Mughūl, Qaṃbar-‘alī, useful as an aftābachī.

[176] Bābur was Governor of Andijān and the month being June, would be living out-of-doors. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii. 272 and Schuyler ii, 37.

[177] To the word Sherīm applies Abū’l-ghāzī’s explanation of Nurūm and Ḥājīm, namely, that they are abbreviations of Nūr and Ḥājī Muḥammad. It explains Sult̤ānīm also when used (f. 72) of Sl. Muḥammad Khānika but of Sult̤ānīm as the name is common with Bābur, Ḥaidar and Gul-badan, i.e. as a woman’s, Busbecq’s explanation is the better, namely, that it means My Sult̤ān and is applied to a person of rank and means. This explains other women’s titles e.g. Khānīm, my Khān and Ākām (Ākīm), My Lady. A third group of names formed like the last by enclitic 'm (my), may be called names of affection, e.g. Māhīm, My Moon, Jānīm, My Life. (Cf. Persian equivalents.) Cf. Abū’l-ghāzī’s Shajarat-i-Turkī (Désmaisons p. 272); and Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq’s Life and Letters (Forster and Daniel i, 38.)

[178] Namāz-gāh; generally an open terrace, with a wall towards the Qibla and outside the town, whither on festival days the people go out in crowds to pray. (Erskine.)

[179] Bēglār (nīng) mīnī u wilāyatnī tāpshūrghūlārī dūr; a noticeably idiomatic sentence. Cf. f. 16b 1. 6 and 1. 7 for a repetition.

[180] Maḥmūd was in Tāshkīnt, Aḥmad in Kāshghār or on the Āq-sū.

[181] The B.N. contains a considerable number of what are virtually footnotes. They are sometimes, as here, entered in the middle of a sentence and confuse the narrative; they are introduced by kīm, a mere sign of parenthetical matter to follow, and some certainly, known not to be Bābur’s own, must have stood first on the margin of his text. It seems best to enter them as Author’s notes.

[182] i.e. the author of the Hidāyat. Cf. f. 3b and note; Blochmann Āyīn-i-akbarī s.n. qulij and note; Bellew’s Afghan Tribes p. 100, Khilich.

[183] Ar. dead, gone. The precision of Bābur’s words khānwādalār and yūsūnlūq is illustrated by the existence in the days of Tīmūr, in Marghīnān, (Burhānu’d-dīn’s township) of a ruler named Aīlīk Khān, apparently a descendant of Sātūq-būghrā Khān (b. 384 AH.-994 AD.) so that in Khwāja Qāẓī were united two dynasties, (khānwādalār), one priestly, perhaps also regal, the other of bye-gone ruling Khāns. Cf. D’Herbélot p. 433; Yarkand Mission, Bellew p. 121; Taẕkirat-i Sult̤ān Sātūq-būghrā Khān Ghāzī Pādshāh and Tārīkh-i-nāṣirī (Raverty s.n.)

[184] darzī; Ḥ.S. khaiyāt̤.

[185] bīr yīrgā (qūyūb), lit. to one place.

[186] i.e. reconstructed the earthern defences. Cf. Von Schwarz s.n. loess.

[187] They had been sent, presumably, before ‘Umar Shaikh’s death, to observe Sl. Aḥmad M.’s advance. Cf. f. 6.

[188] The time-table of the Andijān Railway has a station, Kouwa (Qabā).

[189] Bābur, always I think, calls this man Long Ḥasan; Khwānd-amīr styles him Khwāja Ḥasan; he seems to be the brother of one of ‘Umar Shaikh’s fathers-in-law, Khwāja Ḥusain.

[190] bātqāq. This word is underlined in the Elph. MS. by dil-dil and in the Ḥai. MS. by jam-jama. It is translated in the W.-i-B. by āb pur hīla, water full of deceit; it is our Slough of Despond. It may be remarked that neither Zenker nor Steingass gives to dil-dil or jam-jama the meaning of morass; the Akbar-nāma does so. (H.B. ii, 112.)

[191] t̤awīla t̤awīla ātlār yīghīlīb aūlā kīrīshtī. I understand the word yīghīlīb to convey that the massing led to the spread of the murrain.

[192] jān tārātmāqlār i.e. as a gift to their over-lord.

[193] Perhaps, Bābur’s maternal great-uncle. It would suit the privileges bestowed on Tarkhāns if their title meant Khān of the Gifts (Turkī tar, gift). In the Bāburnāma, it excludes all others. Most of Aḥmad’s begs were Tarkhāns, Arghūns and Chīngīz Khānids, some of them ancestors of later rulers in Tatta and Sind. Concerning the Tarkhāns see T.R. p. 55 and note; A.N. (H.B. s.n.) Elliot and Dowson’s History of India, 498.

[194] Cf. f. 6.

[195] beg ātākā, lit. beg for father.

[196] T.R. s.n. Ābā-bikr.

[197] Cf. f. 6b and note.

[198] faqra u masākin, i.e. those who have food for one day and those who have none in hand. (Steingass.)

[199] For fashions of sitting, see Tawārīkh-i-guzīda Naṣrat-nāma B.M. Or. 3222. Aḥmad would appear to have maintained the deferential attitude by kneeling and sitting back upon his heels.

[200] bīr sūnkāk bār īkān dūr. I understand that something defiling must have been there, perhaps a bone.

[201] Khwājanīng ham āyāghlārī ārādā īdī.

[202] īlbāsūn, a kind of mallard (Abūshqa), here perhaps a popinjay. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 193 for Aḥmad’s skill as an archer, and Payne-Gallwey’s Cross-bow p. 225.

[203] qabāq, an archer’s mark. Abū’l-ghāzī (Kāsān ed. p. 181. 5) mentions a hen (tūqūq) as a mark. Cf. Payne-Gallwey l.c. p. 231.

[204] qīrghīcha, astar palumbarius. (Shaw’s Voc. Scully.)

[205] Perhaps, not quarrelsome.

[206] The T.R. (p. 116) attributes the rout to Shaibānī’s defection. The Ḥ.S. (ii, 192) has a varied and confused account. An error in the T.R. trs. making Shaibānī plunder the Mughūls, is manifestly clerical.

[207] i.e. condiment, ce qu’on ajoute au pain.

[208] Cf. f. 6.

[209] qāzāqlār; here, if Bābur’s, meaning his conflicts with Taṃbal, but as the Begīm may have been some time in Khujand, the qāzāqlār may be of Samarkand.

[210] All the (Turkī) Bābur-nāma MSS. and those examined of the W.-i-B. by writing aūltūrdī (killed) where I suggest to read aūlnūrdī (devenir comme il faut) state that Aḥmad killed Qātāq. I hesitate to accept this (1) because the only evidence of the murder is one diacritical point, the removal of which lifts Aḥmad’s reproach from him by his return to the accepted rules of a polygamous household; (2) because no murder of Qātāq is chronicled by Khwānd-amīr or other writers; and (3) because it is incredible that a mild, weak man living in a family atmosphere such as Bābur, Ḥaidar and Gul-badan reproduce for us, should, while possessing facility for divorce, kill the mother of four out of his five children.

Reprieve must wait however until the word tīrīklīk is considered. This Erskine and de C. have read, with consistency, to mean life-time, but if aūlnūrdī be read in place of aūltūrdī (killed), tīrīklīk may be read, especially in conjunction with Bābur’s ‘āshīqlīklār, as meaning living power or ascendancy. Again, if read as from tīrik, a small arrow and a consuming pain, tīrīklīk may represent Cupid’s darts and wounds. Again it might be taken as from tīrāmāk, to hinder, or forbid.

Under these considerations, it is legitimate to reserve judgment on Aḥmad.

[211] It is customary amongst Turks for a bride, even amongst her own family, to remain veiled for some time after marriage; a child is then told to pluck off the veil and run away, this tending, it is fancied, to the child’s own success in marriage. (Erskine.)

[212] Bābur’s anecdote about Jānī Beg well illustrates his caution as a narrator. He appears to tell it as one who knowing the point of a story, leads up to it. He does not affirm that Jānī Beg’s habits were strange or that the envoy was an athlete but that both things must have been (īkān dūr) from what he had heard or to suit the point of the anecdote. Nor does he affirm as of his own knowledge that Aūzbegs calls a strong man (his zor kīshī) a būkuh (bull) but says it is so understood (dīr īmīsh).

[213] Cf. f. 170.

[214] The points of a tīpūchāq are variously stated. If the root notion of the name be movement (tīp), Erskine’s observation, that these horses are taught special paces, is to the point. To the verb tīprāmāq dictionaries assign the meaning of movement with agitation of mind, an explanation fully illustrated in the B.N. The verb describes fittingly the dainty, nervous action of some trained horses. Other meanings assigned to tūpūchāq are roadster, round-bodied and swift.

[215] Cf. f. 37b.

[216] Cf. f. 6b and note.

[217] mashaf kitābat qīlūr īdī.

[218] Cf. f. 36 and Ḥ.S. ii. 271.

[219] sīnkīlīsī ham mūndā īdī.

[220] khāna-wādalār, viz. the Chaghatāī, the Tīmūrid in two Mīrān-shāhī branches, ‘Alī’s and Bābur’s and the Bāī-qarā in Harāt.

[221] aūghlāqchī i.e. player at kūk-būrā. Concerning the game, see Shaw’s Vocabulary; Schuyler i, 268; Kostenko iii, 82; Von Schwarz s.n. baiga.

[222] Ẕū’l-ḥijja 910 AH.-May 1505 AD. Cf. f. 154. This statement helps to define what Bābur reckoned his expeditions into Hindūstān.

[223] Aīkū (Ayāgū)-tīmūr Tarkhān Arghūn d. circa 793 AH.-1391 AD. He was a friend of Tīmūr. See Z̤.N. i, 525 etc.

[224] āndāq ikhlāq u at̤awārī yūq īdī kīm dīsā būlghāī. The Shāh-nāma cap. xviii, describes him as a spoiled child and man of pleasure, caring only for eating, drinking and hunting. The Shaibānī-nāma narrates his various affairs.

[225] i.e., cutlass, a parallel sobriquet to qīlīch, sword. If it be correct to translate by “cutlass,” the nickname may have prompted Bābur’s brief following comment, mardāna īkān dūr, i.e. Qulī Muḥ. must have been brave because known as the Cutlass. A common variant in MSS. from Būghdā is Bāghdād; Bāghdād was first written in the Ḥai. MS. but is corrected by the scribe to būghdā.

[226] So pointed in the Ḥai. MS. I surmise it a clan-name.

[227] i.e. to offer him the succession. The mountain road taken from Aūrā-tīpā would be by Āb-burdan, Sara-tāq and the Kām Rūd defile.

[228] īrīldī. The departure can hardly have been open because Aḥmad’s begs favoured Maḥmūd; Malik-i-Muḥammad’s party would be likely to slip away in small companies.

[229] This well-known Green, Grey or Blue palace or halting-place was within the citadel of Samarkand. Cf. f. 37. It served as a prison from which return was not expected.

[230] Cf. f. 27. He married a full-sister of Bāī-sunghar.

[231] Gulistān Part I. Story 27. For “steaming up,” see Tennyson’s Lotus-eaters Choric song, canto 8 (H.B.).

[232] Elph. MS. f. 16b; First W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 19; Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 15b; Memoirs p. 27.

[233] He was a Dūghlāt, uncle by marriage of Ḥaidar Mīrzā and now holding Khost for Maḥmūd. See T.R. s.n. for his claim on Aīsān-daulat’s gratitude.

[234] tāsh qūrghān dā chīqār dā. Here (as e.g. f. 110b l. 9) the Second W.-i-B. translates tāsh as though it meant stone instead of outer. Cf. f. 47 for an adjectival use of tāsh, stone, with the preposition (tāsh) din. The places contrasted here are the citadel (ark) and the walled-town (qūrghān). The chīqār (exit) is the fortified Gate-house of the mud circumvallation. Cf. f. 46 for another example of chīqār.

[235] Elph. Ḥai. Kehr’s MSS., ānīng bīla bār kīshi bār beglārnī tūtūrūldī. This idiom recurs on f. 76b l. 8. A palimpsest entry in the Elph. MS. produces the statement that when Ḥasan fled, his begs returned to Andijān.

[236] Ḥai. MS. awī mūnkūzī, underlined by sāgh-i-gāū, cows’ thatched house. [T. mūnkūz, lit. horn, means also cattle.] Elph. MS., awī mūnkūsh, underlined by dar jā’ī khwāb alfakhta, sleeping place. [T. mūnkūsh, retired.]

[237] The first qāchār of this pun has been explained as gurez-gāh, sharm-gāh, hinder parts, fuite and vertèbre inférieur. The Ḥ.S. (ii, 273 l. 3 fr. ft.) says the wound was in a vital (maqattal) part.

[238] From Niz̤āmī’s Khusrau u Shirīn, Lahore lith. ed. p. 137 l. 8. It is quoted also in the A.N. Bib. Ind. ed. ii, 207 (H.B. ii, 321). (H.B.).

[239] See Hughes Dictionary of Islām s.nn. Eating and Food.

[240] Cf. f. 6b and note. If ‘Umar Shaikh were Maḥmūd’s full-brother, his name might well appear here.

[241] i.e. “Not a farthing, not a half-penny.”

[242] Here the Mems. enters a statement, not found in the Turkī text, that Maḥmūd’s dress was elegant and fashionable.

[243] n:h:l:m. My husband has cleared up a mistake (Mems. p. 28 and Méms. i, 54) of supposing this to be the name of an animal. It is explained in the A.N. (i, 255. H.B. i, 496) as a Badakhshī equivalent of tasqāwal; tasqāwal var. tāshqāwal, is explained by the Farhang-i-az̤farī, a Turkī-Persian Dict. seen in the Mullā Fīroz Library of Bombay, to mean rāh band kunanda, the stopping of the road. Cf. J.R.A.S. 1900 p. 137.

[244] i.e. “a collection of poems in the alphabetical order of the various end rhymes.” (Steingass.)

[245] At this battle Daulat-shāh was present. Cf. Browne’s D.S. for Astarābād p. 523 and for Andikhūd p. 532. For this and all other references to D.S. and Ḥ.S. I am indebted to my husband.

[246] The following dates will help out Bābur’s brief narrative. Maḥmūd æt. 7, was given Astarābād in 864 AH. (1459-60 AD.); it was lost to Ḥusain at Jauz-wilāyat and Maḥmūd went into Khurāsān in 865 AH.; he was restored by his father in 866 AH.; on his father’s death (873 AH.-1469 AD.) he fled to Harāt, thence to Samarkand and from there was taken to Ḥiṣār æt. 16. Cf. D’Herbélot s.n. Abū-sa‘ad; Ḥ.S. i, 209; Browne’s D.S. p. 522.

[247] Presumably the “Hindūstān the Less” of Clavijo (Markham p. 3 and p. 113), approx. Qaṃbar-‘alī’s districts. Clavijo includes Tīrmīẕ under the name.

[248] Perhaps a Ṣufī term,—longing for the absent friend. For particulars about this man see Ḥ.S. ii, 235 and Browne’s D.S. p. 533.

[249] Here in the Ḥai. MS. is one of several blank spaces, waiting for information presumably not known to Bābur when writing. The space will have been in the archetype of the Ḥai. MS. and it makes for the opinion that the Ḥai. MS. is a direct copy of Bābur’s own. This space is not left in the Elph. MS. but that MS. is known from its scribe’s note (f. 198) down to f. 198 (Ḥai. MS. f. 243b) to have been copied from “other writings” and only subsequent to its f. 198 from Bābur’s own. Cf. JRAS 1906 p. 88 and 1907 p. 143.

[250] The T.R. (p. 330) supplies this name.

[251] Cf. f. 35b. This was a betrothal only, the marriage being made in 903 AH. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 260 and Gul-badan’s H.N. f. 24b.

[252] Kehr’s MS. supplies Aī (Moon) as her name but it has no authority. The Elph. MS. has what may be lā nām, no name, on its margin and over tūrūtūnchī (4th.) its usual sign of what is problematical.

[253] See Ḥ.S. ii, 250. Here Pīr-i-Muḥammad Aīlchī-būghā was drowned. Cf. f. 29.

[254] Chaghānīān is marked in Erskine’s (Mems.) map as somewhere about the head of (Fr. map 1904) the Ilyak Water, a tributary of the Kāfir-nighān.

[255] i.e. when Bābur was writing in Hindūstān.

[256] For his family see f. 55b note to Yār-‘alī Balāl.

[257] bā wujūd turklūk muhkam paidā kunanda īdī.

[258] Roebuck’s Oriental Proverbs (p. 232) explains the five of this phrase where seven might be expected, by saying that of this Seven days’ world (qy. days of Creation) one is for birth, another for death, and that thus five only are left for man’s brief life.

[259] The cognomen Aīlchī-būghā, taken with the bearer’s recorded strength of fist, may mean Strong man of Aīlchī (the capital of Khutan). One of Tīmūr’s commanders bore the name. Cf. f. 21b for būghū as athlete.

[260] Hazārāspī seems to be Mīr Pīr Darwesh Hazārāspī. With his brother, Mīr ‘Alī, he had charge of Balkh. See Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā B.M. Add. 23506, f. 242b; Browne’s D.S. p. 432. It may be right to understand a hand-to-hand fight between Hazārāspī and Aīlchī-būghā. The affair was in 857 AH. (1453 AD.).

[261] yārāq sīz, perhaps trusting to fisticuffs, perhaps without mail. Bābur’s summary has confused the facts. Muḥ. Aīlchī-būghā was sent by Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā from Ḥiṣār with 1,000 men and did not issue out of Qūndūz. (Ḥ.S. ii, 251.) His death occurred not before 895 AH.

[262] See T.R. s.nn. Mīr Ayūb and Ayūb.

[263] This passage is made more clear by f. 120b and f. 125b.

[264] He is mentioned in ‘Alī-sher Nawā’ī’s Majālis-i-nafā’is; see B.M. Add. 7875, f. 278 and Rieu’s Turkish Catalogue.

[265] ? full of splits or full handsome.

[266] This may have occurred after Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā’s death whose son Abā-bikr was. Cf. f. 28. If so, over-brevity has obscured the statement.

[267] mīnglīgh aīldīn dūr, perhaps of those whose hereditary Command was a Thousand, the head of a Mīng (Pers. Hazāra), i.e. of the tenth of a tūmān.

[268] qūrghān-nīng tāshīdā yāngī tām qūpārīb sālā dūr. I understand, that what was taken was a new circumvallation in whole or in part. Such double walls are on record. Cf. Appendix A.

[269] bahādurlūq aūlūsh, an actual portion of food.

[270] i.e. either unmailed or actually naked.

[271] The old English noun strike expresses the purpose of the sar-kob. It is “an instrument for scraping off what rises above the top” (Webster, whose example is grain in a measure). The sar-kob is an erection of earth or wood, as high as the attacked walls, and it enabled besiegers to strike off heads appearing above the ramparts.

[272] i.e. the dislocation due to ‘Umar Shaikh’s death.

[273] Cf. f. 13. The Ḥ.S. (ii, 274) places his son, Mīr Mughūl, in charge, but otherwise agrees with the B.N.

[274] Cf. Clavijo, Markham p. 132. Sir Charles Grandison bent the knee on occasions but illustrated MSS. e.g. the B.M. Tawārīkh-i-guzīda Naṣrat-nāma show that Bābur would kneel down on both knees. Cf. f. 123b for the fatigue of the genuflection.

[275] I have translated kūrūshūb thus because it appears to me that here and in other places, stress is laid by Bābur upon the mutual gaze as an episode of a ceremonious interview. The verb kūrūshmak is often rendered by the Persian translators as daryāftan and by the L. and E. Memoirs as to embrace. I have not found in the B.N. warrant for translating it as to embrace; qūchūshmāq is Bābur’s word for this (f. 103). Daryāftan, taken as to grasp or see with the mind, to understand, well expresses mutual gaze and its sequel of mutual understanding. Sometimes of course, kūrūsh, the interview does not imply kūrūsh, the silent looking in the eyes with mutual understanding; it simply means se voyer e.g. f. 17. The point is thus dwelt upon because the frequent mention of an embrace gives a different impression of manners from that made by “interview” or words expressing mutual gaze.

[276] dābān. This word Réclus (vi, 171) quoting from Fedschenko, explains as a difficult rocky defile; art, again, as a dangerous gap at a high elevation; bel, as an easy low pass; and kūtal, as a broad opening between low hills. The explanation of kūtal does not hold good for Bābur’s application of the word (f. 81b) to the Sara-tāq.

[277] Cf. f. 4b and note. From Bābur’s special mention of it, it would seem not to be the usual road.

[278] The spelling of this name is uncertain. Variants are many. Concerning the tribe see T.R. p. 165 n.

[279] Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī Barlās: see Gul-badan’s H.N. s.n. He served Bābur till the latter’s death.

[280] i.e. Ẕū’n-nūn or perhaps the garrison.

[281] i.e. down to Shaibānī’s destruction of Chaghatāī rule in Tāshkīnt in 1503 AD.

[282] Elph. MS. f. 23; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 26 and 217 f. 21; Mems. p. 35.

Bābur’s own affairs form a small part of this year’s record; the rest is drawn from the Ḥ.S. which in its turn, uses Bābur’s f. 34 and f. 37b. Each author words the shared material in his own style; one adding magniloquence, the other retracting to plain statement, indeed summarizing at times to obscurity. Each passes his own judgment on events, e.g. here Khwānd-amīr’s is more favourable to Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s conduct of the Ḥiṣār campaign than Bābur’s. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 256-60 and 274.

[283] This feint would take him from the Oxus.

[284] Tīrmīẕ to Ḥiṣār, 96m. (Réclus vi, 255).

[285] Ḥ.S. Wazr-āb valley. The usual route is up the Kām Rūd and over the Mūra pass to Sara-tāq. Cf. f. 81b.

[286] i.e. the Ḥiṣārī mentioned a few lines lower and on f. 99b. Nothing on f. 99b explains his cognomen.

[287] The road is difficult. Cf. f. 81b.

[288] Khwānd-amīr also singles out one man for praise, Sl. Maḥmūd Mīr-i-ākhwur; the two names probably represent one person. The sobriquet may refer to skill with a matchlock, to top-spinning (firnagī-bāz) or to some lost joke. (Ḥ.S. ii, 257.)

[289] This pregnant phrase has been found difficult. It may express that Bābur assigned the sult̤āns places in their due precedence; that he seated them in a row; and that they sat cross-legged, as men of rank, and were not made, as inferiors, to kneel and sit back on their heels. Out of this last meaning, I infer comes the one given by dictionaries, “to sit at ease,” since the cross-legged posture is less irksome than the genuflection, not to speak of the ease of mind produced by honour received. Cf. f. 18b and note on Aḥmad’s posture; Redhouse s.nn. bāghīsh and bāghdāsh; and B.M. Tawārīkh-i-guzīda naṣrat-nāma, in the illustrations of which the chief personage, only, sits cross-legged.

[290] siyāsat. My translation is conjectural only.

[291] sar-kob. The old English noun strike, “an instrument for scraping off what appears above the top,” expresses the purpose of the wall-high erections of wood or earth (L. agger) raised to reach what shewed above ramparts. Cf. Webster.

[292] Presumably lower down the Qūndūz Water.

[293] aūz pādshāhī u mīrzālārīdīn artīb.

[294] sic. Ḥai. MS.; Elph. MS. “near Tāliqān”; some W.-i-B. MSS. “Great Garden.” Gul-badan mentions a Tāliqān Garden. Perhaps the Mīrzā went so far east because, Ẕū’n-nūn being with him, he had Qandahār in mind. Cf. f. 42b.

[295] i.e. Sayyid Muḥammad ‘Alī. See f. 15 n. to Sherīm. Khwāja Changāl lies 14 m. below Tāliqān on the Tāliqān Water. (Erskine.)

[296] f. 27b, second.

[297] The first was circa 895 AH.-1490 AD. Cf. f. 27b.

[298] Bābur’s wording suggests that their common homage was the cause of Badī‘u’z-zamān’s displeasure but see f. 41.

[299] The Mīrzā had grown up with Ḥiṣārīs. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 270.

[300] As the husband of one of the six Badakhshī Begīms, he was closely connected with local ruling houses. See T.R. p. 107.

[301] i.e. Muḥammad ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh the elder of Aḥrārī’s two sons. d. 911 AH. See Rashaḥāt-i-‘ain-alḥayāt (I.O. 633) f. 269-75; and Khizīnatu’l-aṣfīya lith. ed. i, 597.

[302] Bū yūq tūr, i.e. This is not to be.

[303] d. 908 AH. He was not, it would seem, of the Aḥrārī family. His own had provided Pontiffs (Shaikhu’l-islām) for Samarkand through 400 years. Cf. Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry, p. 106; also, for his character, p. 96.

[304] i.e. he claimed sanctuary.

[305] Cf. f. 45b and Pétis de la Croix’s Histoire de Chīngīz Khān pp. 171 and 227. What Tīmūr’s work on the Gūk Sarāī was is a question for archæologists.

[306] i.e. over the Aītmak Pass. Cf. f. 49.

[307] Ḥai. MS. ārālighīgha. Elph. MS. ārāl, island.

[308] See f. 179b for Binā’ī. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā Khwārizmī is the author of the Shaibānī-nāma.

[309] Elph. MS. f. 27; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 30b and 217 f. 25; Mems. p. 42.

[310] i.e. Circassian. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (Sh.N. Vambéry p. 276 l. 58) speaks of other Aūzbegs using Chirkas swords.

[311] aīrtā yāzīghā. My translation is conjectural. Aīrtā implies i.a. foresight. Yāzīghā allows a pun at the expense of the sult̤āns; since it can be read both as to the open country and as for their (next, aīrtā) misdeeds. My impression is that they took the opportunity of being outside Samarkand with their men, to leave Bāī-sunghar and make for Shaibānī, then in Turkistān. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ also marking the tottering Gate of Sl. ‘Alī Mīrzā, left him now, also for Shaibānī. (Vambéry cap. xv.)

[312] aūmāq, to amuse a child in order to keep it from crying.

[313] i.e. with Khwāja Yahya presumably. See f. 38.

[314] This man is mentioned also in the Tawārikh-i-guzīda Naṣratnāma B.M. Or. 3222 f. 124b.

[315] Ḥ.S., on the last day of Ramẓān (June 28th. 1497 AD.).

[316] Muḥammad Sīghal appears to have been a marked man. I quote from the T.G.N.N. (see supra), f. 123b foot, the information that he was the grandson of Ya‘qūb Beg. Zenker explains Sīghalī as the name of a Chaghatāī family. An Ayūb-i-Ya‘qūb Begchīk Mughūl may be an uncle. See f. 43 for another grandson.

[317] baẓ’ī kīrkān-kīnt-kīsākkā bāsh-sīz-qīlghān Mughūllārnī tūtūb. I take the word kīsāk in this highly idiomatic sentence to be a diminutive of kīs, old person, on the analogy of mīr, mīrāk, mard, mardak. [The Ḥ.S. uses Kīsāk (ii, 261) as a proper noun.] The alliteration in kāf and the mighty adjective here are noticeable.

[318] Qāsim feared to go amongst the Mughūls lest he should meet retaliatory death. Cf. f. 99b.

[319] This appears from the context to be Yām (Jām) -bāī and not the Djouma (Jām) of the Fr. map of 1904, lying farther south. The Avenue named seems likely to be Tīmūr’s of f. 45b and to be on the direct road for Khujand. See Schuyler i, 232.

[320] būghān buyīnī. W.-i-B. 215, yān, thigh, and 217 gardan, throat. I am in doubt as to the meaning of būghān; perhaps the two words stand for joint at the nape of the neck. Khwāja-i-kalān was one of seven brothers, six died in Bābur’s service, he himself served till Bābur’s death.

[321] Cf. f. 48.

[322] Khorochkine (Radlov’s Réceuil d’Itinéraires p. 241) mentions Pul-i-mougak, a great stone bridge thrown across a deep ravine, east of Samarkand. For Kūl-i-maghāk, deep pool, or pool of the fosse, see f. 48b.

[323] From Khwānd-amīr’s differing account of this affair, it may be surmised that those sending the message were not treacherous; but the message itself was deceiving inasmuch as it did not lead Bābur to expect opposition. Cf. f. 43 and note.

[324] Of this nick-name several interpretations are allowed by the dictionaries.

[325] See Schuyler i, 268 for an account of this beautiful Highland village.

[326] Here Bābur takes up the thread, dropped on f. 36, of the affairs of the Khurāsānī mīrzās. He draws on other sources than the Ḥ.S.; perhaps on his own memory, perhaps on information given by Khurāsānīs with him in Hindūstān e.g. Ḥusain’s grandson. See f. 167b. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 261.

[327] bāghīshlāb tūr. Cf. f. 34 note to bāghīsh dā.

[328] Bū sozlār aūnūlūng. Some W.-i-B. MSS., Farāmosh bakunīd for nakunīd, thus making the Mīrzā not acute but rude, and destroying the point of the story i.e. that the Mīrzā pretended so to have forgotten as to have an empty mind. Khwānd-amīr states that ‘Alī-sher prevailed at first; his tears therefore may have been of joy at the success of his pacifying mission.

[329] i.e. B.Z.’s father, Ḥusain, against Mū‘min’s father, B.Z. and Ḥusain’s son, Muz̤affar Ḥusain against B.Z.’s son Mū‘min;—a veritable conundrum.

[330] Garzawān lies west of Balkh. Concerning Pul-i-chirāgh Col. Grodekoff’s Ride to Harāt (Marvin p. 103 ff.) gives pertinent information. It has also a map showing the Pul-i-chirāgh meadow. The place stands at the mouth of a triply-bridged defile, but the name appears to mean Gate of the Lamp (cf. Gate of Tīmūr), and not Bridge of the Lamp, because the Ḥ.S. and also modern maps write bīl (bel), pass, where the Turkī text writes pul, bridge, narrows, pass.

The lamp of the name is one at the shrine of a saint, just at the mouth of the defile. It was alight when Col. Grodekoff passed in 1879 and to it, he says, the name is due now—as it presumably was 400 years ago and earlier.

[331] Khwānd-amīr heard from the Mīrzā on the spot, when later in his service, that he was let down the precipice by help of turban-sashes tied together.

[332] yīkīt yīlāng u yāyāq yālīng; a jingle made by due phonetic change of vowels; a play too on yālāng, which first means stripped i.e. robbed and next unmailed, perhaps sometimes bare-bodied in fight.

[333] qūsh-khāna. As the place was outside the walls, it may be a good hawking ground and not a falconry.

[334] The Ḥ.S. mentions (ii, 222) a Sl. Aḥmad of Chār-shaṃba, a town mentioned e.g. by Grodekoff p. 123. It also spoils Bābur’s coincidence by fixing Tuesday, Shab‘ān 29th. for the battle. Perhaps the commencement of the Muḥammadan day at sunset, allows of both statements.

[335] Elph. MS. f. 30b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 34 and 217 f. 26b; Mems. p. 46.

The abruptness of this opening is due to the interposition of Sl. Ḥusain M.’s affairs between Bābur’s statement on f. 41 that he returned from Aūrgūt and this first of 903 AH. that on return he encamped in Qulba.

[336] See f. 48b.

[337] i.e. Chūpān-ātā; see f. 45 and note.

[338] Aūghlāqchī, the Grey Wolfer of f. 22.

[339] A sobriquet, the suppliant or perhaps something having connection with musk. Ḥ.S. ii, 278, son of Ḥ.D.

[340] i.e. grandson (of Muḥammad Sīghal). Cf. f. 39.

[341] This seeming sobriquet may show the man’s trade. Kāl is a sort of biscuit; qāshūq may mean a spoon.

[342] The Ḥ.S. does not ascribe treachery to those inviting Bābur into Samarkand but attributes the murder of his men to others who fell on them when the plan of his admission became known. The choice here of “town-rabble” for retaliatory death supports the account of Ḥ.S. ii.

[343] “It was the end of September or beginning of October” (Erskine).

[344] awī u kīpa yīrlār. Awī is likely to represent kibitkas. For kīpa yīr, see Zenker p. 782.

[345] Interesting reference may be made, amongst the many books on Samarkand, to Sharafu’d-dīn ‘Alī Yazdī’s Z̤afar-nāma Bib. Ind. ed. i, 300, 781, 799, 800 and ii, 6, 194, 596 etc.; to Ruy Gonzalves di Clavijo’s Embassy to Tīmūr (Markham) cap. vi and vii; to Ujfalvy’s Turkistan ii, 79 and Madame Ujfalvy’s De Paris à Samarcande p. 161,—these two containing a plan of the town; to Schuyler’s Turkistan; to Kostenko’s Turkistan Gazetteer i, 345; to Réclus, vi, 270 and plan; and to a beautiful work of the St. Petersburg Archæological Society, Les Mosquées de Samarcande, of which the B.M. has a copy.

[346] This statement is confused in the Elp. and Ḥai. MSS. The second appears to give, by abjad, lat. 40° 6" and long. 99'. Mr. Erskine (p. 48) gives lat. 39’ 57" and long. 99’ 16”, noting that this is according to Ūlūgh Beg’s Tables and that the long. is calculated from Ferro. The Ency. Br. of 1910-11 gives lat. 39’ 39" and long. 66’ 45”.

[347] The enigmatical cognomen, Protected Town, is of early date; it is used i.a. by Ibn Batūta in the 14th. century. Bābur’s tense refers it to the past. The town had frequently changed hands in historic times before he wrote. The name may be due to immunity from damage to the buildings in the town. Even Chīngīz Khān’s capture (1222 AD.) left the place well-preserved and its lands cultivated, but it inflicted great loss of men. Cf. Schuyler i, 236 and his authorities, especially Bretschneider.

[348] Here is a good example of Bābur’s caution in narrative. He does not affirm that Samarkand became Musalmān, or (infra) that Quṣam ibn ‘Abbās went, or that Alexander founded but in each case uses the presumptive past tense, resp. būlghān dūr, bārghān dūr, bīnā qīlghān dūr, thus showing that he repeats what may be inferred or presumed and not what he himself asserts.

[349] i.e. of Muḥammad. See Z̤.N. ii, 193.

[350] i.e. Fat Village. His text misleading him, Mr. Erskine makes here the useful irrelevant note that Persians and Arabs call the place Samar-qand and Turks, Samar-kand, the former using qaf (q), the latter kaf (k). Both the Elph. and the Ḥai. MSS. write Samarqand.

For use of the name Fat Village, see Clavijo (Markham p. 170), Simesquinte, and Bretschneider’s Mediæval Geography pp. 61, 64, 66 and 163.

[351] qadam. Kostenko (i, 344) gives 9 m. as the circumference of the old walls and 1-2/3m. as that of the citadel. See Mde. Ujfalvy p. 175 for a picture of the walls.

[352] Ma‘lūm aīmās kīm mūncha paidā būlmīsh būlghāī; an idiomatic phrase.

[353] d. 333 AH. (944 AD.). See D’Herbélot art. Mātridī p. 572.

[354] See D’Herbélot art. Aschair p. 124.

[355] Abū ‘Abdu’l-lāh bin Ismā‘īlu’l-jausī b. 194 AH. d. 256 AH. (810-870 AD.). See D’Herbélot art. Bokhārī p. 191, art. Giorag p. 373, and art. Ṣāḥiḥu’l-bokhārī p. 722. He passed a short period, only, of his life in Khartank, a suburb of Samarkand.

[356] Cf. f. 3b and n. 1.

[357] This though 2475 ft. above the sea is only some 300 ft. above Samarkand. It is the Chūpān-ātā (Father of Shepherds) of maps and on it Tīmūr built a shrine to the local patron of shepherds. The Zar-afshān, or rather, its Qarā-sū arm, flows from the east of the Little Hill and turns round it to flow west. Bābur uses the name Kohik Water loosely; e.g. for the whole Zar-afshān when he speaks (infra) of cutting off the Dar-i-gham canal but for its southern arm only, the Qarā-sū in several places, and once, for the Dar-i-gham canal. See f. 49b and Kostenko i. 192.

[358] rūd. The Zar-afshān has a very rapid current. See Kostenko i, 196, and for the canal, i, 174. The name Dar-i-gham is used also for a musical note having charm to witch away grief; and also for a town noted for its wines.

[359] What this represents can only be guessed; perhaps 150 to 200 miles. Abū’l-fidā (Reinaud ii, 213) quotes Ibn Haukal as saying that from Bukhārā up to “Bottam” (this seems to be where the Zar-afshān emerges into the open land) is eight days’ journey through an unbroken tangle of verdure and gardens.

[360] See Schuyler i, 286 on the apportionment of water to Samarkand and Bukhārā.

[361] It is still grown in the Samarkand region, and in Mr. Erskine’s time a grape of the same name was cultivated in Aurangābād of the Deccan.

[362] i.e. Shāhrukhī, Tīmūr’s grandson, through Shāhrukh. It may be noted here that Bābur never gives Tīmūr any other title than Beg and that he styles all Tīmūrids, Mīrzā (Mīr-born).

[363] Mr. Erskine here points out the contradiction between the statements (i) of Ibn Haukal, writing, in 367 AH. (977 AD.), of Samarkand as having a citadel (ark), an outer-fort (qūrghān) and Gates in both circumvallations; and (2) of Sharafu’d-dīn Yazdī (Z̤.N.) who mentions that when, in Tīmūr’s day, the Getes besieged Samarkand, it had neither walls nor gates. See Ouseley’s Ibn Haukal p. 253; Z̤.N. Bib. Ind. ed. i, 109 and Pétis de la Croix’s Z̤.N. (Histoire de Tīmūr Beg) i, 91.

[364] Here still lies the Ascension Stone, the Gūk-tāsh, a block of greyish white marble. Concerning the date of the erection of the building and meaning of its name, see e.g. Pétis de la Croix’s Histoire de Chīngīz Khān p. 171; Mems. p. 40 note; and Schuyler s.n.

[365] This seems to be the Bībī Khānīm Mosque. The author of Les Mosquées de Samarcande states that Tīmūr built Bībī Khānīm and the Gūr-i-amīr (Amīr’s tomb); decorated Shāh-i-zinda and set up the Chūpān-ātā shrine. Cf. f. 46 and note to Jahāngīr Mīrzā, as to the Gūr-i-amīr.

[366] Cap. II. Quoting from Sale’s Qur’ān (i, 24) the verse is, “And Ibrāhīm and Ismā‘īl raised the foundations of the house, saying, ‘Lord! accept it from us, for Thou art he who hearest and knowest; Lord! make us also resigned to Thee, and show us Thy holy ceremonies, and be turned to us, for Thou art easy to be reconciled, and merciful.’”

[367] or, buland, Garden of the Height or High Garden. The Turkī texts have what can be read as buldī but the Z̤.N. both when describing it (ii, 194) and elsewhere (e.g. ii, 596) writes buland. Buldī may be a clerical error for bulandī, the height, a name agreeing with the position of the garden.

[368] In the Heart-expanding Garden, the Spanish Ambassadors had their first interview with Tīmūr. See Clavijo (Markham p. 130). Also the Z̤.N. ii, 6 for an account of its construction.

[369] Judging from the location of the gardens and of Bābur’s camps, this appears to be the Avenue mentioned on f. 39b and f. 40.

[370] See infra f. 48 and note.

[371] The Plane-tree Garden. This seems to be Clavijo’s Bayginar, laid out shortly before he saw it (Markham p. 136).

[372] The citadel of Samarkand stands high; from it the ground slopes west and south; on these sides therefore gardens outside the walls would lie markedly below the outer-fort (tāsh-qūrghān). Here as elsewhere the second W.-i-B. reads stone for outer (Cf. index s.n. tāsh). For the making of the North garden see Z̤.N. i, 799.

[373] Tīmūr’s eldest son, d. 805 AH. (1402 AD.), before his father, therefore. Bābur’s wording suggests that in his day, the Gūr-i-amīr was known as the Madrāsa. See as to the buildings Z̤.N. i, 713 and ii, 492, 595, 597, 705; Clavijo (Markham p. 164 and p. 166); and Les Mosquées de Samarcande.

[374] Hindūstān would make a better climax here than Samarkand does.

[375] These appear to be pictures or ornamentations of carved wood. Redhouse describes islīmī as a special kind of ornamentation in curved lines, similar to Chinese methods.

[376] i.e. the Black Stone (ka’ba) at Makkah to which Musalmāns turn in prayer.

[377] As ancient observatories were themselves the instruments of astronomical observation, Bābur’s wording is correct. Aūlūgh Beg’s great quadrant was 180 ft. high; Abū-muḥammad Khujandī’s sextant had a radius of 58 ft. Jā’ī Singh made similar great instruments in Jā’īpūr, Dihlī has others. Cf. Greaves Misc. Works i, 50; Mems. p. 51 note; Āiyīn-i-akbarī (Jarrett) ii, 5 and note; Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal p. 331; Indian Gazetteer xiii, 400.

[378] b. 597 AH. d. 672 AH. (1201-1274 AD.). See D’Herbélot’s art. Naṣīr-i-dīn p. 662; Abū’l-fidā (Reinaud, Introduction i, cxxxviii) and Beale’s Biographical Dict. s.n.

[379] a grandson of Chīngīz Khān, d. 663 AH. (1265 AD.). The cognomen Aīl-khānī (Īl-khānī) may mean Khān of the Tribe.

[380] Ḥarūnu’r-rashīd’s second son; d. 218 AH. (833 AD.).

[381] Mr. Erskine notes that this remark would seem to fix the date at which Bābur wrote it as 934 AH. (1527 AD.), that being the 1584th. year of the era of Vikramāditya, and therefore at three years before Bābur’s death. (The Vikramāditya era began 57 BC.)

[382] Cf. index s.n. tāsh.

[383] This remark may refer to the 34 miles between the town and the quarries of its building stone. See f. 49 and note to Aītmāk Pass.

[384] Steingass, any support for the back in sitting, a low wall in front of a house. See Vullers p. 148 and Burhān-i-qāt̤i‘; p. 119. Perhaps a dado.

[385] beg u begāt, bāgh u bāghcha.

[386] Four Gardens, a quadrilateral garden, laid out in four plots. The use of the name has now been extended for any well-arranged, large garden, especially one belonging to a ruler (Erskine).

[387] As two of the trees mentioned here are large, it may be right to translate nārwān, not by pomegranate, but as the hard-wood elm, Madame Ujfalvy’s ‘karagatche’ (p. 168 and p. 222). The name qarā-yīghāch (karagatch), dark tree, is given to trees other than this elm on account of their deep shadow.

[388] Now a common plan indeed! See Schuyler i, 173.

[389] juwāz-i-kaghazlār (nīng) sū’ī, i.e. the water of the paper-(pulping)-mortars. Owing to the omission from some MSS. of the word sū, water, juwāz has been mistaken for a kind of paper. See Mems. p. 52 and Méms. i, 102; A.Q.R. July 1910, p. 2, art. Paper-mills of Samarkand (H.B.); and Madame Ujfalvy p. 188. Kostenko, it is to be noted, does not include paper in his list (i, 346) of modern manufactures of Samarkand.

[390] Mine of mud or clay. My husband has given me support for reading gil, and not gul, rose;—(1) In two good MSS. of the W.-i-B. the word is pointed with kasra, i.e. as for gil, clay; and (2) when describing a feast held in the garden by Tīmūr, the Z̤.N. says the mud-mine became a rose-mine, shuda Kān-i-gil Kān-i-gul. [Mr. Erskine refers here to Pétis de la Croix’s Histoire de Tīmūr Beg (i.e. Z̤.N.) i, 96 and ii, 133 and 421.]

[391] qūrūgh. Vullers, classing the word as Arabic, Zenker, classing it as Eastern Turkī, and Erskine (p. 42 n.) explain this as land reserved for the summer encampment of princes. Shaw (Voc. p. 155), deriving it from qūrūmāq, to frighten, explains it as a fenced field of growing grain.

[392] Cf. f. 40. There it is located at one yīghāch and here at 3 kurohs from the town.

[393] t̤aur. Cf. Zenker s.n. I understand it to lie, as Khān Yūrtī did, in a curve of the river.

[394] 162 m. by rail.

[395] Cf. f. 3.

[396] tīrīsīnī sūīūb. The verb sūīmāk, to despoil, seems to exclude the common plan of stoning the fruit. Cf. f. 3b, dānasīnī alīp, taking out the stones.

[397] Mīn Samarkandtā aūl (or auwal) aīchkāndā Bukhārā chāghīrlār nī aīchār aīdīm. These words have been understood to refer to Bābur’s initial drinking of wine but this reading is negatived by his statement (f. 189) that he first drank wine in Harāt in 912 AH. I understand his meaning to be that the wine he drank in Samarkand was Bukhārā wine. The time cannot have been earlier than 917 AH. The two words aūl aīchkāndā, I read as parallel to aūl (bāghrī qarā) (f. 280) ‘that drinking,’ ‘that bird,’ i.e. of those other countries, not of Hindūstān where he wrote.

It may be noted that Bābur’s word for wine, chāghīr, may not always represent wine of the grape but may include wine of the apple and pear (cider and perry), and other fruits. Cider, its name seeming to be a descendant of chāghīr, was introduced into England by Crusaders, its manufacture having been learned from Turks in Palestine.

[398] 48 m. 3 fur. by way of the Aītmāk Pass (mod. Takhta Qarachi), and, Réclus (vi, 256) Buz-gala-khāna, Goat-house.

[399] The name Aītmāk, to build, appears to be due to the stone quarries on the range. The pass-head is 34 m. from Samarkand and 3000 ft. above it. See Kostenko ii, 115 and Schuyler ii, 61 for details of the route.

[400] The description of this hall is difficult to translate. Clavijo (Markham 124) throws light on the small recesses. Cf. Z̤.N. i, 781 and 300 and Schuyler ii, 68.

[401] The Tāq-i-kisrī, below Bāghdād, is 105 ft. high, 84 ft. span and 150 ft. in depth (Erskine).

[402] Cf. f. 46. Bābur does not mention that Tīmūr’s father was buried at Kesh. Clavijo (Markham p. 123) says it was Tīmūr’s first intention to be buried near his father, in Kesh.

[403] Abū’l-fidā (Reinaud II, ii, 21) says that Nasaf is the Arabic and Nakhshab the local name for Qarshī. Ibn Haukal (Ouseley p. 260) writes Nakhshab.

[404] This word has been translated burial-place and cimetière but Qarshī means castle, or royal-residence. The Z̤.N. (i, 111) says that Qarshī is an equivalent for Ar. qaṣr, palace, and was so called, from one built there by Qublāī Khān (d. 1294 AD.). Perhaps Bābur’s word is connected with Gūrkhān, the title of sovereigns in Khutan, and means great or royal-house, i.e. palace.

[405] 94 m. 6-1/2 fur. via Jām (Kostenko i, 115.)

[406] See Appendix B.

[407] some 34 m. (Kostenko i, 196). Schuyler mentions that he heard in Qarā-kūl a tradition that the district, in bye-gone days, was fertilized from the Sīr.

[408] Cf. f. 45.

[409] By abjad the words ‘Abbās kasht yield 853. The date of the murder was Ramẓān 9, 853 AH. (Oct. 27th. 1449 AD.).

[410] This couplet is quoted in the Rauẓatu’ṣ-ṣafā (lith. ed. vi, f. 234 foot) and in the Ḥ.S. ii, 44. It is said, in the R.Ṣ. to be by Niz̤āmī and to refer to the killing by Shīrūya of his father, Khusrau Parwīz in 7 AH. (628 AD.). The Ḥ.S. says that ‘Abdu’l-lat̤īf constantly repeated the couplet, after he had murdered his father. [See also Daulat Shāh (Browne p. 356 and p. 366.) H.B.]

[411] By abjad, Bābā Ḥusain kasht yields 854. The death was on Rabi‘ I, 26, 854 AH. (May 9th. 1450 AD.). See R.Ṣ. vi, 235 for an account of this death.

[412] This overstates the time; dates shew 1 yr. 1 mth. and a few days.

[413] i.e. The Khān of the Mughūls, Bābur’s uncle.

[414] Elph. MS. aūrmaghāīlār, might not turn; Ḥai. and Kehr’s MSS. (sar bā bād) bīrmāghāīlār, might not give. Both metaphors seem drawn from the protective habit of man and beast of turning the back to a storm-wind.

[415] i.e. betwixt two waters, the Miyān-i-dū-āb of India. Here, it is the most fertile triangle of land in Turkistān (Réclus, vi, 199), enclosed by the eastern mountains, the Nārīn and the Qarā-sū; Rabāt̤ik-aūrchīnī, its alternative name, means Small Station sub-district. From the uses of aūrchīn I infer that it describes a district in which there is no considerable head-quarters fort.

[416] i.e. his own, Qūtlūq-nigār Khānīm and hers, Aīsān-daulat Begīm, with perhaps other widows of his father, probably Shāh Sult̤ān Begīm.

[417] Cf. f. 16 for almost verbatim statements.

[418] Blacksmith’s Dale. Ahangarān appears corrupted in modern maps to Angren. See Ḥ.S. ii, 293 for Khwānd-amīr’s wording of this episode.

[419] Cf. f. 1b and Kostenko i, 101.

[420] i.e. Khān Uncle (Mother’s brother).

[421] n.w. of the Sang ferry over the Sīr.

[422] perhaps, messenger of good tidings.

[423] This man’s family connections are interesting. He was ‘Alī-shukr Beg Bahārlū’s grandson, nephew therefore of Pāshā Begīm; through his son, Saif-‘alī Beg, he was the grandfather of Bairām Khān-i-khānān and thus the g.g.f. of ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm Mīrzā, the translator of the Second Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī. See Firishta lith. ed. p. 250.

[424] Bābur’s (step-)grandmother, co-widow with Aīsān-daulat of Yūnas Khān and mother of Aḥmad and Maḥmud Chaghatāī.

[425] Here the narrative picks up the thread of Khusrau Shāh’s affairs, dropped on f. 44.

[426] mīng tūmān fulūs, i.e. a thousand sets-of-ten-thousand small copper coins. Mr. Erskine (Mems. p. 61) here has a note on coins. As here the tūmān does not seem to be a coin but a number, I do not reproduce it, valuable as it is per se.

[427] ārīqlār; this the annotator of the Elph. MS. has changed to āshlīq, provisions, corn.

[428] Samān-chī may mean Keeper of the Goods. Tīngrī-bīrdī, Theodore, is the purely Turkī form of the Khudāī-bīrdī, already met with several times in the B.N.

[429] Bast (Bost) is on the left bank of the Halmand.

[430] Cf. f. 56b.

[431] known as Kābulī. He was a son of Abū-sa‘īd and thus an uncle of Bābur. He ruled Kābul and Ghaznī from a date previous to his father’s death in 873 AH. (perhaps from the time ‘Umar Shaikh was not sent there, in 870 AH. See f. 6b) to his death in 907 AH. Bābur was his virtual successor in Kābul, in 910 AH.

[432] Elph. MS. f. 42; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 47b and 217 f. 38; Mems. p. 63. Bābur here resumes his own story, interrupted on f. 56.

[433] aīsh achīlmādī, a phrase recurring on f. 59b foot. It appears to imply, of trust in Providence, what the English “The way was not opened,” does. Cf. f. 60b for another example of trust, there clinching discussion whether to go or not to go to Marghīnān.

[434] i.e. Aḥrārī. He had been dead some 10 years. The despoilment of his family is mentioned on f. 23b.

[435] fatratlār, here those due to the deaths of Aḥmad and Maḥmūd with their sequel of unstable government in Samarkand.

[436] Aūghlāqchī, the player of the kid-game, the gray-wolfer. Yār-yīlāq will have gone with the rest of Samarkand into ‘Alī’s hands in Rajab 903 AH. (March 1498). Contingent terms between him and Bābur will have been made; Yūsuf may have recognized some show of right under them, for allowing Bābur to occupy Yār-yīlāq.

[437] i.e. after 933 AH. Cf. f. 46b and note concerning the Bikramāditya era. See index s.n. Aḥmad-i-yūsuf and Ḥ.S. ii, 293.

[438] This plural, unless ironical, cannot be read as honouring ‘Alī; Bābur uses the honorific plural most rarely and specially, e.g. for saintly persons, for The Khān and for elder women-kinsfolk.

[439] bīr yārīm yīl. Dates shew this to mean six months. It appears a parallel expression to Pers. hasht-yak, one-eighth.

[440] Ḥ.S. ii, 293, in place of these two quotations, has a misra‘,—Na rāy ṣafar kardan u na rūy iqāmat, (Nor resolve to march, nor face to stay).

[441] i.e. in Samarkand.

[442] Point to point, some 145 m. but much further by the road. Tang-āb seems likely to be one of the head-waters of Khwāja Bikargān-water. Thence the route would be by unfrequented hill-tracks, each man leading his second horse.

[443] tūn yārīmī naqāra waqtīdā. Tūn yārīmī seems to mean half-dark, twilight. Here it cannot mean mid-night since this would imply a halt of twelve hours and Bābur says no halt was made. The drum next following mid-day is the one beaten at sunset.

[444] The voluntary prayer, offered when the sun has well risen, fits the context.

[445] I understand that the obeisance was made in the Gate-house, between the inner and outer doors.

[446] This seeming sobriquet may be due to eloquence or to good looks.

[447] qarā tīyāq. Cf. f. 63 where black bludgeons are used by a red rabble.

[448] He was head-man of his clan and again with Shaibānī in 909 AH. (Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 272). Erskine (p. 67) notes that the Manghīts are the modern Nogais.

[449] i.e. in order to allow for the here very swift current. The Ḥ.S. varying a good deal in details from the B.N. gives the useful information that Aūzūn Ḥasan’s men knew nothing of the coming of the Tāshkīnt Mughūls.

[450] Cf. f. 4b and App. A. as to the position of Akhsī.

[451] bārīnī qīrdīlār. After this statement the five exceptions are unexpected; Bābur’s wording is somewhat confused here.

[452] i.e. in Hindūstān.

[453] Taṃbal would be the competitor for the second place.

[454] 47 m. 4-1/2 fur.

[455] Bābur had been about two lunar years absent from Andijān but his loss of rule was of under 16 months.

[456] A scribe’s note entered here on the margin of the Ḥai. MS. is to the effect that certain words are not in the noble archetype (nashka sharīf); this supports other circumstances which make for the opinion that this Codex is a direct copy of Bābur’s own MS. See Index s.n. Ḥai. MS. and JRAS 1906, p. 87.

[457] Musalmān here seems to indicate mental contrast with Pagan practices or neglect of Musalmān observances amongst Mughūls.

[458] i.e. of his advisors and himself.

[459] Cf. f. 34.

[460] circa 933 AH. All the revolts chronicled by Bābur as made against himself were under Mughūl leadership. Long Ḥasan, Taṃbal and ‘Alī-dost were all Mughūls. The worst was that of 914 AH. (1518 AD.) in which Qulī Chūnāq disgraced himself (T.R. p. 357).

[461] Chūnāq may indicate the loss of one ear.

[462] Būqāq, amongst other meanings, has that of one who lies in ambush.

[463] This remark has interest because it shews that (as Bābur planned to write more than is now with the B.N. MSS.) the first gap in the book (914 AH. to 925 AH.) is accidental. His own last illness is the probable cause of this gap. Cf. JRAS 1905, p. 744. Two other passages referring to unchronicled matters are one about the Bāgh-i-ṣafā (f. 224), and one about Sl. ‘Alī T̤aghāī (f. 242).

[464] I surmise Aīlāīsh to be a local name of the Qarā-daryā affluent of the Sīr.

[465] aīkī aūch naubat chāpqūlāb bāsh chīqārghalī qūīmās. I cannot feel so sure as Mr. E. and M. de C. were that the man’s head held fast, especially as for it to fall would make the better story.

[466] Tūqā appears to have been the son of a T̤aghāī, perhaps of Sherīm; his name may imply blood-relationship.

[467] For the verb awīmāq, to trepan, see f. 67 note 5.

[468] The Fr. map of 1904 shews a hill suiting Bābur’s location of this Hill of Pleasure.

[469] A place near Kābul bears the same name; in both the name is explained by a legend that there Earth opened a refuge for forty menaced daughters.

[470] Elph. MS. f. 47b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 53 and 217 f. 43; Mems. p. 70.

[471] From Andijān to Aūsh is a little over 33 miles. Taṃbal’s road was east of Bābur’s and placed him between Andijān and Aūzkīnt where was the force protecting his family.

[472] mod. Mazy, on the main Aūsh-Kāshghar road.

[473] āb-duzd; de C. i, 144, prise d’eau.

[474] This simile seems the fruit of experience in Hindūstān. See f. 333, concerning Chānderi.

[475] These two Mughūls rebelled in 914 AH. with Sl. Qulī Chūnāq (T.R. s.n.).

[476] awīdī. The head of Captain Dow, fractured at Chunār by a stone flung at it, was trepanned (Saiyār-i-muta‘akhirīn, p. 577 and Irvine l .c. p. 283). Yār-‘alī was alive in 910 AH. He seems to be the father of the great Bairām Khān-i-khānān of Akbar’s reign.

[477] chasht-gāh; midway between sunrise and noon.

[478] t̤aurī; because providing prisoners for exchange.

[479] shakh tūtūlūr īdī, perhaps a palisade.

[480] i.e. from Ḥiṣār where he had placed him in 903 AH.

[481] qūba yūzlūq (f. 6b and note 4). The Turkmān features would be a maternal inheritance.

[482] He is “Saifī Maulānā ‘Arūzī” of Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 525. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 341. His book, ‘Arūz-i-saifī has been translated by Blochmann and by Ranking.

[483] namāz aūtār īdī. I understand some irony from this (de Meynard’s Dict. s.n. aūtmāq).

[484] The mat̤la‘ of poems serve as an index of first lines.

[485] Cf. f. 30.

[486] Cf. f. 37b.

[487] i.e. scout and in times of peace, huntsman. On the margin of the Elph. Codex here stands a note, mutilated in rebinding;—Sl. Aḥmad pidr-i-Qūch Beg ast * * * pidr-i-Sher-afgan u Sher-afgan * * * u Sl. Ḥusain Khān * * * Qūch Beg ast. Hamesha * * * dar khāna Shaham Khān * * *.

[488] pītīldī; W.-i-B. navishta shud, words indicating the use by Bābur of a written record.

[489] Cf. f. 6b and note and f. 17 and note.

[490] tūlūk; i.e. other food than grain. Fruit, fresh or preserved, being a principal constituent of food in Central Asia, tūlūk will include several, but chiefly melons. “Les melons constituent presque seuls vers le fin d'été, la nourriture des classes pauvres (Th. Radloff. l.c. p. 343).

[491] Cf. f. 6b and note.

[492] tūlkī var. tūlkū, the yellow fox. Following this word the Ḥai. MS. has u dar kamīn dūr instead of u rangīn dūr.

[493] bī ḥadd; with which I.O. 215 agrees but I.O. 217 adds farbih, fat, which is right in fact (f. 2b) but less pertinent here than an unlimited quantity.

[494] Here a pun on ‘ajab may be read.

[495] Cf. f. 15, note to T̤aghāī.

[496] Apparently not the usual Kīndīr-līk pass but one n.w. of Kāsān.

[497] A ride of at least 40 miles, followed by one of 20 to Kāsān.

[498] Cf. f. 72 and f. 72b. Tīlba would seem to have left Taṃbal.

[499] Taṃbalnīng qarāsī.

[500] i.e. the Other (Mid-afternoon) Prayer.

[501] ātīnīng būīnīnī qātīb. Qātmāq has also the here-appropriate meaning of to stiffen.

[502] aīlīk qūshmāq, i.e. Bābur’s men with the Kāsān garrison. But the two W.-i-B. write merely dast burd and dast kardan.

[503] The meaning of Ghazna here is uncertain. The Second W.-i-B. renders it by ar. qaryat but up to this point Bābur has not used qaryat for village. Ghazna-namangān cannot be modern Namangān. It was 2 m. from Archīān where Taṃbal was, and Bābur went to Bīshkhārān to be between Taṃbal and Machamī, coming from the south. Archīān and Ghazna-namangān seem both to have been n. or n.w. of Bīshkārān (see maps).

It may be mentioned that at Archīān, in 909 AH. the two Chaghatāī Khāns and Bābur were defeated by Shaibānī.

[504] bīzlār. The double plural is rare with Bābur; he writes bīz, we, when action is taken in common; he rarely uses mīn, I, with autocratic force; his phrasing is largely impersonal, e.g. with rare exceptions, he writes the impersonal passive verb.

[505] bāshlīghlār. Teufel was of opinion that this word is not used as a noun in the B.N. In this he is mistaken; it is so used frequently, as here, in apposition. See ZDMG, xxxvii, art. Bābur und Abū‘l-faẓl.

[506] Cf. f. 54 foot.

[507] Cf. f. 20. She may have come from Samarkand and ‘Alī’s household or from Kesh and the Tarkhān households.

[508] Cf. f. 26 l. 2 for the same phrase.

[509] He is the author of the Shaibānī-nāma.

[510] dāng and fils (infra) are small copper coins.

[511] Cf. f. 25 l. 1 and note 1.

[512] Probably the poet again; he had left Harāt and was in Samarkand (Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 34 l. 14).

[513] From what follows, this Mughūl advance seems a sequel to a Tarkhān invitation.

[514] By omitting the word Mīr the Turkī text has caused confusion between this father and son (Index s.nn.).

[515] bīz khūd kharāb bū mu‘āmla aīdūk. These words have been understood earlier, as referring to the abnormal state of Bābur’s mind described under Sec. r. They better suit the affairs of Samarkand because Bābur is able to resolve on action and also because he here writes bīz, we, and not mīn, I, as in Sec. r.

[516] For būlghār, rendezvous, see also f. 78 l. 2 fr. ft.

[517] 25 m. only; the halts were due probably to belated arrivals.

[518] Some of his ties would be those of old acquaintance in Ḥiṣār with ‘Alī’s father’s begs, now with him in Samarkand.

[519] Point to point, some 90 m. but further by road.

[520] Bū waqi‘ būlghāch, manifestly ironical.

[521] Sangzār to Aūrā-tīpā, by way of the hills, some 50 miles.

[522] The Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 60, confirms this.

[523] Cf. f. 74b.

[524] Macham and Awīghūr, presumably.

[525] gūzlār tūz tūtī, i.e. he was blinded for some treachery to his hosts.

[526] Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ’s well-informed account of this episode has much interest, filling out and, as by Shaibānī’s Boswell, balancing Bābur’s. Bābur is obscure about what country was to be given to ‘Alī. Pāyanda-ḥasan paraphrases his brief words;—Shaibānī was to be as a father to ‘Alī and when he had taken ‘Alī’s father’s wilāyāt, he was to give a country to ‘Alī. It has been thought that the gift to ‘Alī was to follow Shaibānī’s recovery of his own ancestral camping-ground (yūrt) but this is negatived, I think, by the word, wilāyāt, cultivated land.

[527] Elp. MS. f. 57b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 63b and I.O. 217 f. 52; Mems. p. 82.

Two contemporary works here supplement the B.N.; (1) the (Tawārikh-i-guzīda) Naṣrat-nāma, dated 908 AH. (B.M. Turkī Or. 3222) of which Berezin’s Shaibāni-nāma is an abridgment; (2) Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā’s Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry trs. cap. xix et seq.). The Ḥ.S. (Bomb. ed. p. 302, and Tehran ed. p. 384) is also useful.

[528] i.e. on his right. The Ḥ.S. ii, 302 represents that ‘Alī was well-received. After Shaibāq had had Zuhra’s overtures, he sent an envoy to ‘Alī and Yaḥya; the first was not won over but the second fell in with his mother’s scheme. This difference of view explains why ‘Alī slipped away while Yaḥya was engaged in the Friday Mosque. It seems likely that mother and son alike expected their Aūzbeg blood to stand them in good stead with Shaibāq.

[529] He tried vainly to get the town defended. “Would to God Bābur Mīrzā were here!” he is reported as saying, by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ.

[530] Perhaps it is for the play of words on ‘Alī and ‘Alī’s life (jān) that this man makes his sole appearance here.

[531] i.e. rich man or merchant, but Bī (infra) is an equivalent of Beg.

[532] Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, invoking curses on such a mother, mentions that Zuhra was given to a person of her own sort.

[533] The Sh. N. and Naṣrat-nāma attempt to lift the blame of ‘Alī’s death from Shaibāq; the second saying that he fell into the Kohik-water when drunk.

[534] Harāt might be his destination but the Ḥ.S. names Makka. Some dismissals towards Khurāsān may imply pilgrimage to Meshhed.

[535] Used also by Bābur’s daughter, Gul-badan (l.c. f. 31).

[536] Cut off by alien lands and weary travel.

[537] The Pers. annotator of the Elph. Codex has changed Alāī to wīlāyat, and dābān (pass) to yān, side. For the difficult route see Schuyler, i, 275, Kostenko, i, 129 and Rickmers, JRGS. 1907, art. Fan Valley.

[538] Amongst Turks and Mughūls, gifts were made by nines.

[539] Ḥiṣār was his earlier home.

[540] Many of these will have been climbed in order to get over places impassable at the river’s level.

[541] Schuyler quotes a legend of the lake. He and Kostenko make it larger.

[542] The second occasion was when he crossed from Sūkh for Kābul in 910 AH. (fol. 120).

[543] This name appears to indicate a Command of 10,000 (Bretschneider’s Mediæval Researches, i, 112).

[544] It seems likely that the cloth was soiled. Cf. f. 25 and Hughes Dict. of Islām s.n. Eating.

[545] As, of the quoted speech, one word only, of three, is Turkī, others may have been dreamed. Shaikh Maṣlaḥat’s tomb is in Khujand where Bābur had found refuge in 903 AH.; it had been circumambulated by Tīmūr in 790 AH. (1390 AD.) and is still honoured.

This account of a dream compares well for naturalness with that in the seemingly-spurious passage, entered with the Ḥai. MS. on f. 118. For examination of the passage see JRAS, Jan. 1911, and App. D.

[546] He was made a Tarkhān by diploma of Shaibānī (Ḥ.S. ii, 306, l. 2).

[547] Here the Ḥai. MS. begins to use the word Shaibāq in place of its previously uniform Shaibānī. As has been noted (f. 5b n. 2), the Elph. MS. writes Shaibāq. It may be therefore that a scribe has changed the earlier part of the Ḥai. MS. and that Bābur wrote Shaibāq. From this point my text will follow the double authority of the Elph. and Ḥai. MSS.

[548] In 875 AH. (1470 AD.). Ḥusain was then 32 years old. Bābur might have compared his taking of Samarkand with Tīmūr’s capture of Qarshī, also with 240 followers (Z̤.N. i, 127). Firishta (lith. ed. p. 196) ascribes his omission to do so to reluctance to rank himself with his great ancestor.

[549] This arrival shews that Shaibānī expected to stay in Samarkand. He had been occupying Turkistān under The Chaghatāī Khān.

[550] ‘Alī-sher died Jan. 3rd. 1501. It is not clear to what disturbances Bābur refers. He himself was at ease till after April 20th. 1502 and his defeat at Sar-i-pul. Possibly the reference is to the quarrels between Binā’ī and ‘Alī-sher. Cf. Sām Mīrzā’s Anthology, trs. S. de Saçy, Notices et Extraits iv, 287 et seq.

[551] I surmise a double play-of-words in this verse. One is on two rhyming words, ghala and mallah and is illustrated by rendering them as oat and coat. The other is on pointed and unpointed letters, i.e. ghala and ‘ala. We cannot find however a Persian word ‘ala, meaning garment.

[552] Bābur’s refrain is ghūsīdūr, his rhymes būl, (buyur)ūl and tūl. Binā’ī makes būlghūsīdūr his refrain but his rhymes are not true viz. yīr, (sa)mar and lār.

[553] Shawwāl 906 AH. began April 20th. 1501.

[554] From the Bū-stān, Graf ed. p. 55, l. 246.

[555] Sīkīz Yīldūz. See Chardin’s Voyages, v, 136 and Table; also Stanley Lane Poole’s Bābur, p. 56.

[556] In 1791 AD. Muḥ. Effendi shot 482 yards from a Turkish bow, before the R. Tox. S.; not a good shot, he declared. Longer ones are on record. See Payne-Gallwey’s Cross-bow and AQR. 1911, H. Beveridge’s Oriental Cross-bows.

[557] In the margin of the Elph. Codex, here, stands a Persian verse which appears more likely to be Humāyūn’s than Bābur’s. It is as follows:

Were the Mughūl race angels, they would be bad;

Written in gold, the name Mughūl would be bad;

Pluck not an ear from the Mughūl’s corn-land,

What is sown with Mughūl seed will be bad.

This verse is written into the text of the First W.-i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 72) and is introduced by a scribe’s statement that it is by ān Ḥaẓrat, much as notes known to be Humāyūn’s are elsewhere attested in the Elph. Codex. It is not in the Ḥai. and Kehr’s MSS. nor with, at least many, good copies of the Second W.-i-B.

[558] This subterranean water-course, issuing in a flowing well (Erskine) gave its name to a bastion (Ḥ.S. ii, 300).

[559] nāwak, a diminutive of nāo, a tube. It is described, in a MS. of Bābur’s time, by Muḥ. Budhā’ī, and, in a second of later date, by Amīnu’d-dīn (AQR 1911, H.B.’s Oriental Cross-bows).

[560] Kostenko, i, 344, would make the rounds 9 m.

[561] bīr yūz ātliqnīng ātinī nāwak aūqī bīla yakhshī atīm. This has been read by Erskine as though būz āt, pale horse, and not yūz ātlīq, Centurion, were written. De. C. translates by Centurion and a marginal note of the Elph. Codex explains yūz ātlīq by ṣad aspagī.

[562] The Sh. N. gives the reverse side of the picture, the plenty enjoyed by the besiegers.

[563] He may have been attached to the tomb of Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh Anṣārī in Harāt.

[564] The brusque entry here and elsewhere of e.g. Taṃbal’s affairs, allows the inference that Bābur was quoting from perhaps a news-writer’s, contemporary records. For a different view of Taṃbal, the Sh. N. cap. xxxiii should be read.

[565] Five-villages, on the main Khujand-Tāshkīnt road.

[566] turk, as on f. 28 of Khusrau Shāh.

[567] Elph. MS. f. 68b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 78 and 217 f. 61b; Mems. p. 97.

The Kehr-Ilminsky text shews, in this year, a good example of its Persification and of Dr. Ilminsky’s dealings with his difficult archetype by the help of the Memoirs.

[568] tāshlāb. The Sh. N. places these desertions as after four months of siege.

[569] It strikes one as strange to find Long Ḥasan described, as here, in terms of his younger brother. The singularity may be due to the fact that Ḥusain was with Bābur and may have invited Ḥasan. It may be noted here that Ḥusain seems likely to be that father-in-law of ‘Umar Shaikh mentioned on f. 12b and 13b.

[570] This laudatory comment I find nowhere but in the Ḥai. Codex.

[571] There is some uncertainty about the names of those who left.

[572] The Sh. N. is interesting here as giving an eye-witness’ account of the surrender of the town and of the part played in the surrender by Khān-zāda’s marriage (cap. xxxix).

[573] The first seems likely to be a relation of Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī Khalīfa; the second was Mole-marked, a foster-sister. The party numbered some 100 persons of whom Abū’l-makāram was one (Ḥ.S. ii, 310).

[574] Bābur’s brevity is misleading; his sister was not captured but married with her own and her mother’s consent before attempt to leave the town was made. Cf. Gul-badan’s H.N. f. 3b and Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 145.

[575] The route taken avoided the main road for Dīzak; it can be traced by the physical features, mentioned by Bābur, on the Fr. map of 1904. The Sh. N. says the night was extraordinarily dark. Departure in blinding darkness and by unusual ways shews distrust of Shaibāq’s safe-conduct suggesting that Yaḥyā’s fate was in the minds of the fugitives.

[576] The texts differ as to whether the last two lines are prose or verse. All four are in Turkī, but I surmise a clerical error in the refrain of the third, where būlūb is written for būldī.

[577] The second was in 908 AH. (f. 18b); the third in 914 AH. (f. 216 b); the fourth is not described in the B.N.; it followed Bābur’s defeat at Ghaj-diwān in 918 AH. (Erskine’s History of India, i, 325). He had a fifth, but of a different kind, when he survived poison in 933 AH. (f. 305).

[578] Ḥai. MS. qāqāsrāq; Elph. MS. yānasrāq.

[579] ātūn, one who instructs in reading, writing and embroidery. Cf. Gulbadan’s H.N. f. 26. The distance walked may have been 70 or 80 m.

[580] She was the wife of the then Governor of Aūrā-tīpā, Muḥ. Ḥusain Dūghlāt.

[581] It may be noted here that in speaking of these elder women Bābur uses the honorific plural, a form of rare occurrence except for such women, for saintly persons and exceptionally for The supreme Khān. For his father he has never used it.

[582] This name has several variants. The village lies, in a valley-bottom, on the Aq-sū and on a road. See Kostenko, i, 119.

[583] She had been divorced from Shaibānī in order to allow him to make legal marriage with her niece, Khān-zāda.

[584] Amongst the variants of this name, I select the modern one. Macha is the upper valley of the Zar-afshān.

[585] Tīmūr took Dihlī in 801 AH. (Dec. 1398), i.e. 103 solar and 106 lunar years earlier. The ancient dame would then have been under 5 years old. It is not surprising therefore that in repeating her story Bābur should use a tense betokening hear-say matter (bārib īkān dūr).

[586] The anecdote here following, has been analysed in JRAS 1908, p. 87, in order to show warrant for the opinion that parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky text are retranslations from the Persian W.-i-B.

[587] Amongst those thus leaving seem to have been Qaṃbar-‘alī (f. 99b).

[588] Cf. f. 107 foot.

[589] The Sh. N. speaks of the cold in that winter (Vambéry, p. 160). It was unusual for the Sīr to freeze in this part of its course (Sh. N. p. 172) where it is extremely rapid (Kostenko, i, 213).

[590] Cf. f. 4b.

[591] Point to point, some 50 miles.

[592] Āhangarān-julgasī, a name narrowed on maps to Angren (valley).

[593] Faut shūd Nuyān. The numerical value of these words is 907. Bābur when writing, looks back 26 years to the death of this friend.

[594] Āb-burdan village is on the Zar-afshān; the pass is 11,200 ft. above the sea. Bābur’s boundaries still hold good and the spring still flows. See Ujfalvy l.c. i. 14; Kostenko, i, 119 and 193; Rickmers, JRGS 1907, p. 358.

[595] From the Bū-stān (Graf’s ed. Vienna 1858, p. 561). The last couplet is also in the Gulistān (Platts’ ed. p. 72). The Bombay lith. ed. of the Bū-stān explains (p. 39) that the “We” of the third couplet means Jamshīd and his predecessors who have rested by his fountain.

[596] nīma. The First W.-i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 81 l. 8) writes tawārīkh, annals.

[597] This may be the Khwāja Hijrī of the A.N. (index s.n.); and Badāyūnī’s Ḥasan Hijrī, Bib. Ind. iii, 385; and Ethé’s Pers. Cat. No. 793; and Bod. Cat. No. 189.

[598] The Ḥai. MS. points in the last line as though punning on Khān and Jān, but appears to be wrong.

[599] For an account of the waste of crops, the Sh. N. should be seen (p. 162 and 180).

[600] I think this refers to last year’s move (f. 94 foot).

[601] In other words, the T. preposition, meaning E. in, at, etc. may be written with t or d, as ta(tā) or as da(dā). Also the one meaning E. towards, may be gha, qa, or ka (with long or short vowel).

[602] dīm, a word found difficult. It may be a derivative of root de, tell, and a noun with the meaning of English tale (number). The First W.-i-B. renders it by san, and by san, Abū’l-ghāzī expresses what Bābur’s dīm expresses, the numbering of troops. It occurs thrice in the B.N. (here, on f. 183b and on f. 264b). In the Elphinstone Codex it has been written-over into Ivīm, once resembles vīm more than dīm and once is omitted. The L. and E. Memoirs (p. 303) inserts what seems a gloss, saying that a whip or bow is used in the count, presumably held by the teller to ‘keep his place’ in the march past. The Siyāsat-nāma (Schefer, trs. p. 22) names the whip as used in numbering an army.

[603] The acclamation of the standards is depicted in B.M. W.-i-B. Or. 3714 f. 128b. One cloth is shewn tied to the off fore-leg of a live cow, above the knee, Bābur’s word being aūrtā aīlīk (middle-hand).

[604] The libation was of fermented mares'-milk.

[605] lit. their one way.

[606] Cf. T.R. p. 308.

[607] Elph. MS. f. 74; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 83 and 217 f. 66; Mems. p. 104.

[608] It may be noted that Bābur calls his mother’s brothers, not t̤aghāī but dādā father. I have not met with an instance of his saying ‘My t̤aghāī’ as he says ‘My dādā.’ Cf. index s.n. taghāī.

[609] kūrūnūsh qīlīb, reflective from kūrmak, to see.

[610] A rider’s metaphor.

[611] As touching the misnomer, ‘Mughūl dynasty’ for the Tīmūrid rulers in Hindūstān, it may be noted that here, as Bābur is speaking to a Chaghatāī Mughūl, his ‘Turk’ is left to apply to himself.

[612] Gulistān, cap. viii, Maxim 12 (Platts’ ed. p. 147).

[613] This backward count is to 890 AH. when Aḥmad fled from cultivated lands (T.R. p. 113).

[614] It becomes clear that Aḥmad had already been asked to come to Tāshkīnt.

[615] Cf. f. 96b for his first departure without help.

[616] Yagha (Yaghma) is not on the Fr. map of 1904, but suitably located is Turbat (Tomb) to which roads converge.

[617] Elph. MS. tūshkūcha; Ḥai. MS. yūkūnchā. The importance Aḥmad attached to ceremony can be inferred by the details given (f. 103) of his meeting with Maḥmūd.

[618] kūrūshkāīlār. Cf. Redhouse who gives no support for reading the verb kūrmak as meaning to embrace.

[619] būrk, a tall felt cap (Redhouse). In the adjective applied to the cap there are several variants. The Ḥai. MS. writes muftūl, solid or twisted. The Elph. MS. has muftūn-lūq which has been understood by Mr. Erskine to mean, gold-embroidered.

[620] The wording suggests that the decoration is in chain-stitch, pricked up and down through the stuff.

[621] tāsh chantāī. These words have been taken to mean whet-stone (bilgū-tāsh). I have found no authority for reading tāsh as whet-stone. Moreover to allow ‘bag of the stone’ to be read would require tāsh (nīng) chantāī-sī in the text.

[622] lit. bag-like things. Some will have held spare bow-strings and archers’ rings, and other articles of ‘repairing kit.’ With the gifts, it seems probable that the gosha-gīr (f. 107) was given.

[623] Vullers, clava sex foliis.

[624] Zenker, casse-tête. Kīstin would seem to be formed from the root, kīs, cutting, but M. de C. describes it as a ball attached by a strap or chain to a handle. Sanglākh, a sort of mace (gurz).

[625] The Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā states that The Khāns left Tāshkīnt on Muḥarram 15th (July 21st. 1502), in order to restore Bābur and expel Taṃbal (Erskine).

[626] lit. saw the count (dīm). Cf. f. 100 and note concerning the count. Using a Persian substitute, the Kehr-Ilminsky text writes san (kūrdīlār).

[627] Elph. MS. aṃbārchī, steward, for Itārchī, a tribal-name. The ‘Mīrzā’ and the rank of the army-begs are against supposing a steward in command. Here and just above, the texts write Mīrzā-i-Itārchī and Mīrzā-i-Dūghlāt, thus suggesting that in names not ending with a vowel, the iẓāfat is required for exact transliteration, e.g. Muḥammad-i-dūghlāt.

[628] Alāī-līq aūrchīnī. I understand the march to have been along the northern slope of the Little Alāī, south of Aūsh.

[629] As of Ālmālīgh and Ālmātū (fol. 2b) Bābur reports a tradition with caution. The name Aūz-kīnt may be read to mean ‘Own village,’ independent, as Aūz-beg, Own-beg.

[630] He would be one of the hereditary Khwājas of Andijān (f. 16).

[631] For several battle-cries see Th. Radloff’s Réceuils etc. p. 322.

[632] qāshqa ātlīq kīshī. For a parallel phrase see f. 92b.

[633] Bābur does not explain how the imbroglio was cleared up; there must have been a dramatic moment when this happened.

[634] Darwāna (a trap-door in a roof) has the variant dur-dāna, a single pearl; tūqqāī perhaps implies relationship; lūlū is a pearl, a wild cow etc.

[635] Ḥai. MS. sāīrt kīshī. Muḥ. ‘Alī is likely to be the librarian (cf. index s.n.).

[636] Elph. MS. ramāqgha u tūr-gā; Ḥai. MS. tārtātgha u tūr-gā. Ilminsky gives no help, varying much here from the true text. The archetype of both MSS. must have been difficult to read.

[637] The Ḥai. MS.’s pointing allows the sobriquet to mean ‘Butterfly.’ His family lent itself to nick-names; in it three brothers were known respectively as Fat or Lubberly, Fool and, perhaps, Butterfly.

[638] bīrk ārīgh, doubly strong by its trench and its current.

[639] I understand that time failed to set the standard in its usual rest. E. and de C. have understood that the yak-tail (qūtās tūghī f. 100) was apart from the staff and that time failed to adjust the two parts. The tūgh however is the whole standard; moreover if the tail were ever taken off at night from the staff, it would hardly be so treated in a mere bivouac.

[640] aīshīklīk tūrlūq, as on f. 113. I understand this to mean that the two men were as far from their followers as sentries at a Gate are posted outside the Gate.

[641] So too ‘Piero of Cosimo’ and ‘Lorenzo of Piero of the Medici.’ Cf. the names of five men on f. 114.

[642] shashtīm. The shasht (thumb) in archery is the thumb-shield used on the left hand, as the zih-gīr (string-grip), the archer’s ring, is on the right-hand thumb.

It is useful to remember, when reading accounts of shooting with the Turkī (Turkish) bow, that the arrows (aūq) had notches so gripping the string that they kept in place until released with the string.

[643] sar-i-sabz gosha gīr. The gosha-gīr is an implement for remedying the warp of a bow-tip and string-notch. For further particulars see Appendix C.

The term sar-i-sabz, lit. green-head, occurs in the sense of ‘quite young’ or ‘new,’ in the proverb, ‘The red tongue loses the green head,’ quoted in the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī account of Bābur’s death. Applied here, it points to the gosha-gīr as part of the recent gift made by Aḥmad to Bābur.

[644] Taṃbal aīkāndūr. By this tense I understand that Bābur was not at first sure of the identity of the pseudo-sentries, partly because of their distance, partly, it may be presumed, because of concealment of identity by armour.

[645] dūwulgha būrkī; i.e. the soft cap worn under the iron helm.

[646] Nūyān’s sword dealt the blow (f. 97b). Gul-badan also tells the story (f. 77) à propos of a similar incident in Humāyūn’s career. Bābur repeats the story on f. 234.

[647] yāldāghlāmāī dūr aīdīm. The Second W.-i-B. has taken this as from yāltūrmāq, to cause to glisten, and adds the gloss that the sword was rusty (I.O. 217 f. 70b).

[648] The text here seems to say that the three men were on foot, but this is negatived by the context.

[649] Amongst the various uses of the verb tūshmak, to descend in any way, the B.N. does not allow of ‘falling (death) in battle.’ When I made the index of the Ḥai. MS. facsimile, this was not known to me; I therefore erroneously entered the men enumerated here as killed at this time.

[650] Elph. MS. yakhshī. Zenker explains bakhshī (pay-master) as meaning also a Court-physician.

[651] The Ḥai. Elph. and Kehr’s MS. all have pūchqāq tāqmāq or it may be pūḥqāq tāqmāq. T. būkhāq means bandage, pūchāq, rind of fruit, but the word clear in the three Turkī MSS. means, skin of a fox’s leg.

[652] The daryā here mentioned seems to be the Kāsān-water; the route taken from Bīshkhārān to Pāp is shewn on the Fr. map to lead past modern Tūpa-qūrghān. Pāp is not marked, but was, I think, at the cross-roads east of Touss (Karnān).

[653] Presumably Jahāngīr’s.

[654] Here his father was killed (f. 6b). Cf. App. A.

[655] ‘Alī-dost’s son (f. 79b).

[656] The sobriquet Khīz may mean Leaper, or Impetuous.

[657] kūīlāk, syn. kūnglāk, a shirt not opening at the breast. It will have been a short garment since the under-vest was visible.

[658] i.e. when Bābur was writing in Hindūstān. Exactly at what date he made this entry is not sure. ‘Alī was in Koel in 933 AH. (f. 315) and then taken prisoner, but Bābur does not say he was killed,—as he well might say of a marked man, and, as the captor was himself taken shortly after, ‘Alī may have been released, and may have been in Koel again. So that the statement ‘now in Koel’ may refer to a time later than his capture. The interest of the point is in its relation to the date of composition of the Bābur-nāma.

No record of ‘Alī’s bravery in Aūsh has been preserved. The reference here made to it may indicate something attempted in 908 AH. after Bābur’s adventure in Karnān (f. 118b) or in 909 AH. from Sūkh. Cf. Translator’s note f. 118b.

[659] aūpchīnlīk. Vambéry, gepanzert; Shaw, four horse-shoes and their nails; Steingass, aūpcha-khāna, a guard-house.

[660] Sang is a ferry-station (Kostenko, i, 213). Pāp may well have been regretted (f. 109b and f. 112b)! The well-marked features of the French map of 1904 allows Bābur’s flight to be followed.

[661] In the Turkī text this saying is in Persian; in the Kehr-Ilminsky, in Turkī, as though it had gone over with its Persian context of the W.-i-B. from which the K.-I. text here is believed to be a translation.

[662] Cf. f. 96b and Fr. Map for route over the Kīndīr-tau.

[663] This account of Muḥ. Bāqir reads like one given later to Bābur; he may have had some part in Bābur’s rescue (cf. Translator’s Note to f. 118b).

[664] Perhaps reeds for a raft. Sh. N. p. 258, Sāl aūchūn bār qāmīsh, reeds are there also for rafts.

[665] Here the Turkī text breaks off, as it might through loss of pages, causing a blank of narrative extending over some 16 months. Cf. App. D. for a passage, supposedly spurious, found with the Ḥaidarābād Codex and the Kehr-Ilminsky text, purporting to tell how Bābur was rescued from the risk in which the lacuna here leaves him.

[666] As in the Farghāna Section, so here, reliance is on the Elphinstone and Ḥaidarābād MSS. The Kehr-Ilminsky text still appears to be a retranslation from the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī and verbally departs much from the true text; moreover, in this Section it has been helped out, where its archetype was illegible or has lost fragmentary passages, from the Leyden and Erskine Memoirs. It may be mentioned, as between the First and the Second Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī, that several obscure passages in this Section are more explicit in the First (Pāyanda-ḥasan’s) than in its successor (‘Abdu-r-raḥīm’s).

[667] Elph. MS. f. 90b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215, f. 96b and 217, f. 79; Mems. p. 127. “In 1504 AD. Ferdinand the Catholic drove the French out of Naples” (Erskine). In England, Henry VII was pushing forward a commercial treaty, the Intercursus malus, with the Flemings and growing in wealth by the exactions of Empson and Dudley.

[668] presumably the pastures of the “Ilak” Valley. The route from Sūkh would be over the ‘Alā‘u’d-dīn-pass, into the Qīzīl-sū valley, down to Āb-i-garm and on to the Aīlāq-valley, Khwāja ‘Imād, the Kāfirnigān, Qabādīān, and Aūbāj on the Amū. See T.R. p. 175 and Farghāna Section, p. 184, as to the character of the journey.

[669] Amongst the Turkī tribes, the time of first applying the razor to the face is celebrated by a great entertainment. Bābur’s miserable circumstances would not admit of this (Erskine).

The text is ambiguous here, reading either that Sūkh was left or that Aīlāq-yīlāq was reached in Muḥarram. As the birthday was on the 8th, the journey very arduous and, for a party mostly on foot, slow, it seems safest to suppose that the start was made from Sūkh at the end of 909 AH. and not in Muḥarram, 910 AH.

[670] chārūq, rough boots of untanned leather, formed like a moccasin with the lower leather drawn up round the foot; they are worn by Khīrghīz mountaineers and caravan-men on journeys (Shaw).

[671] chāpān, the ordinary garment of Central Asia (Shaw).

[672] The ālāchūq, a tent of flexible poles, covered with felt, may be the khargāh (kibitka); Persian chādar seems to represent Turkī āq awī, white house.

[673] i.e. with Khusrau’s power shaken by Aūzbeg attack, made in the winter of 909 AH. (Shaibānī-nāma cap. lviii).

[674] Cf. ff. 81 and 81b. The armourer’s station was low for an envoy to Bābur, the superior in birth of the armourer’s master.

[675] var. Chaqānīān and Saghānīān. The name formerly described the whole of the Ḥiṣār territory (Erskine).

[676] the preacher by whom the Khut̤ba is read (Erskine).

[677] bī bāqī or bī Bāqī; perhaps a play of words with the double meaning expressed in the above translation.

[678] Amongst these were widows and children of Bābur’s uncle, Maḥmūd (f. 27b).

[679] aūghūl. As being the son of Khusrau’s sister, Aḥmad was nephew to Bāqī; there may be in the text a scribe’s slip from one aūghūl to another, and the real statement be that Aḥmad was the son of Bāqī’s son, Muḥ. Qāsim, which would account for his name Aḥmad-i-qāsim.

[680] Cf. f. 67.

[681] Bābur’s loss of rule in Farghāna and Samarkand.

[682] about 7 miles south of Aībak, on the road to Sar-i-tāgh (mountain-head, Erskine).

[683] viz. the respective fathers, Maḥmūd and ‘Umar Shaikh. The arrangement was made in 895 AH. (1490 AD.).

[684] Gulistān cap. i, story 3. Part of this quotation is used again on f. 183.

[685] Maḥmūd’s sons under whom Bāqī had served.

[686] Uncles of all degrees are included as elder brethren, cousins of all degrees, as younger ones.

[687] Presumably the ferries; perhaps the one on the main road from the north-east which crosses the river at Fort Murgh-āb.

[688] Nine deaths, perhaps where the Amū is split into nine channels at the place where Mīrzā Khān’s son Sulaimān later met his rebel grandson Shāh-rukh (T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī, Elliot & Dowson, v, 392, and A.N. Bib. Ind., 3rd ed., 441). Tūqūz-aūlūm is too far up the river to be Arnold’s “shorn and parcelled Oxus”.

[689] Shaibāq himself had gone down from Samarkand in 908 AH. and in 909 AH. and so permanently located his troops as to have sent their families to them. In 909 AH. he drove Khusrau into the mountains of Badakhshān, but did not occupy Qūndūz; thither Khusrau returned and there stayed till now, when Shaibāq again came south (fol. 123). See Sh. N. cap. lviii et seq.

[690] From Taṃbal, to put down whom he had quitted his army near Balkh (Sh. N. cap. lix).

[691] This, one of the many Red-rivers, flows from near Kāhmard and joins the Andar-āb water near Dūshī.

[692] A garī is twenty-four minutes.

[693] Qorān, Surat iii, verse 25; Sale’s Qorān, ed. 1825, i, 56.

[694] Cf. f. 82.

[695] viz. Bāī-sanghar, bowstrung, and Mas‘ūd, blinded.

[696] Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ is florid over the rubies of Badakhshān he says Bābur took from Khusrau, but Ḥaidar says Bābur not only had Khusrau’s property, treasure, and horses returned to him, but refused all gifts Khusrau offered. “This is one trait out of a thousand in the Emperor’s character.” Ḥaidar mentions, too, the then lack of necessaries under which Bābur suffered (Sh. N., cap. lxiii, and T.R. p. 176).

[697] Cf. T. R. p. 134 n. and 374 n.

[698] Jība, so often used to describe the quilted corselet, seems to have here a wider meaning, since the jība-khāna contained both joshan and kūhah, i.e. coats-of-mail and horse-mail with accoutrements. It can have been only from this source that Bābur’s men obtained the horse-mail of f. 127.

[699] He succeeded his father, Aūlūgh Beg Kābulī, in 907 AH.; his youth led to the usurpation of his authority by Sherīm Ẕikr, one of his begs; but the other begs put Sherīm to death. During the subsequent confusions Muḥ. Muqīm Arghūn, in 908 AH., got possession of Kābul and married a sister of ‘Abdu’r-razzāq. Things were in this state when Bābur entered the country in 910 AH. (Erskine).

[700] var. Ūpīān, a few miles north of Chārikār.

[701] Suhail (Canopus) is a most conspicuous star in Afghānistān; it gives its name to the south, which is never called Janūb but Suhail; the rising of Suhail marks one of their seasons (Erskine). The honour attaching to this star is due to its seeming to rise out of Arabia Felix.

[702] The lines are in the Preface to the Anwār-i-suhailī (Lights of Canopus).

[703] “Die Kirghis-qazzāq drücken die Sonnen-höhe in Pikenaus” (von Schwarz, p. 124).

[704] Presumably, dark with shade, as in qarā-yīghāch, the hard-wood elm (f. 47b and note to narwān).

[705] i.e. Sayyid Muḥammad ‘Alī, the door-ward. These būlāks seem likely to have been groups of 1,000 fighting-men (Turki Mīng).

[706] In-the-water and Water-head.

[707] Walī went from his defeat to Khwāst; wrote to Maḥmūd Aūzbeg in Qūndūz to ask protection; was fetched to Qūndūz by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, the author of the Shaibānī-nāma, and forwarded from Qūndūz to Samarkand (Sh. N. cap. lxiii). Cf. f. 29b.

[708] i.e. where justice was administered, at this time, outside Bābur’s tent.

[709] They would pass Ajar and make for the main road over the Dandān-shikan Pass.

[710] The clansmen may have obeyed Aḥmad’s orders in thus holding up the families.

[711] The name may be from Turkī tāq, a horse-shoe, but I.O. 215 f. 102 writes Persian naqīb, the servant who announces arriving guests.

[712] Here, as immediately below, when mentioning the Chār-bāgh and the tomb of Qūtlūq-qadam, Bābur uses names acquired by the places at a subsequent date. In 910 AH. the Taster was alive; the Chār-bāgh was bought by Bābur in 911 AH., and Qūtlūq-qadam fought at Kānwāha in 933 AH.

[713] The Kūcha-bāgh is still a garden about 4 miles from Kābul on the north-west and divided from it by a low hill-pass. There is still a bridge on the way (Erskine).

[714] Presumably that on which the Bālā-ḥiṣār stood, the glacis of a few lines further.

[715] Cf. f. 130.

[716] One of Muqīm’s wives was a Tīmūrid, Bābur’s first-cousin, the daughter of Aūlūgh Beg Kābulī; another was Bībī Zarīf Khātūn, the mother of that Māh-chūchūq, whose anger at her marriage to Bābur’s faithful Qāsim Kūkūldāsh has filled some pages of history (Gulbadan’s H.N. s.n. Māh-chūchūq and Erskine’s B. and H. i, 348).

[717] Some 9 m. north of Kābul on the road to Āq-sarāī.

[718] The Ḥai. MS. (only) writes First Rabī but the Second better suits the near approach of winter.

[719] Elph. MS. fol. 97; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 102b and 217 f. 85; Mems. p. 136. Useful books of the early 19th century, many of them referring to the Bābur-nāma, are Conolly’s Travels, Wood’s Journey, Elphinstone’s Caubul, Burnes’ Cabool, Masson’s Narrative, Lord’s and Leech’s articles in JASB 1838 and in Burnes’ Reports (India Office Library), Broadfoot’s Report in RGS Supp. Papers vol. I.

[720] f. 1b where Farghāna is said to be on the limit of cultivation.

[721] f. 131b. To find these tūmāns here classed with what was not part of Kābul suggest a clerical omission of “beyond” or “east of” (Lamghānāt). It may be more correct to write Lāmghānāt, since the first syllable may be lām, fort. The modern form Laghmān is not used in the Bābur-nāma, nor, it may be added is Paghmān for Pamghān.

[722] It will be observed that Bābur limits the name Afghānistān to the countries inhabited by Afghān tribesmen; they are chiefly those south of the road from Kābul to Pashāwar (Erskine). See Vigne, p. 102, for a boundary between the Afghāns and Khurāsān.

[723] Al-birūnī’s Indika writes of both Turk and Hindū-shāhī Kings of Kābul. See Raverty’s Notes p. 62 and Stein’s Shāhī Kings of Kābul. The mountain is 7592 ft. above the sea, some 1800 ft. therefore above the town.

[724] The Kābul-river enters the Chār-dih plain by the Dih-i-yaq‘ūb narrows, and leaves it by those of Dūrrīn. Cf. S.A. War, Plan p. 288 and Plan of action at Chār-āsiyā (Four-mills), the second shewing an off-take which may be Wais Ātāka’s canal. See Vigne, p. 163 and Raverty’s Notes pp. 69 and 689.

[725] This, the Bālā-jūī (upper-canal) was a four-mill stream and in Masson’s time, as now, supplied water to the gardens round Bābur’s tomb. Masson found in Kābul honoured descendants of Wais Ātāka (ii, 240).

[726] But for a, perhaps negligible, shortening of its first vowel, this form of the name would describe the normal end of an irrigation canal, a little pool, but other forms with other meanings are open to choice, e.g. small hamlet (Pers. kul), or some compound containing Pers. gul, a rose, in its plain or metaphorical senses. Jarrett’s Āyīn-i-akbarī writes Gul-kīnah, little rose (?). Masson (ii, 236) mentions a similar pleasure-resort, Sanjī-tāq.

[727] The original ode, with which the parody agrees in rhyme and refrain, is in the Dīwān, s.l. Dāl (Brockhaus ed. 1854, i, 62 and lith. ed. p. 96). See Wilberforce Clarke’s literal translation i, 286 (H. B.). A marginal note to the Ḥaidarābād Codex gives what appears to be a variant of one of the rhymes of the parody.

[728] aūlūgh kūl; some 3 m. round in Erskine’s time; mapped as a swamp in S.A. War p. 288.

[729] A marginal note to the Ḥai. Codex explains this name to be an abbreviation of Khwāja Shamsū’d-dīn Jān-bāz (or Jahān-bāz; Masson, ii, 279 and iii, 93).

[730] i.e. the place made holy by an impress of saintly foot-steps.

[731] Two eagles or, Two poles, used for punishment. Vigne’s illustration (p. 161) clearly shows the spur and the detached rock. Erskine (p. 137 n.) says that ‘Uqābain seems to be the hill, known in his day as ‘Āshiqān-i-‘ārifān, which connects with Bābur Bādshāh. See Raverty’s Notes p. 68.

[732] During most of the year this wind rushes through the Hindū-kush (Parwān)-pass; it checks the migration of the birds (f. 142), and it may be the cause of the deposit of the Running-sands (Burnes, p. 158). Cf. Wood, p. 124.

[733] He was Badī‘u’z-zamān’s Ṣadr before serving Bābur; he died in 918 AH. (1512 AD.), in the battle of Kūl-i-malik where ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aūzbeg defeated Bābur. He may be identical with Mīr Ḥusain the Riddler of f. 181, but seems not to be Mullā Muḥ. Badakhshī, also a Riddler, because the Ḥabību’s-siyār (ii, 343 and 344) gives this man a separate notice. Those interested in enigmas can find one made by T̤ālib on the name Yaḥya (Ḥ.S. ii, 344). Sharafu’d-dīn ‘Alī Yazdī, the author of the Z̤afar-nāma, wrote a book about a novel kind of these puzzles (T.R. p. 84).

[734] The original couplet is as follows:—

Bakhūr dar arg-i Kābul mai, bagardān kāsa pāy dar pāy,

Kah ham koh ast, u ham daryā, u ham shahr ast, u ham ṣaḥrā'.

What T̤ālib’s words may be inferred to conceal is the opinion that like Badī‘u’z-zamān and like the meaning of his name, Kābul is the Wonder-of-the-world. (Cf. M. Garçin de Tassy’s Rhétorique [p. 165], for ces combinaisons énigmatiques.)

[735] All MSS. do not mention Kāshghar.

[736] Khīta (Cathay) is Northern China; Chīn (infra) is China; Rūm is Turkey and particularly the provinces near Trebizond (Erskine).

[737] 300% to 400% (Erskine).

[738] Persian sinjid, Brandis, elæagnus hortensis; Erskine (Mems. p. 138) jujube, presumably the zizyphus jujuba of Speede, Supplement p. 86. Turkī yāngāq, walnut, has several variants, of which the most marked is yānghkāq. For a good account of Kābul fruits see Masson, ii, 230.

[739] a kind of plum (?). It seems unlikely to be a cherry since Bābur does not mention cherries as good in his old dominions, and Firminger (p. 244) makes against it as introduced from India. Steingass explains alū-bālū by “sour-cherry, an armarylla”; if sour, is it the Morello cherry?

[740] The sugar-cane was seen in abundance in Lan-po (Lamghān) by a Chinese pilgrim (Beale, p. 90); Bābur’s introduction of it may have been into his own garden only in Nīngnahār (f. 132b).

[741] i.e. the seeds of pinus Gerardiana.

[742] rawāshlār. The green leaf-stalks (chūkrī) of ribes rheum are taken into Kābul in mid-April from the Pamghān-hills; a week later they are followed by the blanched and tended rawāsh (Masson, ii, 7). See Gul-badan’s H.N. trs. p. 188, Vigne, p. 100 and 107, Masson, ii, 230, Conolly, i, 213.

[743] a large green fruit, shaped something like a citron; also a large sort of cucumber (Erskine).

[744] The ṣāḥibī, a grape praised by Bābur amongst Samarkandī fruits, grows in Koh-dāman; another well-known grape of Kābul is the long stoneless ḥusainī, brought by Afghān traders into Hindūstān in round, flat boxes of poplar wood (Vigne, p. 172).

[745] An allusion, presumably, to the renouncement of wine made by Bābur and some of his followers in 933 AH. (1527 AD. f. 312). He may have had ‘Umar Khayyām’s quatrain in mind, “Wine’s power is known to wine-bibbers alone” (Whinfield’s 2nd ed. 1901, No. 164).

[746] pūstīn, usually of sheep-skin. For the wide range of temperature at Kābul in 24 hours, see Ency. Brtt. art. Afghānistān. The winters also vary much in severity (Burnes, p. 273).

[747] Index s.n. As he fought at Kānwāha, he will have been buried after March 1527 AD.; this entry therefore will have been made later. The Curriers'-gate is the later Lahor-gate (Masson, ii, 259).

[748] Index s.n.

[749] For lists of the Hindū-kush passes see Leech’s Report VII; Yule’s Introductory Essay to Wood’s Journey 2nd ed.; PRGS 1879, Markham’s art. p. 121.

The highest cols on the passes here enumerated by Bābur are,—Khawāk 11,640 ft.—T̤ūl, height not known,—Pārandī 15,984 ft.—Bāj-gāh (Toll-place) 12,000 ft.—Walīān (Saints) 15,100 ft.—Chahār-dār (Four-doors) 18,900 ft. and Shibr-tū 9800 ft. In considering the labour of their ascent and descent, the general high level, north and south of them, should be borne in mind; e.g. Chārikār (Chār-yak-kār) stands 5200 ft. and Kābul itself at 5780 ft. above the sea.

[750] i.e. the hollow, long, and small-bāzār roads respectively. Panjhīr is explained by Hindūs to be Panj-sher, the five lion-sons of Pandu (Masson, iii, 168).

[751] Shibr is a Hazāra district between the head of the Ghūr-bund valley and Bāmīān. It does not seem to be correct to omit the tū from the name of the pass. Persian tū, turn, twist (syn. pīch) occurs in other names of local passes; to read it here as a turn agrees with what is said of Shibr-tū pass as not crossing but turning the Hindū-kush (Cunningham). Lord uses the same wording about the Ḥājī-ghāt (var. -kāk etc.) traverse of the same spur, which “turns the extremity of the Hindū-kush”. See Cunningham’s Ancient Geography, i, 25; Lord’s Ghūr-bund (JASB 1838 p. 528), Masson, iii, 169 and Leech’s Report VII.

[752] Perhaps through Jālmīsh into Saighān.

[753] i.e. they are closed.

[754] It was unknown in Mr. Erskine’s day (Mems. p. 140). Several of the routes in Raverty’s Notes (p. 92 etc.) allow it to be located as on the Īrī-āb, near to or identical with Bāghzān, 35 kurohs (70 m.) s.s.e. of Kābul.

[755] Farmūl, about the situation of which Mr. Erskine was in doubt, is now marked in maps, Ūrghūn being its principal village.

[756] 15 miles below Atak (Erskine). Mr. Erskine notes that he found no warrant, previous to Abū’l-faẓl’s, for calling the Indus the Nīl-āb, and that to find one would solve an ancient geographical difficulty. This difficulty, my husband suggests, was Alexander’s supposition that the Indus was the Nile. In books grouping round the Bābur-nāma, the name Nīl-āb is not applied to the Indus, but to the ferry-station on that river, said to owe its name to a spring of azure water on its eastern side. (Cf. Afẓal Khān Khattak, R.’s Notes p. 447.)

I find the name Nīl-āb applied to the Kābul-river:—1. to its Arghandī affluent (Cunningham, p. 17, Map); 2. through its boatman class, the Nīl-ābīs of Lālpūra, Jalālābād and Kūnār (G. of I. 1907, art. Kābul); 3. inferentially to it as a tributary of the Indus (D’Herbélot); 4. to it near its confluence with the grey, silt-laden Indus, as blue by contrast (Sayyid Ghulām-i-muḥammad, R.’s Notes p. 34). (For Nīl-āb (Naulibis?) in Ghūr-bund see Cunningham, p. 32 and Masson, iii, 169.)

[757] By one of two routes perhaps,—either by the Khaibar-Nīngnahār-Jagdālīk road, or along the north bank of the Kābul-river, through Goshṭa to the crossing where, in 1879, the 10th Hussars met with disaster. See S.A. War, Map 2 and p. 63; Leech’s Reports II and IV (Fords of the Indus); and R.’s Notes p. 44.

[758] Hāru, Leech’s Harroon, apparently, 10 m. above Atak. The text might be read to mean that both rivers were forded near their confluence, but, finding no warrant for supposing the Kābul-river fordable below Jalālābād, I have guided the translation accordingly; this may be wrong and may conceal a change in the river.

[759] Known also as Dhān-kot and as Mu‘az̤z̤am-nagar (Ma‘āṣiru’l-‘umrā i, 249 and A.N. trs. H.B. index s.n. Dhān-kot). It was on the east bank of the Indus, probably near modern Kālā-bāgh, and was washed away not before 956 AH. (1549 AD. H. Beveridge).

[760] Chaupāra seems, from f. 148b, to be the Chapari of Survey Map 1889. Bābur’s Dasht is modern Dāman.

[761] aīmāq, used usually of Mughūls, I think. It may be noted that Lieutenant Leech compiled a vocabulary of the tongue of the Mughūl Aīmāq in Qandahār and Harāt (JASB 1838, p. 785).

[762] The Āyīn-i-akbarī account of Kābul both uses and supplements the Bābur-nāma.

[763] viz. ‘Alī-shang, Alangār and Mandrāwar (the Lamghānāt proper), Nīngnahār (with its bulūk, Kāma), Kūnār-with-Nūr-gal, (and the two bulūks of Nūr-valley and Chaghān-sarāī).

[764] See Appendix E, On Nagarahāra.

[765] The name Adīnapūr is held to be descended from ancient Udyānapūra (Garden-town); its ancestral form however was applied to Nagarahāra, apparently, in the Bārān-Sūrkh-rūd dū-āb, and not to Bābur’s dārogha’s seat. The Sūrkh-rūd’s deltaic mouth was a land of gardens; when Masson visited Adīnapūr he went from Bālā-bāgh (High-garden); this appears to stand where Bābur locates his Bāgh-i-wafā, but he was shown a garden he took to be this one of Bābur’s, a mile higher up the Sūrkh-rūd. A later ruler made the Chār-bāgh of maps. It may be mentioned that Bālā-bāgh has become in some maps Rozābād (Garden-town). See Masson, i, 182 and iii, 186; R.’s Notes; and Wilson’s Ariana Antiqua, Masson’s art.

[766] One of these tangī is now a literary asset in Mr. Kipling’s My Lord the Elephant. Bābur’s 13 y. represent some 82 miles; on f. 137b the Kābul-Ghaznī road of 14 y. represents some 85; in each case the yīghāch works out at over six miles (Index s.n. yīghāch and Vigne, p. 454). Sayyid Ghulām-i-muḥammad traces this route minutely (R.’s Notes pp. 57, 59).

[767] Masson was shewn “Chaghatai castles”, attributed to Bābur (iii, 174).

[768] Dark-turn, perhaps, as in Shibr-tū, Jāl-tū, etc. (f. 130b and note to Shibr-tū).

[769] f. 145 where the change is described in identical words, as seen south of the Jagdālīk-pass. The Bādām-chashma pass appears to be a traverse of the eastern rampart of the Tīzīn-valley.

[770] Appendix E, On Nagarahāra.

[771] No record exists of the actual laying-out of the garden; the work may have been put in hand during the Mahmand expedition of 914 AH. (f. 216); the name given to it suggests a gathering there of loyalists when the stress was over of the bad Mughūl rebellion of that year (f. 216b where the narrative breaks off abruptly in 914 AH. and is followed by a gap down to 925 AH.-1519 AD.).

[772] No annals of 930 AH. are known to exist; from Ṣafar 926 AH. to 932 AH. (Jan. 1520-Nov. 1525 AD.) there is a lacuna. Accounts of the expedition are given by Khāfī Khān, i, 47 and Firishta, lith. ed. p. 202.

[773] Presumably to his son, Humāyūn, then governor in Badakhshān; Bukhārā also was under Bābur’s rule.

[774] Here, qārī, yards. The dimensions 10 by 10, are those enjoined for places of ablution.

[775] Presumably those of the tūqūz-rūd, supra. Cf. Appendix E, On Nagarahāra.

[776] White-mountain; Pushtū, Spīn-ghur (or ghar).

[777] i.e. the Lamghānāt proper. The range is variously named; in (Persian) Siyāh-koh (Black-mountain), which like Turkī Qarā-tāgh may mean non-snowy; by Tājīks, Bāgh-i-ātāka (Foster-father’s garden); by Afghāns, Kanda-ghur, and by Lamghānīs Koh-i-būlān,—Kanda and Būlān both being ferry-stations below it (Masson, iii, 189; also the Times Nov. 20th 1912 for a cognate illustration of diverse naming).

[778] A comment made here by Mr. Erskine on changes of name is still appropriate, but some seeming changes may well be due to varied selection of land-marks. Of the three routes next described in the text, one crosses as for Mandrāwar; the second, as for ‘Alī-shang, a little below the outfall of the Tīzīn-water; the third may take off from the route, between Kābul and Tag-aū, marked in Col. Tanner’s map (PRGS 1881 p. 180). Cf. R’s Route 11; and for Aūlūgh-nūr, Appendix F, On the name Nūr.

[779] The name of this pass has several variants. Its second component, whatever its form, is usually taken to mean pass, but to read it here as pass would be redundant, since Bābur writes “pass (kūtal) of Bād-i-pīch”. Pich occurs as a place name both east (Pīch) and west (Pīchghān) of the kūtal, but what would suit the bitter and even fatal winds of the pass would be to read the name as Whirling-wind (bād-i-pīch). Another explanation suggests itself from finding a considerable number of pass-names such as Shibr-tū, Jāi-tū, Qarā-tū, in which tū is a synonym of pīch, turn, twist; thus Bād-i-pīch may be the local form of Bād-tū, Windy-turn.

[780] See Masson, iii, 197 and 289. Both in Pashāī and Lamghānī, lām means fort.

[781] See Appendix F, On the name Dara-i-nūr.

[782] ghair mukarrar. Bābur may allude to the remarkable change men have wrought in the valley-bottom (Appendix F, for Col. Tanner’s account of the valley).

[783] f. 154.

[784] diospyrus lotus, the European date-plum, supposed to be one of the fruits eaten by the Lotophagi. It is purple, has bloom and is of the size of a pigeon’s egg or a cherry. See Watts’ Economic Products of India; Brandis’ Forest Trees, Illustrations; and Speede’s Indian Hand-book.

[785] As in Lombardy, perhaps; in Luhūgur vines are clipped into standards; in most other places in Afghānistān they are planted in deep trenches and allowed to run over the intervening ridges or over wooden framework. In the narrow Khūlm-valley they are trained up poplars so as to secure them the maximum of sun. See Wood’s Report VI p. 27; Bellew’s Afghānistān p. I75 and Mems. p. 142 note.

[786] Appendix G, On the names of two Nūrī wines.

[787] This practice Bābur viewed with disgust, the hog being an impure animal according to Muḥammadan Law (Erskine).

[788] The Khazīnatu’l-asfiyā (ii, 293) explains how it came about that this saint, one honoured in Kashmīr, was buried in Khutlān. He died in Hazāra (Paklī) and there the Paklī Sult̤ān wished to have him buried, but his disciples, for some unspecified reason, wished to bury him in Khutlān. In order to decide the matter they invited the Sultān to remove the bier with the corpse upon it. It could not be stirred from its place. When, however, a single one of the disciples tried to move it, he alone was able to lift it, and to bear it away on his head. Hence the burial in Khutlān. The death occurred in 786 AH. (1384 AD.). A point of interest in this legend is that, like the one to follow, concerning dead women, it shews belief in the living activities of the dead.

[789] The MSS. vary between 920 and 925 AH.—neither date seems correct. As the annals of 925 AH. begin in Muḥarram, with Bābur to the east of Bājaur, we surmise that the Chaghān-sarāī affair may have occurred on his way thither, and at the end of 924 AH.

[790] karanj, coriandrum sativum.

[791] Some 20-24 m. north of Jalālābād. The name Multa-kundī may refer to the Rām-kundī range, or mean Lower district, or mean Below Kundī. See Biddulph’s Khowārī Dialect s.n under; R.’s Notes p. 108 and Dict. s.n. kund; Masson, i, 209.

[792] i.e. treat her corpse as that of an infidel (Erskine).

[793] It would suit the position of this village if its name were found to link to the Turkī verb chaqmāq, to go out, because it lies in the mouth of a defile (Dahānah-i-koh, Mountain-mouth) through which the road for Kāfiristān goes out past the village. A not-infrequent explanation of the name to mean White-house, Āq-sarāī, may well be questioned. Chaghān, white, is Mughūlī and it would be less probable for a Mughūlī than for a Turkī name to establish itself. Another explanation may lie in the tribe name Chugānī. The two forms chaghān and chaghār may well be due to the common local interchange in speech of n with r. (For Dahānah-i-koh see [some] maps and Raverty’s Bājaur routes.)

[794] Nīmchas, presumably,—half-bred in custom, perhaps in blood—; and not improbably, converted Kāfirs. It is useful to remember that Kāfiristān was once bounded, west and south, by the Bārān-water.

[795] Kāfir wine is mostly poor, thin and, even so, usually diluted with water. When kept two or three years, however, it becomes clear and sometimes strong. Sir G. S. Robertson never saw a Kāfir drunk (Kāfirs of the Hindū-kush, p. 591).

[796] Kāma might have classed better under Nīngnahār of which it was a dependency.

[797] i.e. water-of-Nijr; so too, Badr-aū and Tag-aū. Nijr-aū has seven-valleys (JASB 1838 p. 329 and Burnes’ Report X). Sayyid Ghulām-i-muḥammad mentions that Bābur established a frontier-post between Nijr-aū and Kāfiristān which in his own day was still maintained. He was an envoy of Warren Hastings to Tīmūr Shāh Sadozī (R.’s Notes p. 36 and p. 142).

[798] Kāfirwash; they were Kāfirs converted to Muḥammadanism.

[799] Archa, if not inclusive, meaning conifer, may represent juniperus excelsa, this being the common local conifer. The other trees of the list are pinus Gerardiana (Brandis, p. 690), quercus bīlūt, the holm-oak, and pistacia mutica or khanjak, a tree yielding mastic.

[800] rūba-i-parwān, pteromys inornatus, the large, red flying-squirrel (Blandford’s Fauna of British India, Mammalia, p. 363).

[801] The giz is a short-flight arrow used for shooting small birds etc. Descending flights of squirrels have been ascertained as 60 yards, one, a record, of 80 (Blandford).

[802] Apparently tetrogallus himalayensis, the Himalayan snow-cock (Blandford, iv, 143).Burnes (Cabool p. 163) describes the kabg-i-darī as the rara avis of the Kābul Kohistān, somewhat less than a turkey, and of the chikor (partridge) species. It was procured for him first in Ghūr-bund, but, when snow has fallen, it could be had nearer Kābul. Bābur’s bū-qalamūn may have come into his vocabulary, either as a survival direct from Greek occupation of Kābul and Panj-āb, or through Arabic writings. PRGS 1879 p. 251, Kaye’s art. and JASB 1838 p. 863, Hodgson’s art.

[803] Bartavelle’s Greek-partridge, tetrao- or perdrix-rufus [f. 279 and Mems. p. 320 n.].

[804] A similar story is told of some fields near Whitby:—“These wild geese, which in winter fly in great flocks to the lakes and rivers unfrozen in the southern parts, to the great amazement of every-one, fall suddenly down upon the ground when they are in flight over certain neighbouring fields thereabouts; a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men.” See Notes to Marmion p. xlvi (Erskine); Scott’s Poems, Black’s ed. 1880, vii, 104.

[805] Are we to infer from this that the musk-rat (Crocidura cœrulea, Lydekker, p. 626) was not so common in Hindūstān in the age of Bābur as it has now become? He was not a careless observer (Erskine).

[806] Index s.n. Bābur-nāma, date of composition; also f. 131.

[807] In the absence of examples of bund to mean kūtal, and the presence “in those countries” of many in which bund means koh, it looks as though a clerical error had here written kūtal for koh. But on the other hand, the wording of the next passage shows just the confusion an author’s unrevised draft might shew if a place were, as this is, both a tūmān and a kūtal (i.e. a steady rise to a traverse). My impression is that the name Ghūr-bund applies to the embanking spur at the head of the valley-tūmān, across which roads lead to Ghūrī and Ghūr (PRGS 1879, Maps; Leech’s Report VII; and Wood’s VI).

[808] So too when, because of them, Leech and Lord turned back, re infectâ.

[809] It will be noticed that these villages are not classed in any tūmān; they include places “rich without parallel” in agricultural products, and level lands on which towns have risen and fallen, one being Alexandria ad Caucasum. They cannot have been part of the unremunerative Ghūr-bund tūmān; from their place of mention in Bābur’s list of tūmāns, they may have been part of the Kābul tūmān (f. 178), as was Koh-dāman (Burnes’ Cabool p. 154; Haughton’s Charikar p. 73; and Cunningham’s Ancient History, i, 18).

[810] Dūr-namāī, seen from afar (Masson, iii, 152) is not marked on the Survey Maps; Masson, Vigne and Haughton locate it. Bābur’s “head” and “foot” here indicate status and not location.

[811] Mems. p. 146 and Méms, i, 297, Arabs’ encampment and Cellule des Arabes. Perhaps the name may refer to uses of the level land and good pasture by horse qāfilas, since Kurra is written with tashdīd in the Ḥaidarābād Codex, as in kurra-tāz, a horse-breaker. Or the tāziyān may be the fruit of a legend, commonly told, that the saint of the neighbouring Running-sands was an Arabian.

[812] Presumably this is the grass of the millet, the growth before the ear, on which grazing is allowed (Elphinstone, i, 400; Burnes, p. 237).

[813] Wood, p. 115; Masson, iii, 167; Burnes, p. 157 and JASB 1838 p. 324 with illustration; Vigne, pp. 219, 223; Lord, JASB 1838 p. 537; Cathay and the way thither, Hakluyt Society vol. I. p. xx, para. 49; History of Musical Sands, C. Carus-Wilson.

[814] West might be more exact, since some of the group are a little north, others a little south of the latitude of Kābul.

[815] Affluents and not true sources in some cases (Col. Holdich’s Gates of India, s.n. Koh-i-bābā; and PRGS 1879, maps pp. 80 and 160).

[816] The Pamghān range. These are the villages every traveller celebrates. Masson’s and Vigne’s illustrations depict them well.

[817] Cercis siliquastrum, the Judas-tree. Even in 1842 it was sparingly found near Kābul, adorning a few tombs, one Bābur’s own. It had been brought from Sih-yārān where, as also at Chārikār, (Chār-yak-kār) it was still abundant and still a gorgeous sight. It is there a tree, as at Kew, and not a bush, as in most English gardens (Masson, ii, 9; Elphinstone, i, 194; and for the tree near Harāt, f. 191 n. to Ṣafar).

[818] Khwāja Maudūd of Chisht, Khwāja Khāwand Sa‘īd and the Khwāja of the Running-sands (Elph. MS. f. 104b, marginal note).

[819] The yellow-flowered plant is not cercis siliquastrum but one called mahaka(?) in Persian, a shrubby plant with pea-like blossoms, common in the plains of Persia, Bilūchistān and Kābul (Masson, iii, 9 and Vigne, p. 216).

[820] The numerical value of these words gives 925 (Erskine). F. 246b et seq. for the expedition.

[821] f. 178. I.O. MS. No. 724, Haft-iqlīm f. 135 (Ethé, p. 402); Rieu, pp. 21a, 1058b.

[822] of Afghan habit. The same term is applied (f. 139b) to the Zurmutīs; it may be explained in both places by Bābur’s statement that Zurmutīs grow corn, but do not cultivate gardens or orchards.

[823] aīkān dūr. Sabuk-tīgīn, d. 387 AH.-997 AD., was the father of Sl. Maḥmūd Ghaznawī, d. 421 AH.-1030 AD.

[824] d. 602 AH.-1206 AD.

[825] Some Musalmāns fast through the months of Rajab, Sha‘bān and Ramẓān; Muḥammadans fast only by day; the night is often given to feasting (Erskine).

[826] The Garden; the tombs of more eminent Muṣalmāns are generally in gardens (Erskine). See Vigne’s illustrations, pp. 133, 266.

[827] i.e. the year now in writing. The account of the expedition, Bābur’s first into Hindūstān, begins on f. 145.

[828] i.e. the countries groupable as Khurāsān.

[829] For picture and account of the dam, see Vigne, pp. 138, 202.

[830] f. 295b.

[831] The legend is told in numerous books with varying location of the spring. One narrator, Zakarīyā Qazwīnī, reverses the parts, making Jāī-pāl employ the ruse; hence Leyden’s note (Mems. p. 150; E. and D.’s History of India ii, 20, 182 and iv, 162; for historical information, R.’s Notes p. 320). The date of the events is shortly after 378 AH.-988 AD.

[832] R.’s Notes s.n. Zurmut.

[833] The question of the origin of the Farmūlī has been written of by several writers; perhaps they were Turks of Persia, Turks and Tājīks.

[834] This completes the list of the 14 tūmāns of Kābul, viz. Nīngnahār, ‘Alī-shang, Alangār, Mandrāwar, Kūnār-with-Nūr-gal, Nijr-aū, Panjhīr, Ghūr-bund, Koh-dāman (with Kohistān?), Luhūgur (of the Kābul tūmān), Ghaznī, Zurmut, Farmūl and Bangash.

[835] Between Nijr-aū and Tag-aū (Masson, iii, 165). Mr. Erskine notes that Bābur reckoned it in the hot climate but that the change of climate takes place further east, between ‘Alī-shang and Aūzbīn (i.e. the valley next eastwards from Tag-aū).

[836] būghūzlārīghā furṣat būlmās; i.e. to kill them in the lawful manner, while pronouncing the Bi’smi’llāh.

[837] This completes the bulūks of Kābul viz. Badr-aū (Tag-aū), Nūr-valley, Chaghān-sarāī, Kāma and Ālā-sāī.

[838] The rūpī being equal to 2-1/2 shāhrukhīs, the shāhrukhī may be taken at 10d. thus making the total revenue only £33,333 6s. 8d. See Āyīn-i-akbarī ii, 169 (Erskine).

[839] sic in all B. N. MSS. Most maps print Khost. Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ says of Khwāst, “Who sees it, would call it a Hell” (Vambéry, p. 361).

[840] Bābur’s statement about this fodder is not easy to translate; he must have seen grass grow in tufts, and must have known the Persian word būta (bush). Perhaps kāh should be read to mean plant, not grass. Would Wood’s bootr fit in, a small furze bush, very plentiful near Bāmiān? (Wood’s Report VI, p. 23; and for regional grasses, Aitchison’s Botany of the Afghān Delimitation Commission, p. 122.)

[841] nāzū, perhaps cupressus torulosa (Brandis, p.693).

[842] f. 276.

[843] A laborious geographical note of Mr. Erskine’s is here regretfully left behind, as now needless (Mems. p. 152).

[844] Here, mainly wild-sheep and wild-goats, including mār-khẉār.

[845] Perhaps, no conifers; perhaps none of those of the contrasted hill-tract.

[846] While here dasht (plain) represents the eastern skirt of the Mehtar Sulaimān range, dūkī or dūgī (desert) seems to stand for the hill tracts on the west of it, and not, as on f. 152, for the place there specified.

[847] Mems. p. 152, “A narrow place is large to the narrow-minded”; Méms. i, 311, “Ce qui n’est pas trop large, ne reste pas vide.” Literally, “So long as heights are not equal, there is no vis-a-vis,” or, if tāng be read for tīng, “No dawn, no noon,” i.e. no effect without a cause.

[848] I have not lighted on this name in botanical books or explained by dictionaries. Perhaps it is a Cis-oxanian name for the sax-aol of Transoxania. As its uses are enumerated by some travellers, it might be Haloxylon ammodendron, ta-ghas etc. and sax-aol (Aitchison, p. 102).

[849] f. 135b note to Ghūr-bund.

[850] I understand that wild-goats, wild-sheep and deer (āhū) were not localized, but that the dun-sheep migrated through. Antelope (āhū) was scarce in Elphinstone’s time.

[851] qīzīl kīyik which, taken with its alternative name, arqārghalcha, allows it to be the dun-sheep of Wood’s Journey p. 241. From its second name it may be Ovis amnon (Raos), or O. argalī.

[852] tusqāwal, var. tutqāwal, tus̱aqāwal and tūshqāwal, a word which has given trouble to scribes and translators. As a sporting-term it is equivalent to shikār-i-nihilam; in one or other of its forms I find it explained as Weg-hüter, Fahnen-hüter, Zahl-meister, Schlucht, Gefahrlicher-weg and Schmaler-weg. It recurs in the B.N. on f. 197b l. 5 and l. 6 and there might mean either a narrow road or a Weg-hüter. If its Turkī root be tūs, the act of stopping, all the above meanings can follow, but there may be two separate roots, the second, tūsh, the act of descent (JRAS 1900 p. 137, H. Beveridge’s art. On the word nihilam).

[853] qūshlīk, aītlīk. Elphinstone writes (i, 191) of the excellent greyhounds and hawking birds of the region; here the bird may be the charkh, which works with the dogs, fastening on the head of the game (Von Schwarz, p. 117, for the same use of eagles).

[854] An antelope resembling the usual one of Hindūstān is common south of Ghaznī (Vigne, p. 110); what is not found may be some classes of wild-sheep, frequent further north, at higher elevation, and in places more familiar to Bābur.

[855] The Parwān or Hindū-kush pass, concerning the winds of which see f. 128.

[856] tūrnā u qarqara; the second of which is the Hindī būglā, heron, egret ardea gazetta, the furnisher of the aigrette of commerce.

[857] The aūqār is ardea cinerea, the grey heron; the qarqara is ardea gazetta, the egret. Qūt̤ān is explained in the Elph. Codex (f. 110) by khawāsil, goldfinch, but the context concerns large birds; Scully (Shaw’s Voc.) has qodan, water-hen, which suits better.

[858] giz, the short-flight arrow.

[859] a small, round-headed nail with which a whip-handle is decorated (Vambéry). Such a stud would keep the cord from slipping through the fingers and would not check the arrow-release.

[860] It has been understood (Mems. p. 158 and Méms. i, 313) that the arrow was flung by hand but if this were so, something heavier than the giz would carry the cord better, since it certainly would be difficult to direct a missile so light as an arrow without the added energy of the bow. The arrow itself will often have found its billet in the closely-flying flock; the cord would retrieve the bird. The verb used in the text is aītmāq, the one common to express the discharge of arrows etc.

[861] For Tīmūrids who may have immigrated the fowlers see Raverty’s Notes p. 579 and his Appendix p. 22.

[862] milwāh; this has been read by all earlier translators, and also by the Persian annotator of the Elph. Codex, to mean shākh, bough. For decoy-ducks see Bellew’s Notes on Afghānistān p. 404.

[863] qūlān qūyirūghī. Amongst the many plants used to drug fish I have not found this one mentioned. Khār-zāhra and khār-fāq approach it in verbal meaning; the first describes colocynth, the second, wild rue. See Watts’ Economic Products of India iii, 366 and Bellew’s Notes pp. 182, 471 and 478.

[864] Much trouble would have been spared to himself and his translators, if Bābur had known a lobster-pot.

[865] The fish, it is to be inferred, came down the fall into the pond.

[866] Burnes and Vigne describe a fall 20 miles from Kābul, at “Tangī Gharoi”, [below where the Tag-aū joins the Bārān-water,] to which in their day, Kābulīs went out for the amusement of catching fish as they try to leap up the fall. Were these migrants seeking upper waters or were they captives in a fish-pond?

[867] Elph. MS. f. 111; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 116b and 217 f. 97b; Mems. p. 155; Méms. i, 318.

[868] mihmān-beglār, an expression first used by Bābur here, and due, presumably, to accessions from Khusrau Shāh’s following. A parallel case is given in Max Müller’s Science of Language i, 348 ed. 1871, “Turkmān tribes ... call themselves, not subjects, but guests of the Uzbeg Khāns.”

[869] tiyūl-dīk in all the Turkī MSS. Ilminsky, de Courteille and Zenker, yitūl-dīk, Turkī, a fief.

[870] Wilāyat khūd hech bīrīlmādī; W.-i-B. 215 f. 116b, Wilāyat dāda na shuda and 217 f. 97b, Wilāyat khūd hech dāda na shud. By this I understand that he kept the lands of Kābul itself in his own hands. He mentions (f. 350) and Gul-badan mentions (H.N. f. 40b) his resolve so to keep Kābul. I think he kept not only the fort but all lands constituting the Kābul tūmān (f. 135b and note).

[871] Saifī dūr, qalamī aīmās, i.e. tax is taken by force, not paid on a written assessment.

[872] khar-wār, about 700 lbs Averdupois (Erskine). Cf. Āyīn-i-akbarī (Jarrett, ii, 394).

[873] Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad and Badāyūnī both mention this script and say that in it Bābur transcribed a copy of the Qorān for presentation to Makka. Badāyūnī says it was unknown in his day, the reign of Akbar (T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī, lith. ed. p. 193, and Muntakhabu’t-tawārīkh Bib. Ind. ed. iii, 273).

[874] Bābur’s route, taken with one given by Raverty (Notes p. 691), allows these Hazāras, about whose location Mr. Erskine was uncertain, to be located between the Takht-pass (Arghandī-Maidān-Unai road), on their east, and the Sang-lākh mountains, on their west.

[875] The Takht-pass, one on which from times immemorial, toll (nirkh) has been taken.

[876] khāt̤ir-khwāh chāpīlmādī, which perhaps implies mutual discontent, Bābur’s with his gains, the Hazāras’ with their losses. As the second Persian translation omits the negative, the Memoirs does the same.

[877] Bhīra being in Shāhpūr, this Khān’s daryā will be the Jehlam.

[878] Bābur uses Persian dasht and Hindī dūkī, plain and hill, for the tracts east and west of Mehtar Sulaimān. The first, dasht, stands for Dāman (skirt) and Dara-i-jāt, the second, dūkī, indefinitely for the broken lands west of the main range, but also, in one instance for the Dūkī [Dūgī] district of Qandahār, as will be noted.

[879] f. 132. The Jagdālīk-pass for centuries has separated the districts of Kābul and Nīngnahār. Forster (Travels ii, 68), making the journey the reverse way, was sensible of the climatic change some 3m. east of Gandamak. Cf. Wood’s Report I. p. 6.

[880] These are they whose families Nāṣir Mīrzā shepherded out of Kābul later (f. 154, f. 155).

[881] Bird’s-dome, opposite the mouth of the Kūnār-water (S.A. War, Map p. 64).

[882] This word is variously pointed and is uncertain. Mr. Erskine adopted “Pekhi”, but, on the whole, it may be best to read, here and on f. 146, Ar. fajj or pers. paj, mountain or pass. To do so shews the guide to be one located in the Khaibar-pass, a Fajjī or Pajī.

[883] mod. Jām-rūd (Jām-torrent), presumably.

[884] G. of I. xx, 125 and Cunningham’s Ancient History i, 80. Bābur saw the place in 925 AH. (f. 232b).

[885] Cunningham, p. 29. Four ancient sites, not far removed from one another, bear this name, Bīgrām, viz. those near Hūpīān, Kābul, Jalālābād and Pashāwar.

[886] Cunningham, i, 79.

[887] Perhaps a native of Kamarī on the Indus, but kamarī is a word of diverse application (index s.n.).

[888] The annals of this campaign to the eastward shew that Bābur was little of a free agent; that many acts of his own were merciful; that he sets down the barbarity of others as it was, according to his plan of writing (f. 86); and that he had with him undisciplined robbers of Khusrau Shāh’s former following. He cannot be taken as having power to command or control the acts of those, his guest-begs and their following, who dictated his movements in this disastrous journey, one worse than a defeat, says Ḥaidar Mīrzā.

[889] For the route here see Masson, i, 117 and Colquhoun’s With the Kuram Field-force p. 48.

[890] The Ḥai. MS. writes this Dilah-zāk.

[891] i.e. raised a force in Bābur’s name. He took advantage of this farmān in 911 AH. to kill Bāqī Chagkānīānī (f. 159b-160).

[892] Of the Yūsuf-zāī and Ranjīt-sīngh, Masson says, (i, 141) “The miserable, hunted wretches threw themselves on the ground, and placing a blade or tuft of grass in their mouths, cried out, “I am your cow.” This act and explanation, which would have saved them from an orthodox Hindū, had no effect with the infuriated Sikhs.” This form of supplication is at least as old as the days of Firdausī (Erskine, p. 159 n.). The Bahār-i-‘ajam is quoted by Vullers as saying that in India, suppliants take straw in the mouth to indicate that they are blanched and yellow from fear.

[893] This barbarous custom has always prevailed amongst the Tartar conquerors of Asia (Erskine). For examples under ‘ see Raverty’s Notes p. 137.

[894] For a good description of the road from Kohāt to Thāl see Bellew’s Mission p. 104.

[895] F. 88b has the same phrase about the doubtful courage of one Sayyidī Qarā.

[896] Not to the mod. town of Bannū, [that having been begun only in 1848 AD.] but wherever their wrong road brought them out into the Bannū amphitheatre. The Survey Map of 1868, No. 15, shews the physical features of the wrong route.

[897] Perhaps he connived at recovery of cattle by those raided already.

[898] Tāq is the Tank of Maps; Bāzār was s.w. of it. Tank for Tāq looks to be a variant due to nasal utterance (Vigne, p. 77, p. 203 and Map; and, as bearing on the nasal, in loco, Appendix E).

[899] If return had been made after over-running Bannū, it would have been made by the Tochī-valley and so through Farmūl; if after over-running the Plain, Bābur’s details shew that the westward turn was meant to be by the Gūmāl-valley and one of two routes out of it, still to Farmūl; but the extended march southward to near Dara-i-Ghazī Khān made the westward turn be taken through the valley opening at Sakhī-sawār.

[900] This will mean, none of the artificial runlets familiar where Bābur had lived before getting to know Hindūstān.

[901] sauda-āt, perhaps, pack-ponies, perhaps, bred for sale and not for own use. Burnes observes that in 1837 Lūhānī merchants carried precisely the same articles of trade as in Bābur’s day, 332 years earlier (Report IX p. 99).

[902] Mr. Erskine thought it probable that the first of these routes went through Kanigūram, and the second through the Ghwālirī-pass and along the Gūmāl. Birk, fastness, would seem an appropriate name for Kanigūram, but, if Bābur meant to go to Ghaznī, he would be off the ordinary Gūmāl-Ghaznī route in going through Farmūl (Aūrgūn). Raverty’s Notes give much useful detail about these routes, drawn from native sources. For Barak (Birk) see Notes pp. 88, 89; Vigne, p. 102.

[903] From this it would seem that the alternative roads were approached by one in common.

[904] tūmshūq, a bird’s bill, used here, as in Selsey-bill, for the naze (nose), or snout, the last spur, of a range.

[905] Here these words may be common nouns.

[906] Nū-roz, the feast of the old Persian New-year (Erskine); it is the day on which the Sun enters Aries.

[907] In the [Turkī] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. and in some Persian ones, there is a space left here as though to indicate a known omission.

[908] kamarī, sometimes a cattle-enclosure, which may serve as a sangur. The word may stand in one place of its Bābur-nāma uses for Gum-rāhī (R.’s Notes s.n. Gum-rāhān).

[909] Index s.n.

[910] Vigne, p. 241.

[911] This name can be translated “He turns not back” or “He stops not”.

[912] i.e. five from Bīlah.

[913] Raverty gives the saint’s name as Pīr Kānūn (Ar. kānūn, listened to). It is the well-known Sakhī-sarwār, honoured hy Hindūs and Muḥammadans. (G. of I., xxi, 390; R.’s Notes p. 11 and p. 12 and JASB 1855; Calcutta Review 1875, Macauliffe’s art. On the fair at Sakhi-sarwar; Leech’s Report VII, for the route; Khazīnatu ’l-asfiyā iv, 245.)

[914] This seems to be the sub-district of Qandahār, Dūkī or Dūgī.

[915] khar-gāh, a folding tent on lattice frame-work, perhaps a khibitka.

[916] It may be more correct to write Kāh-mard, as the Ḥai. MS. does and to understand in the name a reference to the grass(kāh)-yielding capacity of the place.

[917] f. 121.

[918] This may mean, what irrigation has not used.

[919] Mr. Erskine notes that the description would lead us to imagine a flock of flamingoes. Masson found the lake filled with red-legged, white fowl (i, 262); these and also what Bābur saw, may have been the China-goose which has body and neck white, head and tail russet (Bellew’s Mission p. 402). Broadfoot seems to have visited the lake when migrants were few, and through this to have been led to adverse comment on Bābur’s accuracy (p. 350).

[920] The usual dryness of the bed may have resulted from the irrigation of much land some 12 miles from Ghaznī.

[921] This is the Luhūgur (Logar) water, knee-deep in winter at the ford but spreading in flood with the spring-rains. Bābur, not being able to cross it for the direct roads into Kābul, kept on along its left bank, crossing it eventually at the Kamarī of maps, s.e. of Kābul.

[922] This disastrous expedition, full of privation and loss, had occupied some four months (T.R. p. 201).

[923] f. 145b.

[924] f. 133b and Appendix F.

[925] They were located in Mandrāwar in 926 AH. (f. 251).

[926] This was done, manifestly, with the design of drawing after the families their fighting men, then away with Bābur.

[927] f. 163. Shaibāq Khān besieged Chīn Ṣufī, Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā’s man in Khwārizm (T. R. p. 204; Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry, Table of Contents and note 89).

[928] Survey Map 1889, Sadda. The Rāgh-water flows n.w. into the Oxus (Amū).

[929] birk, a mountain stronghold; cf. f. 149b note to Birk (Barak).

[930] They were thus driven on from the Bārān-water (f. 154b).

[931] f. 126b.

[932] Ḥiṣār, presumably.

[933] Here “His Honour” translates Bābur’s clearly ironical honorific plural.

[934] These two sult̤āns, almost always mentioned in alliance, may be Tīmūrids by maternal descent (Index s.nn.). So far I have found no direct statement of their parentage. My husband has shewn me what may be one indication of it, viz. that two of the uncles of Shaibāq Khān (whose kinsmen the sult̤āns seem to be), Qūj-kūnjī and Sīūnjak, were sons of a daughter of the Tīmūrid Aūlūgh Beg Samarkandī (Ḥ.S. ii, 318). See Vambéry’s Bukhārā p. 248 note.

[935] For the deaths of Taṃbal and Maḥmūd, mentioned in the above summary of Shaibāq Khān’s actions, see the Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry, p. 323.

[936] Ḥ.S. ii, 323, for Khusrau Shāh’s character and death.

[937] f. 124.

[938] Khwāja-of-the-rhubarb, presumably a shrine near rhubarb-grounds (f. 129b).

[939] yakshī bārdīlār, lit. went well, a common expression in the Bābur-nāma, of which the reverse statement is yamānlīk bīla bārdī (f. 163). Some Persian MSS. make the Mughūls disloyal but this is not only in opposition to the Turkī text, it is a redundant statement since if disloyal, they are included in Bābur’s previous statement, as being Khusrau Shāh’s retainers. What might call for comment in Mughūls would be loyalty to Bābur.

[940] Elph. MS. f. 121b: W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 126 and 217 f. 106b; Mems. p. 169.

[941] tāgh-dāmanasī, presumably the Koh-dāman, and the garden will thus be the one of f. 136b.

[942] If these heirs were descendants of Aūlūgh Beg M. one would be at hand in ‘Abdu’r-razzāq, then a boy, and another, a daughter, was the wife of Muqīm Arghūn. As Mr. Erskine notes, Musalmāns are most scrupulous not to bury their dead in ground gained by violence or wrong.

[943] The news of Aḥmad’s death was belated; he died some 13 months earlier, in the end of 909 AH. and in Eastern Turkistān. Perhaps details now arrived.

[944] i.e. the fortieth day of mourning, when alms are given.

[945] Of those arriving, the first would find her step-daughter dead, the second her sister, the third, his late wife’s sister (T. R. p. 196).

[946] This will be the earthquake felt in Agra on Ṣafar 3rd 911 AH. (July 5th 1505 AD. Erskine’s History of India i, 229 note). Cf. Elliot and Dowson, iv, 465 and v, 99.

[947] Raverty’s Notes p. 690.

[948] bīr kitta tāsh ātīmī; var. bāsh ātīmī. If tāsh be right, the reference will probably be to the throw of a catapult.

[949] Here almost certainly, a drummer, because there were two tambours and because also Bābur uses ‘aūdī & ghachakī for the other meanings of t̤ambourchi, lutanist and guitarist. The word has found its way, as tambourgi, into Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Canto ii, lxxii. H. B.).

[950] Kābul-Ghaznī road (R.’s Notes index s.n.).

[951] var. Yārī. Tāzī is on the Ghaznī-Qalāt-i-ghilzāī road (R.’s Notes, Appendix p. 46).

[952] i.e. in Kābul and in the Trans-Himalayan country.

[953] These will be those against Bābur’s suzerainty done by their defence of Qalāt for Muqīm.

[954] tabaqa, dynasty. By using this word Bābur shews recognition of high birth. It is noticeable that he usually writes of an Arghūn chief either simply as “Beg” or without a title. This does not appear to imply admission of equality, since he styles even his brothers and sisters Mīrzā and Begīm; nor does it shew familiarity of intercourse, since none seems to have existed between him and Ẕū’n-nūn or Muqīm. That he did not admit equality is shewn on f. 208. The T.R. styles Ẕū’n-nūn “Mīrzā”, a title by which, as also by Shāh, his descendants are found styled (A.-i-a. Blochmann, s.n.).

[955] Turkī khachar is a camel or mule used for carrying personal effects. The word has been read by some scribes as khanjar, dagger.

[956] In 910 AH. he had induced Bābur to come to Kābul instead of going into Khurāsān (Ḥ.S. iii, 319); in the same year he dictated the march to Kohāt, and the rest of that disastrous travel. His real name was not Bāqī but Muḥammad Bāqir (Ḥ.S. iii, 311).

[957] These transit or custom duties are so called because the dutiable articles are stamped with a t̤amghā, a wooden stamp.

[958] Perhaps this word is an equivalent of Persian goshī, a tax on cattle and beasts of burden.

[959] Bāqī was one only and not the head of the Lords of the Gate.

[960] The choice of the number nine, links on presumably to the mystic value attached to it e.g. Tarkhāns had nine privileges; gifts were made by nines.

[961] It is near Ḥasan-abdāl (A.-i-A. Jarrett, ii, 324).

[962] For the farmān, f. 146b; for Gujūrs, G. of I.

[963] var. Khwesh. Its water flows into the Ghūr-bund stream; it seems to be the Dara-i-Turkmān of Stanford and the Survey Maps both of which mark Janglīk. For Hazāra turbulence, f. 135b and note.

[964] The repetition of aūq in this sentence can hardly be accidental.

[965] t̤aur [dara], which I take to be Turkī, round, complete.

[966] Three MSS. of the Turkī text write bīr sīmīzlūq tīwah; but the two Persian translations have yak shuturlūq farbīh, a shuturlūq being a baggage-camel with little hair (Erskine).

[967] brochettes, meat cut into large mouthfuls, spitted and roasted.

[968] Perhaps he was officially an announcer; the word means also bearer of good news.

[969] yīlāng, without mail, as in the common phrase yīgīt yīlāng, a bare brave.

[970] aūpchīn, of horse and man (f. 113b and note).

[971] Manifestly Bābur means that he twice actually helped to collect the booty.

[972] This is that part of a horse covered by the two side-pieces of a Turkī saddle, from which the side-arch springs on either side (Shaw).

[973] Bārān-nīng ayāghī. Except the river I have found nothing called Bārān; the village marked Baian on the French Map would suit the position; it is n.e. of Chār-yak-kār (f. 184b note).

[974] i.e. prepared to fight.

[975] For the Hazāra (Turkī, Mīng) on the Mīrzā’s road see Raverty’s routes from Ghaznī to the north. An account given by the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 196) of Jahāngīr’s doings is confused; its parenthetical “(at the same time)” can hardly be correct. Jahāngīr left Ghaznī now, (911 AH.), as Bābur left Kābul in 912 AH. without knowledge of Ḥusain’s death (911 AH.). Bābur had heard it (f. 183b) before Jahāngīr joined him (912 AH.); after their meeting they went on together to Herī. The petition of which the T. R. speaks as made by Jahāngīr to Bābur, that he might go into Khurāsān and help the Bāī-qarā Mīrzās must have been made after the meeting of the two at Ṣaf-hill (f. 184b).

[976] The plurals they and their of the preceding sentence stand no doubt for the Mīrzā, Yūsuf and Buhlūl who all had such punishment due as would lead them to hear threat in Qāsim’s words now when all were within Bābur’s pounce.

[977] These are the aīmāqs from which the fighting-men went east with Bābur in 910 AH. and the families in which Nāṣir shepherded across Hindu-kush (f. 154 and f. 155).

[978] yamānlīk bīla bārdī; cf. f. 156b and n. for its opposite, yakhshī bārdīlār; and T. R. p. 196.

[979] One might be of mail, the other of wadded cloth.

[980] Chīn Ṣūfī was Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s man (T.R. p. 204). His arduous defence, faithfulness and abandonment recall the instance of a later time when also a long road stretched between the man and the help that failed him. But the Mīrzā was old, his military strength was, admittedly, sapped by ease; hence his elder Khartum, his neglect of his Gordon.

It should be noted that no mention of the page’s fatal arrow is made by the Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry, p. 442), or by the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 204). Chīn Ṣūfī’s death was on the 21st of the Second Rabī 911 AH. (Aug. 22nd 1505 AD.).

[981] This may be the “Baboulei” of the French Map of 1904, on the Herī-Kushk-Marūchāq road.

[982] Elph. MS. f. 127; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 132 and 217 f. 111b; Mems. p. 175; Méms. i, 364.

That Bābur should have given his laborious account of the Court of Herī seems due both to loyalty to a great Tīmūrid, seated in Tīmūr Beg’s place (f. 122b), and to his own interest, as a man-of-letters and connoisseur in excellence, in that ruler’s galaxy of talent. His account here opening is not complete; its sources are various; they include the Ḥabību’s-siyār and what he will have learned himself in Herī or from members of the Bāī-qarā family, knowledgeable women some of them, who were with him in Hindūstān. The narrow scope of my notes shews that they attempt no more than to indicate further sources of information and to clear up a few obscurities.

[983] Tīmūr’s youngest son, d. 850 AH. (1446 AD.). Cf. Ḥ.S. iii, 203. The use in this sentence of Amīr and not Beg as Tīmūr’s title is, up to this point, unique in the Bābur-nāma; it may be a scribe’s error.

[984] Fīrūza’s paternal line of descent was as follows:—Fīrūza, daughter of Sl. Ḥusain Qānjūt, son of Ākā Begīm, daughter of Tīmūr. Her maternal descent was:—Fīrūza, d. of Qūtlūq-sult̤ān Begīm, d. of Mīrān-shāh, s. of Tīmūr. She died Muḥ. 24th 874 AH. (July 25th 1489 AD. Ḥ.S. iii, 218).

[985] “No-one in the world had such parentage”, writes Khwānd-amīr, after detailing the Tīmūrid, Chīngīz-khānid, and other noted strains meeting in Ḥusain Bāī-qarā (Ḥ.S. iii, 204).

[986] The Elph. MS. gives the Begīm no name; Badī‘u’l-jamāl is correct (Ḥ.S. iii, 242). The curious “Badka” needs explanation. It seems probable that Bābur left one of his blanks for later filling-in; the natural run of his sentence here is “Ākā B. and Badī‘u’l-jamāl B.” and not the detail, which follows in its due place, about the marriage with Aḥmad.

[987] Dīwān bāshīdā ḥāṣir būlmās aīdī; the sense of which may be that Bāī-qarā did not sit where the premier retainer usually sat at the head of the Court (Pers. trs. sar-i-dīwān).

[988] From this Wais and Sl. Ḥusain M.’s daughter Sult̤ānīm (f. 167b) were descended the Bāī-qarā Mīrzās who gave Akbar so much trouble.

[989] As this man might be mistaken for Bābur’s uncle (q.v.) of the same name, it may be well to set down his parentage. He was a s. of Mīrzā Sayyidī Aḥmad, s. of Mīrān-shāh, s. of Tīmūr (Ḥ.S. iii, 217, 241). I have not found mention elsewhere of “Aḥmad s. of Mīrān-shāh”; the sayyidī in his style points to a sayyida mother. He was Governor of Herī for a time, for Sl. H.M.; ‘Alī-sher has notices of him and of his son, Kīchīk Mīrzā (Journal Asiatique xvii, 293, M. Belin’s art. where may be seen notices of many other men mentioned by Bābur).

[990] He collected and thus preserved ‘Alī-sher’s earlier poems (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 294). Mu’inu’d-dīn al Zamji writes respectfully of his being worthy of credence in some Egyptian matters with which he became acquainted in twice passing through that country on his Pilgrimage (Journal Asiatique xvi, 476, de Meynard’s article).

[991] Kīchīk M.’s quatrain is a mere plagiarism of Jāmī’s which I am indebted to my husband for locating as in the Dīwān I.O. MS. 47 p. 47; B.M. Add. 7774 p. 290; and Add. 7775 p. 285. M. Belin interprets the verse as an expression of the rise of the average good man to mystical rapture, not as his lapse from abstinence to indulgence (l.c. xvii, 296 and notes).

[992] Elph. MS. younger but Ḥai. MS. older in which it is supported by the “also” (ham) of the sentence.

[993] modern Astrakhan. Ḥusain’s guerilla wars were those through which he cut his way to the throne of Herī. This begīm was married first to Pīr Budāgh Sl. (Ḥ.S. iii, 242); he dying, she was married by Aḥmad, presumably by levirate custom (yīnkālīk; f. 12 and note). By Aḥmad she had a daughter, styled Khān-zāda Begīm whose affairs find comment on f. 206 and Ḥ.S. iii, 359. (The details of this note negative a suggestion of mine that Badka was the Rābī‘a-sult̤ān of f. 168 (Gul-badan, App. s. nn.).)

[994] This is a felt wide-awake worn by travellers in hot weather (Shaw); the Turkmān bonnet (Erskine).

[995] Ḥai. MS. yamānlīk, badly, but Elph. MS. namāyan, whence Erskine’s showy.

[996] This was a proof that he was then a Shī‘a (Erskine).

[997] The word perform may be excused in speaking of Musalmān prayers because they involve ceremonial bendings and prostrations (Erskine).

[998] If Bābur’s 40 include rule in Herī only, it over-states, since Yādgār died in 875 AH. and Ḥusain in 911 AH. while the intervening 36 years include the 5 or 6 temperate ones. If the 40 count from 861 AH. when Ḥusain began to rule in Merv, it under-states. It is a round number, apparently.

[999] Relying on the Ilminsky text, Dr. Rieu was led into the mistake of writing that Bābur gave Ḥusain the wrong pen-name, i.e. Ḥusain, and not Ḥusainī (Turk. Cat. p. 256).

[1000] Daulat-shāh says that as he is not able to enumerate all Ḥusain’s feats-of-arms, he, Turkmān fashion, offers a gift of Nine. The Nine differ from those of Bābur’s list in some dates; they are also records of victory only (Browne, p. 521; Not. et Extr. iv, 262, de Saçy’s article).

[1001] Wolves'-water, a river and its town at the s.e. corner of the Caspian, the ancient boundary between Russia and Persia. The name varies a good deal in MSS.

[1002] The battle was at Tarshīz; Abū-sa‘īd was ruling in Herī; Daulat-shāh (l.c. p. 523) gives 90 and 10,000 as the numbers of the opposed forces!

[1003] f. 26b and note; Ḥ.S. iii, 209; Daulat-shāh p. 523.

[1004] The loser was the last Shāhrukhī ruler. Chanārān (variants) is near Abīward, Anwārī’s birth-place (Ḥ.S. iii, 218; D.S. p. 527).

[1005] f. 85. D.S. (p. 540) and the Ḥ.S. (iii, 223) dwell on Ḥusain’s speed through three continuous days and nights.

[1006] f. 26; Ḥ.S. iii, 227; D.S. p. 532.

[1007] Abū-sa‘īd’s son by a Badakhshī Begīm (T.R. p. 108); he became his father’s Governor in Badakhshān and married Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s daughter Begīm Sultān at a date after 873 AH. (f. 168 and note; Ḥ.S. iii, 196, 229, 234-37; D.S. p. 535).

[1008] f. 152.

[1009] Abā-bikr was defeated and put to death at the end of Rajah 884 AH.-Oct. 1479 AD. after flight before Ḥusain across the Gurgān-water (Ḥ.S. iii, 196 and 237 but D.S. p. 539, Ṣafar 885 AH.).

[1010] f. 41, Pul-i-chirāgh; for Halwā-spring, Ḥ.S. iii, 283 and Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 443.

[1011] f. 33 (p. 57) and f. 57b.

[1012] In commenting thus Bābur will have had in mind what he best knew, Ḥusain’s futile movements at Qūndūz and Ḥiṣār.

[1013] qālīb aīdī; if qālīb be taken as Turkī, survived or remained, it would not apply here since many of Ḥusain’s children predeceased him; Ar. qālab would suit, meaning begotten, born.

There are discrepancies between Bābur’s details here and Khwānd-amīr’s scattered through the Ḥabību’s-siyār, concerning Ḥusain’s family.

[1014] bī ḥuẓūrī, which may mean aversion due to Khadīja Begīm’s malevolence.

[1015] Some of the several goings into ‘Irāq chronicled by Bābur point to refuge taken with Tīmūrids, descendants of Khalīl and ‘Umar, sons of Mirān-shāh (Lane-Poole’s Muhammadan Dynasties, Table of the Tīmūrids).

[1016] He died before his father (Ḥ.S. iii, 327).

[1017] He will have been killed previous to Ramẓān 3rd 918 AH. (Nov. 12th, 1512 AD.), the date of the battle of Ghaj-dawān when Nijm S̱ānī died.

[1018] The bund here may not imply that both were in prison, but that they were bound in close company, allowing Ismā‘īl, a fervent Shī‘a, to convert the Mīrzā.

[1019] The bātmān is a Turkish weight of 13lbs (Meninsky) or 15lbs (Wollaston). The weight seems likely to refer to the strength demanded for rounding the bow (kamān guroha-sī) i.e. as much strength as to lift 40 bātmāns. Rounding or bending might stand for stringing or drawing. The meaning can hardly be one of the weight of the cross-bow itself. Erskine read gūrdehieh for guroha (p. 180) and translated by “double-stringed bow”; de Courteille (i, 373) read guirdhiyeh, arrondi, circulaire, in this following Ilminsky who may have followed Erskine. The Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. and the first W.-i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 113b) have kamān guroha-sī; the second W.-i-B. omits the passage, in the MSS. I have seen.

[1020] yakhshīlār bārīb tūr; lit. good things went (on); cf. f. 156b and note.

[1021] Badī‘u’z-zamān’s son, drowned at Chausa in 946 AH. (1539 AD.) A.N. (H. Beveridge, i, 344).

[1022] Qalāt-i-nādirī, in Khurāsān, the birth-place of Nādir Shāh (T.R. p. 209).

[1023] bīr gīna qīz, which on f. 86b can fitly be read to mean daughterling, Töchterchen, fillette, but here and i.a. f. 168, must have another meaning than diminutive and may be an equivalent of German Stück and mean one only. Gul-badan gives an account of Shād’s manly pursuits (H.N. f. 25b).

[1024] He was the son of Mahdī Sl. (f. 320b) and the father of ‘Āqil Sl. Aūzbeg (A.N. index s.n.). Several matters suggest that these men were of the Shabān Aūzbegs who intermarried with Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s family and some of whom went to Bābur in Hindūstān. One such matter is that Kābul was the refuge of dispossessed Harātīs, after the Aūzbeg conquest; that there ‘Āqil married Shād Bāī-qarā and that ‘Ādil went on to Bābur. Moreover Khāfī Khān makes a statement which (if correct) would allow ‘Ādil’s father Mahdī to be a grandson of Ḥusain Bāī-qarā; this statement is that when Bābur defeated the Aūzbegs in 916 AH. (1510 AD.), he freed from their captivity two sons (descendants) of his paternal uncle, named Mahdī Sl. and Sult̤ān Mīrzā. [Leaving the authenticity of the statement aside for a moment, it will be observed that this incident is of the same date and place as another well-vouched for, namely that Bābur then and there killed Mahdī Sl. Aūzbeg and Ḥamza Sl. Aūzbeg after defeating them.] What makes in favour of Khāfī Khān’s correctness is, not only that Bābur’s foe Mahdī is not known to have had a son ‘Ādil, but also that his “Sulṯān Mīrzā” is not a style so certainly suiting Ḥamza as it does a Shabān sult̤ān, one whose father was a Shabān sult̤ān, and whose mother was a Mīrzā’s daughter. Moreover this point of identification is pressed by the correctness, according to oriental statement of relationship, of Khāfī Khān’s “paternal uncle” (of Bābur), because this precisely suits Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā with whose family these Shabān sult̤āns allied themselves. On the other hand it must be said that Khāfī Khān’s statement is not in the English text of the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, the book on which he mostly relies at this period, nor is it in my husband’s MS. crux presses home the need of much attention to the lacunæ in the Bābur-nāma, since in them are lost some exits and some entries of Bābur’s dramatis personæ, pertinently, mention of the death of Mahdī with Ḥamza in 916 AH., and possibly also that of ‘Ādil’s Mahdī’s release.

[1025] A chār-t̤āq may be a large tent rising into four domes or having four porches.

[1026] Ḥ.S. iii, 367.

[1027] This phrase, common but not always selected, suggests unwillingness to leave the paternal roof.

[1028] Abū’l-ghāzī’s History of the Mughūls, Désmaisons, p. 207.

[1029] The appointment was made in 933 AH. (1527 AD.) and seems to have been held still in 934 AH. (ff. 329, 332).

[1030] This grandson may have been a child travelling with his father’s household, perhaps Aūlūgh Mīrzā, the oldest son of Muḥammad Sult̤ān Mīrzā (A. A. Blochmann, p. 461). No mention is made here of Sult̤ānīm Begīm’s marriage with ‘Abdu’l-bāqī Mīrzā (f. 175).

[1031] Abū’l-qāsim Bābur Shāhrukhī presumably.

[1032] The time may have been 902 AH. when Mas‘ūd took his sister Bega Begīm to Herī for her marriage with Ḥaidar (Ḥ.S. iii, 260).

[1033] Khwāja Aḥmad Yāsawī, known as Khwāja Ātā, founder of the Yāsawī religious order.

[1034] Not finding mention of a daughter of Abū-sa‘id named Rābī‘a-sult̤ān, I think she may be the daughter styled Āq Begīm who is No. 3 in Gul-badan’s guest-list for the Mystic Feast.

[1035] This man I take to be Ḥusain’s grandfather and not brother, both because ‘Abdu’l-lāh was of Ḥusain’s and his brother’s generation, and also because of the absence here of Bābur’s usual defining words “elder brother” (of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā). In this I have to differ from Dr. Rieu (Pers. Cat. p. 152).

[1036] So-named after his ancestor Sayyid Barka whose body was exhumed from Andikhūd for reburial in Samarkand, by Tīmūr’s wish and there laid in such a position that Tīmūr’s body was at its feet (Z̤afar-nāma ii, 719; Ḥ.S. iii, 82). (For the above interesting detail I am indebted to my husband.)

[1037] Qīzīl-bāsh, Persians wearing red badges or caps to distinguish them as Persians.

[1038] Yādgār-i-farrukh Mīrān-shāhī (Ḥ.S. iii, 327). He may have been one of those Mīrān-shāhīs of ‘Irāq from whom came Ākā’s and Sult̤ānīm’s husbands, Aḥmad and ‘Abdu’l-bāqī (ff. 164, 175b).

[1039] This should be four (f. 169b). The Ḥ.S. (iii, 327) also names three only when giving Pāpā Āghācha’s daughters (the omission linking it with the B.N.), but elsewhere (iii, 229) it gives an account of a fourth girl’s marriage; this fourth is needed to make up the total of 11 daughters. Bābur’s and Khwānd-amīr’s details of Pāpā Āghācha’s quartette are defective; the following may be a more correct list:—(1) Begīm Sult̤ān (a frequent title), married to Abā-bikr Mīrān-shāhī (who died 884 AH.) and seeming too old to be the one [No. 3] who married Mas‘ūd (Ḥ.S. iii, 229); (2) Sult̤ān-nizhād, married to Iskandar Bāī-qarā; (3) Sa‘ādat-bakht also known as Begīm Sult̤ān, married to Mas’ūd Mīrān-shāhī (Ḥ.S. iii, 327); (4) Manauwar-sult̤ān, married to a son of Aūlūgh Beg Kābulī (Ḥ.S. iii, 327).

[1040] This “after” seems to contradict the statement (f. 58) that Mas‘ūd was made to kneel as a son-in-law (kūyādlīk-kā yūkūndūrūb) at a date previous to his blinding, but the seeming contradiction may be explained by considering the following details; he left Herī hastily (f. 58), went to Khusrau Shāh and was blinded by him,—all in the last two months of 903 AH. (1498 AD.), after the kneeling on Ẕū’l-qa‘da 3rd, (June 23rd) in the Ravens'-garden. Here what Bābur says is that the Begīm was given (bīrīb) after the blinding, the inference allowed being that though Mas‘ūd had kneeled before the blinding, she had remained in her father’s house till his return after the blinding.

[1041] The first W.-i-B. writes “Apāq Begīm” (I.O. 215 f. 136) which would allow Sayyid Mīrzā to be a kinsman of Apāq Begīm, wife of Ḥusain Bāī-qarā.

[1042] This brief summary conveys the impression that the Begīm went on her pilgrimage shortly after Mas‘ūd’s death (913 AH. ?), but may be wrong:—After Mas‘ūd’s murder, by one Bīmāsh Mīrzā, dārogha of Sarakhs, at Shaibāq Khān’s order, she was married by Bīmāsh M. (Ḥ.S. iii, 278). How long after this she went to Makka is not said; it was about 934 AH. when Bābur heard of her as there.

[1043] This clause is in the Ḥai. MS. but not in the Elph. MS. (f. 131), or Kehr’s (Ilminsky, p. 210), or in either Persian translation. The boy may have been 17 or 18.

[1044] This appears a mistake (f. 168 foot, and note on Pāpā’s daughters).

[1045] f. 171b.

[1046] 933 AH.-1527 AD. (f. 329).

[1047] Presumably this was a yīnkālīk marriage; it differs from some of those chronicled and also from a levirate marriage in not being made with a childless wife. (Cf. index s.n. yīnkālīk.)

[1048] Khwānd-amīr says that Bega Begīm was jealous, died of grief at her divorce, and was buried in a College, of her own erection, in 893 AH. (1488 AD. ḤS. iii, 245).

[1049] Gulistān Cap. II, Story 31 (Platts, p. 114).

[1050] i.e. did not get ready to ride off if her husband were beaten by her brother (f. 11 and note to Ḥabība).

[1051] Khadīja Begī Āghā (Ḥ.S. ii, 230 and iii, 327); she would be promoted probably after Shāh-i-gharīb’s birth.

[1052] He was a son of Badī‘u’z-zamān.

[1053] It is singular that this honoured woman’s parentage is not mentioned; if it be right on f. 168b (q.v. with note) to read Sayyid Mīrzā of Apāq Begīm, she may be a sayyida of Andikhūd.

[1054] As Bābur left Kābul on Ṣafar 1st (Nov. 17th 1525 AD.), the Begīm must have arrived in Muḥarram 932 AH. (Oct. 18th to Nov. 17th).

[1055] f. 333. As Chandīrī was besieged in Rabī‘u’l-ākhar 934 AH. this passage shews that, as a minimum estimate, what remains of Bābur’s composed narrative (i.e. down to f. 216b) was written after that date (Jan. 1528).

[1056] Chār-shambalār. Mention of another inhabitant of this place with the odd name, Wednesday (Chār-shamba), is made on f. 42b.

[1057] Mole-marked Lady; most MSS. style her Bī but Ḥ.S. iii, 327, writes Bībī; it varies also by calling her a Turk. She was a purchased slave of Shahr-bānū’s and was given to the Mīrzā by Shahr-bānū at the time of her own marriage with him.

[1058] As noted already, f. 168b enumerates three only.

[1059] The three were almost certainly Badī‘u’z-zamān, Ḥaidar, son of a Tīmūrid mother, and Muz̤affar-i-ḥusain, born after his mother had been legally married.

[1060] Seven sons predeceased him:—Farrukh, Shāh-i-gharīb, Muḥ. Ma‘ṣūm, Ḥaidar, Ibrāhīm-i-ḥusain, Muḥ. Ḥusain and Abū-turāb. So too five daughters:—Āq, Bega, Āghā, Kīchīk and Fāt̤ima-sult̤ān Begīms. So too four wives:—Bega-sult̤ān and Chūlī Begīms, Zubaida and Lat̤īf-sult̤ān Āghāchas (Ḥ.S. iii, 327).

[1061] Chākū, a Barlās, as was Tīmūr, was one of Tīmūr’s noted men.

At this point some hand not the scribe’s has entered on the margin of the Ḥai. MS. the descendants of Muḥ. Barandūq down into Akbar’s reign:—Muḥ. Farīdūn, bin Muḥ. Qulī Khān, bin Mīrzā ‘Alī, bin Muḥ. Barandūq Barlās. Of these Farīdūn and Muḥ. Qulī are amīrs of the Āyīn-i-akbarī list (Blochmann, pp. 341, 342; Ḥ.S. iii, 233).

[1062] Enforced marches of Mughūls and other nomads are mentioned also on f. 154b and f. 155.

[1063] Ḥ.S. iii, 228, 233, 235.

[1064] beg kīshī, beg-person.

[1065] Khwānd-amīr says he died a natural death (Ḥ.S. iii, 235).

[1066] f. 21. For a fuller account of Nawā’i, J. Asiatique xvii, 175, M. Belin’s article.

[1067] i.e. when he was poor and a beg’s dependant. He went back to Herī at Sl. Ḥusain M.’s request in 873 AH.

[1068] Niz̤āmī’s (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. s.n.).

[1069] Farīdu’d-dīn-‘at̤t̤ar’s (Rieu l.c. and Ency. Br.).

[1070] Gharā’ibu’ṣ-ṣighar, Nawādiru’sh-shahāb, Badā’i‘u’l-wasat̤ and Fawā’idu’l-kibr.

[1071] Every Persian poet has a takhalluṣ (pen-name) which he introduces into the last couplet of each ode (Erskine).

[1072] The death occurred in the First Jumāda 906 AH. (Dec. 1500 AD.).

[1073] Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad bin Tawakkal Barlās (Ḥ.S. iii, 229).

[1074] This may be that uncle of Tīmūr who made the Ḥaj (T. R. p. 48, quoting the Z̤afar-nāma).

[1075] Some MSS. omit the word “father” here but to read it obviates the difficulty of calling Walī a great beg of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā although he died when that mīrzā took the throne (973 AH.) and although no leading place is allotted to him in Bābur’s list of Herī begs. Here as in other parts of Bābur’s account of Herī, the texts vary much whether Turkī or Persian, e.g. the Elph. MS. appears to call Walī a blockhead (dūnkūz dūr), the Ḥai. MS. writing n:kūz dūr(?).

[1076] He had been Bābur Shāhrukhī’s yasāwal (Court-attendant), had fought against Ḥusain for Yādgār-i-muḥammad and had given a daughter to Ḥusain (Ḥ.S. iii, 206, 228, 230-32; D.S. in Not. et Ex. de Saçy p. 265).

[1077] f. 29b.

[1078] Sic, Elph. MS. and both Pers. trss. but the Ḥai. MS. omits “father”. To read it, however, suits the circumstance that Ḥasan of Ya‘qūb was not with Ḥusain and in Harāt but was connected with Maḥmūd Mīrānshāhī and Tīrmīẕ (f. 24). Nuyān is not a personal name but is a title; it implies good-birth; all uses of it I have seen are for members of the religious family of Tīrmīẕ.

[1079] He was the son of Ibrāhīm Barlās and a Badakhshī begīm (T.R. p. 108).

[1080] He will have been therefore a collateral of Daulat-shāh whose relation to Fīrūz-shāh is thus expressed by Nawā’i:—Mīr Daulat-shāh Fīrūz-shāh Beg-nīng ‘amm-zāda-sī Amīr ‘Alā’u’d-daula Isfārayīnī-nīng aūghūlī dur, i.e. Mīr Daulat-shāh was the son of Fīrūz-shāh Beg’s paternal uncle’s son, Amir ‘Alā’u’d-daula Isfārayīnī. Thus, Fīrūz-shāh and Isfārayīnī were first cousins; Daulat-shāh and ‘Abdu’l-khalīq’s father were second cousins; while Daulat-shāh and Fīrūz-shāh were first cousins, once removed (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 534; Browne’s D.S. English preface p. 14 and its reference to the Pers. preface).

[1081] Tarkhān-nāma, E. & D.’s History of India i, 303; Ḥ.S. iii, 227.

[1082] f. 41 and note.

[1083] Both places are in the valley of the Herī-rūd.

[1084] Badī‘u’z-zamān married a daughter of Ẕū’n-nūn; she died in 911 AH. (E. & D. i, 305; Ḥ.S. iii, 324).

[1085] This indicates, both amongst Musalmāns and Hindūs, obedience and submission. Several instances occur in Macculloch’s Bengali Household Stories.

[1086] T.R. p. 205.

[1087] This is an idiom expressive of great keenness (Erskine).

[1088] Ḥ.S. iii, 250, kitābdār, librarian; so too Ḥai. MS. f. 174b.

[1089] mutaiyam (f. 7b and note). Mīr Mughūl Beg was put to death for treachery in ‘Irāq (Ḥ.S. iii, 227, 248).

[1090] Bābur speaks as an eye-witness (f. 187b). For a single combat of Sayyid Badr, Ḥ. S. iii, 233.

[1091] f. 157 and note to bātmān.

[1092] A level field in which a gourd (qabaq) is set on a pole for an archer’s mark to be hit in passing at the gallop (f. 18b and note).

[1093] Or possibly during the gallop the archer turned in the saddle and shot backwards.

[1094] Junaid was the father of Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī, Bābur’s Khalīfa (Vice-gerent). That Khalīfa was of a religious house on his mother’s side may be inferred from his being styled both Sayyid and Khwāja neither of which titles could have come from his Turkī father. His mother may have been a sayyida of one of the religious families of Marghīnān (f. 18 and note), since Khalīfa’s son Muḥibb-i-‘alī writes his father’s name “Niz̤āmu’d-din ‘Alī Marghīlānī” (Marghīnānī) in the Preface of his Book on Sport (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 485).

[1095] This northward migration would take the family into touch with Bābur’s in Samarkand and Farghāna.

[1096] He was left in charge of Jaunpūr in Rabī‘ I, 933 AH. (Jan. 1527 AD.) but exchanged for Chunār in Ramẓān 935 AH. (June 1529 AD.); so that for the writing of this part of the Bābur-nāma we have the major and minor limits of Jan. 1527 and June 1529.

[1097] Ḥ.S. iii, 227.

[1098] See Appendix H, On the counter-mark Bih-būd on coins.

[1099] Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Amīr Shaikh Aḥmadu’s-suhailī was surnamed Suhailī through a fāl (augury) taken by his spiritual guide, Kamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain Gāzur-gāhī; it was he induced Ḥusain Kashīfī to produce his Anwār-i-suhailī (Lights of Canopus) (f. 125 and note; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 756; and for a couplet of his, Ḥ.S. iii, 242 l. 10).

[1100] Index s.n.

[1101] Did the change complete an analogy between ‘Alī Jalāīr and his (perhaps) elder son with ‘Alī Khalīfa and his elder son Ḥasan?

[1102] The Qūsh-begī is, in Central Asia, a high official who acts for an absent ruler (Shaw); he does not appear to be the Falconer, for whom Bābur’s name is Qūshchī (f. 15 n.).

[1103] He received this sobriquet because when he returned from an embassy to the Persian Gulf, he brought, from Bahrein, to his Tīmūrid master a gift of royal pearls (Sām Mīrzā). For an account of Marwārīd see Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 1094 and (re portrait) p. 787.

[1104] Sām Mīrzā specifies this affliction as ābla-i-farang, thus making what may be one of the earliest Oriental references to morbus gallicus [as de Saçy here translates the name], the foreign or European pox, the “French disease of Shakespeare” (H.B.).

[1105] Index s.n. Yūsuf.

[1106] Ramẓān 3rd 918 AH.-Nov. 12th 1512.

[1107] i.e. of the White-sheep Turkmāns.

[1108] His paternal line was, ‘Abdu’l-bāqī, son of ‘Us̤mān, son of Sayyidī Aḥmad, son of Mīrān-shāh. His mother’s people were begs of the White-sheep (Ḥ.S. iii, 290).

[1109] Sult̤ānīm had married Wais (f. 157) not later than 895 or 896 AH. (Ḥ. S. iii, 253); she married ‘Abdu’l-bāqī in 908 AH. (1502-3 AD.).

[1110] Sayyid Shamsu’d-dīn Muḥammad, Mīr Sayyid Sar-i-barahna owed his sobriquet of Bare-head to love-sick wanderings of his youth (Ḥ.S. iii, 328). The Ḥ.S. it is clear, recognizes him as a sayyid.

[1111] Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 760; it is immensely long and “filled with tales that shock all probability” (Erskine).

[1112] f. 94 and note. Sl. Ḥusain M. made him curator of Anṣārī’s shrine, an officer represented, presumably, by Col. Yate’s “Mīr of Gāzur-gāh”, and he became Chief Justice in 904 AH. (1498-99 AD.). See Ḥ.S. iii, 330 and 340; JASB 1887, art. On the city of Harāt (C. E. Yate) p. 85.

[1113] mutasauwif, perhaps meaning not a professed Ṣūfī.

[1114] He was of high birth on both sides, of religious houses of T̤abas and Nishāpūr (D.S. pp. 161, 163).

[1115] In agreement with its preface, Dr. Rieu entered the book as written by Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā; in his Addenda, however, he quotes Bābur as the authority for its being by Gāzur-gāhī; Khwānd-amīr’s authority can be added to Bābur’s (Ḥ.S. 340; Pers. Cat. pp. 351, 1085).

[1116] Dīwān. The Wazīr is a sort of Minister of Finance; the Dīwān is the office of revenue receipts and issues (Erskine).

[1117] a secretary who writes out royal orders (Ḥ.S. iii, 244).

[1118] Count von Noer’s words about a cognate reform of later date suit this man’s work, it also was “a bar to the defraudment of the Crown, a stumbling-block in the path of avaricious chiefs” (Emperor Akbar trs. i, 11). The opposition made by ‘Alī-sher to reform so clearly to Ḥusain’s gain and to Ḥusain’s begs’ loss, stirs the question, “What was the source of his own income?” Up to 873 AH. he was for some years the dependant of Aḥmad Ḥājī Beg; he took nothing from the Mīrzā, but gave to him; he must have spent much in benefactions. The question may have presented itself to M. Belin for he observes, “‘Alī-sher qui sans doute, à son retour de l’exil, recouvra l’héritage de ses pères, et depuis occupa de hautes positions dans le gouvernement de son pays, avait acquis une grande fortune” (J. Asiatique xvii, 227). While not contradicting M. Belin’s view that vested property such as can be described as “paternal inheritance”, may have passed from father to son, even in those days of fugitive prosperity and changing appointments, one cannot but infer, from Nawā’i’s opposition to Majdu’d-dīn, that he, like the rest, took a partial view of the “rights” of the cultivator.

[1119] This was in 903 AH. after some 20 years of service (Ḥ.S. iii, 231; Ethé I.O. Cat. p. 252).

[1120] Amīr Jamālu’d-dīn ‘Atā’u’l-lāh, known also as Jamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain, wrote a History of Muhammad (Ḥ.S. iii, 345; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 147 & (a correction) p. 1081).

[1121] Amongst noticeable omissions from Bābur’s list of Herī celebrities are Mīr Khwānd Shāh (“Mirkhond”), his grandson Khwānd-amīr, Ḥusain Kashifī and Muinu’d-dīn al Zamjī, author of a History of Harāt which was finished in 897 AH.

[1122] Sa’du‘d-dīn Mas‘ūd, son of ‘Umar, was a native of Taft in Yazd, whence his cognomen (Bahār-i-‘ajam); he died in 792 AH.-1390 AD. (Ḥ.S. iii, 59, 343; T.R. p. 236; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. pp. 352, 453).

[1123] These are those connected with grammar and rhetoric (Erskine).

[1124] This is one of the four principal sects of Muḥammadanism (Erskine).

[1125] T.R. p. 235, for Shāh Ismā‘īl’s murders in Herī.

[1126] Superintendent of Police, who examines weights, measures and provisions, also prevents gambling, drinking and so on.

[1127] f. 137.

[1128] The rank of Mujtahid, which is not bestowed by any individual or class of men but which is the result of slow and imperceptible opinion, finally prevailing and universally acknowledged, is one of the greatest peculiarities of the religion of Persia. The Mujtahid is supposed to be elevated above human fears and human enjoyments, and to have a certain degree of infallibility and inspiration. He is consulted with reverence and awe. There is not always a Mujtahid necessarily existing. See Kæmpfer, Amoenitates Exoticae (Erskine).

[1129] muḥaddas̤, one versed in the traditional sayings and actions of Muḥammad.

[1130] Ḥ.S. iii, 340.

[1131] B.M. Or. 218 (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 350). The Commentary was made in order to explain the Nafaḥāt to Jāmī’s son.

[1132] He was buried by the Mullā’s side.

[1133] Amīr Burhānu’d-dīn ‘Atā’u’l-lāh bin Maḥmūdu’l-ḥusainī was born in Nishāpūr but known as Mashhadī because he retired to that holy spot after becoming blind.

[1134] f. 144b and note. Qāẓī Ikhtiyāru’d-dīn Ḥasan (Ḥ.S. iii, 347) appears to be the Khwāja Ikhtiyār of the Āyīn-i-akbarī, and, if so, will have taken professional interest in the script, since Abū’l-faẓl describes him as a distinguished calligrapher in Sl. Ḥusain M.’s presence (Blochmann, p. 101).

[1135] Saifu’d-dīn (Sword of the Faith) Aḥmad, presumably.

[1136] A sister of his, Apāq Bega, the wife of ‘Alī-sher’s brother Darwīsh-i-‘alī kitābdār, is included as a poet in the Biography of Ladies (Sprenger’s Cat. p. 11). Amongst the 20 women named one is a wife of Shaibāq Khān, another a daughter of Hilālī.

[1137] He was the son of Khw. Ni‘amatu’l-lāh, one of Sl. Abū-sa‘īd M.’s wazīrs. When dying aet. 70 (923 AH.), he made this chronogram on his own death, “With 70 steps he measured the road to eternity.” The name Āsaf, so frequent amongst wazīrs, is that of Solomon’s wazīr.

[1138] Other interpretations are open; wādī, taken as river, might refer to the going on from one poem to another, the stream of verse; or it might be taken as desert, with disparagement of collections.

[1139] Maulānā Jamālu’d-dīn Banā’i was the son of a sabz-banā, an architect, a good builder.

[1140] Steingass’s Dictionary allows convenient reference for examples of metres.

[1141] Other jokes made by Banā’i at the expense of Nawā’i are recorded in the various sources.

[1142] Bābur saw Banā’i in Samarkand at the end of 901 AH. (1496 AD. f. 38).

Here Dr. Leyden’s translation ends; one other fragment which he translated will be found under the year 925 AH. (Erskine). This statement allows attention to be drawn to the inequality of the shares of the work done for the Memoirs of 1826 by Leyden and by Erskine. It is just to Mr. Erskine, but a justice he did not claim, to point out that Dr. Leyden’s share is slight both in amount and in quality; his essential contribution was the initial stimulus he gave to the great labours of his collaborator.

[1143] So of Lope de Vega (b. 1562; d. 1635 AD.), “It became a common proverb to praise a good thing by calling it a Lope, so that jewels, diamonds, pictures, etc. were raised into esteem by calling them his” (Montalvan in Ticknor’s Spanish Literature ii, 270).

[1144] Maulānā Saifī, known as ‘Arūẓī from his mastery in prosody (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 525).

[1145] Here pedantry will be implied in the mullahood.

[1146] Khamsatīn (infra f. 180b and note).

[1147] This appears to mean that not only the sparse diacritical pointing common in writing Persian was dealt with but also the fuller Arabic.

[1148] He is best known by his pen-name Hātifī. The B.M. and I.O. have several of his books.

[1149] Khamsatīn. Hātifī regarded himself as the successor of Niz̤āmī and Khusrau; this, taken with Bābur’s use of the word Khamsatīn on f. 7 and here, and Saifī’s just above, leads to the opinion that the Khamsatīn of the Bābur-nāma are always those of Niz̤āmī and Khusrau, the Two Quintets (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 653).

[1150] Maulānā Mīr Kamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain of Nishāpūr (Rieu l.c. index s.n.; Ethé’s I.O. Cat. pp. 433 and 1134).

[1151] One of his couplets on good and bad fortune is striking; “The fortune of men is like a sand-glass; one hour up, the next down.” See D’Herbélot in his article (Erskine).

[1152] Ḥ.S. iii, 336; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 1089.

[1153] Āhī (sighing) was with Shāh-i-gharīb before Ibn-i-ḥusain and to him dedicated his dīwān. The words sāḥib-i-dīwān seem likely to be used here with double meaning i.e. to express authorship and finance office. Though Bābur has made frequent mention of authorship of a dīwān and of office in the Dīwān, he has not used these words hitherto in either sense; there may be a play of words here.

[1154] Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā Khwārizmī, author of the Shaibānī-nāma which manifestly is the poem (mas̤nawī) mentioned below. This has been published with a German translation by Professor Vambéry and has been edited with Russian notes by Mr. Platon Melioransky (Rieu’s Turkish Cat. p. 74; Ḥ.S. iii, 301).

[1155] Jāmī’s Subḥatu’l-abrār (Rosary of the righteous).

[1156] The reference may be to things said by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ the untruth of which was known to Bābur through his own part in the events. A crying instance of misrepresentation is Ṣāliḥ’s assertion, in rhetorical phrase, that Bābur took booty in jewels from Khusrau Shāh; other instances concern the affairs of The Khāns and of Bābur in Transoxiana (f. 124b and index s.nn. Aḥmad and Maḥmūd Chaghatāī etc.; T.R. index s.nn.)

[1157] The name Fat-land (Taṃbal-khāna) has its parallel in Fat-village (Sīmīz-kīnt) a name of Samarkand; in both cases the nick-name is accounted for by the fertility of irrigated lands. We have not been able to find the above-quoted couplet in the Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry); needless to say, the pun is on the nick-name (taṃbal, fat) of Sl. Aḥmad Taṃbal.

[1158] Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ does not show well in his book; he is sometimes coarse, gloats over spoil whether in human captives or goods, and, his good-birth not-forbidding, is a servile flatterer. Bābur’s word “heartless” is just; it must have had sharp prompting from Ṣāliḥ’s rejoicing in the downfall of The Khāns, Bābur’s uncles.

[1159] the Longer (Ḥ.S. iii, 349).

[1160] Maulānā Badru’d-dīn (Full-moon of the Faith) whose pen-name was Hilālī, was of Astarābād. It may be noted that two dates of his death are found, 936 and 939 AH. the first given by de Saçy, the second by Rieu, and that the second seems to be correct (Not. et Extr. p. 285; Pers. Cat. p. 656; Hammer’s Geschichte p. 368).

[1161] B.M. Add. 7783.

[1162] Opinions differ as to the character of this work:—Bābur’s is uncompromising; von Hammer (p. 369) describes it as “ein romantisches Gedicht, welches eine sentimentale Männerliebe behandelt”; Sprenger (p. 427), as a mystical mas̤nawī (poem); Rieu finds no spiritual symbolism in it and condemns it (Pers. Cat. p. 656 and, quoting the above passage of Bābur, p. 1090); Ethé, who has translated it, takes it to be mystical and symbolic (I.O. Cat. p. 783).

[1163] Of four writers using the pen-name Ahlī (Of-the-people), viz. those of Turān, Shīrāz, Tarshīz (in Khurāsān), and ‘Irāq, the one noticed here seems to be he of Tarshīz. Ahlī of Tarshīz was the son of a locally-known pious father and became a Superintendent of the Mint; Bābur’s ‘āmī may refer to Ahlī’s first patrons, tanners and shoe-makers by writing for whom he earned his living (Sprenger, p. 319). Erskine read 'ummī, meaning that Ahlī could neither read nor write; de Courteille that he was un homme du commun.

[1164] He was an occasional poet (Ḥ.S. iii, 350 and iv, 118; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 531; Ethé’s I.O. Cat. p. 428).

[1165] Ustād Kamālu’d-dīn Bih-zād (well-born; Ḥ.S. iii, 350). Work of his is reproduced in Dr. Martin’s Painting and Painters of Persia of 1913 AD.

[1166] This sentence is not in the Elph. MS.

[1167] Perhaps he could reproduce tunes heard and say where heard.

[1168] M. Belin quotes quatrains exchanged by ‘Alī-sher and this man (J. Asiatique xvii, 199).

[1169] i.e. from his own camp to Bābā Ilāhī.

[1170] f. 121 has a fuller quotation. On the dual succession, see T.R. p. 196.

[1171] Elph. MS. f. 144; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 148b and 217 f. 125b; Mems. p. 199.

[1172] News of Ḥusain’s death in 911 AH. (f. 163b) did not reach Bābur till 912 AH. (f. 184b).

[1173] Lone-meadow (f. 195b). Jahāngīr will have come over the ‘Irāq-pass, Bābur’s baggage-convoy, by Shibr-tū. Cf. T. R. p. 199 for Bābur and Jahāngīr at this time.

[1174] Servant-of-the-mace; but perhaps, Qilinj-chāq, swords-man.

[1175] One of four, a fourth. Chār-yak may be a component of the name of the well-known place, n. of Kābul, “Chārikār”; but also the Chār in it may be Hindūstānī and refer to the permits-to-pass after tolls paid, given to caravans halted there for taxation. Raverty writes it Chārlākār.

[1176] Amongst the disruptions of the time was that of the Khānate of Qībchāq (Erskine).

[1177] The nearest approach to kipkī we have found in Dictionaries is kupaki, which comes close to the Russian copeck. Erskine notes that the casbeké is an oval copper coin (Tavernier, p. 121); and that a tūmān is a myriad (10,000). Cf. Manucci (Irvine), i, 78 and iv, 417 note; Chardin iv, 278.

[1178] Muḥarram 912 AH.-June 1506 AD. (Ḥ.S. iii, 353).

[1179] I take Murgh-āb here to be the fortified place at the crossing of the river by the main n.e. road; Bābur when in Dara-i-bām was on a tributary of the Murgh-āb. Khwānd-amīr records that the information of his approach was hailed in the Mīrzās’ camp as good news (Ḥ.S. iii, 354).

[1180] Bābur gives the Mīrzās precedence by age, ignoring Muz̤affar’s position as joint-ruler.

[1181] mubālgha qīldī; perhaps he laid stress on their excuse; perhaps did more than was ceremonially incumbent on him.

[1182] ‘irq, to which estrade answers in its sense of a carpet on which stands a raised seat.

[1183] Perhaps it was a recess, resembling a gate-way (W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 151 and 217 f. 127b). The impression conveyed by Bābur’s words here to the artist who in B.M. Or. 3714, has depicted the scene, is that there was a vestibule opening into the tent by a door and that the Mīrzā sat near that door. It must be said however that the illustration does not closely follow the text, in some known details.

[1184] shīra, fruit-syrups, sherbets. Bābur’s word for wine is chāghīr (q.v. index) and this reception being public, wine could hardly have been offered in Sunnī Herī. Bābur’s strictures can apply to the vessels of precious metal he mentions, these being forbidden to Musalmāns; from his reference to the Tūra it would appear to repeat the same injunctions. Bābur broke up such vessels before the battle of Kanwāha (f. 315). Shāh-i-jahān did the same; when sent by his father Jahāngīr to reconquer the Deccan (1030 AH.-1621 AD.) he asked permission to follow the example of his ancestor Bābur, renounced wine, poured his stock into the Chaṃbal, broke up his cups and gave the fragments to the poor (‘Amal-i-ṣāliḥ, Hughes’ Dict. of Islām quoting the Hidāyah and Mishkāt, s.nn. Drinkables, Drinking-vessels, and Gold; Lane’s Modern Egyptians p. 125 n.).

[1185] This may be the Rabāt̤-i-sanghī of some maps, on a near road between the “Forty-daughters” and Harāt; or Bābur may have gone out of his direct way to visit Rabāt̤-i-sang-bast, a renowned halting place at the Carfax of the Herī-T̤ūs and Nishāpūr-Mashhad roads, built by one Arslān Jazāla who lies buried near, and rebuilt with great magnificence by ‘Alī-sher Nawā’i (Daulat-shāh, Browne, p. 176).

[1186] The wording here is confusing to those lacking family details. The paternal-aunt begīms can be Pāyanda-sult̤ān (named), Khadīja-sult̤ān, Apāq-sult̤ān, and Fakhr-jahān Begīms, all daughters of Abū-sa‘īd. The Apāq Begīm named above (also on f. 168b q.v.) does not now seem to me to be Abū-sa‘īd’s daughter (Gul-badan, trs. Bio. App.).

[1187] yūkūnmāī. Unless all copies I have seen reproduce a primary clerical mistake of Bābur’s, the change of salutation indicated by there being no kneeling with Apāq Begīm, points to a nuance of etiquette. Of the verb yūkūnmāk it may be noted that it both describes the ceremonious attitude of intercourse, i.e. kneeling and sitting back on both heels (Shaw), and also the kneeling on meeting. From Bābur’s phrase Begīm bīla yūkūnūb [having kneeled with], it appears that each of those meeting made the genuflection; I have not found the phrase used of other meetings; it is not the one used when a junior or a man of less degree meets a senior or superior in rank (e.g. Khusrau and Bābur f. 123, or Bābur and Badī‘u’z-zamān f. 186).

[1188] Musalmāns employ a set of readers who succeed one another in reading (reciting) the Qorān at the tombs of their men of eminence. This reading is sometimes continued day and night. The readers are paid by the rent of lands or other funds assigned for the purpose (Erskine).

[1189] A suspicion that Khadīja put poison in Jahāngīr’s wine may refer to this occasion (T.R. p. 199).

[1190] These are jharokha-i-darsān, windows or balconies from which a ruler shews himself to the people.

[1191] Mas‘ūd was then blind.

[1192] Bābur first drank wine not earlier than 917 AH. (f. 49 and note), therefore when nearing 30.

[1193] aīchkīlār, French, intérieur.

[1194] The obscure passage following here is discussed in Appendix I, On the weeping-willows of f. 190b.

[1195] Here this may well be a gold-embroidered garment.

[1196] This, the tomb of Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh Anṣari (d. 481 AH.) stands some 2m. north of Herī. Bābur mentions one of its numerous attendants of his day, Kamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain Gāzur-gāhī. Mohan Lall describes it as he saw it in 1831; says the original name of the locality was Kār-zār-gāh, place-of-battle; and, as perhaps his most interesting detail, mentions that Jalālu’d-dīn Rūmī’s Maṣnawī was recited every morning near the tomb and that people fainted during the invocation (Travels in the Panj-āb etc. p. 252). Colonel Yate has described the tomb as he saw it some 50 years later (JASB 1887); and explains the name Gāzur-gāh (lit. bleaching-place) by the following words of an inscription there found; “His tomb (Anṣarī’s) is a washing-place (gāzur-gāh) wherein the cloud of the Divine forgiveness washes white the black records of men” (p. 88 and p. 102).

[1197] juāz-i-kaghazlār (f. 47b and note).

[1198] The Ḥabību’s-siyār and Ḥai. MS. write this name with medial “round hā”; this allows it to be Kahad-stān, a running-place, race-course. Khwānd-amīr and Daulat-shāh call it a meadow (aūlāng); the latter speaks of a feast as held there; it was Shaibānī’s head-quarters when he took Harāt.

[1199] var. Khatīra; either an enclosure (qūrūq?) or a fine and lofty building.

[1200] This may have been a usual halting-place on a journey (safar) north. It was built by Ḥusain Bāī-qarā, overlooked hills and fields covered with arghwān (f. 137b) and seems once to have been a Paradise (Mohan Lall, p. 256).

[1201] Jāmī’s tomb was in the ‘Īd-gah of Herī (Ḥ.S. ii, 337), which appears to be the Muṣalla (Praying-place) demolished by Amīr ‘Abdu’r-raḥmān in the 19th century. Col. Yate was shewn a tomb in the Muṣalla said to be Jāmī’s and agreeing in the age, 81, given on it, with Jāmī’s at death, but he found a crux in the inscription (pp. 99, 106).

[1202] This may be the Muṣalla (Yate, p. 98).

[1203] This place is located by the Ḥ.S. at 5 farsakh from Herī (de Meynard at 25 kilomètres). It appears to be rather an abyss or fissure than a pond, a crack from the sides of which water trickles into a small bason in which dwells a mysterious fish, the beholding of which allows the attainment of desires. The story recalls Wordsworth’s undying fish of Bow-scale Tarn. (Cf. Ḥ.S. Bomb. ed. ii, Khatmat p. 20 and de Meynard, Journal Asiatique xvi, 480 and note.)

[1204] This is on maps to the north of Herī.

[1205] d. 232 AH. (847 AD.). See Yate, p. 93.

[1206] Imām Fakhru’d-dīn Raẓī (de Meynard, Journal Asiatique xvi, 481).

[1207] d. 861 AH.-1457 AD. Guhār-shād was the wife of Tīmūr’s son Shāhrukh. See Mohan Lall, p. 257 and Yate, p. 98.

[1208] This Marigold-garden may be named after Hārūnu’r-rashīd’s wife Zubaida.

[1209] This will be the place n. of Herī from which Maulānā Jalālu’d-dīn Pūrānī (d. 862 AH.) took his cognomen, as also Shaikh Jamālu’d-dīn Abū-sa‘īd Pūrān (f. 206) who was visited there by Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, ill-treated by Shaibānī (f. 206), left Herī for Qandahār, and there died, through the fall of a roof, in 921 AH. (Ḥ.S. iii, 345; Khazīnatu’l-asfiya ii, 321).

[1210] His tomb is dated 35 or 37 AH. (656 or 658 AD.; Yate, p. 94).

[1211] Mālān was a name of the Herī-rūd (Journal Asiatique xvi, 476, 511; Mohan Lall, p. 279; Ferrier, p. 261; etc.).

[1212] Yate, p. 94.

[1213] The position of this building between the Khūsh and Qībchāq Gates (de Meynard, l.c. p. 475) is the probable explanation of the variant, noted just below, of Kushk for Khūsh as the name of the Gate. The Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 429), mentions this kiosk in its list of the noted ones of the world.

[1214] var. Kushk (de Meynard, l.c. p. 472).

[1215] The reference here is, presumably, to Bābur’s own losses of Samarkand and Andijān.

[1216] Ākā or Āgā is used of elder relations; a yīnkā or yīngā is the wife of an uncle or elder brother; here it represents the widow of Bābur’s uncle Aḥmad Mīrān-shāhī. From it is formed the word yīnkālīk, levirate.

[1217] The almshouse or convent was founded here in Tīmūr’s reign (de Meynard, l.c. p. 500).

[1218] i.e. No smoke without fire.

[1219] This name may be due to the splashing of water. A Langar which may be that of Mīr Ghiyās̤, is shewn in maps in the Bām valley; from it into the Herī-rūd valley Bābur’s route may well have been the track from that Langar which, passing the villages on the southern border of Gharjistān, goes to Ahangarān.

[1220] This escape ought to have been included in the list of Bābur’s transportations from risk to safety given in my note to f. 96.

[1221] The right and wrong roads are shewn by the Indian Survey and French Military maps. The right road turns off from the wrong one, at Daulat-yār, to the right, and mounts diagonally along the south rampart of the Herī-rūd valley, to the Zirrīn-pass, which lies above the Bakkak-pass and carries the regular road for Yaka-aūlāng. It must be said, however, that we are not told whether Yaka-aūlāng was Qāsim Beg’s objective; the direct road for Kābul from the Herī-rūd valley is not over the Zirrīn-pass but goes from Daulat-yār by “Āq-zarat”, and the southern flank of Koh-i-bābā (bābār) to the Unai-pass (Holdich’s Gates of India p. 262).

[1222] circa Feb. 14th 1507, Bābur’s 24th birthday.

[1223] The Hazāras appear to have been wintering outside their own valley, on the Ghūr-bund road, in wait for travellers [cf. T.R. p. 197]. They have been perennial highwaymen on the only pass to the north not closed entirely in winter.

[1224] The Ghūr-bund valley is open in this part; the Hazāras may have been posted on the naze near the narrows leading into the Janglīk and their own side valleys.

[1225] Although the verses following here in the text are with the Turkī Codices, doubt cannot but be felt as to their authenticity. They do not fit verbally to the sentence they follow; they are a unique departure from Bābur’s plain prose narrative and nothing in the small Hazāra affair shews cause for such departure; they differ from his usual topics in their bombast and comment on his men (cf. f. 194 for comment on shirking begs). They appear in the 2nd Persian translation (217 f. 134) in Turkī followed by a prose Persian rendering (khalāṣa). They are not with the 1st Pers. trs. (215 f. 159), the text of which runs on with a plain prose account suiting the size of the affair, as follows:—“The braves, seeing their (the Hazāras) good soldiering, had stopped surprised; wishing to hurry them i went swiftly past them, shouting ‘Move on! move on!’ They paid me no attention. When, in order to help, I myself attacked, dismounting and going up the hill, they shewed courage and emulation in following. Getting to the top of the pass, we drove that band off, killing many, capturing others, making their families prisoner and plundering their goods.” This is followed by “I myself collected” etc. as in the Turkī text after the verse. It will be seen that the above extract is not a translation of the verse; no translator or even summariser would be likely to omit so much of his original. It is just a suitably plain account of a trivial matter.

[1226] Gulistān Cap. I. Story 4.

[1227] Bābur seems to have left the Ghūr-bund valley, perhaps pursuing the Hazāras towards Janglīk, and to have come “by ridge and valley” back into it for Ushtur-shahr. I have not located Tīmūr Beg’s Langar. As has been noted already (q.v. index) the Ghūr-bund narrows are at the lower end of the valley; they have been surmised to be the fissured rampart of an ancient lake.

[1228] Here this may represent a guard- or toll-house (Index s.n.).

[1229] As yūrūn is a patch, the bearer of the sobriquet might be Black Aḥmad the repairing-tailor.

[1230] Second Afghān War, Map of Kābul and its environs.

[1231] I understand that the arrival undiscovered was a result of riding in single-file and thus shewing no black mass.

[1232] or gharbīcha, which Mr. Erskine explains to be the four plates of mail, made to cover the back, front and sides; the jība would thus be the wadded under-coat to which they are attached.

[1233] This prayer is composed of extracts from the Qorān (Méms, i, 454 note); it is reproduced as it stands in Mr. Erskine’s wording (p. 216).

[1234] Bābur’s reference may well be to Sanjar’s birth as well as to his being the holder of Nīngnahār. Sanjar’s father had been thought worthy to mate with one of the six Badakhshī begīms whose line traced back to Alexander (T. R. p. 107); and his father was a Barlās, seemingly of high family.

[1235] It may be inferred that what was done was for the protection of the two women.

[1236] Not a bad case could have been made out for now putting a Tīmūrid in Bābur’s place in Kābul; viz. that he was believed captive in Herī and that Mīrzā Khān was an effective locum tenens against the Arghūns. Ḥaidar sets down what in his eyes pleaded excuse for his father Muḥ. Ḥusain (T.R. p. 198).

[1237] qūsh, not even a little plough-land being given (chand qulba dihya, 215 f. 162).

[1238] They were sons of Sl. Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī.

[1239] f. 160.

[1240] Ḥaidar’s opinion of Bābur at this crisis is of the more account that his own father was one of the rebels let go to the mercy of the “avenging servitor”. When he writes of Bābur, as being, at a time so provoking, gay, generous, affectionate, simple and gentle, he sets before us insight and temper in tune with Kipling’s “If....”

[1241] Bābur’s distinction, made here and elsewhere, between Chaghatāī and Mughūl touches the old topic of the right or wrong of the term “Mughūl dynasty”. What he, as also Ḥaidar, allows said is that if Bābur were to describe his mother in tribal terms, he would say she was half-Chaghatāī, half-Mughūl; and that if he so described himself, he would say he was half-Tīmūrid-Turk, half-Chaghatāī. He might have called the dynasty he founded in India Turkī, might have called it Tīmūriya; he would never have called it Mughūl, after his maternal grandmother.

Ḥaidar, with imperfect classification, divides Chīngīz Khān’s “Mughūl horde” into Mughūls and Chaghatāīs and of this Chaghatāī offtake says that none remained in 953 AH. (1547 AD.) except the rulers, i.e. sons of Sl. Aḥmad Khan (T.R. 148). Manifestly there was a body of Chaghatāīs with Bābur and there appear to have been many near his day in the Herī region,—‘Alī-sher Nawā‘i the best known.

Bābur supplies directions for naming his dynasty when, as several times, he claims to rule in Hindūstān where the “Turk” had ruled (f. 233b, f. 224b, f. 225). To call his dynasty Mughūl seems to blot out the centuries, something as we should do by calling the English Teutons. If there is to be such blotting-out, Abū’l-ghāzī would allow us, by his tables of Turk descent, to go further, to the primal source of all the tribes concerned, to Turk, son of Japhet. This traditional descent is another argument against “Mughūl dynasty.”

[1242] They went to Qandahār and there suffered great privation.

[1243] Bārān seems likely to be the Baian of some maps. Gul-i-bahār is higher up on the Panjhīr road. Chāsh-tūpa will have been near-by; its name might mean Hill of the heap of winnowed-corn.

[1244] f. 136.

[1245] Answer; Visions of his father’s sway.

[1246] Elph. MS. f. 161; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 164 and 217 f. 139b; Mems. p. 220.

[1247] The narrative indicates the location of the tribe, the modern Ghilzāī or Ghilzī.

[1248] Sih-kāna lies s.e. of Shorkach, and near Kharbīn. Sar-i-dih is about 25 or 30 miles s. of Ghaznī (Erskine). A name suiting the pastoral wealth of the tribe viz. Mesh-khail, Sheep-tribe, is shewn on maps somewhat s. from Kharbīn. Cf. Steingass s.n. Masht.

[1249] yāghrūn, whence yāghrūnchī, a diviner by help of the shoulder-blades of sheep. The defacer of the Elphinstone Codex has changed yāghrūn to yān, side, thus making Bābur turn his side and not his half-back to the north, altering his direction, and missing what looks like a jesting reference to his own divination of the road. The Pole Star was seen, presumably, before the night became quite black.

[1250] From the subsequent details of distance done, this must have been one of those good yīghāch of perhaps 5-6 miles, that are estimated by the ease of travel on level lands (Index s.v. yīghāch).

[1251] I am uncertain about the form of the word translated by “whim”. The Elph. and Ḥai. Codices read khūd d:lma (altered in the first to y:lma); Ilminsky (p. 257) reads khūd l:ma (de C. ii, 2 and note); Erskine has been misled by the Persian translation (215 f. 164b and 217 f. 139b). Whether khūd-dilma should be read, with the sense of “out of their own hearts” (spontaneously), or whether khūd-yalma, own pace (Turkī, yalma, pace) the contrast made by Bābur appears to be between an unpremeditated gallop and one premeditated for haste. Persian dalama, tarantula, also suggests itself.

[1252] chāpqūn, which is the word translated by gallop throughout the previous passage. The Turkī verb chāpmāq is one of those words-of-all-work for which it is difficult to find a single English equivalent. The verb qūīmāq is another; in its two occurrences here the first may be a metaphor from the pouring of molten metal; the second expresses that permission to gallop off for the raid without which to raid was forbidden. The root-notion of qūīmāq seems to be letting-go, that of chāpmāq, rapid motion.

[1253] i.e. on the raiders’ own road for Kābul.

[1254] f. 198b.

[1255] The Fifth taken was manifestly at the ruler’s disposition. In at least two places when dependants send gifts to Bābur the word [tassaduq] used might be rendered as “gifts for the poor”. Does this mean that the pādshāh in receiving this stands in the place of the Imām of the Qorān injunction which orders one-fifth of spoil to be given to the Imām for the poor, orphans, and travellers,—four-fifths being reserved for the troops? (Qorān, Sale’s ed. 1825, i, 212 and Hidāyat, Book ix).

[1256] This may be the sum of the separate items of sheep entered in account-books by the commissaries.

[1257] Here this comprehensive word will stand for deer, these being plentiful in the region.

[1258] Three Turkī MSS. write ṣīghīnīb, but the Elph. MS. has had this changed to yītīb, having reached.

[1259] bāsh-sīz, lit. without head, doubtless a pun on Aūz-beg (own beg, leaderless). B.M. Or. 3714 shows an artist’s conception of this tart-part.

[1260] Bābā Khākī is a fine valley, some 13 yīghāch e. of Herī (f. 13) where the Herī sult̤āns reside in the heats (J. Asiatique xvi, 501, de Meynard’s article; Ḥ.S. iii, 356).

[1261] f. 172b.

[1262] aūkhshātā almādī. This is one of many passages which Ilminsky indicates he has made good by help of the Memoirs (p. 261; Mémoires ii, 6).

[1263] They are given also on f. 172.

[1264] This may be Sirakhs or Sirakhsh (Erskine).

[1265] Tūshlīq tūshdīn yūrdī bīrūrlār. At least two meanings can be given to these words. Circumstances seem to exclude the one in which the Memoirs (p. 222) and Mémoires (ii, 7) have taken them here, viz. “each man went off to shift for himself”, and “chacun s’en alla de son côté et s’enfuit comme il put”, because Ẕū’n-nūn did not go off, and the Mīrzās broke up after his defeat. I therefore suggest another reading, one prompted by the Mīrzās’ vague fancies and dreams of what they might do, but did not.

[1266] The encounter was between “Belāq-i-marāl and Rabāt̤-i-‘alī-sher, near Bādghīs” (Raverty’s Notes p. 580). For particulars of the taking of Herī see Ḥ.S. iii, 353.

[1267] One may be the book-name, the second the name in common use, and due to the colour of the buildings. But Bābur may be making an ironical jest, and nickname the fort by a word referring to the defilement (ālā) of Aūzbeg possession. (Cf. Ḥ.S. iii, 359.)

[1268] Mr. Erskine notes that Badī‘u’z-zamān took refuge with Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī who gave him Tabrīz. When the Turkish Emperor Sālim took Tabrīz in 920 AH. (1514 AD.), he was taken prisoner and carried to Constantinople, where he died in 923 AH. (1517 AD.).

[1269] In the fort were his wife Kābulī Begīm, d. of Aūlūgh Beg M. Kābulī and Ruqaiya Āghā, known as the Nightingale. A young daughter of the Mīrzā, named the Rose-bud (Chūchak), had died just before the siege. After the surrender of the fort, Kābulī Begīm was married by Mīrzā Kūkūldāsh (perhaps ‘Āshiq-i-muḥammad Arghūn); Ruqaiya by Tīmūr Sl. Aūzbeg (Ḥ.S. iii, 359).

[1270] The Khut̤ba was first read for Shaibāq Khān in Herī on Friday Muḥarram 15th 913 AH. (May 27th 1507 AD.).

[1271] There is a Persian phrase used when a man engages in an unprofitable undertaking Kīr-i-khar gerift, i.e. Asini nervum deprehendet (Erskine). The Ḥ.S. does not mention Banā’i as fleecing the poets but has much to say about one Maulānā ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm a Turkistānī favoured by Shaibānī, whose victim Khwānd-amīr was, amongst many others. Not infrequently where Bābur and Khwānd-amīr state the same fact, they accompany it by varied details, as here (Ḥ.S. iii, 358, 360).

[1272] ‘adat. Muḥammadan Law fixes a term after widowhood or divorce within which re-marriage is unlawful. Light is thrown upon this re-marriage by Ḥ.S. iii, 359. The passage, a somewhat rhetorical one, gives the following details:—“On coming into Herī on Muḥarram 11th, Shaibānī at once set about gathering in the property of the Tīmūrids. He had the wives and daughters of the former rulers brought before him. The great lady Khān-zāda Begīm (f. 163b) who was daughter of Aḥmad Khān, niece of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, and wife of Muz̤affar Mīrzā, shewed herself pleased in his presence. Desiring to marry him, she said Muz̤affar M. had divorced her two years before. Trustworthy persons gave evidence to the same effect, so she was united to Shaibānī in accordance with the glorious Law. Mihr-angez Begīm, Muẓaffar M.’s daughter, was married to ‘Ubaidu’llāh Sl. (Aūzbeg); the rest of the chaste ladies having been sent back into the city, Shaibānī resumed his search for property.” Manifestly Bābur did not believe in the divorce Khwānd-amīr thus records.

[1273] A sarcasm this on the acceptance of literary honour from the illiterate.

[1274] f. 191 and note; Pul-i-sālār may be an irrigation-dam.

[1275] Qalāt-i-nādirī, the birth-place of Nādir Shāh, n. of Mashhad and standing on very strong ground (Erskine).

[1276] This is likely to be the road passing through the Carfax of Rabāt̤-i-sangbast, described by Daulat-shāh (Browne, p. 176).

[1277] This will mean that the Arghūns would acknowledge his suzerainty; Ḥaidar Mīrzā however says that Shāh Beg had higher views (T. R. p. 202). There had been earlier negotiations between Ẕū’n-nūn with Badī‘u’z-zamān and Bābur which may have led to the abandonment of Bābur’s expedition in 911 AD. (f. 158; Ḥ.S. iii, 323; Raverty’s account (Notes p. 581-2) of Bābur’s dealings with the Arghūn chiefs needs revision).

[1278] They will have gone first to Tūn or Qāīn, thence to Mashhad, and seem likely to have joined the Begīm after cross-cutting to avoid Herī.

[1279] yāghī wilāyatī-ghā kīlādūrghān. There may have been an accumulation of caravans on their way to Herāt, checked in Qalāt by news of the Aūzbeg conquest.

[1280] Jahāngīr’s son, thus brought by his mother, will have been an infant; his father had gone back last year with Bābur by the mountain road and had been left, sick and travelling in a litter, with the baggage when Bābur hurried on to Kābul at the news of the mutiny against him (f. 197); he must have died shortly afterwards, seemingly between the departure of the two rebels from Kābul (f. 201b-202) and the march out for Qandahār. Doubtless his widow now brought her child to claim his uncle Bābur’s protection.

[1281] Persians pay great attention in their correspondence not only to the style but to the kind of paper on which a letter is written, the place of signature, the place of the seal, and the situation of the address. Chardin gives some curious information on the subject (Erskine). Bābur marks the distinction of rank he drew between the Arghūn chiefs and himself when he calls their letter to him, ‘arẓ-dāsht, his to them khat̤t̤. His claim to suzerainty over those chiefs is shewn by Ḥaidar Mīrzā to be based on his accession to Tīmūrid headship through the downfall of the Bāī-qarās, who had been the acknowledged suzerains of the Arghūns now repudiating Bābur’s claim. Cf. Erskine’s History of India i, cap. 3.

[1282] on the main road, some 40 miles east of Qandahār.

[1283] var. Kūr or Kawar. If the word mean ford, this might well be the one across the Tarnak carrying the road to Qarā (maps). Here Bābur seems to have left the main road along the Tarnak, by which the British approach was made in 1880 AD., for one crossing west into the valley of the Argand-āb.

[1284] Bābā Ḥasan Abdāl is the Bābā Walī of maps. The same saint has given his name here, and also to his shrine east of Atak where he is known as Bābā Walī of Qandahār. The torrents mentioned are irrigation off-takes from the Argand-āb, which river flows between Bābā Walī and Khalishak. Shāh Beg’s force was south of the torrents (cf. Murghān-koh on S.A.W. map).

[1285] The narrative and plans of Second Afghan War (Murray 1908) illustrate Bābur’s movements and show most of the places he names. The end of the 280 mile march, from Kābul to within sight of Qandahār, will have stirred in the General of 1507 what it stirred in the General of 1880. Lord Roberts speaking in May 1913 in Glasgow on the rapid progress of the movement for National Service thus spoke:—“A memory comes over me which turns misgiving into hope and apprehension into confidence. It is the memory of the morning when, accompanied by two of Scotland’s most famous regiments, the Seaforths and the Gordons, at the end of a long and arduous march, I saw in the distance the walls and minarets of Qandahar, and knew that the end of a great resolve and a great task was near.”

[1286] mīn tāsh ‘imārat qāzdūrghān tūmshūghī-nīng alīdā; 215 f. l68b, ‘imarātī kah az sang yak pāra farmūda būdīm; 217 f. 143b, jāy kah man ‘imāratī sākhtam; Mems. p. 226, where I have built a palace; Méms. ii, 15, l’endroit même où j’ai bâti un palais. All the above translations lose the sense of qāzdūrghān, am causing to dig out, to quarry stone. Perhaps for coolness’ sake the dwelling was cut out in the living rock. That the place is south-west of the main ạrīqs, near Murghān-koh or on it, Bābur’s narrative allows. Cf. Appendix J.

[1287] sic, Ḥai. MS. There are two Lakhshas, Little Lakhsha, a mile west of Qandahār, and Great Lakhsha, about a mile s.w. of Old Qandahār, 5 or 6 m. from the modern one (Erskine).

[1288] This will be the main irrigation channel taken off from the Argand-āb (Maps).

[1289] tamām aīlīkīdīn—aīsh-kīlūr yīkītlār, an idiomatic phrase used of ‘Alī-dost (f. 14b and n.), not easy to express by a single English adjective.

[1290] The tawāchī was a sort of adjutant who attended to the order of the troops and carried orders from the general (Erskine). The difficult passage following gives the Turkī terms Bābur selected to represent Arabic military ones.

[1291] Ar. aḥad (Āyīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, index s.n.). The word būī recurs in the text on f. 210.

[1292] i.e. the būī tīkīnī of f. 209b, the khāṣa tābīn, close circle.

[1293] As Mughūls seem unlikely to be descendants of Muḥammad, perhaps the title Sayyid in some Mughūl names here, may be a translation of a Mughūl one meaning Chief.

[1294] Arghūn-nīng qarāsī, a frequent phrase.

[1295] in sign of submission.

[1296] f. 176. It was in 908 AH. [1502 AD.].

[1297] This word seems to be from sānjmāq, to prick or stab; and here to have the military sense of prick, viz. riding forth. The Second Pers. trs. (217 f. 144b) translates it by ghauta khūrda raft, went tasting a plunge under water (215 f. 170; Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. p. 133). Erskine (p. 228), as his Persian source dictates, makes the men sink into the soft ground; de Courteille varies much (ii, 21).

[1298] Ar. akhmail, so translated under the known presence of trees; it may also imply soft ground (Lane p. 813 col. b) but soft ground does not suit the purpose of arīqs (channels), the carrying on of water to the town.

[1299] The S.A.W. map is useful here.

[1300] That he had a following may be inferred.

[1301] Ḥai. MS. qāchār; Ilminsky, p. 268; and both Pers. trss. rukhsār or rukhsāra (f. 25 and note to qāchār).

[1302] So in the Turkī MSS. and the first Pers. trs. (215 f. 170b). The second Pers. trs. (217 f. 145b) has a gloss of ātqū u tika; this consequently Erskine follows (p. 229) and adds a note explaining the punishment. Ilminsky has the gloss also (p. 269), thus indicating Persian and English influence.

[1303] No MS. gives the missing name.

[1304] The later favour mentioned was due to Saṃbhal’s laborious release of his master from Aūzbeg captivity in 917 AH. (1511 AD.) of which Erskine quotes a full account from the Tārīkh-i-sind (History of India i, 345).

[1305] Presumably he went by Sabzār, Daulatābād, and Washīr.

[1306] f. 202 and note to Chaghatāī.

[1307] This will be for the Nīngnahār tūmān of Lamghān.

[1308] He was thus dangerously raised in his father’s place of rule.

[1309] ff. 10b, 11b. Ḥaidar M. writes, “Shāh Begīm laid claim to Badakhshān, saying, “it has been our hereditary kingdom for 3000 years; though I, being a woman, cannot myself attain sovereignty, yet my grandson Mīrzā Khān can hold it” (T. R. p. 203).

[1310] tībrādīlār. The agitation of mind connoted, with movement, by this verb may well have been, here, doubt of Bābur’s power to protect.

[1311] tūshlūq tūshdīn tāghghā yūrūkāīlār. Cf. 205b for the same phrase, with supposedly different meaning.

[1312] qāngshār lit. ridge of the nose.

[1313] bīr aūq ham qūīā-ālmādīlār (f. 203b note to chāpqūn).

[1314] This will have been news both of Shaibāq Khān and of Mīrzā Khān. The Pers. trss. vary here (215 f. 173 and 217 f. 148).

[1315] Index s.n.

[1316] Māh-chūchūk can hardly have been married against her will to Qāsim. Her mother regarded the alliance as a family indignity; appealed to Shāh Beg and compassed a rescue from Kābul while Bābur and Qāsim were north of the Oxus [circa 916 AH.]. Māh-chūchūk quitted Kābul after much hesitation, due partly to reluctance to leave her husband and her infant of 18 months, [Nāhīd Begīm,] partly to dread less family honour might require her death (Erskine’s History, i, 348 and Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma).

[1317] Erskine gives the fort the alternative name “Kaliūn”, locates it in the Bādghīs district east of Herī, and quotes from Abū’l-ghāzī in describing its strong position (History i, 282). Ḥ.S. Tīrah-tū.

[1318] f. 133 and note. Abū’l-faẓl mentions that the inscription was to be seen in his time.

[1319] This fief ranks in value next to the Kābul tūmān.

[1320] Various gleanings suggest motives for Bābur’s assertion of supremacy at this particular time. He was the only Tīmūrid ruler and man of achievement; he filled Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s place of Tīmūrid headship; his actions through a long period show that he aimed at filling Tīmūr Beg’s. There were those who did not admit his suzerainty,—Tīmūrids who had rebelled, Mughūls who had helped them, and who would also have helped Sa‘īd Khān Chaghatāī, if he had not refused to be treacherous to a benefactor; there were also the Arghūns, Chīngīz-khānids of high pretensions. In old times the Mughūl Khāqāns were pādshāh (supreme); Pādshāh is recorded in history as the style of at least Sātūq-būghra Khān Pādshāh Ghāzī; no Tīmūrid had been lifted by his style above all Mīrzās. When however Tīmūrids had the upper hand, Bābur’s Tīmūrid grandfather Abū-sa‘īd asserted his de facto supremacy over Bābur’s Chaghatāī grandfather Yūnas (T. R. p. 83). For Bābur to re-assert that supremacy by assuming the Khāqān’s style was highly opportune at this moment. To be Bābur Supreme was to declare over-lordship above Chaghatāī and Mughūl, as well as over all Mīrzās. It was done when his sky had cleared; Mīrzā Khān’s rebellion was scotched; the Arghūns were defeated; he was the stronger for their lost possessions; his Aūzbeg foe had removed to a less ominous distance; and Kābul was once more his own.

Gul-badan writes as if the birth of his first-born son Humāyūn were a part of the uplift in her father’s style, but his narrative does not support her in this, since the order of events forbids.

[1321] The “Khān” in Humāyūn’s title may be drawn from his mother’s family, since it does not come from Bābur. To whose family Māhīm belonged we have not been able to discover. It is one of the remarkable omissions of Bābur, Gul-badan and Abū’l-faẓl that they do not give her father’s name. The topic of her family is discussed in my Biographical Appendix to Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma and will be taken up again, here, in a final Appendix on Bābur’s family.

[1322] Elph. MS. f. 172b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 174b and 217 f. 148b; Mems. p. 234.

[1323] on the head-waters of the Tarnak (R.’s Notes App. p. 34).

[1324] Bābur has made no direct mention of his half-brother’s death (f. 208 and n. to Mīrzā).

[1325] This may be Darwesh-i-‘alī of f. 210; the Sayyid in his title may merely mean chief, since he was a Mughūl.

[1326] Several of these mutineers had fought for Bābur at Qandahār.

[1327] It may be useful to recapitulate this Mīrzā’s position:—In the previous year he had been left in charge of Kābul when Bābur went eastward in dread of Shaibānī, and, so left, occupied his hereditary place. He cannot have hoped to hold Kābul if the Aūzbeg attacked it; for its safety and his own he may have relied, and Bābur also in appointing him, upon influence his Arghūn connections could use. For these, one was Muqim his brother-in-law, had accepted Shaibānī’s suzerainty after being defeated in Qandahār by Bābur. It suited them better no doubt to have the younger Mīrzā rather than Bābur in Kābul; the latter’s return thither will have disappointed them and the Mīrzā; they, as will be instanced later, stood ready to invade his lands when he moved East; they seem likely to have promoted the present Mughūl uprising. In the battle which put this down, the Mīrzā was captured; Bābur pardoned him; but he having rebelled again, was then put to death.

[1328] Bāgh-i-yūrūnchqā may be an equivalent of Bāgh-i-safar, and the place be one of waiting “up to” (ūnchqā) the journey (yūr). Yūrūnchqā also means clover (De Courteille).

[1329] He seems to have been a brother or uncle of Humāyūn’s mother Māhīm (Index; A. N. trs. i, 492 and note).

[1330] In all MSS. the text breaks off abruptly here, as it does on f. 118b as though through loss of pages, and a blank of narrative follows. Before the later gap of f. 251b however the last sentence is complete.

[1331] Index s. n. Bābur-nāma, date of composition and gaps.

[1332] ibid.

[1333] Jumāda I, 14th 968 AH.-Jan. 31st 1561 AD. Concerning the book see Elliot and Dowson’s History of India vi, 572 and JRAS 1901 p. 76, H. Beveridge’s art. On Persian MSS. in Indian Libraries.

[1334] The T. R. gives the names of two only of the champions but Firishta, writing much later gives all five; we surmise that he found his five in the book of which copies are not now known, the Tārīkh-i Muḥ. ‘Ārif Qandahārī. Firishta’s five are ‘Ali shab-kūr (night-blind), ‘Alī Sīstānī, Naz̤ar Bahādur Aūzbeg, Ya‘qūb tez-jang (swift in fight), and Aūzbeg Bahādur. Ḥaidar’s two names vary in the MSS. of the T. R. but represent the first two of Firishta’s list.

[1335] There are curious differences of statement about the date of Shaibānī’s death, possibly through confusion between this and the day on which preliminary fighting began near Merv. Ḥaidar’s way of expressing the date carries weight by its precision, he giving roz-i-shakk of Ramẓān, i.e. a day of which there was doubt whether it was the last of Sha‘bān or the first of Ramẓān (Lane, yauma’u’l-shakk). As the sources support Friday for the day of the week and on a Friday in the year 915 AH. fell the 29th of Sha‘bān, the date of Shaibānī’s death seems to be Friday Sha‘bān 29th 915 AH. (Friday December 2nd 1510 AD.).

[1336] If my reading be correct of the Turkī passage concerning wines drunk by Bābur which I have noted on f. 49 (in loco p. 83 n. 1), it was during this occupation of Kābul that Bābur first broke the Law against stimulants.

[1337] Mr. R. S. Poole found a coin which he took to be one struck in obedience to Bābur’s compact with the Shāh (B.M.Cat. of the coins of Persian Shāhs 1887, pp. xxiv et seq.; T.R. p. 246 n.).

[1338] It was held by Aḥmad-i-qāsim Kohbur and is referred to on f. 234b, as one occasion of those in which Dost Beg distinguished himself.

[1339] Schuyler’s Turkistān has a good account and picture of the mosque. ‘Ubaid’s vow is referred to in my earlier mention of the Sūlūku’l-mulūk. It may be noted here that this MS. supports the spelling Bābur by making the second syllable rhyme to pūr, as against the form Bābar.

[1340] aūrūq. Bābur refers to this exodus on f. 12b when writing of Daulat-sult̤ān Khānīm.

[1341] It is one recorded with some variation, in Niyāz Muḥammad Khukandī’s Tārīkh-i-shāhrukhī (Kazan, 1885) and Nalivkine’s Khānate of Khokand (p. 63). It says that when Bābur in 918 AH. (1512 AD.) left Samarkand after defeat by the Aūzbegs, one of his wives, Sayyida Āfāq who accompanied him in his flight, gave birth to a son in the desert which lies between Khujand and Kand-i-badām; that Bābur, not daring to tarry and the infant being too young to make the impending journey, left it under some bushes with his own girdle round it in which were things of price; that the child was found by local people and in allusion to the valuables amongst which it lay, called Altūn bīshik (golden cradle); that it received other names and was best known in later life as Kḥudāyān Sult̤ān. He is said to have spent most of his life in Akhsī; to have had a son Tīngrī-yār; and to have died in 952 AH. (1545 AD.). His grandson Yār-i-muḥammad is said to have gone to India to relations who was descendants of Bābur (JASB 1905 p. 137 H. Beveridge’s art. The Emperor Bābur). What is against the truth of this tradition is that Gul-badan mentions no such wife as Sayyida Āfāq. Māhīm however seems to have belonged to a religious family, might therefore be styled Sayyida, and, as Bābur mentions (f. 220), had several children who did not live (a child left as this infant was, might if not heard of, be supposed dead). There is this opening allowed for considering the tradition.

[1342] Bābur refers to this on f. 265.

[1343] The Lubbu’t-tawārīkh would fix Ramẓān 7th.

[1344] Mr. Erskine’s quotation of the Persian original of the couplet differs from that which I have translated (History of India ii, 326; Tārīkh-i-badāyūnī Bib. Ind. ed. f. 444). Perhaps in the latter a pun is made on Najm as the leader’s name and as meaning fortune; if so it points the more directly at the Shāh. The second line is quoted by Badāyūnī on his f. 362 also.

[1345] Some translators make Bābur go “naked” into the fort but, on his own authority (f. 106b), it seems safer to understand what others say, that he went stripped of attendance, because it was always his habit even in times of peace to lie down in his tunic; much more would he have done so at such a crisis of his affairs as this of his flight to Ḥiṣār.

[1346] Ḥaidar gives a graphic account of the misconduct of the horde and of their punishment (T.R. p. 261-3).

[1347] One of the mutineers named as in this affair (T.R. p. 257) was Sl. Qulī chūnāq, a circumstance attracting attention by its bearing on the cause of the lacunæ in the Bābur-nāma, inasmuch as Bābur, writing at the end of his life, expresses (f. 65) his intention to tell of this man’s future misdeeds. These misdeeds may have been also at Ḥiṣār and in the attack there made on Bābur; they are known from Ḥaidar to have been done at Ghaznī; both times fall within this present gap. Hence it is clear that Bābur meant to write of the events falling in the gap of 914 AH. onwards.

[1348] In 925 AH. (ff. 227 and 238) mention is made of courtesies exchanged between Bābur and Muḥammad-i-zamān in Balkh. The Mīrzā was with Bābur later on in Hindūstān.

[1349] Mīr Ma‘ṣūm’s Tārīkh-i-sind is the chief authority for Bābur’s action after 913 AH. against Shāh Beg in Qandahār; its translation, made in 1846 by Major Malet, shews some manifestly wrong dates; they appear also in the B. M. MS. of the work.

[1350] f. 216b and note to “Monday”.

[1351] Elph. MS. f. 173b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 178 and 217 f. 149; Mems. p. 246. The whole of the Ḥijra year is included in 1519 AD. (Erskine). What follows here and completes the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma is a diary of a little over 13 months’ length, supplemented by matter of later entry. The product has the character of a draft, awaiting revision to harmonize it in style and, partly, in topic with the composed narrative that breaks off under 914 AH.; for the diary, written some 11 years earlier than that composed narrative, varies, as it would be expected à priori to vary, in style and topic from the terse, lucid and idiomatic output of Bābur’s literary maturity. A good many obscure words and phrases in it, several new from Bābur’s pen, have opposed difficulty to scribes and translators. Interesting as such minutiae are to a close observer of Turkī and of Bābur’s diction, comment on all would be tedious; a few will be found noted, as also will such details as fix the date of entry for supplementary matter.

[1352] Here Mr. Erskine notes that Dr. Leyden’s translation begins again; it broke off on f. 180b, and finally ends on f. 223b.

[1353] This name is often found transliterated as Chandul or [mod.] Jandul but the Ḥai. MS. supports Raverty’s opinion that Chandāwal is correct.

The year 925 AH. opens with Bābur far from Kābul and east of the Khahr (fort) he is about to attack. Afghān and other sources allow surmise of his route to that position; he may have come down into the Chandāwal-valley, first, from taking Chaghān-sarāī (f. 124, f. 134 and n.), and, secondly, from taking the Gibrī stronghold of Ḥaidar-i-‘alī Bajaurī which stood at the head of the Bābā Qarā-valley. The latter surmise is supported by the romantic tales of Afghān chroniclers which at this date bring into history Bābur’s Afghān wife, Bībī Mubāraka (f. 220b and note; Mems. p. 250 n.; and Appendix K, An Afghān legend). (It must be observed here that R.’s Notes (pp. 117, 128) confuse the two sieges, viz. of the Gibrī fort in 924 AH. and of the Khahr of Bajaur in 925 AH.)

[1354] Raverty lays stress on the circumstance that the fort Bābur now attacks has never been known as Bajaur, but always simply as Khahr, the fort (the Arabic name for the place being, he says, plain Shahr); just as the main stream is called simply Rūd (the torrent). The name Khahr is still used, as modern maps shew. There are indeed two neighbouring places known simply as Khahr (Fort), i.e. one at the mouth of the “Mahmand-valley” of modern campaigns, the other near the Malakand (Fincastle’s map).

[1355] This word the Ḥai. MS. writes, passim, Dilah-zāk.

[1356] Either Ḥaidar-i-‘alī himself or his nephew, the latter more probably, since no name is mentioned.

[1357] Looking at the position assigned by maps to Khahr, in the dū-āb of the Charmanga-water and the Rūd of Bajaur, it may be that Bābur’s left moved along the east bank of the first-named stream and crossed it into the dū-āb, while his centre went direct to its post, along the west side of the fort.

[1358] sū-kīrīshī; to interpret which needs local knowledge; it might mean where water entered the fort, or where water disembogued from narrows, or, perhaps, where water is entered for a ford. (The verb kīrmāk occurs on f. 154b and f. 227 to describe water coming down in spate.)

[1359] dīwānawār, perhaps a jest on a sobriquet earned before this exploit, perhaps the cause of the man’s later sobriquet dīwāna (f. 245b).

[1360] Text, t:r:k, read by Erskine and de Courteille as Turk; it might however be a Turkī component in Jān-i-‘alī or Muḥibb-i-‘alī. (Cf. Zenker s.n. tirik.)

[1361] aūshūl gūnī, which contrasts with the frequent aūshbū gūnī (this same day, today) of manifestly diary entries; it may indicate that the full account of the siege is a later supplement.

[1362] This puzzling word might mean cow-horn (kau-sarū) and stand for the common horn trumpet. Erskine and de Courteille have read it as gau-sar, the first explaining it as cow-head, surmised to be a protection for matchlockmen when loading; the second, as justaucorps de cuir. That the word is baffling is shewn by its omission in I.O. 215 (f. 178b), in 217 (f. 149b) and in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. (p. 137).

[1363] or farangī. Much has been written concerning the early use of gun-powder in the East. There is, however, no well-authenticated fact to prove the existence of anything like artillery there, till it was introduced from Europe. Bābur here, and in other places (f. 267) calls his larger ordnance Firingī, a proof that they were then regarded as owing their origin to Europe. The Turks, in consequence of their constant intercourse with the nations of the West, have always excelled all the other Orientals in the use of artillery; and, when heavy cannon were first used in India, Europeans or Turks were engaged to serve them (Erskine). It is owing no doubt to the preceding gap in his writings that we are deprived of Bābur’s account of his own introduction to fire-arms. See E. & D.’s History of India, vi, Appendix On the early use of gunpowder in India.

[1364] var. qut̤bī, qūchīnī.

[1365] This sobriquet might mean “ever a fighter”, or an “argle-bargler”, or a brass shilling (Zenker), or (if written jing-jing) that the man was visaged like the bearded reeding (Scully in Shaw’s Vocabulary). The T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī includes a Mīrak Khān Jang-jang in its list of Akbar’s Commanders.

[1366] ghūl-dīn (awwal) aūl qūrghān-gha chīqtī. I suggest to supply awwal, first, on the warrant of Bābur’s later statement (f. 234b) that Dost was first in.

[1367] He was a son of Maulānā Muḥ. Ṣadr, one of the chief men of ‘Umar-shaikh M.’s Court; he had six brothers, all of whom spent their lives in Bābur’s service, to whom, if we may believe Abū’l-faẓl, they were distantly related (Erskine).

[1368] Bābur now returns towards the east, down the Rūd. The chashma by which he encamped, would seem to be near the mouth of the valley of Bābā Qarā, one 30 miles long; it may have been, anglicé, a spring [not that of the main stream of the long valley], but the word may be used as it seems to be of the water supplying the Bāgh-i-ṣafā (f. 224), i.e. to denote the first considerable gathering-place of small head-waters. It will be observed a few lines further on that this same valley seems to be meant by “Khwāja Khiẓr”.

[1369] He will have joined Bābur previous to Muḥarram 925 AH.

[1370] This statement, the first we have, that Bābur has broken Musalmān Law against stimulants (f. 49 and n.), is followed by many others more explicit, jotting down where and what and sometimes why he drank, in a way which arrests attention and asks some other explanation than that it is an unabashed record of conviviality such conceivably as a non-Musalmān might write. Bābur is now 37 years old; he had obeyed the Law till past early manhood; he wished to return to obedience at 40; he frequently mentions his lapses by a word which can be translated as “commitment of sin” (irtqāb); one gathers that he did not at any time disobey with easy conscience. Does it explain his singular record,—one made in what amongst ourselves would be regarded as a private diary,—that his sins were created by Law? Had he a balance of reparation in his thoughts?

Detaching into their separate class as excesses, all his instances of confessed drunkenness, there remains much in his record which, seen from a non-Musalmān point of view, is venial; e.g. his ṣubūhī appears to be the “morning” of the Scot, the Morgen-trank of the Teuton; his afternoon cup, in the open air usually, may have been no worse than the sober glass of beer or local wine of modern Continental Europe. Many of these legal sins of his record were interludes in the day’s long ride, stirrup-cups some of them, all in a period of strenuous physical activity. Many of his records are collective and are phrased impersonally; they mention that there was drinking, drunkenness even, but they give details sometimes such as only a sober observer could include.

Bābur names a few men as drunkards, a few as entirely obedient; most of his men seem not to have obeyed the Law and may have been “temperate drinkers”; they effected work, Bābur amongst them, which habitual drunkards could not have compassed. Spite of all he writes of his worst excesses, it must be just to remember his Musalmān conscience, and also the distorting power of a fictitious sin. Though he broke the law binding all men against excess, and this on several confessed occasions, his rule may have been no worse than that of the ordinarily temperate Western. It cannot but lighten judgment that his recorded lapses from Law were often prompted by the bounty and splendour of Nature; were committed amidst the falling petals of fruit-blossom, the flaming fire of autumn leaves, where the eye rested on the arghwān or the orange grove, the coloured harvest of corn or vine.

[1371] As Mr. Erskine observes, there seems to be no valley except that of Bābā Qarā, between the Khahr and the Chandāwal-valley; “Khwāja Khiẓr” and “Bābā Qarā” may be one and the same valley.

[1372] Time and ingenuity would be needed to bring over into English all the quips of this verse. The most obvious pun is, of course, that on Bajaur as the compelling cause (ba jaur) of the parting; others may be meant on guzīd and gazīd, on sazīd and chāra. The verse would provide the holiday amusement of extracting from it two justifiable translations.

[1373] His possessions extended from the river of Sawād to Bāramūla; he was expelled from them by the Yūsuf-zāī (Erskine).

[1374] This will be the naze of the n.e. rampart of the Bābā Qarā valley.

[1375] f. 4 and note; f. 276. Bābur seems to use the name for several varieties of deer.

[1376] There is here, perhaps, a jesting allusion to the darkening of complexion amongst the inhabitants of countries from west to east, from Highlands to Indian plains.

[1377] In Dr. E. D. Ross’ Polyglot list of birds the sārigh(sārīq)-qūsh is said to frequent fields of ripening grain; this suggests to translate its name as Thief-bird.

[1378] Aquila chrysaetus, the hunting eagle.

[1379] This ārālīgh might be identified with the “Miankalai” of maps (since Soghd, lying between two arms of the Zar-afshān is known also as Mīānkal), but Raverty explains the Bajaur Miankalai to mean Village of the holy men (mīān).

[1380] After 933 AH. presumably, when final work on the B.N. was in progress.

[1381] Mr. Erskine notes that Pesh-grām lies north of Mahyar (on the Chandāwal-water), and that he has not found Kahrāj (or Kohrāj). Judging from Bābur’s next movements, the two valleys he names may be those in succession east of Chandāwal.

[1382] There is hardly any level ground in the cleft of the Panj-kūra (R.’s Notes p. 193); the villages are perched high on the sides of the valley. The pass leading to them may be Katgola (Fincastle’s Map).

[1383] This account of Hind-āl’s adoption is sufficiently confused to explain why a note, made apparently by Humāyūn, should have been appended to it (Appendix L, On Hind-āl’s adoption). The confusion reminds the reader that he has before him a sort of memorandum only, diary jottings, apt to be allusive and abbreviated. The expected child was Dil-dār’s; Māhīm, using her right as principal wife, asked for it to be given to her. That the babe in question is here called Hind-āl shews that at least part of this account of his adoption was added after the birth and naming (f. 227).

[1384] One would be, no doubt, for Dil-dār’s own information. She then had no son but had two daughters, Gul-rang and Gul-chihra. News of Hind-āl’s birth reached Bābur in Bhīra, some six weeks later (f. 227).

[1385] f. 218b.

[1386] Bībī Mubāraka, the Afghānī Aghācha of Gul-badan. An attractive picture of her is drawn by the Tāwārikh-i-ḥāfi-i-raḥmat-khānī. As this gives not only one of Bābur’s romantic adventures but historical matter, I append it in my husband’s translation [(A.Q.R. April 1901)] as Appendix K, An Afghān Legend.

[1387] Bī-sūt aīlī-nīng Bajaur-qūrghānī-dā manāsabatī-bār jīhatī; a characteristic phrase.

[1388] Perhaps the end of the early spring-harvest and the spring harvesting-year. It is not the end of the campaigning year, manifestly; and it is at the beginning of both the solar and lunar years.

[1389] Perhaps, more than half-way between the Mid-day and Afternoon Prayers. So too in the annals of Feb. 12th.

[1390] tīl ālghālī (Pers. zabān-gīrī), a new phrase in the B.N.

[1391] chāsht, which, being half-way between sunrise and the meridian, is a variable hour.

[1392] See n. 2, f. 221.

[1393] Perhaps Maqām is the Mardān of maps.

[1394] Bhīra, on the Jehlam, is now in the Shāhpūr district of the Panj-āb.

[1395] This will be the ford on the direct road from Mardān for the eastward (Elphin-stone’s Caubul ii, 416).

[1396] The position of Sawātī is represented by the Suābī of the G. of I. map (1909 AD.). Writing in about 1813 AD. Mr. Erskine notes as worthy of record that the rhinoceros was at that date no longer found west of the Indus.

[1397] Elph. MS. ghura, the 1st, but this is corrected to 16th by a marginal note. The Ḥai. MS. here, as in some other places, has the context for a number, but omits the figures. So does also the Elph. MS. in a good many places.

[1398] This is the Harru. Mr. Erskine observes that Bābur appears to have turned sharp south after crossing it, since he ascended a pass so soon after leaving the Indus and reached the Sūhān so soon.

[1399] i.e. the Salt-range.

[1400] Mr. Erskine notes that (in his day) a shāhrukhī may be taken at a shilling or eleven pence sterling.

[1401] It is somewhat difficult not to forget that a man who, like Bābur, records so many observations of geographical position, had no guidance from Surveys, Gazetteers and Books of Travel. Most of his records are those of personal observation.

[1402] In this sentence Mr. Erskine read a reference to the Musalmān Ararat, the Koh-i-jūd on the left bank of the Tigris. What I have set down translates the Turkī words but, taking account of Bābur’s eye for the double use of a word, and Erskine’s careful work, done too in India, the Turkī may imply reference to the Ararat-like summit of Sakeswar.

[1403] Here Dr. Leyden’s version finally ends (Erskine).

[1404] Bhīra, as has been noted, is on the Jehlam; Khūsh-āb is 40 m. lower down the same river; Chīnīūt (Chīnī-wat?) is 50 miles south of Bhīra; Chīn-āb (China-water?) seems the name of a tract only and not of a residential centre; it will be in the Bar of Kipling’s border-thief. Concerning Chīnīūt see D. G. Barkley’s letter, JRAS 1899 p. 132.

[1405] t̤aur yīrī waqī‘ būlūb tūr. As on f. 160 of the valley of Khwesh, I have taken t̤aur to be Turkī, complete, shut in.

[1406] chashma (f. 218b and note).

[1407] The promised description is not found; there follows a mere mention only of the garden [f. 369]. This entry can be taken therefore as shewing an intention to write what is still wanting from Ṣafar 926 AH. to Ṣafar 932 AH.

[1408] Mīr Muḥ. may have been a kinsman or follower of Mahdī Khwāja. The entry on the scene, unannounced by introduction as to parentage, of the Khwāja who played a part later in Bābur’s family affairs is due, no doubt, to the last gap of annals. He is mentioned in the Translator’s Note, s.a. 923 AH. (See Gul-badan’s H.N. Biographical Appendix s.n.)

[1409] or Sihrind, mod. Sirhind or Sar-i-hind (Head of Hind). It may be noted here, for what it may be found worth, that Kh(w)āfī Khān [i, 402] calls Sar-i-hind the old name, says that the place was once held by the Ghaznī dynasty and was its Indian frontier, and that Shāh-jahān changed it to Sahrind. The W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 155 writes Shahrind.

[1410] Three krores or crores of dāms, at 40 to the rupee, would make this 750,000 rupees, or about £75,000 sterling (Erskine); a statement from the ancient history of the rupī!

[1411] This Hindustānī word in some districts signifies the head man of a trade, in others a landholder (Erskine).

[1412] In Mr. Erskine’s time this sum was reckoned to be nearly £20,000.

[1413] Here originally neither the Elph. MS. nor the Ḥai. MS. had a date; it has been added to the former.

[1414] This rain is too early for the s.w. monsoon; it was probably a severe fall of spring rain, which prevails at this season or rather earlier, and extends over all the west of Asia (Erskine).

[1415] az ghīna shor sū. Streams rising in the Salt-range become brackish on reaching its skirts (G. of I.).

[1416] Here this will be the fermented juice of rice or of the date-palm.

[1417] Rauḥ is sometimes the name of a musical note.

[1418] a platform, with or without a chamber above it, and supported on four posts.

[1419] so-written in the MSS. Cf. Raverty’s Notes and G. of I.

[1420] Anglicé, cousins on the father’s side.

[1421] The G. of I. describes it.

[1422] Elph. MS. f. 183b, manṣūb; Ḥai. MS. and 2nd W.-i-B. bīsūt. The holder might be Bābā-i-kābulī of f. 225.

[1423] The 1st Pers. trs. (I.O. 215 f. 188b) and Kehr’s MS. [Ilminsky p. 293] attribute Hātī’s last-recorded acts to Bābur himself. The two mistaken sources err together elsewhere. M. de Courteille corrects the defect (ii, 67).

[1424] night-guard. He is the old servant to whom Bābur sent a giant ashrafī of the spoils of India (Gul-badan’s H.N. s.n.).

[1425] The kīping or kīpik is a kind of mantle covered with wool (Erskine); the root of the word is kīp, dry.

[1426] aūlūgh chāsht, a term suggesting that Bābur knew the chota ḥāẓirī, little breakfast, of Anglo-India. It may be inferred, from several passages, that the big breakfast was taken after 9 a.m. and before 12 p.m. Just below men are said to put on their mail at chāsht in the same way as, passim, things other than prayer are said to be done at this or that Prayer; this, I think, always implies that they are done after the Prayer mentioned; a thing done shortly before a Prayer is done “close to” or “near” or when done over half-way to the following Prayer, the act is said to be done “nearer” to the second (as was noted on f. 221).

[1427] Juldū Dost Beg-nīng ātī-gha būldī.

[1428] The disarray of these names in the MSS. reveals confusion in their source. Similar verbal disarray occurs in the latter part of f. 229.

[1429] Manifestly a pun is made on the guide’s name and on the cap-à-pié robe of honour the offenders did not receive.

[1430] aūrdū-nīng aldī-gha, a novel phrase.

[1431] I understand that the servants had come to do their equivalent for “kissing hands” on an appointment viz. to kneel.

[1432] spikenard. Speede’s Indian Handbook on Gardening identifies saṃbhal with Valeriana jatmansi (Sir W. Jones & Roxburgh); “it is the real spikenard of the ancients, highly esteemed alike as a perfume and as a stimulant medicine; native practitioners esteeming it valuable in hysteria and epilepsy.” Bābur’s word dirakht is somewhat large for the plant.

[1433] It is not given, however.

[1434] i.e. through the Indus.

[1435] Perhaps this aīkī-sū-ārāsī (miyān-dū-āb) was the angle made by the Indus itself below Atak; perhaps one made by the Indus and an affluent.

[1436] ma’jūnī nāklīkī, presumably under the tranquillity induced by the drug.

[1437] massadus, the six sides of the world, i.e. all sides.

[1438] This is the name of one of the five champions defeated by Bābur in single combat in 914 AH. (Translator’s Note s.a. 914 AH.).

[1439] f. 145b.

[1440] Humāyūn was 12, Kāmrān younger; one surmises that Bābur would have walked under the same circumstances.

[1441] ṣabuḥī, the morning-draught. In 1623 AD. Pietro della Vallé took a ṣabuḥī with Mr. Thomas Rastel, the head of the merchants of Surat, which was of hot spiced wine and sipped in the mornings to comfort the stomach (Hakluyt ed. p. 20).

[1442] f. 128 and note.

[1443] Anglicé, in the night preceding Tuesday.

[1444] f. 106b.

[1445] This would be the under-corselet to which the four plates of mail were attached when mail was worn. Bābur in this adventure wore no mail, not even his helm; on his head was the under cap of the metal helm.

[1446] Index s.n. gharīcha.

[1447] The earlier account helps to make this one clearer (f. 106b).

[1448] f. 112 et seq.

[1449] Catamite, mistakenly read as khīz on f. 112b (Mémoires ii, 82).

[1450] He was acting for Bābur (Translator’s Note s.a.; Ḥ.S. iii, 318; T.R. pp. 260, 270).

[1451] “Honoured,” in this sentence, represents Bābur’s honorific plural.

[1452] in 921 AH. (Translator’s Note s.a.; T.R. p. 356).

[1453] i.e. Mīr Muḥammad son of Nāṣir.

[1454] i.e. after the dethronement of the Bāī-qarā family by Shaibānī.

[1455] He had been one of rebels of 921 AH. (Translator’s Note s.a.; T.R. p. 356).

[1456] f. 137.

[1457] This is the Adjutant-bird, Pīr-i-dang and Hargila (Bone-swallower) of Hindūstān, a migrant through Kābul. The fowlers who brought it would be the Multänīs of f. 142b.

[1458] f. 280.

[1459] Memoirs, p. 267, sycamore; Mémoires ii, 84, saules; f. 137.

[1460] Perhaps with his long coat out-spread.

[1461] The fortnight’s gap of record, here ended, will be due to illness.

[1462] f. 203b and n. to Khams, the Fifth. Taṣadduq occurs also on f. 238 denoting money sent to Bābur. Was it sent to him as Pādshāh, as the Qorān commands the Khams to be sent to the Imām, for the poor, the traveller and the orphan?

[1463] Rose-water, sherbet, a purgative; English, jalap, julep.

[1464] Mr. Erskine understood Bābur to say that he never had sat sober while others drank; but this does not agree with the account of Harāt entertainments [912 AH.], or with the tenses of the passage here. My impression is that he said in effect “Every-one here shall not be deprived of their wine”.

[1465] This verse, a difficult one to translate, may refer to the unease removed from his attendants by Bābur’s permission to drink; the pun in it might also refer to well and not well.

[1466] Presumably to aid his recovery.

[1467] aūtkān yīl, perhaps in the last and unchronicled year; perhaps in earlier ones. There are several references in the B.N. to the enforced migrations and emigrations of tribes into Kābul.

[1468] Pūlād (Steel) was a son of Kūchūm, the then Khāqān of the Aūzbegs, and Mihr-bānū who may be Bābur’s half-sister. [Index s.n.]

[1469] This may be written for Mihr-bānū, Pūlād’s mother and Bābur’s half-sister (?) and a jest made on her heart as Pūlād’s and as steel to her brother. She had not left husband and son when Bābur got the upper hand, as his half-sister Yādgār-sult̤ān did and other wives of capture e.g. Ḥaidar’s sister Ḥabība. Bābur’s rhymes in this verse are not of his later standard, āī ṣubāḥ, kūnkūīkā, kūnkūlī-kā.

[1470] Taṣadduq sent to Bābur would seem an acknowledgment of his suzerainty in Balkh [Index s.n.].

[1471] This is the Gīrdīz-pass [Raverty’s Notes, Route 101].

[1472] Raverty (p. 677) suggests that Pātakh stands for bātqāq, a quagmire (f. 16 and n.).

[1473] the dark, or cloudy spring.

[1474] yāqīsh-līq qūl, an unusual phrase.

[1475] var. Karmān, Kurmāh, Karmās. M. de C. read Kīr-mās, the impenetrable. The forms would give Garm-ās, hot embers.

[1476] balafré; marked on the face; of a horse, starred.

[1477] Raverty’s Notes (p. 457) give a full account of this valley; in it are the head-waters of the Tochī and the Zurmut stream; and in it R. locates Rustam’s ancient Zābul.

[1478] It is on the Kābul side of the Gīrdīz-pass and stands on the Luhugūr-water (Logar).

[1479] f. 143.

[1480] At this point of the text there occurs in the Elph. MS. (f. 195b) a note, manifestly copied from one marginal in an archetype, which states that what follows is copied from Bābur’s own MS. The note (and others) can be seen in JRAS 1905 p. 754 et seq.

[1481] Masson, iii, 145.

[1482] A qūlāch is from finger-tip to finger-tip of the outstretched arms (Zenker p. 720 and Méms. ii, 98).

[1483] Neither interne is said to have died!

[1484] f. 143.

[1485] or Atūn’s-village, one granted to Bābur’s mother’s old governess (f. 96); Gul-badan’s guest-list has also an Atūn Māmā.

[1486] f. 235b and note.

[1487] miswāk; On les tire principalement de l’arbuste épineux appelé capparis-sodata (de C. ii, 101 n.).

[1488] Gul-badan’s H.N. Index s.n.

[1489] This being Ramẓān, Bābur did not break his fast till sun-set. In like manner, during Ramẓān they eat in the morning before sun-rise (Erskine).

[1490] A result, doubtless, of the order mentioned on f. 240b.

[1491] Bābur’s wife Gul-rukh appears to have been his sister or niece; he was a Begchīk. Cf. Gul-badan’s H.N. trs. p. 233, p. 234; T.R. p. 264-5.

[1492] This remark bears on the question of whether we now have all Bābur wrote of Autobiography. It refers to a date falling within the previous gap, because the man went to Kāshghar while Bābur was ruling in Samarkand (T.R. p. 265). The last time Bābur came from Khwāst to Kābul was probably in 920 AH.; if later, it was still in the gap. But an alternative explanation is that looking over and annotating the diary section, Bābur made this reference to what he fully meant to write but died before being able to do so.

[1493] Anglicé, the right thumb, on which the archer’s ring (zih-gīr) is worn.

[1494] a daughter of Yūnas Khān, Ḥaidar’s account of whom is worth seeing.

[1495] i.e. the water of Luhugūr (Logar). Tradition says that Būt-khāk (Idol-dust) was so named because there Sl. Maḥmūd of Ghaznī had idols, brought by him out of Hindūstān, pounded to dust. Raverty says the place is probably the site of an ancient temple (vahāra).

[1496] Qāsim Beg’s son, come, no doubt, in obedience to the order of f. 240b.

[1497] The ‘Īd-i-fitr is the festival at the conclusion of the feast of Ramẓān, celebrated on seeing the new moon of Shawwāl (Erskine).

[1498] f. 133b and Appendix G, On the names of the wines of Nūr-valley.

[1499] i.e. of the new moon of Shawwāl. The new moon having been seen the evening before, which to Musalmāns was Monday evening, they had celebrated the ‘Īd-i-fitr on Monday eve (Erskine).

[1500] Dīwān of Hāfiz̤ lith. ed. p. 22. The couplet seems to be another message to a woman (f. 238); here it might be to Bībī Mubāraka, still under Khwāja Kalān’s charge in Bajaur (f. 221).

[1501] Here and under date Sep. 30th the wording allows a ford.

[1502] This may be what Masson writes of (i, 149) “We reached a spot where the water supplying the rivulet (of ‘Alī-masjid) gushes in a large volume from the rocks to the left. I slaked my thirst in the living spring and drank to repletion of the delightfully cool and transparent water.”

[1503] Mr. Erskine here notes, “This appears to be a mistake or oversight of Bābur. The eve of ‘Arafa” (9th of Ẕū’l-ḥijja) “was not till the evening of Dec. 2nd 1519. He probably meant to say the ‘Id-i-fitr which had occurred only five days before, on Sep. 26th.”

[1504] This was an affair of frontiers (T.R. p. 354).

[1505] Manucci gives an account of the place (Irvine iv, 439 and ii, 447).

[1506] Sep. 8th to Oct. 9th.

[1507] khūsh rang-i khizān. Sometimes Bābur’s praise of autumn allows the word khizān to mean the harvest-crops themselves, sometimes the autumnal colouring.

[1508] This I have taken to mean the Kābul tūmān. The Ḥai. MS. writes wilāyatlār (plural) thus suggesting that aūl (those) may be omitted, and those countries (Transoxiana) be meant; but the second Pers. trs. (I.O. 217 f. 169) supports wilāyat, Kābul.

[1509] joyous, happy.

[1510] y:lk:rān. This word has proved a difficulty to all translators. I suggest that it stands for aīlīkarān, what came to hand (aīlīk see de C.’s Dict.); also that it contains puns referring to the sheep taken from the road (yūlkarān) and to the wine of the year’s yield (yīlkarān). The way-side meal was of what came to hand, mutton and wine, probably local.

[1511] f. 141b.

[1512] f. 217 and n.

[1513] I think Bābur means that the customary announcement of an envoy or guest must have reached Kābul in his absence.

[1514] He is in the T.R. list of the tribe (p. 307); to it belonged Sl. Aḥmad Taṃbal (ib. p. 316).

[1515] Qābil-nīng kūrī-nīng qāshī-ka, lit. to the presence of the tomb of Qābil, i.e. Cain the eponymous hero of Kābul. The Elph. MS. has been altered to “Qābil Beg”!

[1516] Mr. Erskine surmised that the line was from some religious poem of mystical meaning and that its profane application gave offence.

[1517] His sobriquet khāksār, one who sits in the dust, suits the excavator of a kārez. Bābur’s route can be followed in Masson’s (iii, 110), apparently to the very kārez.

[1518] In Masson’s time this place was celebrated for vinegar. To reach it and return must have occupied several hours.

[1519] Kunos, āq tūīgūn, white falcon; ‘Amal-i-ṣāliḥ (I.O. MS. No. 857, f. 45b), taus tūīghūn.

[1520] f. 246.

[1521] Nawā’ī himself arranged them according to the periods of his life (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 294).

[1522] Elph. MS. f. 202b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 175 (misplaced) and 217 f. 172; Mems. p. 281.

[1523] pushta aūstīda; the Jūī-khwūsh of f. 137.

[1524] The Ḥai. MS. omits a passage here; the Elph. MS. reads Qāsim Bulbulī nīng awī, thus making “nightingale” a sobriquet of Qāsim’s own. Erskine (p. 281) has “Bulbulī-hall”; Ilminsky’s words translate as, the house of Sayyid Qāsim’s nightingale (p. 321).

[1525] or Dūr-namā’ī, seen from afar.

[1526] narm-dīk, the opposite of a qātīq yāī, a stiff bow. Some MSS. write lāzim-dīk which might be read to mean such a bow as his disablement allowed to be used.

[1527] Mr. Erskine, writing early in the 19th century, notes that this seems an easy tribute, about 400 rupīs i.e. £40.

[1528] This is one of the three routes into Lamghān of f. 133.

[1529] f. 251b and Appendix F, On the name Dara-i-nūr.

[1530] This passage will be the basis of the account on f. 143b of the winter-supply of fish in Lamghān.

[1531] This word or name is puzzling. Avoiding extreme detail as to variants, I suggest that it is Dāūr-bīn for Dūr-namā’ī if a place-name; or, if not, dūr-bīn, foresight (in either case the preposition requires to be supplied), and it may refer to foreseen need of and curiosity about Kāfir wines.

[1532] chīūrtika or chīūr-i-tika, whether sauterelle as M. de Courteille understood, or jānwār-i-ranga and chīkūr, partridge as the 1st Persian trs. and as Mr. Erskine (explaining chūr-i-tīka) thought, must be left open. Two points arise however, (1) the time is January, the place the deadly Bād-i-pīch pass; would these suit locusts? (2) If Bābur’s account of a splendid bird (f. 135) were based on this experience, this would be one of several occurrences in which what is entered in the Description of Kābul of 910 AH. is found as an experience in the diary of 925-6 AH.

[1533] Ḥai. MS. maḥali-da maẕkūr būlghūsīdūr, but W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 176 for maḥali-da, in its place, has dar majlis [in the collection], which may point to an intended collection of Bābur’s musical compositions. Either reading indicates intention to write what we now have not.

[1534] Perhaps an equivalent for farẓ-waqt, the time of the first obligatory prayer. Much seems to happen before the sun got up high!

[1535] Koh-i-nūr, Rocky-mountains (?). See Appendix F, On the name Dara-i-nūr.

[1536] Steingass gives būza as made of rice, millet, or barley.

[1537] Is this connected with Arabic kīmiyā', alchemy, chemistry?

[1538] Turkī, a whirlpool; but perhaps the name of an office from aīgar, a saddle.

[1539] The river on which the rafts were used was the Kūnār, from Chītrāl.

[1540] An uncertain name. I have an impression that these waters are medicinal, but I cannot trace where I found the information. The visit paid to them, and the arrangement made for bathing set them apart. The name of the place may convey this speciality.

[1541] panāhī, the word used for the hiding-places of bird-catchers on f. 140.

[1542] This will be the basis of the details about fishing given on f. 143 and f. 143b. The statement that particulars have been given allows the inference that the diary was annotated after the Description of Kābul, in which the particulars are, was written.

[1543] qānlīqlār. This right of private revenge which forms part of the law of most rude nations, exists in a mitigated form under the Muhammadan law. The criminal is condemned by the judge, but is delivered up to the relations of the person murdered, to be ransomed or put to death as they think fit (Erskine).

[1544] Here the text breaks off and a lacuna separates the diary of 11 months length which ends the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma writings, from the annals of 932 AH. which begin the Hindūstān section. There seems no reason why the diary should have been discontinued.

[1545] Jan. 2nd 1520 to Nov. 17th 1525 AD. (Ṣafar 926 to Ṣafar 1st 932 AH.).

[1546] Index s.nn. Bāgh-i-ṣafā and B.N. lacunæ.

[1547] Nominally Balkh seems to have been a Ṣafawī possession; but it is made to seem closely dependent on Bābur by his receipt from Muḥammad-i-zamān in it of taṣadduq (money for alms), and by his action connected with it (q.v.).

[1548] Tārīkh-i-sind, Malet’s trs. p. 77 and in loco, p. 365.

[1549] A chronogram given by Badāyūnī decides the vexed question of the date of Sikandar Lūdī’s death—Jannātu’l-firdūs nazlā = 923 (Bib. Ind. ed. i, 322, Ranking trs. p. 425 n. 6). Erskine supported 924 AH. (i, 407), partly relying on an entry in Bābur’s diary (f. 226b) s.d. Rabī‘u’l-awwal 1st 925 AH. (March 3rd 1519 AD.) which states that on that day Mullā Murshid was sent to Ibrāhīm whose father Sikandar had died five or six months before.

Against this is the circumstance that the entry about Mullā Murshid is, perhaps entirely, certainly partly, of later entry than what precedes and what follows it in the diary. This can be seen on examination; it is a passage such as the diary section shews in other places, added to the daily record and giving this the character of a draft waiting for revision and rewriting (fol. 216b n.).

(To save difficulty to those who may refer to the L. & E. Memoirs on the point, I mention that the whole passage about Mullā Murshid is displaced in that book and that the date March 3rd is omitted.)

[1550] Shāl (the local name of English Quetta) was taken by Ẕū’l-nūn in 884 AH. (1479 AD.); Sīwīstān Shāh Beg took, in second capture, about 917 AH. (1511 AD.), from a colony of Barlās Turks under Pīr Walī Barlās.

[1551] Was the attack made in reprisal for Shāh Beg’s further aggression on the Barlās lands and Bābur’s hereditary subjects? Had these appealed to the head of their tribe?

[1552] Le Messurier writes (l.c. p. 224) that at Old Qandahār “many stone balls lay about, some with a diameter of 18 inches, others of 4 or 5, chiselled out of limestone. These were said to have been used in sieges in the times of the Arabs and propelled from a machine called manjanic a sort of balista or catapult.” Meantime perhaps they served Bābur!

[1553] “Just then came a letter from badakhshān saying, ‘Mīrzā Khān is dead; Mīrzā Sulaimān (his son) is young; the Aūzbegs are near; take thought for this kingdom lest (which God forbid) Badakhshān should be lost.’ Mīrzā Sulaimān’s mother (Sult̤ān-nigār Khānīm) had brought him to Kābul” (Gul-badan’s H. N. f. 8).

[1554] infra and Appendix J.

[1555] E. & D.’s History of India, i. 312.

[1556] For accounts of the Mubīn, Akbar-nāma Bib. Ind. ed. i. 118, trs. H. Beveridge i. 278 note, Badāyūnī ib. i, 343, trs. Ranking p. 450, Sprenger ZDMG. 1862, Teufel ib. 1883. The Akbar-nāma account appears in Turkī in the “Fragments” associated with Kehr’s transcript of the B.N. (JRAS. 1908, p. 76, A. S. B.’s art. Bābur-nāma). Bābur mentions the Mubīn (f. 252b, f. 351b).

[1557] JRAS. 1901, Persian MSS. in Indian Libraries (description of the Rāmpūr Dīwān); AQR. 1911, Bābur’s Dīwān (i.e. the Rāmpūr Dīwān); and Some verses of the Emperor Bābur (the Abūshqa quotations).

For Dr. E. D. Ross’ Reproduction and account of the Rāmpūr Dīwān, JASB. 1910.

[1558] “After him (Ibrāhīm) was Bābur King of Dihlī, who owed his place to the Pathāns,” writes the Afghān poet Khūsh-ḥāl Khattak (Afghān Poets of the XVII century, C. E. Biddulph, p. 58).

[1559] The translation only has been available (E. & D.’s H. of I., vol. 1).

[1560] The marriage is said to have been Kāmrān’s (E. & D.’s trs.).

[1561] Erskine calculated that ‘Ālam Khān was now well over 70 years of age (H. of I. i, 421 n.).

[1562] A. N. trs. H. Beveridge, i, 239.

[1563] The following old English reference to Isma‘il’s appearance may be quoted as found in a corner somewhat out-of-the-way from Oriental matters. In his essay on beauty Lord Bacon writes when arguing against the theory that beauty is usually not associated with highmindedness, “But this holds not always; for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Bel of France, Edward the Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Isma‘il the Sophy (Ṣafawī) of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of their times.”

[1564] Cf. s.a. 928 AH. for discussion of the year of death.

[1565] Elph. MS. f. 205b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 199b omits the year’s events on the ground that Shaikh Zain has translated them; I.O. 217 f. 174; Mems. p. 290; Kehr’s Codex p. 1084.

A considerable amount of reliable textual material for revising the Hindūstān section of the English translation of the Bābur-nāma is wanting through loss of pages from the Elphinstone Codex; in one instance no less than an equivalent of 36 folios of the Ḥaidarābād Codex are missing (f. 356 et seq.), but to set against this loss there is the valuable per contra that Kehr’s manuscript throughout the section becomes of substantial value, losing its Persified character and approximating closely to the true text of the Elphinstone and Ḥaidarābād Codices. Collateral help in revision is given by the works specified (in loco p. 428) as serving to fill the gap existing in Bābur’s narrative previous to 932 AH. and this notably by those described by Elliot and Dowson. Of these last, special help in supplementary details is given for 932 AH. and part of 933 AH. by Shaikh Zain [Khawāfi]’s T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī, which is a highly rhetorical paraphrase of Bābur’s narrative, requiring familiarity with ornate Persian to understand. For all my references to it, I am indebted to my husband. It may be mentioned as an interesting circumstance that the B.M. possesses in Or. 1999 a copy of this work which was transcribed in 998 AH. by one of Khwānd-amīr’s grandsons and, judging from its date, presumably for Abū’l-faẓl’s use in the Akbar-nāma.

Like part of the Kābul section, the Hindūstān one is in diary-form, but it is still more heavily surcharged with matter entered at a date later than the diary. It departs from the style of the preceding diary by an occasional lapse into courtly phrase and by exchange of some Turkī words for Arabic and Persian ones, doubtless found current in Hind, e.g. fauj, dīra, manzil, khail-khāna.

[1566] This is the Logar affluent of the Bārān-water (Kābul-river). Masson describes this haltingplace (iii, 174).

[1567] muḥaqqar saughāt u bīlāk or tīlāk. A small verbal point arises about bīlāk (or tīlāk). Bīlāk is said by Quatremère to mean a gift (N. et E. xiv, 119 n.) but here muḥaqqar saughāt expresses gift. Another meaning can be assigned to bīlāk here, [one had also by tīlāk,] viz. that of word-of-mouth news or communication, sometimes supplementing written communication, possibly secret instructions, possibly small domestic details. In bīlāk, a gift, the root may be bīl, the act of knowing, in tīlāk it is tīl, the act of speaking [whence tīl, the tongue, and tīl tūtmāk, to get news]. In the sentence noted, either word would suit for a verbal communication. Returning to bīlāk as a gift, it may express the nuance of English token, the maker-known of friendship, affection and so-on. This differentiates bīlāk from saughāt, used in its frequent sense of ceremonial and diplomatic presents of value and importance.

[1568] With Sa‘īd at this time were two Khānīms Sult̤ān-nigār and Daulat-sult̤ān who were Bābur’s maternal-aunts. Erskine suggested Khūb-nigār, but she had died in 907 AH. (f. 96).

[1569] Humāyūn’s non-arrival would be the main cause of delay. Apparently he should have joined before the Kābul force left that town.

[1570] The halt would be at Būt-khāk, the last station before the Adīnapūr road takes to the hills.

[1571] Discussing the value of coins mentioned by Bābur, Erskine says in his History of India (vol. i, Appendix E.) which was published in 1854 AD. that he had come to think his estimates of the value of the coins was set too low in the Memoirs (published in 1826 AD.). This sum of 20,000 shāhrukhīs he put at £1000. Cf. E. Thomas’ Pathan Kings of Dihli and Resources of the Mughal Empire.

[1572] One of Masson’s interesting details seems to fit the next stage of Bābur’s march (iii, 179). It is that after leaving Būt-khāk, the road passes what in the thirties of the 19th Century, was locally known as Bābur Pādshāh’s Stone-heap (cairn) and believed piled in obedience to Bābur’s order that each man in his army should drop a stone on it in passing. No time for raising such a monument could be fitter than that of the fifth expedition into Hindūstān when a climax of opportunity allowed hope of success.

[1573] rezāndalīk. This Erskine translates, both here and on ff. 253, 254, by defluxion, but de Courteille by rhume de cerveau. Shaikh Zain supports de Courteille by writing, not rezāndalīk, but nuzla, catarrh. De Courteille, in illustration of his reading of the word, quotes Burnes’ account of an affection common in the Panj-āb and there called nuzla, which is a running at the nostrils, that wastes the brain and stamina of the body and ends fatally (Travels in Bukhara ed. 1839, ii, 41).

[1574] Tramontana, north of Hindū-kush.

[1575] Shaikh Zain says that the drinking days were Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

[1576] The Elph. Codex (f. 208b) contains the following note of Humāyūn’s about his delay; it has been expunged from the text but is still fairly legible:—“The time fixed was after ‘Āshūrā (10th Muḥarram, a voluntary fast); although we arrived after the next-following 10th (‘āshūr, i.e. of Ṣafar), the delay had been necessary. The purpose of the letters (Bābur’s) was to get information; (in reply) it was represented that the equipment of the army of Badakhshān caused delay. If this slave (Humāyūn), trusting to his [father’s] kindness, caused further delay, he has been sorry.”

Bābur’s march from the Bāgh-i-wafā was delayed about a month; Humāyūn started late from Badakhshān; his force may have needed some stay in Kābul for completion of equipment; his personal share of blame for which he counted on his father’s forgiveness, is likely to have been connected with his mother’s presence in Kābul.

Humāyūn’s note is quoted in Turkī by one MS. of the Persian text (B.M. W.-i-B. 16,623 f. 128); and from certain indications in Muḥammad Shīrāzī’s lithograph (p. 163), appears to be in his archetype the Udaipūr Codex; but it is not with all MSS. of the Persian text e.g. not with I.O. 217 and 218. A portion of it is in Kehr’s MS. (p. 1086).

[1577] Bird’s-dome [f. 145b, n.] or The pair (qūsh) of domes.

[1578] gūn khūd kīch būlūb aīdī; a little joke perhaps at the lateness both of the day and the army.

[1579] Shaikh Zain’s maternal-uncle.

[1580] Shaikh Zain’s useful detail that this man’s pen-name was Sharaf distinguishes him from Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ the author of the Shaibānī-nāma.

[1581] gosha, angle (cf. gosha-i-kār, limits of work). Parodies were to be made, having the same metre, rhyme, and refrain as the model couplet.

[1582] I am unable to attach sense to Bābur’s second line; what is wanted is an illustration of two incompatible things. Bābur’s reflections [infra] condemned his verse. Shaikh Zain describes the whole episode of the verse-making on the raft, and goes on with, “He (Bābur) excised this choice couplet from the pages of his Acts (Wāqi‘āt) with the knife of censure, and scratched it out from the tablets of his noble heart with the finger-nails of repentance. I shall now give an account of this spiritual matter” (i.e. the repentance), “by presenting the recantations of his Solomon-like Majesty in his very own words, which are weightier than any from the lips of Aesop.” Shaikh Zain next quotes the Turkī passage here translated in b. Mention of the Mubīn.

[1583] The Mubīn (q.v. Index) is mentioned again and quoted on f. 351b. In both places its name escaped the notice of Erskine and de Courteille, who here took it for mīn, I, and on f. 351b omitted it, matters of which the obvious cause is that both translators were less familiar with the poem than it is now easy to be. There is amplest textual warrant for reading Mubīn in both the places indicated above; its reinstatement gives to the English and French translations what they have needed, namely, the clinch of a definite stimulus and date of repentance, which was the influence of the Mubīn in 928 AH. (1521-2 AD.). The whole passage about the peccant verse and its fruit of contrition should be read with others that express the same regret for broken law and may all have been added to the diary at the same time, probably in 935 AH. (1529 AD.). They will be found grouped in the Index s.n. Bābur.

[1584] mūndīn būrūn, by which I understand, as the grammatical construction will warrant, before writing the Mubīn. To read the words as referring to the peccant verse, is to take the clinch off the whole passage.

[1585] i.e. of the Qorān on which the Mubīn is based.

[1586] Dropping down-stream, with wine and good company, he entirely forgot his good resolutions.

[1587] This appears to refer to the good thoughts embodied in the Mubīn.

[1588] This appears to contrast with the “sublime realities” of the Qorān.

[1589] In view of the interest of the passage, and because this verse is not in the Rāmpūr Dīwān, as are many contained in the Hindūstān section, the Turkī original is quoted. My translation differs from those of Mr. Erskine and M. de Courteille; all three are tentative of a somewhat difficult verse.

Nī qīlā mīn sīnīng bīla āī tīl?

Jihatīng dīn mīnīng aīchīm qān dūr.

Nīcha yakhshī dīsāng bū hazl aīla shi‘r

Bīrī-sī faḥash ū bīrī yālghān dūr.

Gar dīsāng kūīmā mīn, bū jazm bīla

Jalāu’īngnī bū ‘arṣa dīn yān dūr.

[1590] The Qorān puts these sayings into the mouths of Adam and Eve.

[1591] Ḥai. MS. tīndūrūb; Ilminsky, p. 327, yāndūrūb; W.-i-B. I.O. 217, f. 175, sard sākhta.

[1592] Of ‘Alī-masjid the Second Afghān War (official account) has a picture which might be taken from Bābur’s camp.

[1593] Shaikh Zain’s list of the drinking-days (f. 252 note) explains why sometimes Bābur says he preferred ma‘jūn. In the instances I have noticed, he does this on a drinking-day; the preference will be therefore for a confection over wine. December 9th was a Saturday and drinking-day; on it he mentions the preference; Tuesday Nov. 21st was a drinking day, and he states that he ate ma‘jūn.

[1594] presumably the karg-khāna of f. 222b, rhinoceros-home in both places. A similar name applies to a tract in the Rawalpindi District,—Bābur-khāna, Tiger-home, which is linked to the tradition of Buddha’s self-sacrifice to appease the hunger of seven tiger-cubs. [In this Bābur-khāna is the town Kacha-kot from which Bābur always names the river Hārū.]

[1595] This is the first time on an outward march that Bābur has crossed the Indus by boat; hitherto he has used the ford above Attock, once however specifying that men on foot were put over on rafts.

[1596] f. 253.

[1597] In my Translator’s Note (p. 428), attention was drawn to the circumstance that Bābur always writes Daulat Khān Yūsuf-khail, and not Daulat Khān Lūdī. In doing this, he uses the family- or clan-name instead of the tribal one, Lūdī.

[1598] i.e. day by day.

[1599] daryā, which Bābur’s precise use of words e.g. of daryā, rūd, and sū, allows to apply here to the Indus only.

[1600] Presumably this was near Parhāla, which stands, where the Sūhān river quits the hills, at the eastern entrance of a wild and rocky gorge a mile in length. It will have been up this gorge that Bābur approached Parhāla in 925 AH. (Rawalpindi Gazetteer p. 11).

[1601] i.e. here, bed of a mountain-stream.

[1602] The Elphinstone Codex here preserves the following note, the authorship of which is attested by the scribe’s remark that it is copied from the handwriting of Humāyūn Pādshāh:—As my honoured father writes, we did not know until we occupied Hindūstān (932 AH.), but afterwards did know, that ice does form here and there if there come a colder year. This was markedly so in the year I conquered Gujrāt (942 AH.-1535 AD.) when it was so cold for two or three days between Bhūlpūr and Guālīār that the waters were frozen over a hand’s thickness.

[1603] This is a Kakar (Gakkhar) clan, known also as Baragowah, of which the location in Jahāngīr Pādshāh’s time was from Rohtās to Hātya, i.e. about where Bābur encamped (Memoirs of Jahāngīr, Rogers and Beveridge, p. 97; E. and D. vi, 309; Provincial Gazetteers of Rawalpindi and Jihlam, p. 64 and p. 97 respectively).

[1604] āndīn aūtūb, a reference perhaps to going out beyond the corn-lands, perhaps to attempt for more than provisions.

[1605] qūsh-āt, a led horse to ride in change.

[1606] According to Shaikh Zain it was in this year that Bābur made Buhlūlpūr a royal domain (B.M. Add. 26,202 f. 16), but this does not agree with Bābur’s explanation that he visited the place because it was khalṣa. Its name suggests that it had belonged to Buhlūl Lūdī; Bābur may have taken it in 930 AH. when he captured Sīālkot. It never received the population of Sīālkot, as Bābur had planned it should do because pond-water was drunk in the latter town and was a source of disease. The words in which Bābur describes its situation are those he uses of Akhsī (f. 4b); not improbably a resemblance inclined his liking towards Buhlūlpūr. (It may be noted that this Buhlūlpūr is mentioned in the Āyīn-i-akbarī and marked on large maps, but is not found in the G. of I. 1907.)

[1607] Both names are thus spelled in the Bābur-nāma. In view of the inclination of Turkī to long vowels, Bābur’s short one in Jat may be worth consideration since modern usage of Jat and Jāt varies. Mr. Crooke writes the full vowel, and mentions that Jāts are Hindūs, Sikhs, and Muḥammadans (Tribes and Castes of the North-western Provinces and Oude, iii, 38). On this point and on the orthography of the name, Erskine’s note (Memoirs p. 294) is as follows: “The Jets or Jats are the Muḥammadan peasantry of the Panj-āb, the bank of the Indus, Sīwīstān etc. and must not be confounded with the Jāts, a powerful Hindū tribe to the west of the Jamna, about Agra etc. and which occupies a subordinate position in the country of the Rājpūts.”

[1608] The following section contains a later addition to the diary summarizing the action of ‘Ālam Khān before and after Bābur heard of the defeat from the trader he mentions. It refutes an opinion found here and there in European writings that Bābur used and threw over ‘Ālam Khān. It and Bābur’s further narrative shew that ‘Ālam Khān had little valid backing in Hindūstān, that he contributed nothing to Bābur’s success, and that no abstention by Bābur from attack on Ibrāhīm would have set ‘Ālam Khān on the throne of Dihlī. It and other records, Bābur’s and those of Afghān chroniclers, allow it to be said that if ‘Ālam Khān had been strong enough to accomplish his share of the compact that he should take and should rule Dihlī, Bābur would have kept to his share, namely, would have maintained supremacy in the Panj-āb. He advanced against Ibrāhīm only when ‘Ālam Khān had totally failed in arms and in securing adherence.

[1609] This objurgation on over-rapid marching looks like the echo of complaint made to Bābur by men of his own whom he had given to ‘Ālam Khān in Kābul.

[1610] Maḥmūd himself may have inherited his father’s title Khān-i-jahān but a little further on he is specifically mentioned as the son of Khān-i-jahān, presumably because his father had been a more notable man than he was. Of his tribe it may be noted that the Ḥaidarābād MS. uniformly writes Nuḥānī and not Luḥānī as is usual in European writings, and that it does so even when, as on f. 149b, the word is applied to a trader. Concerning the tribe, family, or caste vide G. of I. s.n. Lohānas and Crooke l.c. s.n. Pathān, para. 21.

[1611] i.e. west of Dihlī territory, the Panj-āb.

[1612] He was of the Farmul family of which Bābur says (f. 139b) that it was in high favour in Hindūstān under the Afghāns and of which the author of the Wāqi‘āt-i-mushtāqī says that it held half the lands of Dihlī in jāgīr (E. and D. iv, 547).

[1613] Presumably he could not cut off supplies.

[1614] The only word similar to this that I have found is one “Jaghat” said to mean serpent and to be the name of a Hindū sub-caste of Nats (Crooke, iv, 72 & 73). The word here might be a nick-name. Bābur writes it as two words.

[1615] khaṣa-khail, presumably members of the Sāhū-khail (family) of the Lūdī tribe of the Afghān race.

[1616] Erskine suggested that this man was a rich banker, but he might well be the Farmulī Shaikh-zāda of f. 256b, in view of the exchange Afghān historians make of the Farmulī title Shaikh for Mīān (Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. & D. iv, 347 and Tārīkh-i-daudī ib. 457).

[1617] This Biban, or Bīban, as Bābur always calls him without title, is Malik Biban Jilwānī. He was associated with Shaikh Bāyazīd Farmulī or, as Afghān writers style him, Mīān Bāyazīd Farmulī. (Another of his names was Mīān Biban, son of Mīān Āṭā Sāhū-khail (E. & D. iv, 347).)

[1618] This name occurs so frequently in and about the Panj-āb as to suggest that it means a fort (Ar. maluẕat?). This one in the Siwāliks was founded by Tātār Khān Yūsuf-khail (Lūdī) in the time of Buhlūl Lūdī (E. and D. iv, 415).

[1619] In the Beth Jalandhar dū-āb.

[1620] i.e. on the Siwāliks, here locally known as Katār Dhār.

[1621] Presumably they were from the Hazāra district east of the Indus. The T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī mentions that this detachment was acting under Khalīfa apart from Bābur and marching through the skirt-hills (lith. ed. p. 182).

[1622] dūn, f. 260 and note.

[1623] These were both refugees from Harāt.

[1624] Sarkār of Baṭāla, in the Bārī dū-āb (A.-i-A. Jarrett, p. 110).

[1625] kūrūshūr waqt (Index s.n. kūrūsh).

[1626] Bābur’s phrasing suggests beggary.

[1627] This might refer to the time when Ibrāhīm’s commander Bihār (Bahādur) Khān Nūḥānī took Lāhor (Translator’s Note in loco p. 441).

[1628] They were his father’s. Erskine estimated the 3 krors at £75,000.

[1629] shiqq, what hangs on either side, perhaps a satirical reference to the ass’ burden.

[1630] As illustrating Bābur’s claim to rule as a Tīmūrid in Hindūstān, it may be noted that in 814 AH. (1411 AD.), Khiẓr Khān who is allowed by the date to have been a Sayyid ruler in Dihlī, sent an embassy to Shāhrukh Mīrzā the then Tīmūrid ruler of Samarkand to acknowledge his suzerainty (Mat̤la‘u’s-sa‘dain, Quatremère, N. et Ex. xiv, 196).

[1631] Firishta says that Bābur mounted for the purpose of preserving the honour of the Afghāns and by so doing enabled the families in the fort to get out of it safely (lith. ed. p. 204).

[1632] chuhra; they will have been of the Corps of braves (yīgīt; Appendix H. section c.).

[1633] kīm kullī gharẓ aul aīdī; Pers. trs. ka gharẓ-i-kullī-i-au būd.

[1634] Persice, the eves of Sunday and Monday; Anglice, Saturday and Sunday nights.

[1635] Ghāzī Khān was learned and a poet (Firishta ii, 42).

[1636] mullayāna khūd, perhaps books of learned topic but not in choice copies.

[1637] f. 257. It stands in 31° 50’ N. and 76° E. (G. of I.).

[1638] This is on the Salt-range, in 32° 42’ N. and 72° 50’ E. (Āyīn-i-akbarī trs. Jarrett, i, 325; Provincial Gazetteer, Jīhlam District).

[1639] He died therefore in the town he himself built. Kitta Beg probably escorted the Afghān families from Milwat also; Dilāwar Khān’s own seems to have been there already (f. 257).

The Bābur-nāma makes no mention of Daulat Khān’s relations with Nānak, the founder of the Sikh religion, nor does it mention Nānak himself. A tradition exists that Nānak, when on his travels, made exposition of his doctrines to an attentive Bābur and that he was partly instrumental in bringing Bābur against the Afghāns. He was 12 years older than Bābur and survived him nine. (Cf. Dabistān lith. ed. p. 270; and, for Jahāngīr Pādshāh’s notice of Daulat Khān, Tūzūk-i-jahāngīrī, Rogers and Beveridge, p. 87).

[1640] I translate dūn by dale because, as its equivalent, Bābur uses julga by which he describes a more pastoral valley than one he calls a dara.

[1641] bīr āqār-sū. Bābur’s earlier uses of this term [q.v. index] connect it with the swift flow of water in irrigation channels; this may be so here but also the term may make distinction between the rapid mountain-stream and the slow movement of rivers across plains.

[1642] There are two readings of this sentence; Erskine’s implies that the neck of land connecting the fort-rock with its adjacent hill measures 7-8 qārī (yards) from side to side; de Courteille’s that where the great gate was, the perpendicular fall surrounding the fort shallowed to 7-8 yards. The Turkī might be read, I think, to mean whichever alternative was the fact. Erskine’s reading best bears out Bābur’s account of the strength of the fort, since it allows of a cleft between the hill and the fort some 140-160 feet deep, as against the 21-24 of de Courteille’s. Erskine may have been in possession of information [in 1826] by which he guided his translation (p. 300), “At its chief gate, for the space of 7 or 8 gez (qārī), there is a place that admits of a draw-bridge being thrown across; it may be 10 or 12 gez wide.” If de Courteille’s reading be correct in taking 7-8 qārī only to be the depth of the cleft, that cleft may be artificial.

[1643] yīghāch, which also means wood.

[1644] f. 257.

[1645] Chief scribe (f. 13 n. to ‘Abdu’l-wahhāb). Shaw’s Vocabulary explains the word as meaning also a “high official of Central Asian sovereigns, who is supreme over all qāzīs and mullās.”

[1646] Bābur’s persistent interest in Balkh attracts attention, especially at this time so shortly before he does not include it as part of his own territories (f. 270).

Since I wrote of Balkh s.a. 923 AH. (1517 AD.), I have obtained the following particulars about it in that year; they are summarized from the Ḥabību’s-siyar (lith. ed. iii, 371). In 923 AH. Khwānd-amīr was in retirement at Pasht in Ghūrjistān where also was Muḥammad-i-zamān Mīrzā. The two went in company to Balkh where the Mīrzā besieged Bābur’s man Ibrāhīm chāpūk (Slash-face), and treacherously murdered one Aūrdū-shāh, an envoy sent out to parley with him. Information of what was happening was sent to Bābur in Kābul. Bābur reached Balkh when it had been besieged a month. His presence caused the Mīrzā to retire and led him to go into the Darā-i-gaz (Tamarind-valley). Bābur, placing in Balkh Faqīr-i-‘alī, one of those just come up with him, followed the Mīrzā but turned back at Āq-guṃbaz (White-dome) which lies between Chāch-charān in the Herī-rūd valley and the Ghūrjistān border, going no further because the Ghūrjistānīs favoured the Mīrzā. Bābur went back to Kābul by the Fīrūz-koh, Yaka-aūlāng (cf. f. 195) and Ghūr; the Mīrzā was followed up by others, captured and conveyed to Kābul.

[1647] Both were amīrs of Hind. I understand the cognomen Maẕhab to imply that its bearer occupied himself with the Muḥammadan Faith in its exposition by divines of Islām (Hughes’ Dictionary of Islām).

[1648] These incidents are included in the summary of ‘Ālam Khān’s affairs in section i (f. 255b). It will be observed that Bābur’s wording implies the “waiting” by one of lower rank on a superior.

[1649] Elph. MS. Karnāl, obviously a clerical error.

[1650] Shaikh Sulaimān Effendi (Kunos) describes a tunqit̤ār as the guardian in war of a prince’s tent; a night-guard; and as one who repeats a prayer aloud while a prince is mounting.

[1651] rūd, which, inappropriate for the lower course of the Ghaggar, may be due to Bābur’s visit to its upper course described immediately below. As has been noted, however, he uses the word rūd to describe the empty bed of a mountain-stream as well as the swift water sometimes filling that bed. The account, here-following, of his visit to the upper course of the Ghaggar is somewhat difficult to translate.

[1652] Hindūstāndā daryālārdīn bāshqa, bīr āqār-sū kīm bār (dūr, is added by the Elph. MS.), bū dūr. Perhaps the meaning is that the one (chief?) irrigation stream, apart from great rivers, is the Ghaggar. The bed of the Ghaggar is undefined and the water is consumed for irrigation (G. of I. xx, 33; Index s.n. āqār-sū).

[1653] in Patiāla. Maps show what may be Bābur’s strong millstream joining the Ghaggar.

[1654] Presumably he was of Ibrāhīm’s own family, the Sāhū-khail. His defeat was opportune because he was on his way to join the main army.

[1655] At this place the Elphinstone Codex has preserved, interpolated in its text, a note of Humāyūn’s on his first use of the razor. Part of it is written as by Bābur:—“Today in this same camp the razor or scissors was applied to Humāyūn’s face.” Part is signed by Humāyūn:—“As the honoured dead, earlier in these Acts (wāqi‘āt) mentions the first application of the razor to his own face (f. 120), so in imitation of him I mention this. I was then at the age of 18; now I am at the age of 48, I who am the sub-signed Muḥammad Humāyūn.” A scribe’s note attests that this is “copied from the hand-writing of that honoured one”. As Humāyūn’s 48th (lunar) birthday occurred a month before he left Kābul, to attempt the re-conquest of Hindūstān, in November 1554 AD. (in the last month of 961 AH.), he was still 48 (lunar) years old on the day he re-entered Dihlī on July 23rd 1555 AD. (Ramẓān 1st 962 AH.), so that this “shaving passage” will have been entered within those dates. That he should study his Father’s book at that time is natural; his grandson Jahāngīr did the same when going to Kābul; so doubtless would do its author’s more remote descendants, the sons of Shāh-jahān who reconquered Transoxiana.

(Concerning the “shaving passage” vide the notes on the Elphinstone Codex in JRAS. 1900 p. 443, 451; 1902 p. 653; 1905 p. 754; and 1907 p. 131.)

[1656] This ancient town of the Sahāranpūr district is associated with a saint revered by Hindūs and Muḥammadans. Cf. W. Crooke’s Popular Religion of Northern India p. 133. Its chashma may be inferred (from Bābur’s uses of the word q.v. Index) as a water-head, a pool, a gathering place of springs.

[1657] He was the eighth son of Bābur’s maternal-uncle Sl. Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī and had fled to Bābur, other brothers following him, from the service of their eldest brother Manṣūr, Khāqān of the Mughūls (Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs. p. 161).

[1658] fars̱-waqtī, when there is light enough to distinguish one object from another.

[1659] dīm kūrūldī (Index s.n. dīm). Here the L. & E. Memoirs inserts an explanatory passage in Persian about the dīm. It will have been in one of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī MSS. Erskine used; it is in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lithograph copy of the Udaipūr Codex (p. 173). It is not in the Turkī text or in all the MSS. of the Persian translation. Manifestly, it was entered at a time when Bābur’s term dīm kūrūldī requires explanation in Hindustan. The writer of it himself does not make details clear; he says only, “It is manifest that people declare (the number) after counting the mounted army in the way agreed upon amongst them, with a whip or a bow held in the hand.” This explanation suggests that in the march-past the troops were measured off as so many bow- or whip-lengths (Index s.n. dīm).

[1660] These arāba may have been the baggage-carts of the army and also carts procured on the spot. Erskine omits (Memoirs p. 304) the words which show how many carts were collected and from whom. Doubtless it would be through not having these circumstances in his mind that he took the arāba for gun-carriages. His incomplete translation, again, led Stanley Lane-Poole to write an interesting note in his Bābur (p. 161) to support Erskine against de Courteille (with whose rendering mine agrees) by quoting the circumstance that Humāyūn had 700 guns at Qanauj in 1540 AD. It must be said in opposition to his support of Erskine’s “gun-carriages” that there is no textual or circumstantial warrant for supposing Bābur to have had guns, even if made in parts, in such number as to demand 700 gun-carriages for their transport. What guns Bābur had at Pānī-pat will have been brought from his Kābul base; if he had acquired any, say from Lāhor, he would hardly omit to mention such an important reinforcement of his armament; if he had brought many guns on carts from Kābul, he must have met with transit-difficulties harassing enough to chronicle, while he was making that long journey from Kābul to Pānī-pat, over passes, through skirt-hills and many fords. The elephants he had in Bīgrām may have been his transport for what guns he had; he does not mention his number at Pānī-pat; he makes his victory a bow-man’s success; he can be read as indicating that he had two guns only.

[1661] These Ottoman (text, Rūmī, Roman) defences Ustād ‘Alī-qulī may have seen at the battle of Chāldirān fought some 40 leagues from Tābrīz between Sl. Salīm Rūmī and Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī on Rajab 1st 920 AH. (Aug. 22nd 1514 AD.). Of this battle Khwānd-amīr gives a long account, dwelling on the effective use made in it of chained carts and palisades (Ḥabību’s-siyar iii, part 4, p. 78; Akbar-nāma trs. i, 241).

[1662] Is this the village of the Pānī Afghāns?

[1663] Index s.n. arrow.

[1664]

Pareshān jam‘ī u jam‘ī pareshān;

Giriftār qaumī u qaumī ‘ajā’ib.

These two lines do not translate easily without the context of their original place of occurrence. I have not found their source.

[1665] i.e. of his father and grandfather, Sikandar and Buhlūl.

[1666] As to the form of this word the authoritative MSS. of the Turkī text agree and with them also numerous good ones of the Persian translation. I have made careful examination of the word because it is replaced or explained here and there in MSS. by s:hb:ndī, the origin of which is said to be obscure. The sense of b:d-hindī and of s:hb:ndī is the same, i.e. irregular levy. The word as Bābur wrote it must have been understood by earlier Indian scribes of both the Turkī and Persian texts of the Bābur-nāma. Some light on its correctness may be thought given by Hobson Jobson (Crooke’s ed. p. 136) s.n. Byde or Bede Horse, where the word Byde is said to be an equivalent of pindārī, lūtī, and qāzzāq, raider, plunderer, so that Bābur’s word b:d-hindī may mean qāzzāq of Hind. Wherever I have referred to the word in many MSS. it is pointed to read b:d, and not p:d, thus affording no warrant for understanding pad, foot, foot-man, infantry, and also negativing the spelling bīd, i.e. with a long vowel as in Byde.

It may be noted here that Muḥ. Shīrāzī (p. 174) substituted s:hb:ndī for Bābur’s word and that this led our friend the late William Irvine to attribute mistake to de Courteille who follows the Turkī text (Army of the Mughūls p. 66 and Mémoires ii, 163).

[1667] bī tajarba yīgīt aīdī of which the sense may be that Bābur ranked Ibrāhīm, as a soldier, with a brave who has not yet proved himself deserving of the rank of beg. It cannot mean that he was a youth (yīgīt) without experience of battle.

[1668] Well-known are the three decisive historical battles fought near the town of Pānī-pat, viz. those of Bābur and Ibrāhīm in 1526, of Akbar and Hīmū in 1556, and of Aḥmad Abdālī with the Mahratta Confederacy in 1761. The following lesser particulars about the battle-field are not so frequently mentioned:—(i) that the scene of Bābur’s victory was long held to be haunted, Badāyūnī himself, passing it at dawn some 62 years later, heard with dismay the din of conflict and the shouts of the combatants; (ii) that Bābur built a (perhaps commemorative) mosque one mile to the n.e. of the town; (iii) that one of the unaccomplished desires of Sher Shāh Sūr, the conqueror of Bābur’s son Humāyūn, was to raise two monuments on the battle-field of Pānī-pat, one to Ibrāhīm, the other to those Chaghatāī sult̤āns whose martyrdom he himself had brought about; (iv) that in 1910 AD. the British Government placed a monument to mark the scene of Shāh Abdālī’s victory of 1761 AD. This monument would appear, from Sayyid Ghulām-i-‘alī’s Nigār-nāma-i-hind, to stand close to the scene of Bābur’s victory also, since the Mahrattas were entrenched as he was outside the town of Pānī-pat. (Cf. E. & D. viii, 401.)

[1669] This important date is omitted from the L. & E. Memoirs.

[1670] This wording will cover armour of man and horse.

[1671] ātlāndūk, Pers. trs. sūwār shudīm. Some later oriental writers locate Bābur’s battle at two or more miles from the town of Pānī-pat, and Bābur’s word ātlāndūk might imply that his cavalry rode forth and arrayed outside his defences, but his narrative allows of his delivering attack, through the wide sally-ports, after arraying behind the carts and mantelets which checked his adversary’s swift advance. The Mahrattas, who may have occupied the same ground as Bābur, fortified themselves more strongly than he did, as having powerful artillery against them. Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī’s defence against them was an ordinary ditch and abbattis, [Bābur’s ditch and branch,] mostly of dhāk trees (Butea frondosa), a local product Bābur also is likely to have used.

[1672] The preceding three words seem to distinguish this Shāh Ḥusain from several others of his name and may imply that he was the son of Yāragī Mughūl Ghānchī (Index and I.O. 217 f. 184b l. 7).

[1673] For Bābur’s terms vide f. 209b

[1674] This is Mīrzā Khān’s son, i.e. Wais Mīrān-shāhī’s.

[1675] A dispute for this right-hand post of honour is recorded on f. 100b, as also in accounts of Culloden.

[1676] tartīb u yāsāl, which may include, as Erskine took it to do, the carts and mantelets; of these however, Ibrāhīm can hardly have failed to hear before he rode out of camp.

[1677] f. 217b and note; Irvine’s Army of the Indian Mughuls p. 133. Here Erskine notes (Mems. p. 306) “The size of these artillery at this time is very uncertain. The word firingī is now (1826 AD.) used in the Deccan for a swivel. At the present day, zarb-zan in common usage is a small species of swivel. Both words in Bābur’s time appear to have been used for field-cannon.” (For an account of guns, intermediate in date between Bābur and Erskine, see the Āyīn-i-akbarī. Cf. f. 264 n. on the carts (arāba).)

[1678] Although the authority of the Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afaghāna is not weighty its reproduction of Afghān opinion is worth consideration. It says that astrologers foretold Ibrāhīm’s defeat; that his men, though greatly outnumbering Bābur’s, were out-of-heart through his ill-treatment of them, and his amīrs in displeasure against him, but that never-the-less, the conflict at Pānī-pat was more desperate than had ever been seen. It states that Ibrāhīm fell where his tomb now is (i.e. in circa 1002 AH.-1594 AD.); that Bābur went to the spot and, prompted by his tender heart, lifted up the head of his dead adversary, and said, “Honour to your courage!”, ordered brocade and sweetmeats made ready, enjoined Dilāwar Khān and Khalīfa to bathe the corpse and to bury it where it lay (E. & D. v, 2). Naturally, part of the reverence shewn to the dead would be the burial together of head and trunk.

[1679] f. 209b and App. H. section c. Bābā chuhra would be one of the corps of braves.

[1680] He was a brother of Muḥibb-i-‘alī’s mother.

[1681] To give Humāyūn the title Mīrzā may be a scribe’s lapse, but might also be a nuance of Bābur’s, made to shew, with other minutiae, that Humāyūn was in chief command. The other minute matters are that instead of Humāyūn’s name being the first of a simple series of commanders’ names with the enclitic accusative appended to the last one (here Walī), as is usual, Humāyūn’s name has its own enclitic nī; and, again, the phrase is “Humāyūn with” such and such begs, a turn of expression differentiating him from the rest. The same unusual variations occur again, just below, perhaps with the same intention of shewing chief command, there of Mahdī Khwāja.

[1682] A small matter of wording attracts attention in the preceding two sentences. Bābur, who does not always avoid verbal repetition, here constructs two sentences which, except for the place-names Dihlī and Āgra, convey information of precisely the same action in entirely different words.

[1683] d. 1325 AD. The places Bābur visited near Dihlī are described in the Reports of the Indian Archæological Survey, in Sayyid Aḥmad’s As̤ār Sanādīd pp. 74-85, in Keene’s Hand-book to Dihlī and Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal etc. The last two quote much from the writings of Cunningham and Fergusson.

[1684] and on the same side of the river.

[1685] d. 1235 AD. He was a native of Aūsh [Ush] in Farghāna.

[1686] d. 1286 AD. He was a Slave ruler of Dihlī.

[1687] ‘Alāu’u’d-dīn Muḥ. Shāh Khiljī Turk d. 1316 AD. It is curious that Bābur should specify visiting his Minār (minārī, Pers. trs. I.O. 217 f. 185b, minār-i-au) and not mention the Qut̤b Minār. Possibly he confused the two. The ‘Alāī Minār remains unfinished; the Qut̤b is judged by Cunningham to have been founded by Qut̤bu’d-dīn Aībak Turk, circa 1200 AD. and to have been completed by Sl. Shamsu’d-dīn Altamsh (Aīltimīsh?) Turk, circa 1220 AD. Of the two tanks Bābur visited, the Royal-tank (ḥauẓ-i-khāẓ) was made by ‘Alāu’u’d-dīn in 1293 AD.

[1688] The familiar Turkī word Tūghlūq would reinforce much else met with in Dihlī to strengthen Bābur’s opinion that, as a Turk, he had a right to rule there. Many, if not all, of the Slave dynasty were Turks; these were followed by the Khiljī Turks, these again by the Tūghlūqs. Moreover the Panj-āb he had himself taken, and lands on both sides of the Indus further south had been ruled by Ghaznawid Turks. His latest conquests were “where the Turk had ruled” (f. 226b) long, wide, and with interludes only of non-Turkī sway.

[1689] Perhaps this charity was the Khams (Fifth) due from a victor.

[1690] Bikramājīt was a Tūnūr Rājpūt. Bābur’s unhesitating statement of the Hindu’s destination at death may be called a fruit of conviction, rather than of what modern opinion calls intolerance.

[1691] 120 years (Cunningham’s Report of the Archæological Survey ii, 330 et seq.).

[1692] The Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī tells a good deal about the man who bore this title, and also about others who found themselves now in difficulty between Ibrāhīm’s tyranny and Bābur’s advance (E. & D. iv, 301).

[1693] Gūālīār was taken from Bikramājīt in 1518 AD.

[1694] i.e. from the Deccan of which ‘Alāu’u’d-dīn is said to have been the first Muḥammadan invader. An account of this diamond, identified as the Koh-i-nūr, is given in Hobson Jobson but its full history is not told by Yule or by Streeter’s Great Diamonds of the World, neither mentioning the presentation of the diamond by Humāyūn to Taḥmāsp of which Abū’l-faẓl writes, dwelling on its overplus of payment for all that Humāyūn in exile received from his Persian host (Akbar-nāma trs. i, 349 and note; Asiatic Quarterly Review, April 1899 H. Beveridge’s art. Bābur’s diamond; was it the Koh-i-nūr?).

[1695] 320 ratīs (Erskine). The ratī is 2.171 Troy grains, or in picturesque primitive equivalents, is 8 grains of rice, or 64 mustard seeds, or 512 poppy-seeds,—uncertain weights which Akbar fixed in cat’s-eye stones.

[1696] Bābur’s plurals allow the supposition that the three men’s lives were spared. Malik Dād served him thenceforth.

[1697] Erskine estimated these as dams and worth about £1750, but this may be an underestimate (H. of I. i, App. E.).

[1698] “These begs of his” (or hers) may be the three written of above.

[1699] These will include cousins and his half-brothers Jahāngīr and Nāṣir as opposing before he took action in 925 AH. (1519 AD.). The time between 910 AH. and 925 AH. at which he would most desire Hindūstān is after 920 AH. in which year he returned defeated from Transoxiana.

[1700] kīchīk karīm, which here seems to make contrast between the ruling birth of members of his own family and the lower birth of even great begs still with him. Where the phrase occurs on f. 295, Erskine renders it by “down to the dregs”, and de Courteille (ii, 235) by “de toutes les bouches” but neither translation appears to me to suit Bābur’s uses of the term, inasmuch as both seem to go too low (cf. f. 270b).

[1701] aīūrūshūb, Pers. trs. chaspīda, stuck to.

[1702] The first expedition is fixed by the preceding passage as in 925 AH. which was indeed the first time a passage of the Indus is recorded. Three others are found recorded, those of 926, 930 and 932 AH. Perhaps the fifth was not led by Bābur in person, and may be that of his troops accompanying ‘Ālam Khān in 931 AH. But he may count into the set of five, the one made in 910 AH. which he himself meant to cross the Indus. Various opinions are found expressed by European writers as to the dates of the five.

[1703] Muḥammad died 632 AD. (11 AH.).

[1704] Tramontana, n. of Hindū-kush. For particulars about the dynasties mentioned by Bābur see Stanley Lane-Poole’s Muḥammadan Dynasties.

[1705] Maḥmūd of Ghaznī, a Turk by race, d. 1030 AD. (421 AH.).

[1706] known as Muḥ. Ghūrī, d. 1206 AD. (602 AH.).

[1707] sūrūbtūrlār, lit. drove them like sheep (cf. f. 154b).

[1708] khūd, itself, not Bābur’s only Hibernianism.

[1709] “This is an excellent history of the Musalmān world down to the time of Sl. Nāṣir of Dihlī A.D. 1252. It was written by Abū ‘Umar Minḥāj al Jūrjānī. See Stewart’s catalogue of Tipoo’s Library, p. 7” (Erskine). It has been translated by Raverty.

[1710] bargustwān-wār; Erskine, cataphract horse.

[1711] The numerous instances of the word pādshāh in this part of the Bābur-nāma imply no such distinction as attaches to the title Emperor by which it is frequently translated (Index s.n. pādshāh).

[1712] d. 1500 AD. (905 AH.).

[1713] d. 1388 AD. (790 AH.).

[1714] The ancestor mentioned appears to be Naṣrat Shāh, a grandson of Fīrūz Shāh Tūghlūq (S. L. Poole p. 300 and Beale, 298).

[1715] His family belonged to the Rājpūt sept of Tānk, and had become Muḥammadan in the person of Sadharān the first ruler of Gujrāt (Crooke’s Tribes and Castes; Mirāt-i-sikandarī, Bayley p. 67 and n.).

[1716] S. L.-Poole p. 316-7.

[1717] Mandāū (Mandū) was the capital of Malwā.

[1718] Stanley Lane-Poole shews (p. 311) a dynasty of three Ghūrīs interposed between the death of Fīrūz Shāh in 790 AH. and the accession in 839 AH. of the first Khiljī ruler of Gujrāt Maḥmūd Shāh.

[1719] He reigned from 1518 to 1532 AD. (925 to 939 AH. S.L.-P. p. 308) and had to wife a daughter of Ibrāhīm Lūdī (Riyaẓu’s-salāt̤īn). His dynasty was known as the Ḥusain-shāhī, after his father.

[1720] “Strange as this custom may seem, a similar one prevailed down to a very late period in Malabar. There was a jubilee every 12 years in the Samorin’s country, and any-one who succeeded in forcing his way through the Samorin’s guards and slew him, reigned in his stead. ‘A jubilee is proclaimed throughout his dominions at the end of 12 years, and a tent is pitched for him in a spacious plain, and a great feast is celebrated for 10 or 12 days with mirth and jollity, guns firing night and day, so, at the end of the feast, any four of the guests that have a mind to gain a throne by a desperate action in fighting their way through 30 or 40,000 of his guards, and kill the Samorin in his tent, he that kills him, succeeds him in his empire.’ See Hamilton’s New Account of the East Indies vol. i. p. 309. The attempt was made in 1695, and again a very few years ago, but without success” (Erskine p. 311).

The custom Bābur writes of—it is one dealt with at length in Frazer’s Golden Bough—would appear from Blochmann’s Geography and History of Bengal (JASB 1873 p. 286) to have been practised by the Habshī rulers of Bengal of whom he quotes Faria y Souza as saying, “They observe no rule of inheritance from father to son, but even slaves sometimes obtain it by killing their master, and whoever holds it three days, they look upon as established by divine providence. Thus it fell out that in 40 years space they had 13 kings successively.”

[1721] No doubt this represents Vijāyanagar in the Deccan.

[1722] This date places the composition of the Description of Hindustan in agreement with Shaikh Zain’s statement that it was in writing in 935 AH.

[1723] Are they the Khas of Nepal and Sikkim? (G. of I.).

[1724] Here Erskine notes that the Persian (trs.) adds, “mīr signifying a hill, and kas being the name of the natives of the hill-country.” This may not support the name kas as correct but may be merely an explanation of Bābur’s meaning. It is not in I.O. 217 f. 189 or in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lithographed Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī p. 190.

[1725] Either yak or the tassels of the yak. See Appendix M.

[1726] My husband tells me that Bābur’s authority for this interpretation of Sawālak may be the Z̤afar-nāma (Bib. Ind. ed. ii, 149).

[1727] i.e. the countries of Hindūstān.

[1728] so pointed, carefully, in the Ḥai. MS. Mr. Erskine notes of these rivers that they are the Indus, Hydaspes, Ascesines, Hydraotes, Hesudrus and Hyphasis.

[1729] Āyīn-i-akbarī, Jarrett 279.

[1730] pārcha pārcha, kīchīkrāk kīchīkrāk, āndā mūndā, tāshlīq tāqghīna. The Gazetteer of India (1907 i, 1) puts into scientific words, what Bābur here describes, the ruin of a great former range.

[1731] Here āqār-sūlār might safely be replaced by “irrigation channels” (Index s.n.).

[1732] The verb here is tāshmāq; it also expresses to carry like ants (f. 220), presumably from each person’s carrying a pitcher or a stone at a time, and repeatedly.

[1733] “This” notes Erskine (p. 315) “is the wulsa or walsa, so well described by Colonel Wilks in his Historical Sketches vol. i. p. 309, note ‘On the approach of an hostile army, the unfortunate inhabitants of India bury under ground their most cumbrous effects, and each individual, man, woman, and child above six years of age (the infant children being carried by their mothers), with a load of grain proportioned to their strength, issue from their beloved homes, and take the direction of a country (if such can be found,) exempt from the miseries of war; sometimes of a strong fortress, but more generally of the most unfrequented hills and woods, where they prolong a miserable existence until the departure of the enemy, and if this should be protracted beyond the time for which they have provided food, a large portion necessarily dies of hunger.’ See the note itself. The Historical Sketches should be read by every-one who desires to have an accurate idea of the South of India. It is to be regretted that we do not possess the history of any other part of India, written with the same knowledge or research.”

“The word wulsa or walsa is Dravidian. Telugu has valasa, ‘emigration, flight, or removing from home for fear of a hostile army.’ Kanarese has valasĕ, ŏlasĕ, and ŏlisĕ, ‘flight, a removing from home for fear of a hostile army.’ Tamil has valasei, ‘flying for fear, removing hastily.’ The word is an interesting one. I feel pretty sure it is not Aryan, but Dravidian; and yet it stands alone in Dravidian, with nothing that I can find in the way of a root or affinities to explain its etymology. Possibly it may be a borrowed word in Dravidian. Malayalam has no corresponding word. Can it have been borrowed from Kolarian or other primitive Indian speech?” (Letter to H. Beveridge from Mr. F. E. Pargiter, 8th August, 1914.)

Wulsa seems to be a derivative from Sanscrit ūlvash, and to answer to Persian wairānī and Turkī būzūghlūghī.

[1734] lalmī, which in Afghānī (Pushtū) signifies grown without irrigation.

[1735] “The improvement of Hindūstān since Bābur’s time must be prodigious. The wild elephant is now confined to the forests under Hemāla, and to the Ghats of Malabar. A wild elephant near Karrah, Mānikpūr, or Kālpī, is a thing, at the present day (1826 AD.), totally unknown. May not their familiar existence in these countries down to Bābur’s days, be considered rather hostile to the accounts given of the superabundant population of Hindūstān in remote times?” (Erskine).

[1736] dīwān. I.O. 217 f. 190b, dar dīwān fīl jawāb mīgūīnd; Mems. p. 316. They account to the government for the elephants they take; Méms. ii, 188, Les habitants payent l’impôt avec le produit de leur chasse. Though de Courteille’s reading probably states the fact, Erskine’s includes de C.’s and more, inasmuch as it covers all captures and these might reach to a surplusage over the imposts.

[1737] Pers. trs. gaz=24 inches. Il est bon de rappeler que le mot turk qārī, que la version persane rend par gaz, désigne proprement l’espace compris entre le haut de l'épaule jusqu’au bout des doigts (de Courteille, ii, 189 note). The qārī like one of its equivalents, the ell (Zenker), is a variable measure; it seems to approach more nearly to a yard than to a gaz of 24 inches. See Memoirs of Jahāngīr (R. & B. pp. 18, 141 and notes) for the heights of elephants, and for discussion of some measures.

[1738] khūd, itself.

[1739] i.e. pelt; as Erskine notes, its skin is scattered with small hairs. Details such as this one stir the question, for whom was Bābur writing? Not for Hindūstān where what he writes is patent; hardly for Kābul; perhaps for Transoxiana.

[1740] Shaikh Zain’s wording shows this reference to be to a special piece of artillery, perhaps that of f. 302.

[1741] A string of camels contains from five to seven, or, in poetry, even more (Vullers, ii, 728, sermone poetico series decem camelorum). The item of food compared is corn only (būghūz) and takes no account therefore of the elephant’s green food.

[1742] The Ency. Br. states that the horn seldom exceeds a foot in length; there is one in the B.M. measuring 18 inches.

[1743] āb-khẉura kishtī, water-drinker’s boat, in which name kishtī may be used with reference to shape as boat is in sauce-boat. Erskine notes that rhinoceros-horn is supposed to sweat on approach of poison.

[1744] aīlīk, Pers. trs. angusht, finger, each seemingly representing about one inch, a hand’s thickness, a finger’s breadth.

[1745] lit. hand (qūl) and leg (būt).

[1746] The anatomical details by which Bābur supports this statement are difficult to translate, but his grouping of the two animals is in agreement with the modern classification of them as two of the three Ungulata vera, the third being the tapir (Fauna of British India:—Mammals, Blanford 467 and, illustration, 468).

[1747] De Courteille (ii, 190) reads kūmūk, osseuse; Erskine reads gūmūk, marrow.

[1748] Index s.n. rhinoceros.

[1749] Bos bubalus.

[1750] “so as to grow into the flesh” (Erskine, p. 317).

[1751] sic in text. It may be noted that the name nīl-gāī, common in general European writings, is that of the cow; nīl-gāū, that of the bull (Blanford).

[1752] b:ḥ:rī qūt̤ās; see Appendix M.

[1753] The doe is brown (Blanford, p. 518). The word būghū (stag) is used alone just below and seems likely to represent the bull of the Asiatic wapiti (f. 4 n. on būghū-marāl.)

[1754] Axis porcinus (Jerdon, Cervus porcinus).

[1755] Saiga tartarica (Shaw). Turkī hūna is used, like English deer, for male, female, and both. Here it seems defined by aīrkākī to mean stag or buck.

[1756] Antelope cervicapra, black-buck, so called from the dark hue of its back (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Black-buck).

[1757] tūyūq, underlined in the Elph. MS. by kura, cannon-ball; Erskine, foot-ball, de Courteille, pierre plus grosse que la cheville (tūyāq).

[1758] This mode of catching antelopes is described in the Āyīn-i-akbarī, and is noted by Erskine as common in his day.

[1759] H. gainā. It is 3 feet high (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Gynee). Cf. A. A. Blochmann, p. 149. The ram with which it is compared may be that of Ovis ammon (Vigné’s Kashmīr etc. ii, 278).

[1760] Here the Pers. trs. adds:—They call this kind of monkey langūr (baboon, I.O. 217 f. 192).

[1761] Here the Pers. trs. adds what Erskine mistakenly attributes to Bābur:—People bring it from several islands.—They bring yet another kind from several islands, yellowish-grey in colour like a pūstīn tīn (leather coat of ?; Erskine, skin of the fig, tīn). Its head is broader and its body much larger than those of other monkeys. It is very fierce and destructive. It is singular quod penis ejus semper sit erectus, et nunquam non ad coitum idoneus [Erskine].

[1762] This name is explained on the margin of the Elph. MS. as “rāsū, which is the weasel of Tartary” (Erskine). Rāsū is an Indian name for the squirrel Sciurus indicus. The kīsh, with which Bābur’s nūl is compared, is explained by de C. as belette, weasel, and by Steingass as a fur-bearing animal; the fur-bearing weasel is (Mustelidae) putorius ermina, the ermine-weasel (Blanford, p. 165), which thus seems to be Bābur’s kīsh. The alternative name Bābur gives for his nūl, i.e. mūsh-i-khūrma, is, in India, that of Sciurus palmarum, the palm-squirrel (G. of I. i, 227); this then, it seems that Bābur’s nūl is. Erskine took nūl here to be the mongoose (Herpestes mūngūs) (p. 318); and Blanford, perhaps partly on Erskine’s warrant, gives mūsh-i-khūrma as a name of the lesser mungūs of Bengal. I gather that the name nawal is not exclusively confined even now to the (mungūs.)

[1763] If this be a tree-mouse and not a squirrel, it may be Vandeleuria oleracea (G. of I. i, 228).

[1764] The notes to this section are restricted to what serves to identify the birds Bābur mentions, though temptation is great to add something to this from the mass of interesting circumstance scattered in the many writings of observers and lovers of birds. I have thought it useful to indicate to what language a bird’s name belongs.

[1765] Persian, gul; English, eyes.

[1766] qūlāch (Zenker, p. 720); Pers. trs. (217 f. 192b) yak qad-i-adm; de Courteille, brasse (fathom). These three are expressions of the measure from finger-tip to finger-tip of a man’s extended arms, which should be his height, a fathom (6 feet).

[1767] qānāt, of which here “primaries” appears to be the correct rendering, since Jerdon says (ii, 506) of the bird that its “wings are striated black and white, primaries and tail deep chestnut”.

[1768] The qīrghāwal, which is of the pheasant species, when pursued, will take several flights immediately after each other, though none long; peacocks, it seems, soon get tired and take to running (Erskine).

[1769] Ar. barrāq, as on f. 278b last line where the Elph. MS. has barrāq, marked with the tashdīd.

[1770] This was, presumably, just when Bābur was writing the passage.

[1771] This sentence is in Arabic.

[1772] A Persian note, partially expunged from the text of the Elph. MS. is to the effect that 4 or 5 other kinds of parrot are heard of which the revered author did not see.

[1773] Erskine suggests that this may be the loory (Loriculus vernalis, Indian loriquet).

[1774] The birds Bābur classes under the name shārak seem to include what Oates and Blanford (whom I follow as they give the results of earlier workers) class under Sturnus, Eulabes and Calornis, starling, grackle and mīna, and tree-stare (Fauna of British India, Oates, vols. i and ii, Blanford, vols. iii and iv).

[1775] Turkī, qabā; Ilminsky, p. 361, tang (tund?).

[1776] E. D. Ross’s Polyglot List of Birds, p. 314, Chighīr-chīq, Northern swallow; Elph. MS. f. 230b interlined jil (Steingass lark). The description of the bird allows it to be Sturnus humii, the Himālayan starling (Oates, i, 520).

[1777] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. (Sans. and Bengālī) p:ndūī; two good MSS. of the Pers. trs. (I.O. 217 and 218) p:ndāwalī; Ilminsky (p. 361) mīnā; Erskine (Mems. p. 319) pindāwelī, but without his customary translation of an Indian name. The three forms shewn above can all mean “having protuberance or lump” (pinḍā) and refer to the bird’s wattle. But the word of the presumably well-informed scribes of I.O. 217 and 218 can refer to the bird’s sagacity in speech and be panḍāwalī, possessed of wisdom. With the same spelling, the word can translate into the epithet religiosa, given to the wattled mīnā by Linnæus. This epithet Mr. Leonard Wray informs me has been explained to him as due to the frequenting of temples by the birds; and that in Malāya they are found living in cotes near Chinese temples.—An alternative name (one also connecting with religiosa) allowed by the form of the word is bīnḍā-walī. H. bīnḍā is a mark on the forehead, made as a preparative to devotion by Hindus, or in Sans. and Bengālī, is the spot of paint made on an elephant’s trunk; the meaning would thus be “having a mark”. Cf. Jerdon and Oates s.n. Eulabes religiosa.

[1778] Eulabes intermedia, the Indian grackle or hill-mīna. Here the Pers. trs. adds that people call it mīna.

[1779] Calornis chalybeius, the glossy starling or tree-stare, which never descends to the ground.

[1780] Sturnopastor contra, the pied mīna.

[1781] Part of the following passage about the lūja (var. lūkha, lūcha) is verbatim with part of that on f. 135; both were written about 934-5 AH. as is shewn by Shaikh Zain (Index s.n.) and by inference from references in the text (Index s.n. B.N. date of composition). See Appendix N.

[1782] Lit. mountain-partridge. There is ground for understanding that one of the birds known in the region as monals is meant. See Appendix N.

[1783] Sans. chakora; Ar. durrāj; P. kabg; T. kīklīk.

[1784] Here, probably, southern Afghānistān.

[1785] Caccabis chukūr (Scully, Shaw’s Vocabulary) or C. pallescens (Hume, quoted under No. 126 E. D. Ross’ Polyglot List).

[1786] “In some parts of the country (i.e. India before 1841 AD.), tippets used to be made of the beautiful black, white-spotted feathers of the lower plumage (of the durrāj), and were in much request, but they are rarely procurable now” (Bengal Sporting Magazine for 1841, quoted by Jerdon, ii, 561).

[1787] A broad collar of red passes round the whole neck (Jerdon, ii, 558).

[1788] Ar. durrāj means one who repeats what he hears, a tell-tale.

[1789] Various translations have been made of this passage, “I have milk and sugar” (Erskine), “J’ai du lait, un peu de sucre” (de Courteille), but with short sh:r, it might be read in more than one way ignoring milk and sugar. See Jerdon, ii, 558 and Hobson Jobson s.n. Black-partridge.

[1790] Flower-faced, Trapogon melanocephala, the horned (sing)-monal. It is described by Jahāngīr (Memoirs, R. and B., ii, 220) under the names [H. and P.] phūl-paikār and Kashmīrī, sonlū.

[1791] Gallus sonneratii, the grey jungle-fowl.

[1792] Perhaps Bambusicola fytchii, the western bambu-partridge. For chīl see E. D. Ross, l.c. No. 127.

[1793] Jahāngīr (l.c.) describes, under the Kashmīrī name pūt̤, what may be this bird. It seems to be Gallus ferrugineus, the red jungle-fowl (Blanford, iv, 75).

[1794] Jahāngīr helps to identify the bird by mentioning its elongated tail-feathers,—seasonal only.

[1795] The migrant quail will be Coturnix communis, the grey quail, 8 inches long; what it is compared with seems likely to be the bush-quail, which is non-migrant and shorter.

[1796] Perhaps Perdicula argunda, the rock bush-quail, which flies in small coveys.

[1797] Perhaps Coturnix coromandelica, the black-breasted or rain quail, 7 inches long.

[1798] Perhaps Motacilla citreola, a yellow wag-tail which summers in Central Asia (Oates, ii, 298). If so, its Kābul name may refer to its flashing colour. Cf. E. D. Ross, l.c. No. 301; de Courteille’s Dictionary which gives qārcha, wag-tail, and Zenker’s which fixes the colour.

[1799] Eupodotis edwardsii; Turkī, tūghdār or tūghdīrī.

[1800] Erskine noting (Mems. p. 321), that the bustard is common in the Dakkan where it is bigger than a turkey, says it is called tūghdār and suggests that this is a corruption of tūghdāq. The uses of both words are shewn by Bābur, here, and in the next following, account of the charz. Cf. G. of I. i, 260 and E. D. Ross l.c. Nos. 36, 40.

[1801] Sypheotis bengalensis and S. aurita, which are both smaller than Otis houbara (tūghdīrī). In Hindustan S. aurita is known as līkh which name is the nearest approach I have found to Bābur’s [lūja] lūkha.

[1802] Jerdon mentions (ii, 615) that this bird is common in Afghānistān and there called dugdaor (tūghdār, tūghdīrī).

[1803] Cf. Appendix B, since I wrote which, further information has made it fairly safe to say that the Hindūstān bāghrī-qarā is Pterocles exustus, the common sand-grouse and that the one of f. 49b is Pterocles arenarius, the larger or black-bellied sand-grouse. P. exustus is said by Yule (H. J. s.n. Rock-pigeon) to have been miscalled rock-pigeon by Anglo-Indians, perhaps because its flight resembles the pigeon’s. This accounts for Erskine’s rendering (p. 321) bāghrī-qarā here by rock-pigeon.

[1804] Leptoptilus dubius, Hind. hargīlā. Hindūstānīs call it pīr-i-dīng (Erskine) and peda dhauk (Blanford), both names referring, perhaps, to its pouch. It is the adjutant of Anglo-India. Cf. f. 235.

[1805] only when young (Blanford, ii, 188).

[1806] Elph. MS. mank:sā or mankīā; Ḥai. MS. m:nk. Haughton’s Bengali Dictionary gives two forms of the name mānek-jur and mānak-yoī. It is Dissura episcopus, the white-necked stork (Blanford iv, 370, who gives manik-jor amongst its Indian names). Jerdon classes it (ii, 737) as Ciconia leucocephala. It is the beefsteak bird of Anglo-India.

[1807] Ciconia nigra (Blanford, iv, 369).

[1808] Under the Hindūstānī form, būza, of Persian buzak the birds Bābur mentions as buzak can be identified. The large one is Inocotis papillosus, būza, kāla būza, black curlew, king-curlew. The bird it equals in size is a buzzard, Turkī sār (not Persian sār, starling). The king-curlew has a large white patch on the inner lesser and marginal coverts of its wings (Blanford, iv, 303). This agrees with Bābur’s statement about the wings of the large buzak. Its length is 27 inches, while the starling’s is 9-1/2 inches.

[1809] Ibis melanocephala, the white ibis, Pers. safed buzak, Bengali sabut būza. It is 30 inches long.

[1810] Perhaps, Plegadis falcinellus, the glossy ibis, which in most parts of India is a winter visitor. Its length is 25 inches.

[1811] Erskine suggests that this is Platalea leucorodia, the chamach-būza, spoon-bill. It is 33 inches long.

[1812] Anas poecilorhyncha. The Ḥai. MS. writes gharm-pāī, and this is the Indian name given by Blanford (iv, 437).

[1813] Anas boschas. Dr. Ross notes (No. 147), from the Sanglākh, that sūna is the drake, būrchīn, the duck and that it is common in China to call a certain variety of bird by the combined sex-names. Something like this is shewn by the uses of būghā and marāl q.v. Index.

[1814] Centropus rufipennis, the common coucal (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Crow-pheasant); H. makokhā, Cuculus castaneus (Buchanan, quoted by Forbes).

[1815] Pteropus edwardsii, the flying-fox. The inclusion of the bat here amongst birds, may be a clerical accident, since on f. 136 a flying-fox is not written of as a bird.

[1816] Bābur here uses what is both the Kābul and Andijān name for the magpie, Ar. ‘aqqa (Oates, i, 31 and Scully’s Voc), instead of T. sāghizghān or P. dam-sīcha (tail-wagger).

[1817] The Pers. trs. writes sāndūlāch mamūlā, mamūlā being Arabic for wag-tail. De Courteille’s Dictionary describes the sāndūlāch as small and having a long tail, the cock-bird green, the hen, yellow. The wag-tail suiting this in colouring is Motacilla borealis (Oates, ii, 294; syn. Budytes viridis, the green wag-tail); this, as a migrant, serves to compare with the Indian “little bird”, which seems likely to be a red-start.

[1818] This word may represent Scully’s kirich and be the Turkī name for a swift, perhaps Cypselus affinis.

[1819] This name is taken from its cry during the breeding season (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Koel).

[1820] Bābur’s distinction between the three crocodiles he mentions seems to be that of names he heard, shīr-ābī, siyāh-sār, and ghaṛīāl.

[1821] In this passage my husband finds the explanation of two somewhat vague statements of later date, one made by Abū’l-faẓl (A. A. Blochmann, p. 65) that Akbar called the kīlās (cherry) the shāh-ālū (king-plum), the other by Jahāngīr that this change was made because kīlās means lizard (Jahāngīr’s Memoirs, R. & B. i, 116). What Akbar did is shewn by Bābur; it was to reject the Persian name kīlās, cherry, because it closely resembled Turkī gīlās, lizard. There is a lizard Stellio Lehmanni of Transoxiana with which Bābur may well have compared the crocodile’s appearance (Schuyler’s Turkistān, i, 383). Akbar in Hindūstān may have had Varanus salvator (6 ft. long) in mind, if indeed he had not the great lizard, al lagarto, the alligator itself in his thought. The name kīlās evidently was banished only from the Court circle, since it is still current in Kashmīr (Blochmann l.c. p. 616); and Speede (p. 201) gives keeras, cherry, as used in India.

[1822] This name as now used, is that of the purely fish-eating crocodile. [In the Turkī text Bābur’s account of the ghaṛīāl follows that of the porpoise; but it is grouped here with those of the two other crocodiles.]

[1823] As the Ḥai. MS. and also I.O. 216 f. 137 (Pers. trs.) write kalah (galah)-fish, this may be a large cray-fish. One called by a name approximating to galah-fish is found in Malāyan waters, viz. the galah-prawn (hūdang) (cf. Bengālī gūla-chingrī, gūla-prawn, Haughton). Galah and gūla may express lament made when the fish is caught (Haughton pp. 931, 933, 952); or if kalah be read, this may express scolding. Two good MSS. of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (Pers. trs.) write kaka; and their word cannot but have weight. Erskine reproduces kaka but offers no explanation of it, a failure betokening difficulty in his obtaining one. My husband suggests that kaka may represent a stuttering sound, doing so on the analogy of Vullers’ explanation of the word,—Vir ridiculus et facetus qui simul balbutiat; and also he inclines to take the fish to be a crab (kakra). Possibly kaka is a popular or vulgar name for a cray-fish or a crab. Whether the sound is lament, scolding, or stuttering the fisherman knows! Shaikh Zain enlarges Bābur’s notice of this fish; he says the bones are prolonged (bar āwarda) from the ears, that these it agitates at time of capture, making a noise like the word kaka by which it is known, that it is two wajab (18 in.) long, its flesh surprisingly tasty, and that it is very active, leaping a gaz (cir. a yard) out of the water when the fisherman’s net is set to take it. For information about the Malāyan fish, I am indebted to Mr. Cecil Wray.

[1824] T. qiyünlīghī, presumably referring to spines or difficult bones; T. qīn, however, means a scabbard [Shaw].

[1825] One of the common frogs is a small one which, when alarmed, jumps along the surface of the water (G. of I. i, 273).

[1826] Anb and anbah (pronounced aṃb and aṃbah) are now less commonly used names than ām. It is an interesting comment on Bābur’s words that Abū’l-faẓl spells anb, letter by letter, and says that the b is quiescent (Āyīn 28; for the origin of the word mango, vide Yule’s H.J. s.n.).

[1827] A corresponding diminutive would be fairling.

[1828] The variants, entered in parenthesis, are found in the Bib. Ind. ed. of the Āyīn-i-akbarī p. 75 and in a (bazar) copy of the Qurānu’s-sā‘dain in my husband’s possession. As Amīr Khusrau was a poet of Hindūstān, either khẉash (khẉesh) [our own] or mā [our] would suit his meaning. The couplet is, literally:—

Our fairling, [i.e. mango] beauty-maker of the garden,

Fairest fruit of Hindūstān.

[1829] Daulat Khān Yūsuf-khail Lūdī in 929 AH. sent Bābur a gift of mangoes preserved in honey (in loco p. 440).

[1830] I have learned nothing more definite about the word kārdī than that it is the name of a superior kind of peach (Ghiyās̤u’l-lughat).

[1831] The preceding sentence is out of place in the Turkī text; it may therefore be a marginal note, perhaps not made by Bābur.

[1832] This sentence suggests that Bābur, writing in Āgra or Fatḥpūr did not there see fine mango-trees.

[1833] See Yule’s H.J. on the plantain, the banana of the West.

[1834] This word is a descendant of Sanscrit mocha, and parent of musa the botanical name of the fruit (Yule).

[1835] Shaikh Effendī (Kunos), Zenker and de Courteille say of this only that it is the name of a tree. Shaw gives a name that approaches it, ārman, a grass, a weed; Scully explains this as Artemisia vulgaris, wormwood, but Roxburgh gives no Artemisia having a leaf resembling the plantain’s. Scully has arāmadān, unexplained, which, like amān-qarā, may refer to comfort in shade. Bābur’s comparison will be with something known in Transoxiana. Maize has general resemblance with the plantain. So too have the names of the plants, since mocha and mauz stand for the plantain and (Hindī) mukā’ī for maize. These incidental resemblances bear, however lightly, on the question considered in the Ency. Br. (art. maize) whether maize was early in Asia or not; some writers hold that it was; if Bābur’s amān-qarā were maize, maize will have been familiar in Transoxiana in his day.

[1836] Abū’l-faẓl mentions that the plantain-tree bears no second crop unless cut down to the stump.

[1837] Bābur was fortunate not to have met with a seed-bearing plantain.

[1838] The ripe “dates” are called P. tamar-i Hind, whence our tamarind, and Tamarindus Indica.

[1839] Sophora alopecuroides, a leguminous plant (Scully).

[1840] Abū’l-faẓl gives galaundā as the name of the “fruit” [mewa],—Forbes, as that of the fallen flower. Cf. Brandis p. 426 and Yule’s H.J. s.n. Mohwa.

[1841] Bābur seems to say that spirit is extracted from both the fresh and the dried flowers. The fresh ones are favourite food with deer and jackals; they have a sweet spirituous taste. Erskine notes that the spirit made from them was well-known in Bombay by the name of Moura, or of Parsi-brandy, and that the farm of it was a considerable article of revenue (p. 325 n.). Roxburgh describes it as strong and intoxicating (p. 411).

[1842] This is the name of a green, stoneless grape which when dried, results in a raisin resembling the sultanas of Europe (Jahāngīr’s Memoirs and Yule’s H.J. s.n.; Griffiths’ Journal of Travel pp. 359, 388).

[1843] Aūl, lit. the aūl of the flower. The Persian translation renders aūl by bū which may allow both words to be understood in their (root) sense of being, i.e. natural state. De Courteille translates by quand la fleur est fraîche (ii, 210); Erskine took bū to mean smell (Memoirs p. 325), but the aūl it translates, does not seem to have this meaning. For reading aūl as “the natural state”, there is circumstantial support in the flower’s being eaten raw (Roxburgh). The annotator of the Elphinstone MS. [whose defacement of that Codex has been often mentioned], has added points and tashdīd to the aūl-ī (i.e. its aūl), so as to produce awwalī (first, f. 235). Against this there are the obvious objections that the Persian translation does not reproduce, and that its bū does not render awwalī; also that aūl-ī is a noun with its enclitic genitive yā (i).

[1844] This word seems to be meant to draw attention to the various merits of the mahuwā tree.

[1845] Erskine notes that this is not to be confounded with E. jāmbū, the rose-apple (Memoirs p. 325 n.). Cf. Yule’s H.J. s.n. Jambu.

[1846] var. ghat-ālū, ghab-ālū, ghain-ālū, shafl-ālū. Scully enters ‘ain-ālū (true-plum?) unexplained. The kamrak fruit is 3 in. long (Brandis) and of the size of a lemon (Firminger); dimensions which make Bābur’s 4 aīlīk (hand’s-thickness) a slight excess only, and which thus allow aīlīk, with its Persion translation, angusht, to be approximately an inch.

[1847] Speede, giving the fruit its Sanscrit name kamarunga, says it is acid, rather pleasant, something like an insipid apple; also that its pretty pink blossoms grow on the trunk and main branches (i, 211).

[1848] Cf. Yule’s H.J. s.n. jack-fruit. In a Calcutta nurseryman’s catalogue of 1914 AD. three kinds of jack-tree are offered for sale, viz. “Crispy Or Khaja, Soft or Neo, Rose-scented” (Seth, Feronia Nursery).

[1849] The gīpa is a sheep’s stomach stuffed with rice, minced meat, and spices, and boiled as a pudding. The resemblance of the jack, as it hangs on the tree, to the haggis, is wonderfully complete (Erskine).

[1850] These when roasted have the taste of chestnuts.

[1851] Firminger (p. 186) describes an ingenious method of training.

[1852] For a note of Humāyūn’s on the jack-fruit see Appendix O.

[1853] aīd-ī-yamān aīmās. It is somewhat curious that Bābur makes no comment on the odour of the jack itself.

[1854] būsh, English bosh (Shaw). The Persian translation inserts no more about this fruit.

[1855] Steingass applies this name to the plantain.

[1856] Erskine notes that “this is the bullace-plum, small, not more than twice as large as the sloe and not so high-flavoured; it is generally yellow, sometimes red.” Like Bābur, Brandis enumerates several varieties and mentions the seasonal changes of the tree (p. 170).

[1857] This will be Kābul, probably, because Transoxiana is written of by Bābur usually, if not invariably, as “that country”, and because he mentions the chīkda (i.e. chīka?), under its Persian name sinjid, in his Description of Kābul (f. 129b).

[1858] P. mar manjān, which I take to refer to the rīwājlār of Kābul. (Cf. f. 129b, where, however, (note 5) are corrigenda of Masson’s rawash for rīwāj, and his third to second volume.) Kehr’s Codex contains an extra passage about the karaūn dā, viz. that from it is made a tasty fritter-like dish, resembling a rhubarb-fritter (Ilminsky, p. 369).

[1859] People call it (P.) pālasa also (Elph. MS. f. 236, marginal note).

[1860] Perhaps the red-apple of Kābul, where two sorts are common, both rosy, one very much so, but much inferior to the other (Griffith’s Journal of Travel p. 388).

[1861] Its downy fruit grows in bundles from the trunk and large branches (Roxburgh).

[1862] The reference by “also” (ham) will be to the kamrak (f. 283b), but both Roxburgh and Brandis say the amla is six striated.

[1863] The Sanscrit and Bengālī name for the chirūnjī-tree is pīyala (Roxburgh p. 363).

[1864] Cf. f. 250b.

[1865] The leaflet is rigid enough to serve as a runlet, but soon wears out; for this reason, the usual practice is to use one of split bamboo.

[1866] This is a famous hunting-ground between Bīāna and Dhūlpūr, Rājpūtāna, visited in 933 AH. (f. 33Ob). Bābur’s great-great-grandson Shāh-jahān built a hunting-lodge there (G. of I.).

[1867] Ḥai. MS. mu‘arrab, but the Elph. MS. maghrib, [occidentalizing]. The Ḥai. MS. when writing of the orange (infra) also has maghrib. A distinction of locality may be drawn by maghrib.

[1868] Bābur’s “Hindūstān people” (aīl) are those neither Turks nor Afghāns.

[1869] This name, with its usual form tāḍī (toddy), is used for the fermented sap of the date, coco, and mhār palms also (cf. Yule’s H.J. s.n. toddy).

[1870] Bābur writes of the long leaf-stalk as a branch (shākh); he also seems to have taken each spike of the fan-leaf to represent a separate leaf. [For two omissions from my trs. see Appendix O.]

[1871] Most of the fruits Bābur describes as orange-like are named in the following classified list, taken from Watts’ Economic Products of India:—“Citrus aurantium, narangi, sangtara, amrit-phal; C. decumana, pumelo, shaddock, forbidden-fruit, sada-phal; C. medica proper, turunj, limu; C. medica limonum, jambhira, karna-nebu.” Under C. aurantium Brandis enters both the sweet and the Seville oranges (nārangī); this Bābur appears to do also.

[1872] kīndīklīk, explained in the Elph. Codex by nāfwār (f. 238). This detail is omitted by the Persian translation. Firminger’s description (p. 221) of Aurangābād oranges suggests that they also are navel-oranges. At the present time one of the best oranges had in England is the navel one of California.

[1873] Useful addition is made to earlier notes on the variability of the yīghāch, a variability depending on time taken to cover the ground, by the following passage from Henderson and Hume’s Lahor to Yarkand (p. 120), which shews that even in the last century the farsang (the P. word used in the Persian translation of the Bābur-nāma for T. yīghāch) was computed by time. “All the way from Kargallik (Qārghalīq) to Yarkand, there were tall wooden mile-posts along the roads, at intervals of about 5 miles, or rather one hour’s journey, apart. On a board at the top of each post, or farsang as it is called, the distances were very legibly written in Turki.”

[1874] ma‘rib, Elph. MS. magharrib; (cf. f. 285b note).

[1875] i.e. nārang (Sans. nārangā) has been changed to nāranj in the ‘Arab mouth. What is probably one of Humāyūn’s notes preserved by the Elph. Codex (f. 238), appears to say—it is mutilated—that nārang has been corrupted into nāranj.

[1876] The Elph. Codex has a note—mutilated in early binding—which is attested by its scribe as copied from Humāyūn’s hand-writing, and is to the effect that once on his way from the Hot-bath, he saw people who had taken poison and restored them by giving lime-juice.

Erskine here notes that the same antidotal quality is ascribed to the citron by Virgil:—

Media fert tristes succos. tardumque saporem

Felicis mali, quo non praesentius ullum,

Pocula si quando saevae infecere novercae,

Miscueruntque herbas et non innoxia verba,

Auxilium venit, ac membris agit atra venena.

Georgics II. v. 126.

Vide Heyne’s note i, 438.

[1877] P. turunj, wrinkled, puckered; Sans. vījāpūra and H. bijaurā (Āyīn 28), seed-filled.

[1878] Bābur may have confused this with H. bijaurā; so too appears to have done the writer (Humāyūn?) of a [now mutilated] note in the Elph. Codex (f. 238), which seems to say that the fruit or its name went from Bajaur to Hindūstān. Is the country of Bajaur so-named from its indigenous orange (vījāpūra, whence bijaurā)? The name occurs also north of Kangra.

[1879] Of this name variants are numerous, santra, santhara, samtara, etc. Watts classes it as a C. aurantium; Erskine makes it the common sweet orange; Firminger, quoting Ross (p. 221) writes that, as grown in the Nagpur gardens it is one of the finest Indian oranges, with rind thin, smooth and close. The Emperor Muḥammad Shāh is said to have altered its name to rang-tāra because of its fine colour (rang) (Forbes). Speede (ii, 109) gives both names. As to the meaning and origin of the name santara or santra, so suggestive of Cintra, the Portuguese home of a similar orange, it may be said that it looks like a hill-name used in N. E. India, for there is a village in the Bhutan Hills, (Western Duars) known from its orange groves as Santra-bārī, Abode of the orange. To this (mentioned already as my husband’s suggestion in Mr. Crooke’s ed. of Yule’s H.J.) support is given by the item “Suntura, famous Nipal variety”, entered in Seth’s Nursery-list of 1914 (Feronia Nurseries, Calcutta). Light on the question of origin could be thrown, no doubt, by those acquainted with the dialects of the hill-tract concerned.

[1880] This refers, presumably, to the absence of the beak characteristic of all citrons.

[1881] melter, from the Sans. root gal, which provides the names of several lemons by reason of their solvent quality, specified by Bābur (infra) of the amal-bīd. Erskine notes that in his day the gal-gal was known as kilmek (galmak?).

[1882] Sans. jambīrā, H. jambīr, classed by Abū’l-faẓl as one of the somewhat sour fruits and by Watts as Citrus medica limonum.

[1883] Watts, C. decumana, the shaddock or pumelo; Firminger (p. 223) has C. decumana pyriformis suiting Bābur’s “pear-shaped”. What Bābur compared it with will be the Transoxanian pear and quince (P. amrūd and bihī) and not the Indian guava and Bengal quince (P. amrūd and H. bael).

[1884] The Turkī text writes amrd. Watts classes the amrit-phal as a C. aurantium. This supports Erskine’s suggestion that it is the mandarin-orange. Humāyūn describes it in a note which is written pell-mell in the text of the Elph. Codex and contains also descriptions of the kāmila and santara oranges; it can be seen translated in Appendix O.

[1885] So spelled in the Turkī text and also in two good MSS. of the Pers. trs. I.O. 217 and 218, but by Abū’l-faẓl amal-bīt. Both P. bīd and P. bīt mean willow and cane (ratan), so that amal-bīd (bīt) can mean acid-willow and acid-cane. But as Bābur is writing of a fruit like an orange, the cane that bears an acid fruit, Calamus rotang, can be left aside in favour of Citrus medica acidissima. Of this fruit the solvent property Bābur mentions, as well as the commonly-known service in cleansing metal, link it, by these uses, with the willow and suggest a ground for understanding, as Erskine did, that amal-bīd meant acid-willow; for willow-wood is used to rub rust off metal.

[1886] This statement shows that Bābur was writing the Description of Hindūstān in 935 AH. (1528-9 AD.), which is the date given for it by Shaikh Zain.

[1887] This story of the needle is believed in India of all the citron kind, which are hence called sūī-gal (needle-melter) in the Dakhin (Erskine). Cf. Forbes, p. 489 s.n. sūī-gal.

[1888] Erskine here quotes information from Abū’l-faẓl (Āyīn 28) about Akbar’s encouragement of the cultivation of fruits.

[1889] Hindustani (Urdu) gaṛhal. Many varieties of Hibiscus (syn. Althea) grow in India; some thrive in Surrey gardens; the jāsūn by name and colour can be taken as what is known in Malayan, Tamil, etc., as the shoe-flower, from its use in darkening leather (Yule’s H.J.).

[1890] I surmise that what I have placed between asterisks here belongs to the next-following plant, the oleander. For though the branches of the jāsūn grow vertically, the bush is a dense mass upon one stout trunk, or stout short stem. The words placed in parenthesis above are not with the Ḥaidarabad but are with the Elphinstone Codex. There would seem to have been a scribe’s skip from one “rose” to the other. As has been shewn repeatedly, this part of the Bābur-nāma has been much annotated; in the Elph. Codex, where only most of the notes are preserved, some are entered by the scribe pell-mell into Bābur’s text. The present instance may be a case of a marginal note, added to the text in a wrong place.

[1891] The peduncle supporting the plume of medial petals is clearly seen only when the flower opens first. The plumed Hibiscus is found in florists’ catalogues described as “double”.

[1892] This Anglo-Indians call also rose-bay. A Persian name appears to be zahr-giyāh, poison-grass, which makes it the more probable that the doubtful passage in the previous description of the jāsūn belongs to the rod-like oleander, known as the poison-grass. The oleander is common in river-beds over much country known to Bābur, outside India.

[1893] Roxburgh gives a full and interesting account of this tree.

[1894] Here the Elph. Codex, only, has the (seeming) note, “An ‘Arab calls it kāẕī” (or kāwī). This fills out Steingass’ part-explanation of kāwī, “the blossom of the fragrant palm-tree, armāt̤” (p. 1010), and of armāt̤, “a kind of date-tree with a fragrant blossom” (p. 39), by making armāt̤ and kāwī seem to be the Pandanus and its flower.

[1895] Calamus scriptorius (Vullers ii, 607. H. B.). Abū’l-faẓl compares the leaves to jawārī, the great millet (Forbes); Blochmann (A. A. p. 83) translates jawārī by maize (juwārā, Forbes).

[1896] T. aīrkāk-qūmūsh, a name Scully enters unexplained. Under qūmūsh (reed) he enters Arundo madagascarensis; Bābur’s comparison will be with some Transoxanian Arundo or Calamus, presumably.

[1897] Champa seems to have been Bābur’s word (Elph. and Ḥai. MSS.), but is the (B.) name for Michelia champaka; the Pers. translation corrects it by (B.) chambelī, (yāsman, jasmine).

[1898] Here, “outside India” will be meant, where Hindū rules do not prevail.

[1899] Hind aīlārī-nīng ibtidā-sī hilāl aīlār-nīng istiqbāl-dīn dūr. The use here of istiqbāl, welcome, attracts attention; does it allude to the universal welcome of lighter nights? or is it reminiscent of Muḥammadan welcome to the Moon’s crescent in Shawwāl?

[1900] For an exact statement of the intercalary months vide Cunningham’s Indian Eras, p. 91. In my next sentence (supra) the parenthesis-marks indicate blanks left on the page of the Ḥai. MS. as though waiting for information. These and other similar blanks make for the opinion that the Ḥai. Codex is a direct copy of Bābur’s draft manuscript.

[1901] The sextuple division (r̤itu) of the year is referred to on f. 284, where the Signs Crab and Lion are called the season of the true Rains.

[1902] Bābur appears not to have entered either the Hindī or the Persian names of the week:—the Ḥai. MS. has a blank space; the Elph. MS. had the Persian names only, and Hindī ones have been written in above these; Kehr has the Persian ones only; Ilminsky has added the Hindī ones. (The spelling of the Hindī names, in my translation, is copied from Forbes’ Dictionary.)

[1903] The Ḥai. MS. writes garī and garīāl. The word now stands for the hour of 60 minutes.

[1904] i.e. gong-men. The name is applied also to an alligator Lacertus gangeticus (Forbes).

[1905] There is some confusion in the text here, the Ḥai. MS. reading birinj-dīn tīshī(?) nīma qūīūbtūrlār—the Elph. MS. (f. 240b) biring-dīn bīr yāssī nīma qūīūbtūrlār. The Persian translation, being based on the text of the Elphinstone Codex reads az biring yak chīz pahnī rekhta and. The word tīshī of the Ḥai. MS. may represent tasht plate or yāssī, broad; against the latter however there is the sentence that follows and gives the size.

[1906] Here again the wording of the Ḥai. MS. is not clear; the sense however is obvious. Concerning the clepsydra vide A. A. Jarrett, ii, 15 and notes; Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities; Yule’s H.J. s.n. Ghurry.

[1907] The table is:—60 bipals = 1 pal; 60 pals = 1 g’harī (24 m.); 60 g’harī or 8 pahr = one dīn-rāt (nycthemeron).

[1908] Qorān, cap. CXII, which is a declaration of God’s unity.

[1909] The (S.) ratī = 8 rice-grains (Eng. 8 barley-corns); the (S.) māsha is a kidney-bean; the (P.) tānk is about 2 oz.; the (Ar.) miṣqāl is equal to 40 ratīs; the (S.) tūla is about 145 oz.; the (S.) ser is of various values (Wilson’s Glossary and Yule’s H. J.).

[1910] There being 40 Bengāl sers to the man, Bābur’s word mānbān seems to be another name for the man or maund. I have not found mānbān or mīnāsā. At first sight mānbān might be taken, in the Ḥai. MS. for (T.) bātmān, a weight of 13 or 15 lbs., but this does not suit. Cf. f. 167 note to bātmān and f. 173b (where, however, in the note f. 157 requires correction to f. 167). For Bābur’s table of measures the Pers. trs. has 40 sers = 1 man; 12 mans = 1 mānī; 100 mānī they call mīnāsa (217, f. 201b, l. 8).

[1911] Presumably these are caste-names.

[1912] The words in parenthesis appear to be omitted from the text; to add them brings Bābur’s remark into agreement with others on what he several times makes note of, viz. the absence not only of irrigation-channels but of those which convey “running-waters” to houses and gardens. Such he writes of in Farghāna; such are a well-known charm e.g. in Madeira, where the swift current of clear water flowing through the streets, turns into private precincts by side-runlets.

[1913] The Ḥai. MS. writes lungūtā-dīk, like a lungūtā, which better agrees with Bābur’s usual phrasing. Lung is Persian for a cloth passed between the loins, is an equivalent of S. dhoti. Bābur’s use of it (infra) for the woman’s (P.) chaddar or (S.) sārī does not suit the Dictionary definition of its meaning.

[1914] When Erskine published the Memoirs in 1826 AD. he estimated this sum at 1-1/2 millions Sterling, but when he published his History of India in 1854, he had made further research into the problem of Indian money values, and judged then that Bābur’s revenue was £4,212,000.

[1915] Erskine here notes that the promised details had not been preserved, but in 1854 AD. he had found them in a “paraphrase of part of Bābur”, manifestly in Shaikh Zain’s work. He entered and discussed them and some matters of money-values in Appendices D. and E. of his History of India, vol. I. Ilminsky found them in Kehr’s Codex (C. ii, 230). The scribe of the Elph. MS. has entered the revenues of three sarkārs only, with his usual quotation marks indicating something extraneous or doubtful. The Ḥai. MS. has them in contents precisely as I have entered them above, but with a scattered mode of setting down. They are in Persian, presumably as they were rendered to Bābur by some Indian official. This official statement will have been with Bābur’s own papers; it will have been copied by Shaikh Zain into his own paraphrase. It differs slightly in Erskine’s and again, in de Courteille’s versions. I regret that I am incompetent to throw any light upon the question of its values and that I must leave some uncertain names to those more expert than myself. Cf. Erskine’s Appendices l.c. and Thomas’ Revenue resources of the Mughal Empire. For a few comments see App. P.

[1916] Here the Turkī text resumes in the Ḥai. MS.

[1917] Elph. MS. f. 243b; W. i. B. I.O. 215 has not the events of this year (as to which omission vide note at the beginning of 932 AH. f. 251b) and 217 f. 203; Mems. p. 334; Ilminsky’s imprint p. 380; Méms. ii, 232.

[1918] This should be 30th if Saturday was the day of the week (Gladwin, Cunningham and Bābur’s narrative of f. 269). Saturday appears likely to be right; Bābur entered Āgra on Thursday 28th; Friday would be used for the Congregational Prayer and preliminaries inevitable before the distribution of the treasure. The last day of Bābur’s narrative 932 AH. is Thursday Rajab 28th; he would not be likely to mistake between Friday, the day of his first Congregational prayer in Āgra, and Saturday. It must be kept in mind that the Description of Hindūstān is an interpolation here, and that it was written in 935 AH., three years later than the incidents here recorded. The date Rajab 29th may not be Bābur’s own entry; or if it be, may have been made after the interpolation of the dividing mass of the Description and made wrongly.

[1919] Erskine estimated these sums as “probably £56,700 to Humāyūn; and the smaller ones as £8,100, £6,480, £5,670 and £4,860 respectively; very large sums for the age”. (History of India, i. 440 n. and App. E.)

[1920] These will be his daughters. Gul-badan gives precise details of the gifts to the family circle (Humāyūn-nāma f. 10).

[1921] Some of these slaves were Sl. Ibrāhīm’s dancing-girls (Gul-badan, ib.).

[1922] Ar. ṣada. Perhaps it was a station of a hundred men. Varsak is in Badakhshān, on the water flowing to T̤āliqān from the Khwāja Muḥammad range. Erskine read (p. 335) ṣada Varsak as ṣadūr rashk, incentive to emulation; de C. (ii, 233) translates ṣada conjecturally by circonscription. Shaikh Zain has Varsak and to the recipients of the gifts adds the “Khwāstīs, people noted for their piety” (A. N. trs. H. B. i, 248 n.). The gift to Varsak may well have been made in gratitude for hospitality received by Bābur in the time of adversity after his loss of Samarkand and before his return to Kābul in 920 AH.

[1923] circa 10d. or 11d. Bābur left himself stripped so bare by his far-flung largess that he was nick-named Qalandar (Firishta).

[1924] Badāyūnī says of him (Bib. Ind. ed. i, 340) that he was kāfir kalīma-gū, a pagan making the Muḥammadan Confession of Faith, and that he had heard of him, in Akbar’s time from Bairām Khān-i-khānan, as kingly in appearance and poetic in temperament. He was killed fighting for Rānā Sangā at Kānwaha.

[1925] This is his family name.

[1926] i.e. not acting with Ḥasan Mīwātī.

[1927] Gul-badan says that the Khwāja several times asked leave on the ground that his constitution was not fitted for the climate of Hindūstān; that His Majesty was not at all, at all, willing for him to go, but gave way at length to his importunity.

[1928] in Patiāla, about 25 miles s.w. of Aṃbāla.

[1929] Shaikh Zain, Gul-badan and Erskine write Nau-kār. It was now that Khwāja Kalān conveyed money for the repair of the great dam at Ghaznī (f. 139).

[1930] The friends did not meet again; that their friendship weathered this storm is shewn by Bābur’s letter of f. 359. The Abūshqa says the couplet was inscribed on a marble tablet near the Ḥauẓ-i-khāṣ at the time the Khwāja was in Dihlī after bidding Bābur farewell in Āgra.

[1931] This quatrain is in the Rāmpūr Dīwān (q.v. index). The Abūshqa quotes the following as Khwāja Kalān’s reply, but without mentioning where the original was found. Cf. de Courteille, Dict. s.n. taskarī. An English version is given in my husband’s article Some verses by the Emperor Bābur (A. Q. R. January, 1911).

You shew your gaiety and your wit,

In each word there lie acres of charm.

Were not all things of Hind upside-down,

How could you in the heat be so pleasant on cold?

It is an old remark of travellers that everything in India is the opposite of what one sees elsewhere. Tīmūr is said to have remarked it and to have told his soldiers not to be afraid of the elephants of India, “For,” said he, “Their trunks are empty sleeves, and they carry their tails in front; in Hindustan everything is reversed” (H. Beveridge ibid.). Cf. App. Q.

[1932] Badāyūnī i, 337 speaks of him as unrivalled in music.

[1933] f. 267b.

[1934] aūrūq, which here no doubt represents the women of the family.

[1935] ‘ain parganalār.

[1936] Bābur’s advance, presumably.

[1937] The full amounts here given are not in all MSS., some scribes contenting themselves with the largest item of each gift (Memoirs p. 337).

[1938] The ‘Id of Shawwāl, it will be remembered, is celebrated at the conclusion of the Ramẓān fast, on seeing the first new moon of Shawwāl. In A.H. 932 it must have fallen about July 11th 1526 (Erskine).

[1939] A square shawl, or napkin, of cloth of gold, bestowed as a mark of rank and distinction (Memoirs p. 338 n.); une tunique enrichie de broderies (Mémoires, ii, 240 n.).

[1940] kamar-shamshīr. This Steingass explains as sword-belt, Erskine by “sword with a belt”. The summary following shews that many weapons were given and not belts alone. There is a good deal of variation in the MSS. The Ḥai. MS. has not a complete list. The most all the lists show is that gifts were many.

[1941] f. 263b.

[1942] over the Ganges, a little above Anūp-shahr in the Buland-shahr district.

[1943] A seeming omission in the text is made good in my translation by Shaikh Zain’s help, who says Qāsim was sent to Court.

[1944] This quatrain is in the Rāmpūr Dīwān. It appears to pun on Bīāna and bī(y)ān.

[1945] Kandār is in Rājpūtāna; Abū’l-faẓl writes Kuhan-dār, old habitation.

[1946] This is the first time Bābur’s begs are called amīrs in his book; it may be by a scribe’s slip.

[1947] Chandwār is on the Jumna, between Āgra and Etāwah.

[1948] Here āqār-sūlār will stand for the waters which flow—sometimes in marble channels—to nourish plants and charm the eye, such for example as beautify the Tāj-maḥal pleasaunce.

[1949] Index s.n. The tālār is raised on pillars and open in front; it serves often for an Audience-hall (Erskine).

[1950] tāsh ‘imārat, which may refer to the extra-mural location of the house, or contrast it with the inner khilwat-khāna, the women’s quarters, of the next sentence. The point is noted as one concerning the use of the word tāsh (Index s.n.). I have found no instance in which it is certain that Bābur uses tāsh, a stone or rock, as an adjective. On f. 301 he writes tāshdīn ‘imārat, house-of-stone, which the Persian text renders by ‘imārat-i-sangīn. Wherever tāsh can be translated as meaning outer, this accords with Bābur’s usual diction.

[1951] bāghcha (Index s.n.). That Bābur was the admitted pioneer of orderly gardens in India is shewn by the 30th Āyīn, On Perfumes:—“After the foot-prints of Firdaus-makānī (Bābur) had added to the glory of Hindūstān, embellishment by avenues and landscape-gardening was seen, while heart-expanding buildings and the sound of falling-waters widened the eyes of beholders.”

[1952] Perhaps gaz, each somewhat less than 36 inches.

[1953] The more familiar Indian name is baoli. Such wells attracted Peter Mundy’s attention; Yule gives an account of their names and plan (Mundy’s Travels in Asia, Hakluyt Society, ed. R. C. Temple, and Yule’s Hobson Jobson s.n. Bowly). Bābur’s account of his great wāīn is not easy to translate; his interpreters vary from one another; probably no one of them has felt assured of translating correctly.

[1954] i.e. the one across the river.

[1955] tāsh masjid; this, unless some adjectival affix (e.g. dīn) has been omitted by the scribe, I incline to read as meaning extra, supplementary, or outer, not as “mosque-of-stone”.

[1956] or Jājmāwa, the old name for the sub-district of Kānhpūr (Cawnpur).

[1957] i.e. of the Corps of Braves.

[1958] Dilmāū is on the left bank of the Ganges, s.e. from Bareilly (Erskine).

[1959] Marv-nīng bundī-nī bāghlāb, which Erskine renders by “Having settled the revenue of Merv”, and de Courteille by, “Aprés avoir occupé Merv.” Were the year’s revenues compressed into a 40 to 50 days collection?

[1960] i.e. those who had part in his brother’s murder. Cf. Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad’s T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī and the Mīrat-i-sikandarī (trs. History of Gujrat E. C. Bayley).

[1961] Elph. MS. f. 252; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 199b and 217 f. 208b; Mems. p. 343.

[1962] sīūnchī (Zenker). Fārūq was Māhīm’s son; he died in 934 A.H. before his father had seen him.

[1963] ṣalaḥ. It is clear from the “tāsh-awī” (Pers. trs. khāna-i-sang) of this mortar (qāzān) that stones were its missiles. Erskine notes that from Bābur’s account cannon would seem sometimes to have been made in parts and clamped together, and that they were frequently formed of iron bars strongly compacted into a circular shape. The accoutrement (ṣalaḥ) presumably was the addition of fittings.

[1964] About £40,000 sterling (Erskine).

[1965] The MSS. write Ṣafar but it seems probable that Muḥarram should be substituted for this; one ground for not accepting Ṣafar being that it breaks the consecutive order of dates, another that Ṣafar allows what seems a long time for the journey from near Dilmāū to Āgra. All MSS. I have seen give the 8th as the day of the month but Erskine has 20th. In this part of Bābur’s writings dates are sparse; it is a narrative and not a diary.

[1966] This phrase, foreign to Bābur’s diction, smacks of a Court-Persian milieu.

[1967] Here the Elph. MS. has Ṣafar Muḥarram (f. 253), as has also I.O. 215 f. 200b, but it seems unsafe to take this as an al Ṣafarānī extension of Muḥarram because Muḥ.-Ṣafar 24th was not a Wednesday. As in the passage noted just above, it seems likely that Muḥarram is right.

[1968] Cf. f. 15b note to Qaṃbar-i-‘alī. The title Akhta-begī is to be found translated by “Master of the Horse”, but this would not suit both uses of akhta in the above sentence. Cf. Shaw’s Vocabulary.

[1969] i.e. Tahangaṛh in Karauli, Rājpūtāna.

[1970] Perhaps sipāhī represents Hindūstānī foot-soldiers.

[1971] Rafī‘u-d-dīn Ṣafawī, a native of Īj near the Persian Gulf, teacher of Abū’l-faẓl’s father and buried near Āgra (Āyīn-i-akbarī).

[1972] This phrase, again, departs from Bābur’s simplicity of statement.

[1973] About £5,000 (Erskine).

[1974] About £17,500 (Erskine).

[1975] Ḥai. MS. and 215 f. 201b, Hastī; Elph. MS. f. 254, and Ilminsky, p. 394, Aīmīshchī; Memoirs, p. 346, Imshiji, so too Mémoires, ii, 257.

[1976] About £5000 (Erskine). Bīānwān lies in the sūbah of Āgra.

[1977] Cf. f. 175 for Bābur’s estimate of his service.

[1978] Cf. f. 268b for Bābur’s clemency to him.

[1979] Firishta. (Briggs ii, 53) mentions that Asad had gone to T̤ahmāsp from Kābul to congratulate him on his accession. Shāh Ismā‘īl had died in 930 AH. (1524 AD.); the title Shāh-zāda is a misnomer therefore in 933 AH.—one possibly prompted by T̤ahmāsp’s youth.

[1980] The letter is likely to have been written to Māhīm and to have been brought back to India by her in 935 AH. (f. 380b). Some MSS. of the Pers. trs. reproduce it in Turkī and follow this by a Persian version; others omit the Turkī.

[1981] Turkī, būā. Hindī bawā means sister or paternal-aunt but this would not suit from Bābur’s mouth, the more clearly not that his epithet for the offender is bad-bakht. Gul-badan (H.N. f. 19) calls her “ill-omened demon”.

[1982] She may have been still in the place assigned to her near Āgra when Bābur occupied it (f. 269).

[1983] f. 290. Erskine notes that the tūla is about equal in weight to the silver rūpī.

[1984] It appears from the kitchen-arrangements detailed by Abū’l-faẓl, that before food was dished up, it was tasted from the pot by a cook and a subordinate taster, and next by the Head-taster.

[1985] The Turkī sentences which here follow the well-known Persian proverb, Rasīda būd balāī walī ba khair guz̤asht, are entered as verse in some MSS.; they may be a prose quotation.

[1986] She, after being put under contribution by two of Bābur’s officers (f. 307b) was started off for Kābul, but, perhaps dreading her reception there, threw herself into the Indus in crossing and was drowned. (Cf. A.N. trs. H. Beveridge Errata and addenda p. xi for the authorities.)

[1987] gil makhtūm, Lemnian earth, terra sigillata, each piece of which was impressed, when taken from the quarry, with a guarantee-stamp (Cf. Ency. Br. s.n. Lemnos).

[1988] tirīāq-i-fārūq, an antidote.

[1989] Index s.n.

[1990] Kāmrān was in Qandahār (Index s.n.). Erskine observes here that Bābur’s omission to give the name of Ibrāhīm’s son, is noteworthy; the son may however have been a child and his name not known to or recalled by Bābur when writing some years later.

[1991] f. 299b.

[1992] The Āyīn-i-akbarī locates this in the sarkār of Jūn-pūr, a location suiting the context. The second Persian translation (‘Abdu’r-raḥīm’s) has here a scribe’s skip from one “news” to another (both asterisked in my text); hence Erskine has an omission.

[1993] This is the Chār-bāgh of f. 300, known later as the Rām (Arām)-bāgh (Garden-of-rest).

[1994] Presumably he was coming up from Marwār.

[1995] This name varies; the Ḥai. MS. in most cases writes Qismatī, but on f. 267b, Qismatāī; the Elph. MS. on f. 220 has Q:s:mnāī; De Courteille writes Qismī.

[1996] artkāb qīldī, perhaps drank wine, perhaps ate opium-confections to the use of which he became addicted later on (Gulbadan’s Humāyūn-nāma f. 30b and 73b).

[1997] furṣatlār, i.e. between the occupation of Āgra and the campaign against Rānā Sangā.

[1998] Apparently the siege Bābur broke up in 931 AH. had been renewed by the Aūzbegs (f. 255b and Trs. Note s.a. 931 AH. section c).

[1999] These places are on the Khulm-river between Khulm and Kāhmard. The present tense of this and the following sentences is Babur’s.

[2000] f. 261.

[2001] Erskine here notes that if the ser Bābur mentions be one of 14 tūlas, the value is about £27; if of 24 tūlas, about £45.

[2002] T. chāpdūq. Cf. the two Persian translations 215 f. 205b and 217 f. 215; also Ilminsky, p. 401.

[2003] būlghān chīrīkī. The Rānā’s forces are thus stated by Tod (Rājastān; Annals of Marwār Cap. ix):—“Eighty thousand horse, 7 Rajas of the highest rank, 9 Raos, and 104 chieftains bearing the titles of Rawul and Rawut, with 500 war-elephants, followed him into the field.” Bābur’s army, all told, was 12,000 when he crossed the Indus from Kābul; it will have had accretions from his own officers in the Panj-āb and some also from other quarters, and will have had losses at Pānipat; his reliable kernel of fighting-strength cannot but have been numerically insignificant, compared with the Rājpūt host. Tod says that almost all the princes of Rājastān followed the Rānā at Kanwā.

[2004] dūrbātūr. This is the first use of the word in the Bābur-nāma; the defacer of the Elph. Codex has altered it to aūrātūr.

[2005] Shaikh Zain records [Abū’l-faẓl also, perhaps quoting from him] that Bābur, by varying diacritical points, changed the name Sīkrī to Shukrī in sign of gratitude for his victory over the Rānā. The place became the Fatḥpūr-sīkrī of Akbar.

[2006] Erskine locates this as 10 to 12 miles n.w. of Bīāna.

[2007] This phrase has not occurred in the B.N. before; presumably it expresses what has not yet been expressed; this Erskine’s rendering, “each according to the speed of his horse,” does also. The first Persian translation, which in this portion is by Muḥammad-qulī Mughūl Ḥiṣārī, translates by az daṃbal yak dīgar (I.O. 215, f. 205b); the second, ‘Abdu’r-rāḥīm’s, merely reproduces the phrase; De Courteille (ii, 272) appears to render it by (amirs) que je ne nomme pas. If my reading of T̤āhir-tibrī’s failure be correct (infra), Erskine’s translation suits the context.

[2008] The passage cut off by my asterisks has this outside interest that it forms the introduction to the so-called “Fragments”, that is, to certain Turkī matter not included in the standard Bābur-nāma, but preserved with the Kehr—Ilminsky—de Courteille text. As is well-known in Bāburiana, opinion has varied as to the genesis of this matter; there is now no doubt that it is a translation into Turkī from the (Persian) Akbar-nāma, prefaced by the above-asterisked passage of the Bābur-nāma and continuous (with slight omissions) from Bib. Ind. ed. i, 106 to 120 (trs. H. Beveridge i, 260 to 282). It covers the time from before the battle of Kanwā to the end of Abū’l-faẓl’s description of Bābur’s death, attainments and Court; it has been made to seem Bābur’s own, down to his death-bed, by changing the third person of A.F.’s narrative into the autobiographical first person. (Cf. Ilminsky, p. 403 l. 4 and p. 494; Mémoires ii, 272 and 443 to 464; JRAS. 1908, p. 76.)

A minute point in the history of the B.N. manuscripts may be placed on record here; viz. that the variants from the true Bābur-nāma text which occur in the Kehr-Ilminsky one, occur also in the corrupt Turkī text of I.O. No. 214 (JRAS 1900, p. 455).

[2009] chāpār kūmak yītmās, perhaps implying that the speed of his horses was not equal to that of Muḥibb-i-'alī’s. Translators vary as to the meaning of the phrase.

[2010] Erskine and de Courteille both give Must̤afa the commendation the Turkī and Persian texts give to the carts.

[2011] According to Tod’s Rājastān, negotiations went on during the interval, having for their object the fixing of a frontier between the Rānā and Bābur. They were conducted by a “traitor” Ṣalaḥ’d-dīn Tūār the chief of Raisin, who moreover is said to have deserted to Bābur during the battle.

[2012] Cf. f. 89 for Bābur’s disastrous obedience to astrological warning.

[2013] For the reading of this second line, given by the good MSS. viz. Tauba ham bī maza nīst, bachash, Ilminsky (p. 405) has Tauba ham bī maza, mast bakhis, which de Courteille [II, 276] renders by, “O ivrogne insensé! que ne goûtes-tu aussi à la pénitence?” The Persian couplet seems likely to be a quotation and may yet be found elsewhere. It is not in the Rāmpūr Dīwān which contains the Turkī verses following it (E. D. Ross p. 21).

[2014] kīchmāklīk, to pass over (to exceed?), to ford or go through a river, whence to transgress. The same metaphor of crossing a stream occurs, in connection with drinking, on f. 189b.

[2015] This line shews that Bābur’s renouncement was of wine only; he continued to eat confections (ma‘jūn).

[2016] Cf. f. 186b. Bābur would announce his renunciation in Dīwān; there too the forbidden vessels of precious metals would be broken. His few words leave it to his readers to picture the memorable scene.

[2017] This night-guard (‘asas) cannot be the one concerning whom Gul-badan records that he was the victim of a little joke made at his expense by Bābur (H. N. Index s.n.). He seems likely to be the Ḥājī Muḥ. ‘asas whom Abū’l-faẓl mentions in connection with Kāmrān in 953 AH. (1547 AD.). He may be the ‘asas who took charge of Bābur’s tomb at Āgra (cf. Gul-badan’s H. N. s.n. Muḥ. ‘Alī ‘asas t̤aghāī, and Akbar-nāma trs. i, 502).

[2018] saqālī qīrqmāqta u qūīmāqta. Erskine here notes that “a vow to leave the beard untrimmed was made sometimes by persons who set out against the infidels. They did not trim the beard till they returned victorious. Some vows of similar nature may be found in Scripture”, e.g. II Samuel, cap. 19 v. 24.

[2019] Index s.n. The tamghā was not really abolished until Jahāngīr’s time—if then (H. Beveridge). See Thomas’ Revenue Resources of the Mughal Empire.

[2020] There is this to notice here:—Bābur’s narrative has made the remission of the tamghā contingent on his success, but the farmān which announced that remission is dated some three weeks before his victory over Rānā Sangā (Jumāda II, 13th-March 16th). Manifestly Bābur’s remission was absolute and made at the date given by Shaikh Zain as that of the farmān. The farmān seems to have been despatched as soon as it was ready, but may have been inserted in Bābur’s narrative at a later date, together with the preceding paragraph which I have asterisked.

[2021] “There is a lacuna in the Turkī copy” (i.e. the Elphinstone Codex) “from this place to the beginning of the year 935. Till then I therefore follow only Mr. Metcalfe’s and my own Persian copies” (Erskine).

[2022] I am indebted to my husband for this revised version of the farmān. He is indebted to M. de Courteille for help generally, and specially for the references to the Qorān (q.v. infra).

[2023] The passages in italics are Arabic in the original, and where traced to the Qorān, are in Sale’s words.

[2024] Qorān, Sūrah XII, v. 53.

[2025] Sūrah LVII, v. 21.

[2026] Sūrah LVII, v. 15.

[2027] Sūrah VII, v. 140.

[2028] Sūrah II, v. 185.

[2029] These may be self-conquests as has been understood by Erskine (p. 356) and de Courteille (ii. 281) but as the Divine “acceptance” would seem to Bābur vouched for by his military success, “victories” may stand for his success at Kanwā.

[2030] Sūrah II, 177 where, in Sale’s translation, the change referred to is the special one of altering a legacy.

[2031] The words dīgūchī and yīgūchī are translated in the second Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī by sukhan-gūī and [wīlāyat]-khwār. This ignores in them the future element supplied by their component gū which would allow them to apply to conditions dependent on Bābur’s success. The Ḥai. MS. and Ilminsky read tīgūchī, supporter- or helper-to-be, in place of the yīgūchī, eater-to-be I have inferred from the khwār of the Pers. translation; hence de Courteille writes “amīrs auxquels incombait l’obligation de raffermir le gouvernement”. But Erskine, using the Pers. text alone, and thus having khwār before him, translates by, “amīrs who enjoyed the wealth of kingdoms.” The two Turkī words make a depreciatory “jingle”, but the first one, dīgūchī, may imply serious reference to the duty, declared by Muḥammad to be incumbent upon a wazīr, of reminding his sovereign “when he forgetteth his duty”. Both may be taken as alluding to dignities to be attained by success in the encounter from which wazīrs and amīrs were shrinking.

[2032] Firdausī’s Shāh-nāma [Erskine].

[2033] Also Chand-wāl; it is 25 m. east of Āgra and on the Jamna [T̤abaqāṭ-i-nāṣirī, Raverty, p. 742 n.9]

[2034] Probably, Overthrower of the rhinoceros, but if Gurg-andāz be read, of the wolf.

[2035] According to the Persian calendar this is the day the Sun enters Aries.

[2036] The practical purpose of this order of march is shewn in the account of the battle of Pānīpat, and in the Letter of Victory, f. 319.

[2037] kurohcha, perhaps a short kuroh, but I have not found Bābur using cha as a diminutive in such a case as kurohcha.

[2038] or Kānūa, in the Bīānā district and three marches from Bīāna-town. “It had been determined on by Rānā Sangrām Sīngh (i.e. Sangā) for the northern limit of his dominions, and he had here built a small palace.” Tod thus describes Bābur’s foe, “Sangā Rānā was of the middle stature, and of great muscular strength, fair in complexion, with unusually large eyes which appear to be peculiar to his descendants. He exhibited at his death but the fragments of a warrior: one eye was lost in the broil with his brother, an arm in action with the Lodī kings of Dehlī, and he was a cripple owing to a limb being broken by a cannon-ball in another; while he counted 80 wounds from the sword or the lance on various parts of his body” (Tod’s Rājastān, cap. Annals of Mewār).

[2039] Here M. de C. has the following note (ii, 273 n.); it supplements my own of f. 264 [n. 3]. “Le mot arāba, que j’ai traduit par chariot est pris par M. Leyden” (this should be Erskine) “dans le sens de ‘gun', ce que je ne crois pas exact; tout au plus signifierait-il affût” (gun-carriage). “Il me parait impossible d’admettre que Bāber eût à sa disposition une artillerie attelée aussi considérable. Ces arāba pouvaient servir en partie à transporter des pièces de campagne, mais ils avaient aussi une autre destination, comme on le voit par la suite du récit.” It does not appear to me that Erskine translates the word arāba by the word gun, but that the arābas (all of which he took to be gun-carriages) being there, he supposed the guns. This was not correct as the various passages about carts as defences show (cf. Index s.nn. arāba and carts).

[2040] It is characteristic of Bābur that he reproduces Shaikh Zain’s Fatḥ-nāma, not because of its eloquence but because of its useful details. Erskine and de Courteille have the following notes concerning Shaikh Zain’s farmān:—“Nothing can form a more striking contrast to the simple, manly and intelligent style of Baber himself, than the pompous, laboured periods of his secretary. Yet I have never read this Firmān to any native of India who did not bestow unlimited admiration on the official bombast of Zeineddin, while I have met with none but turks who paid due praise to the calm simplicity of Baber” [Mems. p. 359]. “Comme la précédente (farmān), cette pièce est rédigée en langue persane et offre un modèle des plus accomplis du style en usage dans les chancelleries orientales. La traduction d’un semblable morceau d'éloquence est de la plus grande difficulté, si on veut être clair, tout en restant fidèle à l’original.”

Like the Renunciation farmān, the Letter-of-victory with its preceding sentence which I have asterisked, was probably inserted into Bābur’s narrative somewhat later than the battle of Kānwa. Hence Bābur’s pluperfect-tense “had indited”. I am indebted to my husband for help in revising the difficult Fatḥ-nāma; he has done it with consideration of the variants between the earlier English and the French translations. No doubt it could be dealt with more searchingly still by one well-versed in the Qorān and the Traditions, and thus able to explain others of its allusions. The italics denote Arabic passages in the original; many of these are from the Qorān, and in tracing them M. de Courteille’s notes have been most useful to us.

[2041] Qorān, cap. 80, last sentence.

[2042] Shaikh Zain, in his version of the Bābur-nāma, styles Bābur Nawāb where there can be no doubt of the application of the title, viz. in describing Shāh T̤ahmāsp’s gifts to him (mentioned by Bābur on f. 305). He uses the title also in the farmān of renunciation (f. 313b), but it does not appear in my text, “royal” (fortune) standing for it (in loco p. 555, l. 10).

[2043] The possessive pronoun occurs several times in the Letter-of-victory. As there is no semblance of putting forward that letter as being Bābur’s, the pronoun seems to imply “on our side”.

[2044] The Bābur-nāma includes no other than Shaikh Zain’s about Kanwā. Those here alluded to will be the announcements of success at Milwat, Pānīpat, Dībālpūr and perhaps elsewhere in Hindūstān.

[2045] In Jūn-pūr (Āyīn-i-akbarī); Elliot & Dowson note (iv, 283-4) that it appears to have included, near Sikandarpūr, the country on both sides of the Gogra, and thence on that river’s left bank down to the Ganges.

[2046] That the word Nawāb here refers to Bābur and not to his lieutenants, is shewn by his mention (f. 278) of Sangā’s messages to himself.

[2047] Qorān, cap. 2, v. 32. The passage quoted is part of a description of Satan, hence mention of Satan in Shaikh Zain’s next sentence.

[2048] The brahminical thread.

[2049] khār-i-miḥnat-i-irtidād dar dāman. This Erskine renders by “who fixed thorns from the pangs of apostacy in the hem of their garments” (p. 360). Several good MSS. have khār, thorn, but Ilminsky has Ar. khimār, cymar, instead (p. 411). De Courteille renders the passage by “portent au pan de leurs habits la marque douloureuse de l’apostasie” (ii, 290). To read khimār, cymar (scarf), would serve, as a scarf is part of some Hindū costumes.

[2050] Qorān, cap. 69, v. 35.

[2051] M. Defrémery, when reviewing the French translation of the B.N. (Journal des Savans 1873), points out (p. 18) that it makes no mention of the “blessed ten”. Erskine mentions them but without explanation. They are the 'asharah mubash-sharah, the decade of followers of Muḥammad who “received good tidings”, and whose certain entry into Paradise he foretold.

[2052] Qorān, cap. 3, v. 20. M. Defrémery reads Shaikh Zain to mean that these words of the Qorān were on the infidel standards, but it would be simpler to read Shaikh Zain as meaning that the infidel insignia on the standards “denounce punishment” on their users.

[2053] He seems to have been a Rājpūt convert to Muḥammadanism who changed his Hindī name Silhādī for what Bābur writes. His son married Sangā’s daughter; his fiefs were Raisin and Sārangpūr; he deserted to Bābur in the battle of Kānwa. (Cf. Erskine’s History of India i, 471 note; Mirāt-i-sikandarī, Bayley’s trs. s.n.; Akbar-nāma, H.B.’s trs. i, 261; Tod’s Rājastān cap. Mewār.)

[2054] “Dejāl or al Masih al Dajjal, the false or lying Messiah, is the Muhammadan Anti-christ. He is to be one-eyed, and marked on the forehead with the letters K.F.R. signifying Kafer, or Infidel. He is to appear in the latter days riding on an ass, and will be followed by 70,000 Jews of Ispahān, and will continue on the Earth 40 days, of which one will be equal to a year, another to a month, another to a week, and the rest will be common days. He is to lay waste all places, but will not enter Mekka or Medina, which are to be guarded by angels. He is finally to be slain at the gate of Lud by Jesus, for whom the Musalmans profess great veneration, calling him the breath or spirit of God.—See Sale’s Introductory Discourse to the Koran” [Erskine].

[2055] Qorān, cap. 29, v. 5.

[2056] “This alludes to the defeat of [an Abyssinian Christian] Abraha the prince of Yemen who [in the year of Muḥammad’s birth] marched his army and some elephants to destroy the ka‘ba of Makka. ‘The Meccans,’ says Sale, ‘at the appearance of so considerable a host, retired to the neighbouring mountains, being unable to defend their city or temple. But God himself undertook the defence of both. For when Abraha drew near to Mecca, and would have entered it, the elephant on which he rode, which was a very large one and named Maḥmūd, refused to advance any nigher to the town, but knelt down whenever they endeavoured to force him that way, though he would rise and march briskly enough if they turned him towards any other quarter; and while matters were in this posture, on a sudden a large flock of birds, like swallows, came flying from the sea-coast, every-one of which carried three stones, one in each foot and one in its bill; and these stones they threw down upon the heads of Abraha’s men, certainly killing every one they struck.’ The rest were swept away by a flood or perished by a plague, Abraha alone reaching Senaa, where he also died” [Erskine]. The above is taken from Sale’s note to the 105 chapter of the Qorān, entitled “the Elephant”.

[2057] Presumably black by reason of their dark large mass.

[2058] Presumably, devouring as fire.

[2059] This is 50 m. long and blocked the narrow pass of the Caspian Iron-gates. It ends south of the Russian town of Dar-band, on the west shore of the Caspian. Erskine states that it was erected to repress the invasions of Yajuj and Mujuj (Gog and Magog).

[2060] Qorān, cap. lxi, v. 4.

[2061] Qorān, cap. ii, v. 4. Erskine appears to quote another verse.

[2062] Qorān, cap. xlviii, v. 1.

[2063] Index s.n.

[2064] Khirad, Intelligence or the first Intelligence, was supposed to be the guardian of the empyreal heaven (Erskine).

[2065] Chīn-tīmūr Chīngīz-khānid Chaghatāī is called Bābur’s brother because a (maternal-) cousin of Bābur’s own generation, their last common ancestor being Yūnas Khān.

[2066] Sulaimān Tīmūrid Mīrān-shāhī is called Bābur’s son because his father was of Bābur’s generation, their last common ancestor being Sl. Abū-sa‘id Mīrzā. He was 13 years old and, through Shāh Begīm, hereditary shāh of Badakhshān.

[2067] The Shaikh was able, it would appear, to see himself as others saw him, since the above description of him is his own. It is confirmed by Abū’l-faẓl and Badāyūnī’s accounts of his attainments.

[2068] The honourable post given to this amīr of Hind is likely to be due to his loyalty to Bābur.

[2069] Aḥmad may be a nephew of Yūsuf of the same agnomen (Index s.nn.).

[2070] I have not discovered the name of this old servant or the meaning of his seeming-sobriquet, Hindū. As a qūchīn he will have been a Mughūl or Turk. The circumstance of his service with a son of Maḥmūd Mīrān-shāhī (down to 905 AH.) makes it possible that he drew his name in his youth from the tract s.e. of Maḥmūd’s Ḥiṣār territory which has been known as Little Hind (Index s.n. Hind). This is however conjecture merely. Another suggestion is that as hindū can mean black, it may stand for the common qarā of the Turks, e.g. Qarā Barlās, Black Barlās.

[2071] I am uncertain whether Qarā-qūzī is the name of a place, or the jesting sobriquet of more than one meaning it can be.

[2072] Soul-full, animated; var. Ḥai. MS. khān-dār. No agnomen is used for Asad by Bābur. The Akbar-nāma varies to jāmadār, wardrobe-keeper, cup-holder (Bib. Ind. ed. i, 107), and Firishta to sar-jāmadar, head wardrobe-keeper (lith. ed. p. 209 top). It would be surprising to find such an official sent as envoy to ‘Irāq, as Asad was both before and after he fought at Kānwa.

[2073] son of Daulat Khān Yūsuf-khail Lūdī.

[2074] These are the titles of the 20th and 36th chapters of the Qorān; Sale offers conjectural explanations of them. The “family” is Muḥammad’s.

[2075] a Bāī-qarā Tīmūrid of Bābur’s generation, their last common ancestor being Tīmūr himself.

[2076] an Aūzbeg who married a daughter of Sl. Ḥusain M. Bāī-qarā.

[2077] It has been pointed out to me that there is a Chinese title of nobility Yūn-wāng, and that it may be behind the words jang-jang. Though the suggestion appears to me improbable, looking to the record of Bābur’s officer, to the prevalence of sobriquets amongst his people, and to what would be the sporadic appearance of a Chinese title or even class-name borne by a single man amongst them. I add this suggestion to those of my note on the meaning of the words (Index s.n. Muḥ. ‘Alī). The title Jūn-wāng occurs in Dr. Denison Ross’ Three MSS. from Kāshghar, p. 5, v. 5 and translator’s preface, p. 14.

[2078] Cf. f. 266 and f. 299. Yārāgī may be the name of his office, (from yārāq) and mean provisioner of arms or food or other military requirements.

[2079] or, Tardī yakka, the champion, Gr. monomachus (A. N. trs. i, 107 n.).

[2080] var. 1 watch and 2 g’harīs; the time will have been between 9 and 10 a.m.

[2081] jūldū ba nām al ‘azīz-i-barādar shud, a phrase not easy to translate.

[2082] viz. those chained together as a defence and probably also those conveying the culverins.

[2083] The comparison may be between the darkening smoke of the fire-arms and the heresy darkening pagan hearts.

[2084] There appears to be a distinction of title between the akhta-begī and the mīr-akhẉūr (master of the horse).

[2085] Qorān, cap. 14, v. 33.

[2086] These two men were in one of the flanking-parties.

[2087] This phrase “our brother” would support the view that Shaikh Zain wrote as for Bābur, if there were not, on the other hand, mention of Bābur as His Majesty, and the precious royal soul.

[2088] dīwānīān here may mean those associated with the wazīr in his duties: and not those attending at Court.

[2089] Qorān, cap. 14, v. 52.

[2090] Index s.n. chuhra (a brave).

[2091] hizabrān-i-besha yakrangī, literally, forest-tigers (or, lions) of one hue.

[2092] There may be reference here to the chains used to connect the carts into a defence.

[2093] The braves of the khāṣa tābīn were part of Bābur’s own centre.

[2094] perhaps the cataphract elephants; perhaps the men in mail.

[2095] Qorān, cap. 101, v. 54.

[2096] Qorān, cap. 101, v. 4.

[2097] bā andākhtan-i-sang u ẓarb-zan tufak bisyārī. As Bābur does not in any place mention metal missiles, it seems safest to translate sang by its plain meaning of stone.

[2098] Also, metaphorically, swords.

[2099] tīr. My husband thinks there is a play upon the two meanings of this word, arrow and the planet Mercury; so too in the next sentence, that there may be allusion in the kuākib s̤awābit to the constellation Pegasus, opposed to Bābur’s squadrons of horse.

[2100] The Fish mentioned in this verse is the one pictured by Muḥammadan cosmogony as supporting the Earth. The violence of the fray is illustrated by supposing that of Earth’s seven climes one rose to Heaven in dust, thus giving Heaven eight. The verse is from Firdausī’s Shāh-nāma, [Turner-Macan’s ed. i, 222]. The translation of it is Warner’s, [ii, 15 and n.]. I am indebted for the information given in this note to my husband’s long search in the Shāh-nāmā.

[2101] Qorān, cap. 3, v. 133.

[2102] Qorān, cap. 61, v. 13.

[2103] Qorān, cap. 48, v. 1.

[2104] Qorān, cap. 48, v. 3.

[2105] [see p. 572] farāsh. De Courteille, reading firāsh, translates this metaphor by comme un lit lorsqu’il est défait. He refers to Qorān, cap. 101, v. 3. A better metaphor for the breaking up of an army than that of moths scattering, one allowed by the word farāsh, but possibly not by Muḥammad, is vanished like bubbles on wine.

[2106] Bāgar is an old name for Dungarpūr and Bānswāra [G. of I. vi, 408 s.n. Bānṣwāra].

[2107] sic, Ḥai. MS. and may be so read in I.O. 217 f. 220b; Erskine writes Bikersi (p. 367) and notes the variant Nagersi; Ilminsky (p. 421) N:krsī; de Courteille (ii. 307) Niguersi.

[2108] Cf. f. 318b, and note, where it is seen that the stones which killed the lords of the Elephants were so small as to be carried in the bill of a bird like a swallow. Were such stones used in matchlocks in Bābur’s day?

[2109] guzāran, var. gurazān, caused to flee and hogs (Erskine notes the double-meaning).

[2110] This passage, entered in some MSS. as if verse, is made up of Qorān, cap. 17, v. 49, cap. 33, v. 38, and cap. 3, v. 122.

[2111] As the day of battle was Jumāda II. 13th (March 16th), the Fatḥ-nāma was ready and dated twelve days after that battle. It was started for Kābul on Rajab 9th (April 11th). Something may be said here appropriately about the surmise contained in Dr. Ilminsky’s Preface and M. de Courteille’s note to Mémoires ii, 443 and 450, to the effect that Bābur wrote a plain account of the battle of Kanwā and for this in his narrative substituted Shaikh Zain’s Fatḥ-nāma, and that the plain account has been preserved in Kehr’s Bābur-nāma volume [whence Ilminsky reproduced it, it was translated by M. de Courteille and became known as a “Fragment” of Bāburiana]. Almost certainly both scholars would have judged adversely of their suggestion by the light of to-day’s easier research. The following considerations making against its value, may be set down:—

(1) There is no sign that Bābur ever wrote a plain account of the battle or any account of it. There is against his doing so his statement that he inserts Shaikh Zain’s Fatḥ-nāma because it gives particulars. If he had written any account, it would be found preceding the Fatḥ-nāma, as his account of his renunciation of wine precedes Shaikh Zain’s Farmān announcing the act.

(2) Moreover, the “Fragment” cannot be described as a plain account such as would harmonize with Bābur’s style; it is in truth highly rhetorical, though less so as Shaikh Zain’s.

(3) The “Fragment” begins with a quotation from the Bābur-nāma (f.310b and n.), skips a good deal of Bābur’s matter preliminary to the battle, and passes on with what there can be no doubt is a translation in inferior Turkī of the Akbar-nāma account.

(4) The whole of the extra matter is seen to be continuous and not fragmentary, if it is collated with the chapter in which Abū’l-faẓl describes the battle, its sequel of events, the death, character, attainments, and Court of Bābur. Down to the death, it is changed to the first person so as to make Bābur seem to write it. The probable concocter of it is Jahāngīr.

(5) If the Fragment were Bābur’s composition, where was it when ‘Abdu-r-raḥīm translated the Bābur-nāma in 998 AH.-1590 AD.; where too did Abū’l-faẓl find it to reproduce in the Akbar-nāma?

(6) The source of Abū’l-faẓl’s information seems without doubt to be Bābur’s own narrative and Shaikh Zain’s Fatḥ-nāma. There are many significant resemblances between the two rhetoricians’ metaphors and details selected.

(7) A good deal might be said of the dissimilarities between Bābur’s diction and that of the “Fragment”. But this is needless in face of the larger and more circumstantial objections already mentioned.

(For a fuller account of the “Fragment” see JRAS. Jan. 1906 pp. 81, 85 and 1908 p. 75 ff.)

[2112] T̤ughrā means an imperial signature also, but would Bābur sign Shaikh Zain’s Fatḥ-i-nāma? His autograph verse at the end of the Rāmpūr Dīwān has his signature following it. He is likely to have signed this verse. Cf. App. Q. [Erskine notes that titles were written on the back of despatches, an unlikely place for the quatrain, one surmises.]

[2113] This is in the Rāmpūr dīwān (E.D.R. Plate 17). Dr. E. Denison Ross points out (p. 17 n.) that in the 2nd line the Ḥai. Codex varies from the Dīwān. The MS. is wrong; it contains many inaccuracies in the latter part of the Hindūstān section, perhaps due to a change of scribe.

[2114] These words by abjad yield 933. From Bābur’s use of the pluperfect tense, I think it may be inferred that (my) Sections a and b are an attachment to the Fatḥ-nāma, entered with it at a somewhat later date.

[2115] My translation of this puzzling sentence is tentative only.

[2116] This statement shews that the Dībālpūr affair occurred in one of the B.N. gaps, and in 930 AH. The words make 330 by abjad. It may be noted here that on f. 312b and notes there are remarks concerning whether Bābur’s remission of the tamghā was contingent on his winning at Kānwa. If the remission had been delayed until his victory was won, it would have found fitting mention with the other sequels of victory chronicled above; as it is not with these sequels, it may be accepted as an absolute remission, proclaimed before the fight. The point was a little uncertain owing to the seemingly somewhat deferred insertion in Bābur’s narrative of Shaikh Zain’s Farmān.

[2117] dā’ira, presumably a defended circle. As the word aūrdū [bracketed in the text] shows, Bābur used it both for his own and for Sangā’s camps.

[2118] Hence the Rānā escaped. He died in this year, not without suspicion of poison.

[2119] aīchīmnī khālī qīldīm, a seeming equivalent for English, “I poured out my spleen.”

[2120] var. malūk as e.g. in I.O. 217 f.225b, and also elsewhere in the Bābur-nāma.

[2121] On f. 315 the acts attributed to Ilīās Khān are said to have been done by a “mannikin called Rustam Khān”. Neither name appears elsewhere in the B.N.; the hero’s name seems a sarcasm on the small man.

[2122] Bābur so-calls both Ḥasan and his followers, presumably because they followed their race sympathies, as of Rājpūt origin, and fought against co-religionists. Though Ḥasan’s subjects, Meos, were nominally Muḥammadans, it appears that they practised some Hindu customs. For an account of Mīwāt, see Gazetteer of Ulwur (Alwar, Alūr) by Major P. W. Powlett.

[2123] Alwar being in Mīwāt, Bābur may mean that bodies were found beyond that town in the main portion of the Mīwāt country which lies north of Alwar towards Dihlī.

[2124] Major Powlett speaking (p. 9) of the revenue Mīwāt paid to Bābur, quotes Thomas as saying that the coins stated in Bābur’s Revenue Accounts, viz. 169,810,00 tankas were probably Sikandarī tankas, or Rs. 8,490,50.

[2125] This word appears to have been restricted in its use to the Khān-zādas of the ruling house in Mīwāt, and was not used for their subjects, the Meos (Powlett l.c. Cap. I.). The uses of “Mīwātī” and “Meo” suggest something analogous with those of “Chaghatāī” and “Mughūl” in Bābur’s time. The resemblance includes mutual dislike and distrust (Powlett l.c.).

[2126] qīlūrlār aīkān dūr. This presumptive past tense is frequently used by the cautious Bābur. I quote it here and in a few places near-following because it supports Shaw’s statement that in it the use of aīkān (īkān) reduces the positive affirmation of the perfect to presumption or rumour. With this statement all grammarians are not agreed; it is fully supported by the Bābur-nāma.

[2127] Contrast here is suggested between Sult̤āns of Dihlī & Hind; is it between the greater Turks with whom Bābur classes himself immediately below as a conqueror of Hind, and the Lūdī Sult̤āns of Dihlī?

[2128] The strength of the Tijāra hills towards Dihlī is historical (Powlett l.c. p. 132).

[2129] This is one of the names of the principal river which flows eastwards to the south of Alwar town; other names are Bārah and Rūparel. Powlett notes that it appears in Thorn’s Map of the battle of Laswarree (1803 AD.), which he reproduces on p. 146. But it is still current in Gurgaon, with also a variant Mānas-le, man-killer (G. of Gurgaon 1910 AD. ivA, p.6).

[2130] aūltūrūrlār aīkān dūr, the presumptive past tense.

[2131] f.308.

[2132] qīlghān aīkān dūr, the presumptive past tense.

[2133] Sult̤ān ātīghā juldū būlūb; Pers. trs. Juldū ba nām-i Sult̤ān shud. The juldū guerdon seems to be apart from the fief and allowance.

[2134] f. 315.

[2135] Bābur does not record this detail (f. 315).

[2136] f. 298b and f. 328b. Ja‘far is mentioned as Mahdī’s son by Gul-badan and in the Ḥabību’s-siyar iii, 311, 312.

[2137] f. 388b.

[2138] The town of Fīrūzpūr is commonly known as Fīrūzpūr-jhirka (Fīrūzpūr of the spring), from a small perennial stream which issues from a number of fissures in the rocks bordering the road through a pass in the Mīwāt hills which leads from the town viâ Tijāra to Rewārī (G. of Gurgaon, p. 249). In Abū’l-faẓl’s day there was a Hindū shrine of Mahadeo near the spring, which is still a place of annual pilgrimage. The Kūtila lake is called Kotla-jhil in the G. of G. (p. 7). It extends now 3 m. by 2-1/2 m. varying in size with the season; in Abū’l-faẓl’s day it was 4 kos (8 m.) round. It lies partly in the district of Nūh, partly in Gurgaon, where the two tracts join at the foot of the Alwar hills.

[2139] This is the frequently mentioned size for reservoirs; the measure here is probably the qārī, cir. a yard.

[2140] Bābur does not state it as a fact known to himself that the Mānas-nī falls into the Kūtila lake; it did so formerly, but now does not, tradition assigning a cause for the change (G. of G. p. 6). He uses the hear-say tense, kīrār aīmīsh.

[2141] Kharī and Toda were in Akbar’s sarkār of Rantaṃbhor.

[2142] Bhosāwar is in Bhurtpūr, and Chausa (or Jūsa) may be the Chausath of the Āyīn-i-akbarī, ii, 183.

[2143] As has been noted frequently, this phrase stands for artificial water-courses.

[2144] Certainly Trans-Hindū-kush lands; presumably also those of Trans-Indus, Kābul in chief.

[2145] aūstī; perhaps the reservoir was so built as to contain the bubbling spring.

[2146] Chūn jā’ī khẉush karda ām.

[2147] f. 315.

[2148] var. Janwār (Jarrett). It is 25 m. east of Āgra on the Muttra-Etāwa road (G. of I.).

[2149] kūcha-band, perhaps a barricade at the limit of a suburban lane.

[2150] This has been mentioned already (f. 327).

[2151] f. 315.

[2152] i.e. those professedly held for Bābur.

[2153] Or, according to local pronunciation, Badāyūn.

[2154] This is the old name of Shāhābād in Rāmpūr (G. of I. xxii, 197). The A.-i-A. locates it in Saṃbal. Cf. E. and D.’s History of India, iv, 384 n. and v. 215 n.

[2155] Perhaps the one in Sītapūr.

[2156] f. 305b.

[2157] As the Elphinstone Codex which is the treasure-house of Humāyūn’s notes, has a long lacuna into which this episode falls, it is not known if the culprit entered in his copy of the Bābur-nāma a marginal excuse for his misconduct (cf. f. 252 and n.); such excuse was likely to be that he knew he would be forgiven by his clement father.

[2158] f. 305b.

[2159] Kāmrān would be in Qandahār. Erskine notes that the sum sent to him would be about £750, but that if the coins were rūpīs, it would be £30,000.

[2160] qit̤a‘, for account of which form of poem see Blochmann’s translations of Saifī’s and Jāmī’s Prosody, p. 86.

[2161] Rāmpūr Dīwān (E. D. Ross’ ed. p. 16 and Plate 14a). I am uncertain as to the meaning of ll. 4 and 10. I am not sure that what in most MSS. ends line 4, viz. aūl dam, should not be read as aūlūm, death; this is allowed by Plate 14a where for space the word is divided and may be aūlūm. To read aūlūm and that the deserters fled from the death in Hind they were anxious about, has an answering phrase in “we still are alive”. Ll. 9 and 10 perhaps mean that in the things named all have done alike. [Ilminsky reads khāir nafsī for the elsewhere ḥaz̤z̤-nafsī.]

[2162] These are 20 attitudes (rak‘ah) assumed in prayer during Ramẓān after the Bed-time Prayer. The ablution (ghusl) is the bathing of the whole body for ceremonial purification.

[2163] This Feast is the ‘Id-i-fit̤ṛ, held at the breaking of the Ramẓān Fast on the 1st of Shawwāl.

[2164] Erskine notes that this is the earliest mention of playing-cards he can recall in oriental literature.

[2165] f. 339b.

[2166] The two varieties mentioned by Bābur seem to be Diospyrus melanoxylon, the wood of which is called tindu abnūs in Hindūstānī, and D. tomentosa, Hindi, tindu (Brandis s.nn.). Bārī is 19 m. west of Dūlpūr.

[2167] mī‘ād, perhaps the time at which the Shaikh was to appear before Bābur.

[2168] The Pers. trs. makes the more definite statement that what had to be read was a Section of the Qoran (wird). This was done with remedial aim for the illness.

[2169] As this statement needs comment, and as it is linked to matters mentioned in the Rāmpūr Dīwān, it seems better to remit remarks upon it to Appendix Q, Some matters concerning the Rāmpūr Dīwān.

[2170] risāla. See Appendix Q.

[2171] Elph. MS. lacuna; I.O. 215 lacuna and 217 f. 229; Mems. p. 373. This year’s narrative resumes the diary form.

[2172] There is some uncertainty about these names and also as to which adversary crossed the river. The sentence which, I think, shews, by its plural verb, that Humāyūn left two men and, by its co-ordinate participles, that it was they crossed the river, is as follows:—(Darwīsh and Yūsuf, understood) Qut̤b Sīrwānī-nī u bīr pāra rājalār-nī bīr daryā aūtūb aūrūshūb yakshī bāsīb tūrlār. Aūtūb, aūrūshūb and bāsīb are grammatically referable to the same subject, [whatever was the fact about the crossing].

[2173] bīr daryā; W.-i-B. 217 f. 229, yak daryā, one river, but many MSS. har daryā, every river. If it did not seem pretty certain that the rebels were not in the Miyān-dū-āb one would surmise the river to be “one river” of the two enclosing the tract “between the waters”, and that one to be the Ganges. It may be one near Saṃbhal, east of the Ganges.

[2174] var. Shīrwānī. The place giving the cognomen may be Sarwān, a thakurāt of the Mālwā Agency (G. of I.). Qut̤b of Sīrwān may be the Qut̤b Khān of earlier mention without the cognomen.

[2175] n.w. of Aligarh (Kūl). It may be noted here, where instances begin to be frequent, that my translation “we marched” is an evasion of the Turkī impersonal “it was marched”. Most rarely does Bābur write “we marched”, never, “I marched.”

[2176] in the Aligarh (Kūl) district; it is the Sikandara Rao of the A.-i-A. and the G. of I.

[2177] Rāmpūr Dīwān (E. D. Ross’ ed., p. 19, Plate 16b). This Dīwān contains other quatrains which, judging from their contents, may well be those Bābur speaks of as also composed in Saṃbal. See Appendix Q, Some matters concerning the Rāmpūr Dīwān.

[2178] These are aunts of Bābur, daughters of Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrān-shāhī.

[2179] Sikandarābād is in the Buland-shahr district of the United Provinces.

[2180] It is not clear whether Bābur returned from Sīkrī on the day he started for Jalīsīr; no question of distance would prevent him from making the two journeys on the Monday.

[2181] As this was the rendezvous for the army, it would be convenient if it lay between Āgra and Anwār; as it was 6 m. from Āgra, the only mapped place having approximately the name Jalīsīr, viz. Jalesar, in Etah, seems too far away.

[2182] Anwār would be suitably the Unwāra of the Indian Atlas, which is on the first important southward dip of the Jumna below Āgra. Chandwār is 25 m. east of Āgra, on the Muttra-Etāwah road (G. of I.); Jarrett notes that Tiefenthaler identifies it with Fīrūzābād (A.-i-A. ii, 183 n.).

[2183] In the district of Kālpī. The name does not appear in maps I have seen.

[2184] āghā, Anglicé, uncle. He was Sa‘īd Khān of Kāshghar. Ḥaidar M. says Bābā Sl. was a spoiled child and died without mending his ways.

[2185] From Kālpī Bābur will have taken the road to the s.w. near which now runs the Cawnpur (Kānhpūr) branch of the Indian Midland Railway, and he must have crossed the Betwa to reach Īrij (Irich, Indian Atlas, Sheet 69 N.W.).

[2186] Leaving Īrij, Bābur will have recrossed the Betwa and have left its valley to go west to Bāndīr (Bhander) on the Pahūj (Indian Atlas, Sheet 69 S.W.).

[2187] beneficent, or Muḥassan, comely.

[2188] The one man of this name mentioned in the B.N. is an amīr of Sl. Ḥusain Bāī-qarā.

[2189] It seems safe to take Kachwa [Kajwa] as the Kajwarra of Ibn Batūta, and the Kadwāha (Kadwaia) of the Indian Atlas, Sheet 52 N.E. and of Luard’s Gazetteer of Gwalior (i, 247), which is situated in 24° 58’ N. and 77° 57’ E. Each of the three names is of a place standing on a lake; Ibn Batūta’s lake was a league (4 m.) long, Bābur’s about 11 miles round; Luard mentions no lake, but the Indian Atlas marks one quite close to Kadwāha of such form as to seem to have a tongue of land jutting into it from the north-west, and thus suiting Bābur’s description of the site of Kachwa. Again,—Ibn Batūta writes of Kajwarra as having, round its lake, idol-temples; Luard says of Kadwāha that it has four idol-temples standing and nine in ruins; there may be hinted something special about Bābur’s Kachwa by his remark that he encouraged its people, and this speciality may be interaction between Muḥammadanism and Hindūism serving here for the purpose of identification. For Ibn Batūta writes of the people of Kajwarra that they were jogīs, yellowed by asceticism, wearing their hair long and matted, and having Muḥammadan followers who desired to learn their (occult?) secrets. If the same interaction existed in Bābur’s day, the Muḥammadan following of the Hindū ascetics may well have been the special circumstance which led him to promise protection to those Hindūs, even when he was out for Holy-war. It has to be remembered of Chandīrī, the nearest powerful neighbour of Kadwāha, that though Bābur’s capture makes a vivid picture of Hindūism in it, it had been under Muḥammadan rulers down to a relatively short time before his conquest. The jogīs of Kachwa could point to long-standing relations of tolerance by the Chandīrī Governors; this, with their Muḥammadan following, explains the encouragement Bābur gave them, and helps to identify Kachwa with Kajarra. It may be observed that Bābur was familiar with the interaction of the two creeds, witness his “apostates”, mostly Muḥammadans following Hindū customs, witness too, for the persistent fact, the reports of District-officers under the British Rāj. Again,—a further circumstance helping to identify Kajwarra, Kachwa and Kadwāha is that these are names of the last important station the traveller and the soldier, as well perhaps as the modern wayfarer, stays in before reaching Chandīrī. The importance of Kajwarra is shewn by Ibn Batūta, and of Kadwāha by its being a maḥāll in Akbar’s sarkār of Bāyawān of the ṣūba of Āgra. Again,—Kadwāha is the place nearest to Chandīrī about which Bābur’s difficulties as to intermediate road and jungle would arise. That intermediate road takes off the main one a little south of Kadwāha and runs through what looks like a narrow valley and broken country down to Bhamor, Bhurānpūr and Chandīrī. Again,—no bar to identification of the three names is placed by their differences of form, in consideration of the vicissitudes they have weathered in tongue, script, and transliteration. There is some ground, I believe, for surmising that their common source is kajūr, the date-fruit. [I am indebted to my husband for the help derived from Ibn Batūta, traced by him in Sanguinetti’s trs. iv, 33, and S. Lee’s trs. p. 162.]

(Two places similar in name to Kachwa, and situated on Bābur’s route viz. Kocha near Jhansi, and Kuchoowa north of Kadwāha (Sheet 69 S.W.) are unsuitable for his “Kachwa”, the first because too near Bandīr to suit his itinerary, the second because too far from the turn off the main-road mentioned above, because it has no lake, and has not the help in identification detailed above of Kadwāha.)

[2190] qūrūghīr which could mean also reserved (from the water?).

[2191] qāzān. There seems to have been one only; how few Bābur had is shewn again on f. 337.

[2192] Indian Atlas, Sheet 52 N.E. near a tributary of the Betwa, the Or, which appears to be Bābur’s Burhānpūr-water.

[2193] The bed of the Betwa opposite Chandīrī is 1050 ft. above the sea; the walled-town (qūrghān) of Chandīrī is on a table-land 250 ft. higher, and its citadel is 230 ft. higher again (Cunningham’s Archeological Survey Report, 1871 A.D. ii, 404).

[2194] The plan of Chandīrī illustrating Cunningham’s Report (see last note) allows surmise about the road taken by Bābur, surmise which could become knowledge if the names of tanks he gives were still known. The courtesy of the Government of India allows me to reproduce that plan [Appendix R, Chandīrī and Gwālīāwar].

[2195] He is said to have been Governor of Chandīrī in 1513 AD.

[2196] Here and in similar passages the word m:ljār or m:lchār is found in MSS. where the meaning is that of T. būljār. It is not in any dictionary I have seen; Mr. Irvine found it “obscure” and surmised it to mean “approach by trenches”, but this does not suit its uses in the Bābur-nāma of a military post, and a rendezvous. This surmise, containing, as it does, a notion of protection, links m:ljār in sense with Ar. malja'. The word needs expert consideration, in order to decide whether it is to be received into dictionaries, or to be rejected because explicable as the outcome of unfamiliarity in Persian scribes with T. būljār or, more Persico with narrowed vowels, bŭljăr. Shaw in his Vocabulary enters būljāq (būljār?), “a station for troops, a rendezvous, see malja',” thus indicating, it would seem, that he was aware of difficulty about m:ljār and būljāq (būljār?). There appears no doubt of the existence of a Turkī word būljār with the meanings Shaw gives to būljāq; it could well be formed from the root būl, being, whence follows, being in a place, posted. Maljā has the meaning of a standing-place, as well as those of a refuge and an asylum; both meanings seem combined in the m:ljār of f. 336b, where for matchlockmen a m:ljār was ordered “raised”. (Cf. Irvine’s Army of the Indian Moghuls p. 278.)

[2197] yāghdā; Pers. trs. sar-āshīb. Bābur’s remark seems to show that for effect his mortar needed to be higher than its object. Presumably it stood on the table-land north of the citadel.

[2198] shātū. It may be noted that this word, common in accounts of Bābur’s sieges, may explain one our friend the late Mr. William Irvine left undecided (l.c. p. 278), viz. shāt̤ūr. On p. 281 he states that nardubān is the name of a scaling-ladder and that Bābur mentions scaling ladders more than once. Bābur mentions them however always as shātū. Perhaps shāt̤ūr which, as Mr. Irvine says, seems to be made of the trunks of trees and to be a siege appliance, is really shātū u ... (ladder and ...) as in the passage under note and on f. 216b, some other name of an appliance following.

[2199] The word here preceding tūra has puzzled scribes and translators. I have seen the following variants in MSS.;—nūkrī or tūkrī, b:krī or y:krī, būkrī or yūkrī, būkrāī or yūkrāī, in each of which the k may stand for g. Various suggestions might be made as to what the word is, but all involve reading the Persian enclitic ī (forming the adjective) instead of Turkī līk. Two roots, tīg and yūg, afford plausible explanations of the unknown word; appliances suiting the case and able to bear names formed from one or other of these roots are wheeled mantelet, and head-strike (P. sar-kob). That the word is difficult is shewn not only by the variants I have quoted, but by Erskine’s reading naukarī tūra, “to serve the tūras,” a requisite not specified earlier by Bābur, and by de Courteille’s paraphrase, tout ce qui est nécessaire aux touras.

[2200] Sl. Nāṣiru’d-dīn was the Khīljī ruler of Mālwā from 906 to 916 A.H. (1500-1510 AD.).

[2201] He was a Rājpūt who had been prime-minister of Sl. Maḥmūd II. Khīljī (son of Nāṣīru’d-dīn) and had rebelled. Bābur (like some other writers) spells his name Mindnī, perhaps as he heard it spoken.

[2202] Presumably the one in the United Provinces. For Shamsābād in Gūālīār see Luard l.c. i, 286.

[2203] chīqtī; Pers. trs. bar āmad and, also in some MSS. namī bar āmad; Mems. p. 376, “averse to conciliation”; Méms. ii, 329, “s'élevèrent contre cette proposition.” So far I have not found Bābur using the verb chīqmāq metaphorically. It is his frequent verb to express “getting away”, “going out of a fort”. It would be a short step in metaphor to understand here that Medinī’s men “got out of it”, i.e. what Bābur offered. They may have left the fort also; if so, it would be through dissent.

[2204] f. 332.

[2205] I.O. 217, f. 231, inserts here what seems a gloss, “Tā īn jā Farsī farmūda” (gufta, said). As Bābur enters his speech in Persian, it is manifest that he used Persian to conceal the bad news.

[2206] The Illustrated London News of July 10th, 1915 (on which day this note is written), has an àpropos picture of an ancient fortress-gun, with its stone-ammunition, taken by the Allies in a Dardanelles fort.

[2207] The dū-tahī is the āb-duzd, water-thief, of f. 67. Its position can be surmised from Cunningham’s Plan [Appendix R].

[2208] For Bābur’s use of hand (qūl) as a military term see f. 209.

[2209] His full designation would be Shāh Muḥammad yūz-begī.

[2210] This will be flight from the ramparts to other places in the fort.

[2211] Bābur’s account of the siege of Chandīrī is incomplete, inasmuch as it says nothing of the general massacre of pagans he has mentioned on f. 272. Khẉāfī Khān records the massacre, saying, that after the fort was surrendered, as was done on condition of safety for the garrison, from 3 to 4000 pagans were put to death by Bābur’s troops on account of hostility shewn during the evacuation of the fort. The time assigned to the massacre is previous to the jūhar of 1000 women and children and the self-slaughter of men in Medinī Rāo’s house, in which he himself died. It is not easy to fit the two accounts in; this might be done, however, by supposing that a folio of Bābur’s MS. was lost, as others seem lost at the end of the narrative of this year’s events (q.v.). The lost folio would tell of the surrender, one clearly affecting the mass of Rājpūt followers and not the chiefs who stood for victory or death and who may have made sacrifice to honour after hearing of the surrender. Bābur’s narrative in this part certainly reads less consecutive than is usual with him; something preceding his account of the jūhar would improve it, and would serve another purpose also, since mention of the surrender would fix a term ending the now too short time of under one hour he assigns as the duration of the fighting. If a surrender had been mentioned, it would be clear that his “2 or 3 garīs” included the attacking and taking of the dū-tahī and down to the retreat of the Rājpūts from the walls. On this Bābur’s narrative of the unavailing sacrifice of the chiefs would follow in due order. Khẉāfī Khān is more circumstantial than Firishta who says nothing of surrender or massacre, but states that 6000 men were killed fighting. Khẉāfī Khān’s authorities may throw light on the matter, which so far does not hang well together in any narrative, Bābur’s, Firishta’s, or Khẉāfī Khān’s. One would like to know what led such a large body of Rājpūts to surrender so quickly; had they been all through in favour of accepting terms? One wonders, again, why from 3 to 4000 Rājpūts did not put up a better resistance to massacre. Perhaps their assailants were Turks, stubborn fighters down to 1915 AD.

[2212] For suggestion about the brevity of this period, see last note.

[2213] Clearly, without Bābur’s taking part in the fighting.

[2214] These words by abjad make 934. The Ḥai. MS. mistakenly writes Būd Chandīrī in the first line of the quatrain instead of Būd chandī. Khẉāfī Khān quotes the quatrain with slight variants.

[2215] Chandīrī t̤aurī wilāyat (dā?) wāqī‘ būlūb tūr, which seems to need dā, in, because the fort, and not the country, is described. Or there may be an omission e.g. of a second sentence about the walled-town (fort).

[2216] This is the “Kirat-sagar” of Cunningham’s Plan of Chandīrī; it is mentioned under this name by Luard (l.c. i, 210). “Kirat” represents Kirtī or Kirit Sīngh who ruled in Gūālīār from 1455 to 1479 AD., there also making a tank (Luard, l.c. i, 232).

[2217] For illustrative photographs see Luard, l.c. vol. i, part iv.

[2218] I have taken this sentence to apply to the location of the tanks, but with some doubt; they are on the table-land.

[2219] Bābur appears to have written Betwī, this form being in MSS. I have read the name to be that of the river Betwa which is at a considerable distance from the fort. But some writers dispraise its waters where Bābur praises.

[2220] T. qīā means a slope or slant; here it may describe tilted strata, such as would provide slabs for roofing and split easily for building purposes. (See next note.)

[2221] ‘imārat qīlmāq munāsib. This has been read to mean that the qīālar provide good sites (Mems. & Méms.), but position, distance from the protection of the fort, and the merit of local stone for building incline me to read the words quoted above as referring to the convenient lie of the stone for building purposes. (See preceding note.)

[2222] Chandīrī-dā judai (jady)-nīng irtiqā‘ī yīgīrma-bīsh darja dūr; Erskine, p. 378, Chanderi is situated in the 25th degree of N. latitude; de Courteille, ii, 334, La hauteur du Capricorne à Tchanderi est de 25 degrées. The latitude of Chandīrī, it may be noted, is 24° 43'. It does not appear to me indisputable that what Bābur says here is a statement of latitude. The word judai (or jady) means both Pole-star and the Sign Capricorn. M. de Courteille translates the quoted sentence as I have done, but with Capricorn for Pole-star. My acquaintance with such expressions in French does not allow me to know whether his words are a statement of latitude. It occurs to me against this being so, that Bābur uses other words when he gives the latitude of Samarkand (f. 44b); and also that he has shewn attention to the Pole-star as a guide on a journey (f. 203, where he uses the more common word Qut̤b). Perhaps he notes its lower altitude when he is far south, in the way he noted the first rise of Canopus to his view (f. 125).

[2223] Mallū Khān was a noble of Mālwā, who became ruler of Mālwā in 1532 or 1533 AD. [?], under the style of Qādir Shāh.

[2224] i.e. paid direct to the royal treasury.

[2225] This is the one concerning which bad news reached Bābur just before Chandīrī was taken.

[2226] This presumably is the place offered to Medinī Rāo (f. 333b), and Bikramājīt (f. 343).

[2227] Obviously for the bridge.

[2228] m:ljār (see f. 333 n.). Here the word would mean befittingly a protected standing-place, a refuge, such as matchlockmen used (f. 217 and Index s.n. arāba).

[2229] sīghīrūrdī, a vowel-variant, perhaps, of sūghūrūrdī.

[2230] f. 331b. This passage shews that Bābur’s mortars were few.

[2231] nufūr qūl-lār-dīn ham karka bīla rah rawā kīshī u āt aītīlār, a difficult sentence.

[2232] Afghānlār kūprūk bāghlāmāq-nī istib‘ād qīlīb tamaskhur qīlūrlār aīkāndūr. The ridicule will have been at slow progress, not at the bridge-making itself, since pontoon-bridges were common (Irvine’s Army of the Indian Moghuls).

[2233] tūīlāb; Pers. trs. uftān u khezān, limping, or falling and rising, a translation raising doubt, because such a mode of progression could hardly have allowed escape from pursuers.

[2234] Anglicé, on Friday night.

[2235] According to the Persian calendar, New-year’s-day is that on which the Sun enters Aries.

[2236] so-spelled in the Ḥai. MS.; by de Courteille Banguermādū; the two forms may represent the same one of the Arabic script.

[2237] or Gūī, from the context clearly the Gumti. Jarrett gives Godi as a name of the Gumti; Gūī and Godī may be the same word in the Arabic script.

[2238] Some MSS. read that there was not much pain.

[2239] I take this to be the Kali-Sarda-Chauka affluent of the Gogra and not its Sarju or Saru one. To so take it seems warranted by the context; there could be no need for the fords on the Sarju to be examined, and its position is not suitable.

[2240] Unfortunately no record of the hunting-expedition survives.

[2241] One historian, Aḥmad-i-yādgār states in his Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afāghina that Bābur went to Lāhor immediately after his capture of Chandīrī, and on his return journey to Āgra suppressed in the Panj-āb a rising of the Mundāhar (or, Mandhar) Rājpūts. His date is discredited by Bābur’s existing narrative of 934 AH. as also by the absence in 935 AH. of allusion to either episode. My husband who has considered the matter, advises me that the Lāhor visit may have been made in 936 or early in 937 AH. [These are a period of which the record is lost or, less probably, was not written.]

[2242] Elph. MS. f. 262; I. O. 215 f. 207b and 217 f. 234b; Mems. p. 382. Here the Elphinstone MS. recommences after a lacuna extending from Ḥai. MS. f. 312b.

[2243] See Appendix S:—Concerning the dating of 935 AH.

[2244] ‘Askarī was now about 12 years old. He was succeeded in Multān by his elder brother Kāmrān, transferred from Qandahār [Index; JRAS. 1908 p. 829 para. (1)]. This transfer, it is safe to say, was due to Bābur’s resolve to keep Kābul in his own hands, a resolve which his letters to Humāyūn (f. 348), to Kāmrān (f. 359), and to Khwāja Kalān (f. 359) attest, as well as do the movements of his family at this time. What would make the stronger government of Kāmrān seem now more “for the good of Multān” than that of the child ‘Askarī are the Bīlūchī incursions, mentioned somewhat later (f. 355b) as having then occurred more than once.

[2245] This will be his own house in the Garden-of-eight-paradises, the Chār-bāgh begun in 932 AH. (August 1526 AD.).

[2246] To this name Khwānd-amīr adds Aḥmadu’l-ḥaqīrī, perhaps a pen-name; he also quotes verses of Shihāb’s (Ḥabību’s-siyar lith. ed. iii, 350).

[2247] Khwānd-amīr’s account of his going into Hindūstān is that he left his “dear home” (Herāt) for Qandahār in mid-Shawwāl 933 AH. (mid-July 1527 AD.); that on Jumāda I. 10th 934 AH. (Feb. 1st 1528 AD.) he set out from Qandahār on the hazardous journey into Hindūstān; and that owing to the distance, heat, setting-in of the Rains, and breadth of rapid rivers, he was seven months on the way. He mentions no fellow-travellers, but he gives as the day of his arrival in Āgra the one on which Bābur says he presented himself at Court. (For an account of annoyances and misfortunes to which he was subjected under Aūzbeg rule in Herāt see Journal des Savans, July 1843, pp. 389, 393, Quatremère’s art.)

[2248] Concerning Gūālīār see Cunningham’s Archeological Survey Reports vol. ii; Louis Rousselet’s L’Inde des Rajas; Lepel Griffin’s Famous Monuments of Central India, especially for its photographs; Gazetteer of India; Luard’s Gazetteer of Gwalior, text and photographs; Travels of Peter Mundy, Hakluyt Society ed. R. C. Temple, ii, 61, especially for its picture of the fort and note (p. 62) enumerating early writers on Gūālīār. Of Persian books there is Jalāl Ḥiṣārī’s Tārīkh-i-Gwālīāwar (B.M. Add. 16,859) and Hirāman’s (B.M. Add. 16,709) unacknowledged version of it, which is of the B.M. MSS. the more legible.

[2249] Perhaps this stands for Gwālīāwar, the form seeming to be used by Jalāl Ḥiṣārī, and having good traditional support (Cunningham p. 373 and Luard p. 228).

[2250] tūshlānīb, i.e. they took rest and food together at mid-day.

[2251] This seems to be the conjoined Gambhīr and Bāngānga which is crossed by the Āgra-Dhūlpūr road (G. of I. Atlas, Sheet 34).

[2252] aīchtūq, the plural of which shews that more than one partook of the powders (safūf).

[2253] T. tālqān, Hindī sattu (Shaw). M. de Courteille’s variant translation may be due to his reading for tālqān, tālghāq, flot, agitation (his Dict. s.n.) and yīl, wind, for bīla, with.

[2254] in 933 AH. f. 330b.

[2255] “Each beaked promontory” (Lycidas). Our name “Selsey-bill” is an English instance of Bābur’s (not infrequent) tūmshūq, beak, bill of a bird.

[2256] No order about this Chār-bāgh is in existing annals of 934 AH. Such order is likely to have been given after Bābur’s return from his operations against the Afghāns, in his account of which the annals of 934 AH. break off.

[2257] The fort-hill at the northern end is 300 ft. high, at the southern end, 274 ft.; its length from north to south is 1-3/4 m.; its breadth varies from 600 ft. opposite the main entrance (Hātī-pūl) to 2,800 ft. in the middle opposite the great temple (Sās-bhao). Cf. Cunningham p. 330 and Appendix R, in loco, for his Plan of Gūālīār.

[2258] This Arabic plural may have been prompted by the greatness and distinction of Mān-sing’s constructions. Cf. Index s.nn. begāt and bāghāt.

[2259] A translation point concerning the (Arabic) word ‘imārat is that the words “palace”, “palais”, and “residence” used for it respectively by Erskine, de Courteille, and, previous to the Hindūstān Section, by myself, are too limited in meaning to serve for Bābur’s uses of it in Hindūstān; and this (1) because he uses it throughout his writings for buildings under palatial rank (e.g. those of high and low in Chandīrī); (2) because he uses it in Hindūstān for non-residential buildings (e.g. for the Bādalgarh outwork, f. 341b, and a Hindū temple ib.); and (3) because he uses it for the word “building” in the term building-stone, f. 335b and f. 339b. Building is the comprehensive word under which all his uses of it group. For labouring this point a truism pleads my excuse, namely, that a man’s vocabulary being characteristic of himself, for a translator to increase or diminish it is to intrude on his personality, and this the more when an autobiography is concerned. Hence my search here (as elsewhere) for an English grouping word is part of an endeavour to restrict the vocabulary of my translation to the limits of my author’s.

[2260] Jalāl Ḥiṣārī describes “Khwāja Raḥīm-dād” as a paternal-nephew of Mahdī Khwāja. Neither man has been introduced by Bābur, as it is his rule to introduce when he first mentions a person of importance, by particulars of family, etc. Both men became disloyal in 935 AH. (1529 AD.) as will be found referred to by Bābur. Jalāl Ḥiṣārī supplements Bābur’s brief account of their misconduct and Shaikh Muḥammad Ghaus̤' mediation in 936 AH. For knowledge of his contribution I am indebted to my husband’s perusal of the Tārīkh-i-Gwālīāwar.

[2261] Erskine notes that Indians and Persians regard moonshine as cold but this only faintly expresses the wide-spread fear of moon-stroke expressed in the Psalm (121 v. 6), “The Sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the Moon by night.”

[2262] Agarcha lūk balūk u bī sīyāq. Ilminsky [p. 441] has balūk balūk but without textual warrant and perhaps following Erskine, as he says, speaking generally, that he has done in case of need (Ilminsky’s Preface). Both Erskine and de Courteille, working, it must be remembered, without the help of detailed modern descriptions and pictures, took the above words to say that the buildings were scattered and without symmetry, but they are not scattered and certainly Mān-sing’s has symmetry. I surmise that the words quoted above do not refer to the buildings themselves but to the stones of which they are made. T. lūk means heavy, and T. balūk [? block] means a thing divided off, here a block of stone. Such blocks might be bī sīyāq, i.e. irregular in size. To take the words in this way does not contradict known circumstances, and is verbally correct.

[2263] The Rājas’ buildings Bābur could compare were Rāja Karna (or Kirtī)’s [who ruled from 1454 to 1479 AD.], Rāja Mān-sing’s [1486 to 1516 AD.], and Rāja Bikramājīt’s [1516 to 1526 AD. when he was killed at Panīpat].

[2264] The height of the eastern face is 100 ft. and of the western 60 ft. The total length from north to south of the outside wall is 300 ft.; the breadth of the residence from east to west 160 ft. The 300 ft. of length appears to be that of the residence and service-courtyard (Cunningham p. 347 and Plate lxxxvii).

[2265] kaj bīla āqārītīb. There can be little doubt that a white pediment would show up the coloured tiles of the upper part of the palace-walls more than would pale red sandstone. These tiles were so profuse as to name the building Chīt Mandīr (Painted Mandīr). Guided by Bābur’s statement, Cunningham sought for and found plaster in crevices of carved work; from which one surmises that the white coating approved itself to successors of Mān-sing. [It may be noted that the word Mandīr is in the same case for a translator as is ‘imārat (f. 339b n.) since it requires a grouping word to cover its uses for temple, palace, and less exalted buildings.]

[2266] The lower two storeys are not only backed by solid ground but, except near the Hātī-pūl, have the rise of ground in front of them which led Bābur to say they were “even in a pit” (chūqūr).

[2267] MSS. vary between har and bīr, every and one, in this sentence. It may be right to read bīr, and apply it only to the eastern façade as that on which there were most cupolas. There are fewer on the south side, which still stands (Luard’s photo. No. 37).

[2268] The ground rises steeply from this Gate to an inner one, called Hawā-pūl from the rush of air (hawā) through it.

[2269] Cunningham says the riders were the Rāja and a driver. Perhaps they were a mahout and his mate. The statue stood to the left on exit (chīqīsh).

[2270] This window will have been close to the Gate where no mound interferes with outlook.

[2271] Rooms opening on inner and open courts appear to form the third story of the residence.

[2272] T. chūqūr, hollow, pit. This storey is dark and unventilated, a condition due to small windows, absence of through draught, and the adjacent mound. Cunningham comments on its disadvantages.

[2273] Agarcha Hindūstānī takalluflār qīlīb tūrlār walī bī hawālīk-rāq yīrlār dūr. Perhaps amongst the pains taken were those demanded for punkhas. I regret that Erskine’s translation of this passage, so superior to my own in literary merit, does not suit the Turkī original. He worked from the Persian translation, and not only so, but with a less rigid rule of translation than binds me when working on Bābur’s ipsissima verba (Mems. p. 384; Cunningham p. 349; Luard p. 226).

[2274] The words aūrtā dā make apt contrast between the outside position of Mān-sing’s buildings which helped to form the fort-wall, and Bikramājīt’s which were further in except perhaps one wall of his courtyard (see Cunningham’s Plate lxxxiii).

[2275] Cunningham (p. 350) says this was originally a bāra-dūrī, a twelve-doored open hall, and must have been light. His “originally” points to the view that the hall had been altered before Bābur saw it but as it was only about 10 years old at that time, it was in its first form, presumably. Perhaps Bābur saw it in a bad light. The dimensions Cunningham gives of it suggest that the high dome must have been frequently ill-lighted.

[2276] The word tālār, having various applications, is not easy to match with a single English word, nor can one be sure in all cases what it means, a platform, a hall, or etc. To find an equivalent for its diminutive tālār-ghina is still more difficult. Raḥīm-dād’s tālār-ette will have stood on the flat centre of the dome, raised on four pillars or perhaps with its roof only so-raised; one is sure there would be a roof as protection against sun or moon. It may be noted that the dome is not visible outside from below, but is hidden by the continuation upwards of walls which form a mean-looking parallelogram of masonry.

[2277] T. tūr yūl. Concerning this hidden road see Cunningham p. 350 and Plate lxxxvii.

[2278] bāghcha. The context shews that the garden was for flowers. For Bābur’s distinctions between bāghcha, bāgh and baghāt, see Index s.nn.

[2279] shaft-ālū i.e. the rosy colour of peach-flowers, perhaps lip-red (Steingass). Bābur’s contrast seems to be between those red oleanders of Hindūstān that are rosy-red, and the deep red ones he found in Gūālīār.

[2280] kul, any large sheet of water, natural or artificial (Bābur). This one will be the Sūraj-kund (Sun-tank).

[2281] This is the Telī Mandīr, or Telingana Mandīr (Luard). Cf. Cunningham, p. 356 and Luard p. 227 for accounts of it; and G. of I. s.n. Telīagarhi for Telī Rājas.

[2282] This is a large outwork reached from the Gate of the same name. Bābur may have gone there specially to see the Gūjarī Mandīr said by Cunningham to have been built by Mān-sing’s Gūjar wife Mṛiga-nayāna (fawn-eyed). Cf. Cunningham p. 351 and, for other work done by the same Queen, in the s. e. corner of the fort, p. 344; Luard p. 226. In this place “construction” would serve to translate ‘imārat (f. 340 n.).

[2283] āb-duzd, a word conveying the notion of a stealthy taking of the water. The walls at the mouth of Urwā were built by Altamsh for the protection of its water for the fort. The date Bābur mentions (a few lines further) is presumably that of their erection.

[2284] Cunningham, who gives 57 ft. as the height of this statue, says Bābur estimated it at 20 gaz, or 40 ft., but this is not so. Bābur’s word is not gaz a measure of 24 fingers-breadth, but qārī, the length from the tip of the shoulder to the fingers-ends; it is about 33 inches, not less, I understand. Thus stated in qārīs Bābur’s estimate of the height comes very near Cunningham’s, being a good 55 ft. to 57 ft. (I may note that I have usually translated qārī by “yard”, as the yard is its nearest English equivalent. The Pers. trs. of the B. N. translates by gaz, possibly a larger gaz than that of 24 fingers-breadth i.e. inches.)

[2285] The statues were not broken up by Bābur’s agents; they were mutilated; their heads were restored with coloured plaster by the Jains (Cunningham p. 365; Luard p. 228).

[2286] rozan [or, aūz:n] ... tafarruj qīlīb. Neither Cunningham nor Luard mentions this window, perhaps because Erskine does not; nor is this name of a Gate found. It might be that of the Dhonda-paur (Cunningham, p. 339). The 1st Pers. trs. [I.O. 215 f. 210] omits the word rozan (or, auz:n); the 2nd [I.O. 217 f. 236b] renders it by jā’ī, place. Manifestly the Gate was opened by Bābur, but, presumably, not precisely at the time of his visit. I am inclined to understand that rozan ... tafarruj karda means enjoying the window formerly used by Muḥammadan rulers. If aūz:n be the right reading, its sense is obscure.

[2287] This will have occurred in the latter half of 934 AH. of which no record is now known.

[2288] He is mentioned under the name Asūk Mal Rājpūt, as a servant of Rānā Sangā by the Mirāt-i-sikandarī, lith. ed. p. 161. In Bayley’s Translation p. 273 he is called Awāsūk, manifestly by clerical error, the sentence being az jānib-i-au Asūk Mal Rājpūt dar ān (qila‘) būda....

[2289] ātā-līk, aūghūl-līk, i.e. he spoke to the son as a father, to the mother as a son.

[2290] The Mirāt-i-sikandarī (lith. ed. p. 234, Bayley’s trs. p. 372) confirms Bābur’s statement that the precious things were at Bikramājīt’s disposition. Perhaps they had been in his mother’s charge during her husband’s life. They were given later to Bahādur Shāh of Gujrāt.

[2291] The Telī Mandīr has not a cupola but a waggon-roof of South Indian style, whence it may be that it has the southern name Telingana, suggested by Col. Luard.

[2292] See Luard’s Photo. No. 139 and P. Mundy’s sketch of the fort p. 62.

[2293] This will be the Ghargarāj-gate which looks south though it is not at the south end of the fort-hill where there is only a postern approached by a flight of stone steps (Cunningham p. 332).

[2294] The garden will have been on the lower ground at the foot of the ramp and not near the Hātī-pūl itself where the scarp is precipitous.

[2295] Mūndīn kīchīkrāq ātlānīlghān aīkāndūr. This may imply that the distance mentioned to Bābur was found by him an over-estimate. Perhaps the fall was on the Mūrar-river.

[2296] Rope (Shaw); corde qui sert à attacher le bagage sur les chameaux (de Courteille); a thread of 20 cubits long for weaving (Steingass); I have the impression that an arghamchī is a horse’s tether.

[2297] For information about this opponent of Bābur in the battle of Kānwa, see the Asiatic Review, Nov. 1915, II. Beveridge’s art. Silhadī, and the Mirāt-i-sikandarī.

[2298] Colonel Luard has suggested to us that the Bābur-nāma word Sūkhjana may stand for Salwai or Sukhalhari, the names of two villages near Gūālīār.

[2299] Presumably of night, 6-9 p.m., of Saturday Muḥ. 18th-Oct. 2nd.

[2300] f. 330b and f. 339b.

[2301] Between the last explicit date in the text, viz. Sunday, Muḥ. 19th, and the one next following, viz. Saturday, Ṣafar 3rd, the diary of six days is wanting. The gap seems to be between the unfinished account of doings in Dhūlpūr and the incomplete one of those of the Monday of the party. For one of the intermediate days Bābur had made an appointment, when in Gūālīār (f. 343), with the envoys of Bikramājīt, the trysting-day being Muḥ. 23rd (i.e. 9 days after Muḥ. 14th). Bābur is likely to have gone to Bīāna as planned; that envoys met him there may be surmised from the circumstance that when negociations with Bikramājīt were renewed in Āgra (f. 345), two sets of envoys were present, a “former” one and a “later” one, and this although all envoys had been dismissed from Gūālīār. The “former” ones will have been those who went to Bīāna, were not given leave there, but were brought on to Āgra; the “later” ones may have come to Āgra direct from Ranthaṃbhor. It suits all round to take it that pages have been lost on which was the record of the end of the Dhūlpūr visit, of the journey to the, as yet unseen, fort of Bīāna, of tryst kept by the envoys, of other doings in Bīāna where, judging from the time taken to reach Sīkrī, it may be that the ma‘jūn party was held.

[2302] Anglicé, Tuesday after 6 p.m.

[2303] aghaz aīchīb nīma yīb, which words seem to imply the breaking of a fast.

[2304] Doubtless the garden owes its name to the eight heavens or paradises mentioned in the Qurān (Hughes’ Dictionary of Islām s.n. Paradise). Bābur appears to have reached Āgra on the 1st of Ṣafar; the 2nd may well have been spent on the home affairs of a returned traveller.

[2305] The great, or elder trio were daughters of Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā, Bābur’s paternal-aunts therefore, of his dutiful attendance on whom, Gul-badan writes.

[2306] “Lesser,” i.e. younger in age, lower in rank as not being the daughters of a sovereign Mīrzā, and held in less honour because of a younger generation.

[2307] Gul-badan mentions the arrival in Hindūstān of a khānīm of this name, who was a daughter of Sl. Maḥmūd Khān Chaghatāī, Bābur’s maternal-uncle; to this maternal relationship the word chīcha (mother) may refer. Yīnkā, uncle’s or elder brother’s wife, has occurred before (ff. 192, 207), chīcha not till now.

[2308] Cf. f. 344b and n.5 concerning the surmised movements of this set of envoys.

[2309] This promise was first proffered in Gūālīār (f.343).

[2310] These may be Bāī-qarā kinsfolk or Mīrān-shāhīs married to them. No record of Shāh Qāsim’s earlier mission is preserved; presumably he was sent in 934 AH. and the record will have been lost with much more of that year’s. Khwānd-amīr may well have had to do with this second mission, since he could inform Bābur of the discomfort caused in Herī by the near leaguer of ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aūzbeg.

[2311] Albatta aūzūmīznī har nu‘ qīlīb tīgūrkūmīz dūr. The following versions of this sentence attest its difficulty:—Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī, 1st trs. I.O. 215 f. 212, albatta khūdrā ba har nū‘ī ka bāshad dar ān khūb khẉāhīm rasānad; and 2nd trs. I.O. 217 f. 238b, albatta dar har nu‘ karda khūdrā mī rasānīm; Memoirs p. 388, “I would make an effort and return in person to Kābul”; Mémoires ii, 356, je ferais tous mes efforts pour pousser en avant. I surmise, as Pāyanda-i-ḥasan seems to have done (1st Pers. trs. supra), that the passage alludes to Bābur’s aims in Hindūstān which he expects to touch in the coming spring. What seems likely to be implied is what Erskine says and more, viz. return to Kābul, renewal of conflict with the Aūzbeg and release of Khurāsān kin through success. As is said by Bābur immediately after this, T̤ahmāsp of Persia had defeated ‘Ubaidu’l-lah Aūzbeg before Bābur’s letter was written.

[2312] Sīmāb yīmāknī bunyād qīldīm, a statement which would be less abrupt if it followed a record of illness. Such a record may have been made and lost.

[2313] The preliminaries to this now somewhat obscure section will have been lost in the gap of 934 AH. They will have given Bābur’s instructions to Khwāja Dost-i-khāwand and have thrown light on the unsatisfactory state of Kābul, concerning which a good deal comes out later, particularly in Bābur’s letter to its Governor Khwāja Kalān. It may be right to suppose that Kāmrān wanted Kābul and that he expected the Khwāja to bring him an answer to his request for it, whether made by himself or for him, through some-one, his mother perhaps, whom Bābur now sent for to Hindūstān.

[2314] 934 AH.-August 26th 1528 AD.

[2315] The useful verb tībrāmāk which connotes agitation of mind with physical movement, will here indicate anxiety on the Khwāja’s part to fulfil his mission to Humāyūn.

[2316] Kāmrān’s messenger seems to repeat his master’s words, using the courteous imperative of the 3rd person plural.

[2317] Though Bābur not infrequently writes of e.g. Bengalīs and Aūzbegs and Turks in the singular, the Bengalī, the Aūzbeg, the Turk, he seems here to mean ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh, the then dominant Aūzbeg, although Kūchūm was Khāqān.

[2318] This muster preceded defeat near Jām of which Bābur heard some 19 days later.

[2319] Humāyūn’s wife was Bega Begīm, the later Ḥājī Begīm; Kāmrān’s bride was her cousin perhaps named Māh-afrūz (Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma f. 64b). The hear-say tense used by the messenger allows the inference that he was not accredited to give the news but merely repeated the rumour of Kābul. The accredited bearer-of-good-tidings came later (f. 346b).

[2320] There are three enigmatic words in this section. The first is the Sayyid’s cognomen; was he daknī, rather dark of hue, or zaknī, one who knows, or ruknī, one who props, erects scaffolding, etc.? The second mentions his occupation; was he a ghaiba-gar, diviner (Erskine, water-finder), a jība-gar, cuirass-maker, or a jibā-gar, cistern-maker, which last suits with well-making? The third describes the kind of well he had in hand, perhaps the stone one of f. 353b; had it scaffolding, or was it for drinking-water only (khwāralīq); had it an arch, or was it chambered (khwāzalīq)? If Bābur’s orders for the work had been preserved,—they may be lost from f. 344b, trouble would have been saved to scribes and translators, as an example of whose uncertainty it may be mentioned that from the third word (khwāralīq?) Erskine extracted “jets d’eau and artificial water-works”, and de Courteille “taillé dans le roc vif”.

[2321] All Bābur’s datings in Ṣafar are inconsistent with his of Muḥarram, if a Muḥarram of 30 days [as given by Gladwin and others].

[2322] ḥarārat. This Erskine renders by “so violent an illness” (p. 388), de Courteille by “une inflammation d’entrailles” (ii, 357), both swayed perhaps by the earlier mention, on Muḥ. 10th, of Bābur’s medicinal quick-silver, a drug long in use in India for internal affections (Erskine). Some such ailment may have been recorded and the record lost (f. 345b and n. 8), but the heat, fever, and trembling in the illness of Ṣafar 23rd, taken with the reference to last’s year’s attack of fever, all point to climatic fever.

[2323] aīndīnī (or, āndīnī). Consistently with the readings quoted in the preceding note, E. and de C. date the onset of the fever as Sunday and translate aīndīnī to mean “two days after”. It cannot be necessary however to specify the interval between Friday and Sunday; the text is not explicit; it seems safe to surmise only that the cold fit was less severe on Sunday; the fever had ceased on the following Thursday.

[2324] Anglicé, Monday after 6 p.m.

[2325] The Rashaḥāt-i-´aīnu’l-ḥayāt (Tricklings from the fountain of life) contains an interesting and almost contemporary account of the Khwāja and of his Wālidiyyah-risāla. A summary of what in it concerns the Khwāja can be read in the JRAS. Jan. 1916, H. Beveridge’s art. The tract, so far as we have searched, is now known in European literature only through Bābur’s metrical translation of it; and this, again, is known only through the Rāmpūr Dīwān. [It may be noted here, though the topic belongs to the beginning of the Bābur-nāma (f. 2), that the Rashaḥāt contains particulars about Aḥrārī’s interventions for peace between Bābur’s father ´Umar Shaikh and those with whom he quarrelled.]

[2326] “Here unfortunately, mr. Elphinstone’s Turki copy finally ends” (Erskine), that is to say, the Elphinstone Codex belonging to the Faculty of Advocates of Edinburgh.

[2327] This work, Al-buṣīrī’s famous poem in praise of the Prophet, has its most recent notice in M. René Basset’s article of the Encyclopædia of Islām (Leyden and London).

[2328] Bābur’s technical terms to describe the metre he used are, ramal musaddas makhbūn ´arūẓ and ẓarb gāh abtar gāh makhbūn muhz̤ūf wazn.

[2329] aūtkān yīl (u) har maḥal mūndāq ´āriẓat kīm būldī, from which it seems correct to omit the u (and), thus allowing the reference to be to last year’s illnesses only; because no record, of any date, survives of illness lasting even one full month, and no other year has a lacuna of sufficient length unless one goes improbably far back: for these attacks seem to be of Indian climatic fever. One in last year (934 AH.) lasting 25-26 days (f. 331) might be called a month’s illness; another or others may have happened in the second half of the year and their record be lost, as several have been lost, to the detriment of connected narrative.

[2330] Mr. Erskine’s rendering (Memoirs p. 388) of the above section shows something of what is gained by acquaintance which he had not, with the Rashaḥāt-i-´āinu’l-ḥayāt and with Bābur’s versified Wālidiyyah-risāla.

[2331] This gap, like some others in the diary of 935 AH. can be attributed safely to loss of pages, because preliminaries are now wanting to several matters which Bābur records shortly after it. Such are (1) the specification of the three articles sent to Naṣrat Shāh, (2) the motive for the feast of f. 351b, (3) the announcement of the approach of the surprising group of envoys, who appear without introduction at that entertainment, in a manner opposed to Bābur’s custom of writing, (4) an account of their arrival and reception.

[2332] Land-holder (see Hobson-Jobson s.n. talookdar).

[2333] The long detention of this messenger is mentioned in Bābur’s letter to Humāyūn (f. 349).

[2334] These words, if short a be read in Shăh, make 934 by abjad. The child died in infancy; no son of Humāyūn’s had survived childhood before Akbar was born, some 14 years later. Concerning Abū’l-wajd Fārighī, see Ḥabību’s-siyar, lith. ed. ii, 347; Muntakhabu’t-tawārikh, Bib. Ind. ed. i, 3; and Index s.n.

[2335] I am indebted to Mr. A. E. Hinks, Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, for the following approximate estimate of the distances travelled by Bīān Shaikh:—(a) From Kishm to Kābul 240m.—from Kābul to Peshāwar 175m.—from Peshāwar to Āgra (railroad distance) 759 m.—total 1174 m.; daily average cir. 38 miles; (b) Qila‘-i-z̤afar to Kābul 264m.—Kābul to Qandahār 316m.—total 580m.; daily average cir. 53 miles. The second journey was made probably in 913 AH. and to inform Bābur of the death of the Shāh of Badakhshān (f. 213b).

[2336] On Muḥ. 10th 934 AH.-Sep. 26th 1528 AD. For accounts of the campaign see Rieu’s Suppl. Persian Cat. under Histories of T̤ahmāsp (Churchill Collection); the Ḥabību’s-siyar and the ‘Ālam-ārāī-‘abbāsī, the last a highly rhetorical work, Bābur’s accounts (Index s.n. Jām) are merely repetitions of news given to him; he is not responsible for mistakes he records, such as those of f. 354. It must be mentioned that Mr. Erskine has gone wrong in his description of the battle, the starting-point of error being his reversal of two events, the encampment of T̤ahmāsp at Rādagān and his passage through Mashhad. A century ago less help, through maps and travel, was available than now.

[2337] tufak u arāba, the method of array Bābur adopted from the Rūmī-Persian model.

[2338] T̤ahmāsp’s main objective, aimed at earlier than the Aūzbeg muster in Merv, was Herāt, near which ‘Ubaid Khān had been for 7 months. He did not take the shortest route for Mashhad, viz. the Dāmghān-Sabzawār-Nīshāpūr road, but went from Dāmghān for Mashhad by way of Kālpūsh (‘Ālam-ārāī lith. ed. p. 45) and Rādagān. Two military advantages are obvious on this route; (1) it approaches Mashhad by the descending road of the Kechef-valley, thus avoiding the climb into that valley by a pass beyond Nīshāpūr on the alternative route; and (2) it passes through the fertile lands of Rādagān. [For Kālpūsh and the route see Fr. military map, Sheets Astarābād and Merv, n.e. of Bast̤ām.]

[2339] 7 m. from Kushan and 86 m. from Mashhad. As Lord Curzon reports (Persia, ii, 120) that his interlocutors on the spot were not able to explain the word “Radkan,” it may be useful to note here that the town seems to borrow its name from the ancient tower standing near it, the Mīl-i-rādagān, or, as Réclus gives it, Tour de méimandan, both names meaning, Tower of the bounteous (or, beneficent, highly-distinguished, etc.). (Cf. Vullers Dict. s.n. rād; Réclus’ L’Asie Antérieure p. 219; and O’Donovan’s Merv Oasis.) Perhaps light on the distinguished people (rādagān) is given by the Dābistān’s notice of an ancient sect, the Rādīyān, seeming to be fire-worshippers whose chief was Rād-gūna, an eminently brave hero of the latter part of Jāmshīd’s reign (800 B.C.?). Of the town Rādagān Daulat Shāh makes frequent mention. A second town so-called and having a tower lies north of Ispahān.

[2340] In these days of trench-warfare it would give a wrong impression to say that T̤ahmāsp entrenched himself; he did what Bābur did before his battles at Panīpat and Kānwa (q.v.).

[2341] The Aūzbegs will have omitted from their purview of affairs that T̤ahmāsp’s men were veterans.

[2342] The holy city had been captured by ‘Ubaid Khān in 933 AH. (1525 AD.), but nothing in Bīān Shaikh’s narrative indicates that they were now there in force.

[2343] Presumably the one in the Rādagān-meadow.

[2344] using the yada-tāsh to ensure victory (Index s.n.).

[2345] If then, as now, Scorpio’s appearance were expected in Oct.-Nov., the Aūzbegs had greatly over-estimated their power to check T̤ahmāsp’s movements; but it seems fairly clear that they expected Scorpio to follow Virgo in Sept.-Oct. according to the ancient view of the Zodiacal Signs which allotted two houses to the large Scorpio and, if it admitted Libra at all, placed it between Scorpio’s claws (Virgil’s Georgics i, 32 and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ii, 195.—H. B.).

[2346] It would appear that the Aūzbegs, after hearing that T̤ahmāsp was encamped at Rādagān, expected to interpose themselves in his way at Mashhad and to get their 20,000 to Rādagān before he broke camp. T̤āhmāsp’s swiftness spoiled their plan; he will have stayed at Rādagān a short time only, perhaps till he had further news of the Aūzbegs, perhaps also for commissariat purposes and to rest his force. He visited the shrine of Imām Reza, and had reached Jām in time to confront his adversaries as they came down to it from Zawarābād (Pilgrims'-town).

[2347] or, Khirjard, as many MSS. have it. It seems to be a hamlet or suburb of Jām. The ‘Ālam-ārāī (lith. ed. p. 40) writes Khusrau-jard-i-Jām (the Khusrau-throne of Jām), perhaps rhetorically. The hamlet is Maulānā ‘Abdu’r-raḥmān Jāmī’s birthplace (Daulat Shāh’s Taẕkirat, E. G. Browne’s ed. p. 483). Jām now appears on maps as Turbat-i-Shaikh Jāmī, the tomb (turbat) being that of the saintly ancestor of Akbar’s mother Ḥamīda-bānū.

[2348] The ‘Ālam-ārāī (lith. ed. p. 31) says, but in grandiose language, that ‘Ubaid Khān placed at the foot of his standard 40 of the most eminent men of Transoxania who prayed for his success, but that as his cause was not good, their supplications were turned backwards, and that all were slain where they had prayed.

[2349] Here the 1st Pers. trs. (I.O. 215 f. 214) mentions that it was Chalma who wrote and despatched the exact particulars of the defeat of the Aūzbegs. This information explains the presumption Bābur expresses. It shows that Chalma was in Ḥiṣār where he may have written his letter to give news to Humāyūn. At the time Bīān Shaikh left, the Mīrzā was near Kishm; if he had been the enterprising man he was not, one would surmise that he had moved to seize the chance of the sult̤āns’ abandonment of Ḥiṣār, without waiting for his father’s urgency (f. 348b). Whether he had done so and was the cause of the sult̤āns’ flight, is not known from any chronicle yet come to our hands. Chalma’s father Ibrāhīm Jānī died fighting for Bābur against Shaibāq Khān in 906 AH. (f. 90b).

As the sense of the name-of-office Chalma is still in doubt, I suggest that it may be an equivalent of aftābachī, bearer of the water-bottle on journeys. T. chalma can mean a water-vessel carried on the saddle-bow; one Chalma on record was a safarchī; if, in this word, safar be read to mean journey, an approach is made to aftābachī (fol. 15b and note; Blochmann’s A.-i-A. p. 378 and n. 3).

[2350] The copies of Bābur’s Turkī letter to Humāyūn and the later one to Khwāja Kalān (f. 359) are in some MSS. of the Persian text translated only (I.O. 215 f. 214); in others appear in Turkī only (I.O. 217 f. 240); in others appear in Turkī and Persian (B. M. Add. 26,000 and I.O. 2989); while in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. they are omitted altogether (p. 228).

[2351] Trans- and Cis-Hindukush. Pāyanda-ḥasan (in one of his useful glosses to the 1st Pers. trs.) amplifies here by “Khurāsān, Mā warā’u’n-nahr and Kābul”.

[2352] The words Bābur gives as mispronunciations are somewhat uncertain in sense; manifestly both are of ill-omen:—Al-amān itself [of which the alāmā of the Ḥai. MS. and Ilminsky maybe an abbreviation,] is the cry of the vanquished, “Quarter! mercy!”; Aīlāmān and also ālāman can represent a Turkmān raider.

[2353] Presumably amongst Tīmūrids.

[2354] Perhaps Bābur here makes a placatory little joke.

[2355] i.e. that offered by T̤ahmāsp’s rout of the Aūzbegs at Jām.

[2356] He was an adherent of Bābur. Cf. f. 353.

[2357] The plural “your” will include Humāyūn and Kāmrān. Neither had yet shewn himself the heritor of his father’s personal dash and valour; they had lacked the stress which shaped his heroism.

[2358] My husband has traced these lines to Niz̤āmī’s Khusrau and Shīrīn. [They occur on f. 256b in his MS. of 317 folios.] Bābur may have quoted from memory, since his version varies. The lines need their context to be understood; they are part of Shīrīn’s address to Khusrau when she refuses to marry him because at the time he is fighting for his sovereign position; and they say, in effect, that while all other work stops for marriage (kadkhudāī), kingly rule does not.

[2359] Aūlūghlār kūtārīmlīk kīrāk; 2nd Pers. trs. buzurgān bardāsht mī bāīd kardand. This dictum may be a quotation. I have translated it to agree with Bābur’s reference to the ages of the brothers, but aūlūghlār expresses greatness of position as well as seniority in age, and the dictum may be taken as a Turkī version of “Noblesse oblige”, and may also mean “The great must be magnanimous”. (Cf. de C.’s Dict. s.n. kūtārīmlīk.) [It may be said of the verb bardāshlan used in the Pers. trs., that Abū’l-faẕl, perhaps translating kūtārīmlīk reported to him, puts it into Bābur’s mouth when, after praying to take Humāyūn’s illness upon himself, he cried with conviction, “I have borne it away” (A.N. trs. H.B. i, 276).]

[2360] If Bābur had foreseen that his hard-won rule in Hindūstān was to be given to the winds of one son’s frivolities and the other’s disloyalty, his words of scant content with what the Hindūstān of his desires had brought him, would have expressed a yet keener pain (Rāmpūr Dīwān E.D.R.’s ed. p. 15 l. 5 fr. ft.).

[2361] Bostān, cap. Advice of Noshirwān to Hurmuz (H.B.).

[2362] A little joke at the expense of the mystifying letter.

[2363] For yā, Mr. Erskine writes be. What the mistake was is an open question; I have guessed an exchange of ī for ū, because such an exchange is not infrequent amongst Turkī long vowels.

[2364] That of reconquering Tīmūrid lands.

[2365] of Kūlāb; he was the father of Ḥaram Begīm, one of Gul-badan’s personages.

[2366] aūn altī gūnlūk m:ljār bīla, as on f. 354b, and with exchange of T. m:ljār for P. mī‘ād, f. 355b.

[2367] Probably into Rājpūt lands, notably into those of Ṣalāḥu’d-dīn.

[2368] tukhmalīq chakmānlār; as tukhma means both button and gold-embroidery, it may be right, especially of Hindūstān articles, to translate sometimes in the second sense.

[2369] These statements of date are consistent with Bābur’s earlier explicit entries and with Erskine’s equivalents of the Christian Era, but at variance with Gladwin’s and with Wüstenfeldt’s calculation that Rabī‘ II. 1st was Dec. 13th. Yet Gladwin (Revenue Accounts, ed. 1790 AD. p. 22) gives Rabī‘ I. 30 days. Without in the smallest degree questioning the two European calculations, I follow Bābur, because in his day there may have been allowed variation which finds no entry in methodical calendars. Erskine followed Bābur’s statements; he is likely nevertheless to have seen Gladwin’s book.

[2370] Erskine estimated this at £500, but later cast doubts on such estimates as being too low (History of India, vol. i, App. D.).

[2371] The bearer of the stamp (t̤amghā) who by impressing it gave quittance for the payment of tolls and other dues.

[2372] Either 24ft. or 36ft. according to whether the short or long qārī be meant (infra). These towers would provide resting-place, and some protection against ill-doers. They recall the two mīl-i-rādagān of Persia (f. 347 n. 9), the purpose of which is uncertain. Bābur’s towers were not “kos mīnārs”, nor is it said that he ordered each kuroh to be marked on the road. Some of the kos mīnārs on the “old Mughal roads” were over 30ft. high; a considerable number are entered and depicted in the Annual Progress Report of the Archæological Survey for 1914 (Northern Circle, p. 45 and Plates 44, 45). Some at least have a lower chamber.

[2373] Four-doored, open-on-all-sides. We have not found the word with this meaning in Dictionaries. It may translate H. chaukandī.

[2374] Erskine makes 9 kos (kurohs) to be 13-14 miles, perhaps on the basis of the smaller gaz of 24 inches.

[2375] altī yām-ātī bāghlāghāīlār which, says one of Erskine’s manuscripts, is called a dāk-choki.

[2376] Neither Erskine (Mems. p. 394), nor de Courteille (Méms. ii, 370) recognized the word Mubīn here, although each mentions the poem later (p. 431 and ii, 461), deriving his information about it from the Akbar-nāma, Erskine direct, de Courteille by way of the Turkī translation of the same Akbar-nāma passage, which Ilminsky found in Kehr’s volume and which is one of the much discussed “Fragments”, at first taken to be extra writings of Bābur’s (cf. Index in loco s.n. Fragments). Ilminsky (p. 455) prints the word clearly, as one who knows it; he may have seen that part of the poem itself which is included in Berésine’s Chrestomathie Turque (p. 226 to p. 272), under the title Fragment d’un poème inconnu de Bābour, and have observed that Bābur himself shews his title to be Mubīn, in the lines of his colophon (p. 271),

Chū bīān qīldīm āndā shar‘īyāt,

Nī ‘ajab gar Mubīn dīdīm āt?

(Since in it I have made exposition of Laws, what wonder if I named it Mubīn (exposition)?) Cf. Translator’s Note, p. 437. [Berésine says (Ch. T.) that he prints half of his “unique manuscrit” of the poem.]

[2377] The passage Bābur quotes comes from the Mubīn section on tayammum masā’la (purification with sand), where he tells his son sand may be used, Sū yurāq būlsā sīndīn aīr bīr mīl (if from thee water be one mīl distant), and then interjects the above explanation of what the mīl is. Two lines of his original are not with the Bābur-nāma.

[2378] The t̤anāb was thus 120 ft. long. Cf. A.-i-A. Jarrett i, 414; Wilson’s Glossary of Indian Terms and Gladwin’s Revenue Accounts, p. 14.

[2379] Bābur’s customary method of writing allows the inference that he recorded, in due place, the coming and reception of the somewhat surprising group of guests now mentioned as at this entertainment. That preliminary record will have been lost in one or more of the small gaps in his diary of 935 AH. The envoys from the Samarkand Aūzbegs and from the Persian Court may have come in acknowledgment of the Fātḥ-nāma which announced victory over Rānā Sangā; the guests from Farghāna will have accepted the invitation sent, says Gul-badan, “in all directions,” after Bābur’s defeat of Sl. Ibrāhīm Lūdī, to urge hereditary servants and Tīmūrid and Chīngīz-khānid kinsfolk to come and see prosperity with him now when “the Most High has bestowed sovereignty” (f. 293a; Gul-badan’s H.N. f. 11).

[2380] Hindū here will represent Rājpūt. D’Herbélot’s explanation of the name Qīzīl-bāsh (Red-head) comes in usefully here:—“Kezel basch or Kizil basch. Mot Turc qui signifie Tête rouge. Les Turcs appellent les Persans de ce nom, depuis qu’Ismaël Sofi, fondateur de la Dynastie des princes qui regnent aujourd’hui en Perse, commanda à ses soldats de porter un bonnet rouge autour duquel il y a une écharpe ou Turban à douze plis, en mémoire et à l’honneur des 12 Imams, successeurs d’Ali, desquels il prétendoit descendre. Ce bonnet s’appelle en Persan, Tāj, et fut institué l’an 9O7^e de l’Hég.” T̤ahmāsp himself uses the name Qīzīl-bāsh; Bābur does so too. Other explanations of it are found (Steingass), but the one quoted above suits its use without contempt. (Cf. f. 354 n. 3).

[2381] cir. 140-150ft. or more if the 36in. qārī be the unit.

[2382] Andropogon muricatus, the scented grass of which the roots are fitted into window spaces and moistened to mitigate dry, hot winds. Cf. Hobson-Jobson s.n. Cuscuss.

[2383] A nephew and a grandson of Aḥrāri’s second son Yahya (f. 347b) who had stood staunch to Bābur till murdered in 906 AH.-1500 AD. (80b). They are likely to be those to whom went a copy of the Mubīn under cover of a letter addressed to lawyers of Mā warā’u’n-nahr (f. 351 n. 1). The Khwājas were in Āgra three weeks after Bābur finished his metrical version of their ancestor’s Wālidiyyah-risāla; whether their coming (which must have been announced some time before their arrival), had part in directing his attention to the tract can only be surmised (f. 346).

[2384] He was an Aūzbeg (f. 371) and from his association here with a Bāī-qarā, and, later with Qāsim-i-ḥusain who was half Bāī-qarā, half Aūzbeg, seems likely to be of the latter’s family (Index s.nn.).

[2385] sāchāq kīūrdī (kīltūrdī?) No record survives to tell the motive for this feast; perhaps the gifts made to Bābur were congratulatory on the birth of a grandson, the marriage of a son, and on the generally-prosperous state of his affairs.

[2386] Gold, silver and copper coins.

[2387] Made so by bhang or other exciting drug.

[2388] ārāl, presumably one left by the winter-fall of the Jumna; or, a peninsula.

[2389] Scribes and translators have been puzzled here. My guess at the Turkī clause is aūrang aīralīk kīsh jabbah. In reading muslin, I follow Erskine who worked in India and could take local opinion; moreover gifts made in Āgra probably would be Indian.

[2390] For one Ḥāfiz̤ of Samarkand see f.237b.

[2391] Kūchūm was Khāqān of the Aūzbegs and had his seat in Samarkand. One of his sons, Abū-sa‘īd, mentioned below, had sent envoys. With Abū-sa‘īd is named Mihr-bān who was one of Kūchūm’s wives; Pulād was their son. Mihr-bān was, I think, a half-sister of Bābur, a daughter of ‘Umar Shaikh and Umīd of Andijān (f. 9), and a full-sister of Nāṣir. No doubt she had been captured on one of the occasions when Bābur lost to the Aūzbegs. In 925 AH.-1519 AD. (f. 237b) when he sent his earlier Dīwān to Pulād Sl. (Translator’s Note, p. 438) he wrote a verse on its back which looks to be addressed to his half-sister through her son.

[2392] T̤ahmāsp’s envoy; the title Chalabī shews high birth.

[2393] This statement seems to imply that the weight made of silver and the weight made of gold were of the same size and that the differing specific gravity of the two metals,—that of silver being cir. 10 and that of gold cir. 20—gave their equivalents the proportion Bābur states. Persian Dictionaries give sang (tāsh), a weight, but without further information. We have not found mention of the tāsh as a recognized Turkī weight; perhaps the word tāsh stands for an ingot of unworked metal of standard size. (Cf. inter alios libros, A.-i-A. Blochmann p. 36, Codrington’s Musalman Numismatics p. 117, concerning the miṣqāl, dīnār, etc.)

[2394] tarkāsh bīla. These words are clear in the Ḥai. MS. but uncertain in some others. E. and de C. have no equivalent of them. Perhaps the coins were given by the quiverful; that a quiver of arrows was given is not expressed.

[2395] Bābur’s half-nephew; he seems from his name Keepsake-of-nāṣir to have been posthumous.

[2396] 934 AH.-1528 AD. (f. 336).

[2397] Or, gold-embroidered.

[2398] Wife of Muḥammad-i-zamān Mīrzā.

[2399] These Highlanders of Asfara will have come by invitation sent after the victory at Panīpat; their welcome shows remembrance of and gratitude for kindness received a quarter of a century earlier. Perhaps villagers from Dikh-kat will have come too, who had seen the Pādshāh run barefoot on their hills (Index s.nn.).

[2400] Here gratitude is shewn for protection given in 910 AH.-1504 AD. to the families of Bābur and his men when on the way to Kābul. Qurbān and Shaikhī were perhaps in Fort Ajar (f. 122b, f. 126).

[2401] Perhaps these acrobats were gipsies.

[2402] This may be the one with which Sayyid Daknī was concerned (f. 346).

[2403] Bābur obviously made the distinction between pahr and pās that he uses the first for day-watches, the second for those of the night.

[2404] Anglicé, Tuesday, Dec. 21st; by Muḥammadan plan, Wednesday 22nd. Dhūlpūr is 34 m. s. of Āgra; the journey of 10hrs. 20m. would include the nooning and the time taken in crossing rivers.

[2405] The well was to fill a cistern; the 26 spouts with their 26 supports were to take water into (26?) conduits. Perhaps tāsh means that they were hewn in the solid rock; perhaps that they were on the outer side of the reservoir. They will not have been built of hewn stone, or the word would have been sangīn or tāshdīn.

[2406] One occupation of these now blank days is indicated by the date of the “Rāmpūr Dīwān”, Thursday Rabī‘ II. 15th (Dec. 27th).

[2407] The demon (or, athlete) sult̤ān of Rumelia (Rūmlū); once T̤ahmāsp’s guardian (Taẕkirat-i-T̤ahmāsp, Bib. Ind. ed. Phillott, p. 2). Some writers say he was put to death by T̤ahmāsp (æt. 12) in 933 AH.; if this were so, it is strange to find a servant described as his in 935 AH. (An account of the battle is given in the Sharaf-nāma, written in 1005 AH. by Sharaf Khān who was reared in T̤ahmāsp’s house. The book has been edited by Veliaminof-Zernof and translated into French by Charmoy; cf. Trs. vol. ii, part i, p. 555.—H. Beveridge.)

[2408] This name, used by one who was with the Shāh’s troops, attracts attention; it may show the composition of the Persian army; it may differentiate between the troops and their “Qīzīl-bāsh leader”.

[2409] Several writers give Sārū-qamsh (Charmoy, roseau jaune) as the name of the village where the battle was fought; Sharaf Khān gives ‘Umarābād and mentions that after the fight T̤ahmāsp spent some time in the meadow of Sārū-qamsh.

[2410] The number of T̤ahmāsp’s guns being a matter of interest, reference should be made to Bābur’s accounts of his own battles in which he arrayed in Rūmī (Ottoman) fashion; it will then be seen that the number of carts does not imply the number of guns (Index s.n. arāba, cart).

[2411] This cannot but represent T̤ahmāsp who was on the battle-field (see his own story infra). He was 14 years old; perhaps he was called Shāh-zāda, and not Shāh, on account of his youth, or because under guardianship (?). Readers of the Persian histories of his reign may know the reason. Bābur hitherto has always called the boy Shāh-zāda; after the victory at Jām, he styles him Shāh. Jūha Sl. (Taklū) who was with him on the field, was Governor of Ispahān.

[2412] If this Persian account of the battle be in its right place in Bābur’s diary, it is singular that the narrator should be so ill-informed at a date allowing facts to be known; the three sult̤āns he names as killed escaped to die, Kūchūm in 937 AH.-1530 AD., Abū-sa‘īd in 940 AH.-1533 AD., ‘Ubaid in 946 AH.-1539 AD. (Lane-Poole’s Muḥammadan Dynasties). It would be natural for Bābur to comment on the mistake, since envoys from two of the sult̤āns reported killed, were in Āgra. There had been time for the facts to be known: the battle was fought on Sep. 26th; the news of it was in Āgra on Nov. 23rd; envoys from both adversaries were at Bābur’s entertainment on Dec. 19th. From this absence of comment and for the reasons indicated in note 3 (infra), it appears that matter has been lost from the text.

[2413] T̤ahmāsp’s account of the battle is as follows (T.-i-T̤. p. 11):—“I marched against the Aūzbegs. The battle took place outside Jām. At the first onset, Aūzbeg prevailed over Qīzīl-bāsh. Ya‘qūb Sl. fled and Sl. Wālāma Taklū and other officers of the right wing were defeated and put to flight. Putting my trust in God, I prayed and advanced some paces.... One of my body-guard getting up with ‘Ubaid struck him with a sword, passed on, and occupied himself with another. Qūlīj Bahādur and other Aūzbegs carried off the wounded ‘Ubaid; Kūchkūnjī (Kūchūm) Khān and Jānī Khān Beg, when they became aware of this state of affairs, fled to Merv. Men who had fled from our army rejoined us that day. That night I spent on the barren plain (ṣaḥra'). I did not know what had happened to ‘Ubaid. I thought perhaps they were devising some stratagem against me.” The ‘A.-‘A. says that ‘Ubaid’s assailant, on seeing his low stature and contemptible appearance, left him for a more worthy foe.

[2414] Not only does some comment from Bābur seem needed on an account of deaths he knew had not occurred, but loss of matter may be traced by working backward from his next explicit date (Friday 19th), to do which shows fairly well that the “same day” will be not Tuesday the 16th but Thursday the 18th. Ghīāṣu’d-dīn’s reception was on the day preceding Friday 19th, so that part of Thursday’s record (as shewn by “on this same day”), the whole of Wednesday’s, and (to suit an expected comment by Bābur on the discrepant story of the Aūzbeg deaths) part of Tuesday’s are missing. The gap may well have contained mention of Ḥasan Chalabī’s coming (f. 357), or explain why he had not been at the feast with his younger brother.

[2415] qūrchī, perhaps body-guard, life-guardsman.

[2416] As on f. 350b (q.v. p. 628 n. 1) aūn altī gūnlūk bŭljār (or, m:ljār) bīla.

[2417] A sub-division of the Ballia district of the United Provinces, on the right bank of the Ghogrā.

[2418] i.e. in 16 days; he was 24 or 25 days away.

[2419] The envoy had been long in returning; Kanwā was fought in March, 1527; it is now the end of 1528 AD.

[2420] Rabī‘ II. 20th—January 1st 1529 AD.; Anglicé, Friday, after 6p.m.

[2421] This “Bengalī” is territorial only; Naṣrat Shāh was a Sayyid’s son (f.271).

[2422] Ismā‘īl Mītā (f. 357) who will have come with Mullā Maẕhab.

[2423] mī‘ād, cf. f. 350b and f. 354b. Ghīāṣu’d-dīn may have been a body-guard.

[2424] Lūdī Afghāns and their friends, including Bīban and Bāyazīd.

[2425] yūllūq tūrālīk; Memoirs, p. 398, “should act in every respect in perfect conformity to his commands”; Mémoires ii, 379, “chacun suivant son rang et sa dignité.”

[2426] tawāchī. Bābur’s uses of this word support Erskine in saying that “the tawāchī is an officer who corresponds very nearly to the Turkish chāwush, or special messenger” (Zenker, p. 346, col. iii) “but he was also often employed to act as a commissary for providing men and stores, as a commissioner in superintending important affairs, as an aide-de-camp in carrying orders, etc.”

[2427] Here the Ḥai. MS. has the full-vowelled form, būljār. Judging from what that Codex writes, būljār may be used for a rendezvous of troops, m:ljār or b:ljār for any other kind of tryst (f. 350, p. 628 n. 1; Index s.nn.), also for a shelter.

[2428] yāwūshūb aīdī, which I translate in accordance with other uses of the verb, as meaning approach, but is taken by some other workers to mean “near its end”.

[2429] Though it is not explicitly said, Chīn-tīmūr may have been met with on the road; as the “also” (ham) suggests.

[2430] To the above news the Akbar-nāma adds the important item reported by Humāyūn, that there was talk of peace. Bābur replied that, if the time for negotiation were not past, Humāyūn was to make peace until such time as the affairs of Hindūstān were cleared off. This is followed in the A. N. by a seeming quotation from Bābur’s letter, saying in effect that he was about to leave Hindūstān, and that his followers in Kābul and Tramontana must prepare for the expedition against Samarkand which would be made on his own arrival. None of the above matter is now with the Bābur-nāma; either it was there once, was used by Abū’l-faz̤l and lost before the Persian trss. were made; or Abū’l-faẓl used Bābur’s original, or copied, letter itself. That desire for peace prevailed is shewn by several matters:—T̤ahmāsp, the victor, asked and obtained the hand of an Aūzbeg in marriage; Aūzbeg envoys came to Āgra, and with them Turk Khwājas having a mission likely to have been towards peace (f. 357b); Bābur’s wish for peace is shewn above and on f. 359 in a summarized letter to Humāyūn. (Cf. Abū’l-ghāzī’s Shajarat-i-Turk [Histoire des Mongols, Désmaisons’ trs. p. 216]; Akbar-nāma, H. B.’s trs. i, 270.)

A here-useful slip of reference is made by the translator of the Akbar-nāma (l.c. n. 3) to the Fragment (Mémoires ii, 456) instead of to the Bābur-nāma translation (Mémoires ii, 381). The utility of the slip lies in its accompanying comment that de C.’s translation is in closer agreement with the Akbar-nāma than with Bābur’s words. Thus the Akbar-nāma passage is brought into comparison with what it is now safe to regard as its off-shoot, through Turkī and French, in the Fragment. When the above comment on their resemblance was made, we were less assured than now as to the genesis of the Fragment (Index s.n. Fragment).

[2431] Hind-āl’s guardian (G. B.’s Humāyūn-nāma trs. p. 106, n. 1).

[2432] Nothing more about Humāyūn’s expedition is found in the B. N.; he left Badakhshān a few months later and arrived in Āgra, after his mother (f. 380b), at a date in August of which the record is wanting.

[2433] under 6 m. from Āgra. Gul-badan (f. 16) records a visit to the garden, during which her father said he was weary of sovereignty. Cf. f. 331b, p. 589 n. 2.

[2434] kūrnīsh kīlkān kīshīlār.

[2435] MSS. vary or are indecisive as to the omitted word. I am unable to fill the gap. Erskine has “Sir Māwineh (or hair-twist)” (p. 399), De Courteille, Sir-mouïneh (ii, 382). Mūīna means ermine, sable and other fine fur (Shamsu’l-lūghāt, p 274, col. 1).

[2436] His brother Ḥaẓrat Makhdūmī Nūrā (Khwāja Khāwand Maḥmūd) is much celebrated by Ḥaidar Mīrzā, and Bābur describes his own visit in the words he uses of the visit of an inferior to himself. Cf. Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs. pp. 395, 478; Akbar-nāma trs., i, 356, 360.

[2437] No record survives of the arrival of this envoy or of why he was later in coming than his brother who was at Bābur’s entertainment. Cf. f. 361b.

[2438] Presumably this refers to the appliances mentioned on f. 350b.

[2439] f. 332, n. 3.

[2440] zarbaft m:l:k. Amongst gold stuffs imported into Hindūstān, Abū’l-faẓl mentions mīlak which may be Bābur’s cloth. It came from Turkistān (A.-i-A. Blochmann, p. 92 and n.).

[2441] A tang is a small silver coin of the value of about a penny (Erskine).

[2442] tānglāsī, lit. at its dawning. It is not always clear whether tānglāsī means, Anglicé, next dawn or day, which here would be Monday, or whether it stands for the dawn (daylight) of the Muḥammadan day which had begun at 6 p. m. on the previous evening, here Sunday. When Bābur records, e.g. a late audience, tānglāsī, following, will stand for the daylight of the day of audience. The point is of some importance as bearing on discrepancies of days, as these are stated in MSS., with European calendars; it is conspicuously so in Bābur’s diary sections.

[2443] risālat t̤arīqī bīla; their special mission may have been to work for peace (f. 359b, n. 1).

[2444] He may well be Kāmrān’s father-in-law Sl. ‘Alī Mīrzā T̤aghāī Begchīk.

[2445] nīmcha u takband. The tak-band is a silk or woollen girdle fastening with a “hook and eye” (Steingass), perhaps with a buckle.

[2446] This description is that of the contents of the “Rāmpūr Dīwān”; the tarjuma being the Wālidiyyah-risāla (f. 361 and n.). What is said here shows that four copies went to Kābul or further north. Cf. Appendix Q.

[2447] Sar-khat̤ may mean “copies” set for Kāmrān to imitate.

[2448] bīr pahr yāwūshūb aīdī; I.O. 215 f. 221, qarīb yak pās roz būd.

[2449] ākhar, a word which may reveal a bad start and uncertainty as to when and where to halt.

[2450] This, and not Chandwār (f. 331b), appears the correct form. Neither this place nor Ābāpūr is mentioned in the G. of I.’s Index or shewn in the I.S. Map of 1900 (cf. f. 331b n. 3). Chandawār lies s.w. of Fīrūzābād, and near a village called Ṣufīpūr.

[2451] Anglicé, Wednesday after 6 p.m.

[2452] or life-guardsman, body-guard.

[2453] This higher title for T̤ahmāsp, which first appears here in the B.N., may be an early slip in the Turkī text, since it occurs in many MSS. and also because “Shāh-zāda” reappears on f. 359.

[2454] Slash-face, balafré; perhaps Ibrāhīm Begchīk (Index s.n.), but it is long since he was mentioned by Bābur, at least by name. He may however have come, at this time of reunion in Āgra, with Mīrzā Beg T̤aghāī (his uncle or brother?), father-in-law of Kāmrān.

[2455] The army will have kept to the main road connecting the larger towns mentioned and avoiding the ravine district of the Jumna. What the boat-journey will have been between high banks and round remarkable bends can be learned from the G. of I. and Neave’s District Gazetteer of Mainpūrī. Rāprī is on the road from Fīrūzābād to the ferry for Bateswar, where a large fair is held annually. (It is misplaced further east in the I.S. Map of 1900.) There are two Fatḥpūrs, n. e. of Rāprī.

[2456] aūlūgh tūghāīnīng tūbī. Here it suits to take the Turkī word tūghāī to mean bend of a river, and as referring to the one shaped (on the map) like a soda-water bottle, its neck close to Rāprī. Bābur avoided it by taking boat below its mouth.—In neither Persian translation has tūghāī been read to mean a bend of a river; the first has az pāyān rūīa Rāprī, perhaps referring to the important ford (pāyān); the second has az zīr bulandī kalān Rāprī, perhaps referring to a height at the meeting of the bank of the ravine down which the road to the ford comes, with the high bank of the river. Three examples of tūghāī or tūqāī Shajrat-i-Turk, Fræhn’s imprint, pp. 106, 107, 119 (Désmaisons’ trs. pp. 204, 205, 230). In each instance Désmaisons renders it by coude, elbow, but one of the examples may need reconsideration, since the word has the further meanings of wood, dense forest by the side of a river (Vambéry), prairie (Zenker), and reedy plain (Shaw).

[2457] Blochmann describes the apparatus for marking lines to guide writing (A.-i-A. trs. p. 52 n. 5):—On a card of the size of the page to be written on, two vertical lines are drawn within an inch of the edges; along these lines small holes are pierced at regular intervals, and through these a string is laced backwards and forwards, care being taken that the horizontal strings are parallel. Over the lines of string the pages are placed and pressed down; the strings then mark the paper sufficiently to guide the writing.

[2458] tarkīb (nīng) khat̤ī bīla tarjuma bīlīr aūchūn. The Rāmpūr Dīwān may supply the explanation of the uncertain words tarkīb khat̤ī. The “translation” (tarjuma), mentioned in the passage quoted above, is the Wālidiyyah-risāla, the first item of the Dīwān, in which it is entered on crowded pages, specially insufficient for the larger hand of the chapter-headings. The number of lines per page is 13; Bābur now fashions a line-marker for 11. He has already despatched 4 copies of the translation (f. 357b); he will have judged them unsatisfactory; hence to give space for the mixture of hands (tarkīb khat̤ī), i.e. the smaller hand of the poem and the larger of the headings, he makes an 11 line marker.

[2459] Perhaps Aḥrārī’s in the Wālidiyyah-risāla, perhaps those of Muḥammad. A quatrain in the Rāmpūr Dīwān connects with this admonishment [Plate xiva, 2nd quatrain].

[2460] Jākhān (G. of Mainpūrī). The G. of Etāwa (Drake-Brockman) p. 213, gives this as some 18 m. n.w. of Etāwa and as lying amongst the ravines of the Jumna.

[2461] f. 359b allows some of the particulars to be known.

[2462] Mahdī may have come to invite Bābur to the luncheon he served shortly afterwards. The Ḥai. MS. gives him the honorific plural; either a second caller was with him or an early scribe has made a slip, since Bābur never so-honours Mahdī. This small point touches the larger one of how Bābur regarded him, and this in connection with the singular story Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad tells in his T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī about Khalīfa’s wish to supplant Humāyūn by Mahdī Khwāja (Index s.nn.).

[2463] yīgītlārnī shokhlūqgha sāldūq, perhaps set them to make fun. Cf. f. 366, yīgītlār bīr pāra shokhlūq qīldīlār. Muḥ. Shīrāzī (p. 323 foot) makes the startling addition of dar āb (andākhtīm), i.e. he says that the royal party flung the braves into the river.

[2464] The Gazetteer of Etāwa (Drake-Brockman) p. 186, s.n. Bāburpūr, writes of two village sites [which from their position are Mūrī-and-Adūsa], as known by the name Sarāī Bāburpūr from having been Bābur’s halting-place. They are 24m. to the s.e. of Etāwa, on the old road for Kālpī. Near the name Bāburpūr in the Gazetteer Map there is Muhuri (Mūrī?); there is little or no doubt that Sarāī Bāburpūr represents the camping-ground Mūrī-and-Adūsa.

[2465] This connects with Kītīn-qarā’s complaints of the frontier-begs (f. 361), and with the talk of peace (f. 356b).

[2466] This injunction may connect with the desired peace; it will have been prompted by at least a doubt in Bābur’s mind as to Kāmrān’s behaviour perhaps e.g. in manifested dislike for a Shīa‘. Concerning the style Shāh-zāda see f. 358, p. 643, n. 1.

[2467] Kāmrān’s mother Gul-rukh Begchīk will have been of the party who will have tried in Kābul to forward her son’s interests.

[2468] f. 348, p. 624, n. 2.

[2469] Kābul and Tramontana.

[2470] Presumably that of Shamsu’d-dīn Muḥammad’s mission. One of Bābur’s couplets expresses longing for the fruits, and also for the “running waters”, of lands other than Hindūstān, with conceits recalling those of his English contemporaries in verse, as indeed do several others of his short poems (Rāmpūr Dīwān Plate xvii A.).

[2471] Ḥai. MS. nā marbūt̤līghī; so too the 2nd Pers. trs. but the 1st writes wairānī u karābī which suits the matter of defence.

[2472] qūrghān, walled-town; from the maẓbūt following, the defences are meant.

[2473] viz. Governor Khwāja Kalān, on whose want of dominance his sovereign makes good-natured reflection.

[2474] ‘alūfa u qūnāl; cf. 364b.

[2475] Following aīlchī (envoys) there is in the Ḥai. MS. and in I.O. 217 a doubtful word, būmla, yūmla; I.O. 215 (which contains a Persian trs. of the letter) is obscure, Ilminsky changes the wording slightly; Erskine has a free translation. Perhaps it is yaumī, daily, misplaced (see above).

[2476] Perhaps, endow the Mosque so as to leave no right of property in its revenues to their donor, here Bābur. Cf. Hughes’ Dict. of Islām s.nn. sharī‘, masjid and waqf.

[2477] f. 139. Khwāja Kalān himself had taken from Hindūstān the money for repairing this dam.

[2478] sāpqūn ālīp; the 2nd Pers. trs. as if from sātqūn ālīp, kharīda, purchasing.

[2479] naz̤ar-gāh, perhaps, theatre, as showing the play enacted at the ford. Cf. ff. 137, 236, 248b. Tūtūn-dara will be Masson’s Tūtām-dara. Erskine locates Tūtūn-dara some 8 kos (16 m.) n. w. of Hūpīān (Ūpīān). Masson shews that it was a charming place (Journeys in Biluchistan, Afghanistan and the Panj-āb, vol. iii, cap. vi and vii).

[2480] jībachī. Bābur’s injunction seems to refer to the maintaining of the corps and the manufacture of armour rather than to care for the individual men involved.

[2481] Either the armies in Nīl-āb, or the women in the Kābul-country (f. 375).

[2482] Perhaps what Bābur means is, that both what he had said to ‘Abdu’l-lāh and what the quatrain expresses, are dissuasive from repentance. Erskine writes (Mems. p. 403) but without textual warrant, “I had resolution enough to persevere”; de Courteille (Mems. ii, 390), “Voici un quatrain qui exprime au juste les difficultés de ma position.”

[2483] The surface retort seems connected with the jacket, perhaps with a request for the gift of it.

[2484] Clearly what recalled this joke of Banāī’s long-silent, caustic tongue was that its point lay ostensibly in a baffled wish—in ‘Alī-sher’s professed desire to be generous and a professed impediment, which linked in thought with Bābur’s desire for wine, baffled by his abjuration. So much Banāī’s smart verbal retort shows, but beneath this is the double-entendre which cuts at the Beg as miserly and as physically impotent, a defect which gave point to another jeer at his expense, one chronicled by Sām Mīrzā and translated in Hammer-Purgstall’s Geschichte von schönen Redekünste Persiens, art. CLV. (Cf. f. 179-80.)—The word mādagī is used metaphorically for a button-hole; like nā-mardī, it carries secondary meanings, miserliness, impotence, etc. (Cf. Wollaston’s English-Persian Dictionary s.n. button-hole, where only we have found mādagī with this sense.)

[2485] The 1st Pers. trs. expresses “all these jokes”, thus including with the double-meanings of mādagī, the jests of the quatrain.

[2486] The 1st Pers. trs. fills out Bābur’s allusive phrase here with “of the Wālidiyyah”. His wording allows the inference that what he versified was a prose Turkī translation of a probably Arabic original.

[2487] Erskine comments here on the non-translation into Persian of Bābur’s letters. Many MSS., however, contain a translation (f. 348, p. 624, n. 2 and E.’s n. f. 377b).

[2488] Anglicé, Thursday after 6 p.m.

[2489] What would suit measurement on maps and also Bābur’s route is “Jumoheen” which is marked where the Sarāī Bāburpūr-Atsu-Phaphand road turns south, east of Phaphand (I.S. Map of 1900, Sheet 68).

[2490] var. Qabāq, Qatāk, Qanāk, to each of which a meaning might be attached. Bābur had written to Humāyūn about the frontier affair, as one touching the desired peace (f. 359).

[2491] This will refer to the late arrival in Āgra of the envoy named, who was not with his younger brother at the feast of f. 351b (f. 357, p. 641, n. 2).—As to T̤ahmāsp’s style, see f. 354, f. 358.

[2492] Shāh-qulī may be the ill-informed narrator of f. 354.

[2493] Both are marked on the southward road from Jumoheen (Jumandnā?) for Auraiya.

[2494] The old Kālpī pargana having been sub-divided, Dīrapūr is now in the district of Cawnpore (Kānhpūr).

[2495] That this operation was not hair-cutting but head-shaving is shewn by the verbs T. qīrmāq and its Pers. trs. tarāsh kardan. To shave the head frequently is common in Central Asia.

[2496] This will be Chaparghatta on the Dīrapūr-Bhognīpūr-Chaparghatta-Mūsanagar road, the affixes kada and ghatta both meaning house, temple, etc.

[2497] Māhīm, and with her the child Gul-badan, came in advance of the main body of women. Bābur seems to refer again to her assumption of royal style by calling her Walī, Governor (f. 369 and n.). It is unusual that no march or halt is recorded on this day.

[2498] or, Ārampūr. We have not succeeded in finding this place; it seems to have been on the west bank of the Jumna, since twice Bābur when on the east bank, writes of coming opposite to it (supra and f. 379). If no move was made on Tuesday, Jumāda II. 6th (cf. last note), the distance entered as done on Wednesday would locate the halting-place somewhere near the Akbarpūr of later name, which stands on a road and at a ferry. But if the army did a stage on Tuesday, of which Bābur omits mention, Wednesday’s march might well bring him opposite to Hamirpūr and to the “Rampur”-ferry. The verbal approximation of Ārampūr and “Rampur” arrests attention.—Local encroachment by the river, which is recorded in the District Gazetteers, may have something to do with the disappearance from these most useful books and from maps, of pargana Ādampūr (or, Ārampūr).

[2499] tūshlāb. It suits best here, since solitude is the speciality of the excursion, to read tūshmāk as meaning to take the road, Fr. cheminer.

[2500] da‘wī bīla; Mems. p. 404, challenge; Méms. ii, 391, il avait fait des façons, a truth probably, but one inferred only.

[2501] This will be more to the south than Kūra Khaṣ, the headquarters of the large district; perhaps it is “Koora Khera” (? Kūra-khirāj) which suits the route (I.S. Map, Sheet 88).

[2502] Perhaps Kunda Kanak, known also as “Kuria, Koria, Kura and Kunra Kanak” (D.G. of Fatḥpūr).

[2503] Haswa or Hanswa. The conjoint name represents two villages some 6m. apart, and is today that of their railway-station.

[2504] almost due east of Fatḥpūr, on the old King’s Highway (Bādshāhī Sar-rāh).

[2505] His ancestors had ruled in Jūnpūr from 1394 to 1476 AD., his father Ḥusain Shāh having been conquered by Sl. Sikandar Lūdī at the latter date. He was one of three rivals for supremacy in the East (Sharq), the others being Jalālu’d-dīn Nūhānī and Maḥmūd Lūdī,—Afghāns all three. Cf. Erskine’s History of India, Bābur, i, 501.

[2506] This name appears on the I.S. Map, Sheet 88, but too far north to suit Bābur’s distances, and also off the Sarāī Munda-Kusār-Karrah road. The position of Naubasta suits better.

[2507] Sher Khān was associated with Dūdū Bībī in the charge of her son’s affairs. Bābur’s favours to him, his son Humāyūn’s future conqueror, will have been done during the Eastern campaign in 934 AH., of which so much record is missing. Cf. Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. & D.’s History of India, iv, 301 et seq. for particulars of Sher Khān (Farīd Khān Sūr Afghān).

[2508] In writing “SL. MAḤMŪD”, Bābur is reporting his informant’s style, he himself calling Maḥmūd “Khān” only (f. 363 and f. 363b).

[2509] This will be the more northerly of two Kusārs marked as in Karrah; even so, it is a very long 6 kurohs (12m.) from the Dugdugī of the I.S. Map (cf. n. supra).

[2510] bīr pāra āsh u ta‘ām, words which suggest one of those complete meals served, each item on its separate small dish, and all dishes fitting like mosaic into one tray. T. āsh is cooked meat (f. 2 n. 1 and f. 343b); Ar. ta‘ām will be sweets, fruit, bread, perhaps rice also.

[2511] The yaktāī, one-fold coat, contrasts with the dū-tāhī, two-fold (A.-i-A. Bib. Ind. ed., p. 101, and Blochmann’s trs. p. 88).

[2512] This acknowledgement of right to the style Sult̤ān recognized also supremacy of the Sharqī claim to rule over that of the Nūḥānī and Lūdī competitors.

[2513] mīndīn bītī tūrgān waqāī'. This passage Teufel used to support his view that Bābur’s title for his book was Waqāī‘, and not Bābur-nāma which, indeed, Teufel describes as the Kazaner Ausgabe adoptirte Titel. Bābur-nāma, however, is the title [or perhaps, merely scribe’s name] associated both with Kehr’s text and with the Ḥaidarābād Codex.—I have found no indication of the selection by Bābur of any title; he makes no mention of the matter and where he uses the word waqāī‘ or its congeners, it can be read as a common noun. In his colophon to the Rāmpūr Dīwān, it is a parallel of ash‘ār, poems. Judging from what is found in the Mubīn, it may be right to infer that, if he had lived to complete his book—now broken off s.a. 914 AH. (f. 216b)—he would have been explicit as to its title, perhaps also as to his grounds for choosing it. Such grounds would have found fitting mention in a preface to the now abrupt opening of the Bābur-nāma (f. 1b), and if the Malfūzāt-i-tīmūrī be Tīmūr’s authentic autobiography, this book might have been named as an ancestral example influencing Bābur to write his own. Nothing against the authenticity of the Malfūzāt can be inferred from the circumstance that Bābur does not name it, because the preface in which such mention would be in harmony with e.g. his Walidiyyah preface, was never written. It might accredit the Malfūzāt to collate passages having common topics, as they appear in the Bābur-nāma, Malfūzāt-i-tīmūrī and Z̤afar-nāma (cf. E. & D.’s H. of I. iv, 559 for a discussion by Dr. Sachau and Prof. Dowson on the Malfūzāt). (Cf. Z.D.M. xxxvii, p. 184, Teufel’s art. Bābur und Abū’l-faẓl; Smirnow’s Cat. of Manuscrits Turcs, p. 142; Index in loco s.nn. Mubīn and Title.)

[2514] Koh-khirāj, Revenue-paying Koh (H. G. Nevill’s D. G. of Allāhābād, p. 261).

[2515] kīma aīchīdā, which suggests a boat with a cabin, a bajrā (Hobson-Jobson s.n. budgerow).

[2516] He had stayed behind his kinsman Khwāja Kalān. Both, as Bābur has said, were descendants of Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aḥrārī. Khwāja Kalān was a grandson of Aḥrārī’s second son Yahyā; Khwāja ‘Abdu’sh-shahīd was the son of his fifth, Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh (Khwājagān-khwāja). ‘Abdu’sh-shahīd returned to India under Akbar, received a fief, maintained 2,000 poor persons, left after 20 years, and died in Samarkand in 982 AH.-1574-5 AD. (A.-i-A., Blochmann’s trs. and notes, pp. 423, 539).

[2517] f. 363, f. 363b.

[2518] Not found on maps; OOjani or Ujahni about suits the measured distance.

[2519] Prayāg, Ilāhābād, Allāhābād. Between the asterisk in my text (supra) and the one following “ford” before the foliation mark f. 364, the Ḥai. MS. has a lacuna which, as being preceded and followed by broken sentences, can hardly be due to a scribe’s skip, but may result from the loss of a folio. What I have entered above between the asterisks is translated from the Kehr-Ilminsky text; it is in the two Persian translations also. Close scrutiny of it suggests that down to the end of the swimming episode it is not in order and that the account of the swim across the Ganges may be a survival of the now missing record of 934 AH. (f. 339). It is singular that the Pers. trss. make no mention of Pīāg or of Sīr-auliya; their omission arouses speculation, as to in which text, the Turkī or Persian, it was first tried to fill what remains a gap in the Ḥai. Codex. A second seeming sign of disorder is the incomplete sentence yūrtgha kīlīb, which is noted below. A third is the crowd of incidents now standing under “Tuesday”. A fourth, and an important matter, is that on grounds noted at the end of the swimming passage (p. 655 n. 3) it is doubtful whether that passage is in its right place.—It may be that some-one, at an early date after Bābur’s death, tried to fill the lacuna discovered in his manuscript, with help from loose folios or parts of them. Cf. Index s.n. swimming, and f. 377b, p. 680 n. 2.

[2520] The Chaghatāī sult̤āns will have been with ‘Askarī east of the Ganges.

[2521] tūr hawālīk; Mems. p. 406, violence of the wind; Méms. ii, 398, une température très agréable.

[2522] yūrtgha kīlīb, an incomplete sentence.

[2523] ārāl bār aīkāndūr, phrasing implying uncertainty; there may have been an island, or such a peninsula as a narrow-mouthed bend of a river forms, or a spit or bluff projecting into the river. The word ārāl represents Aīkī-sū-ārāsī, Miyān-dū-āb, Entre-eaux, Twixt-two-streams, Mesopotamia.

[2524] qūl; Pers. trss. dast andākhtan and dast. Presumably the 33 strokes carried the swimmer across the deep channel, or the Ganges was crossed higher than Pīāg.

[2525] The above account of Bābur’s first swim across the Ganges which is entered under date Jumāda II. 27th, 935 AH. (March 8th, 1529 AD.), appears misplaced, since he mentions under date Rajab 25th, 935 AH. (April 4th, 1529 AD. f. 366b), that he had swum the Ganges at Baksara (Buxar) a year before, i.e. on or close to Rajab 25th, 934 AH. (April 15th, 1528 AD.). Nothing in his writings shews that he was near Pīāg (Allāhābād) in 934 AH.; nothing indisputably connects the swimming episode with the “Tuesday” below which it now stands; there is no help given by dates. One supposes Bābur would take his first chance to swim the Ganges; this was offered at Qanauj (f. 336), but nothing in the short record of that time touches the topic. The next chance would be after he was in Aūd, when, by an unascertained route, perhaps down the Ghogrā, he made his way to Baksara where he says (f. 366b) he swam the river. Taking into consideration the various testimony noted, [Index s.n. swimming] there seems warrant for supposing that this swimming passage is a survival of the missing record of 934 AH. (f. 339). Cf. f. 377b, p. 680 and n. 2 for another surmised survival of 934 AH.

[2526] “Friday” here stands for Anglicé, Thursday after 6 p.m.; this, only, suiting Bābur’s next explicit date Sha‘bān 1st, Saturday.

[2527] The march, beginning on the Jumna, is now along the united rivers.

[2528] ẓarb-zanlīk arābalār. Here the carts are those carrying the guns.

[2529] From the particulars Bābur gives about the Tūs (Tons) and Karmā-nāśā, it would seem that he had not passed them last year, an inference supported by what is known of his route in that year:—He came from Gūālīār to the Kanār-passage (f. 336), there crossed the Jumna and went direct to Qanauj (f. 335), above Qanauj bridged the Ganges, went on to Bangarmāu (f. 338), crossed the Gūmtī and went to near the junction of the Ghogrā and Sardā (f. 338b). The next indication of his route is that he is at Baksara, but whether he reached it by water down the Ghogrā, as his meeting with Muḥ. Ma‘rūf Farmūlī suggests (f. 377), or by land, nothing shews. From Baksara (f. 366) he went up-stream to Chausa (f. 365b), on perhaps to Sayyidpūr, 2m. from the mouth of the Gūmtī, and there left the Ganges for Jūnpūr (f. 365). I have found nothing about his return route to Āgra; it seems improbable that he would go so far south as to near Pīāg; a more northerly and direct road to Fatḥpūr and Sarāī Bāburpūr may have been taken.—Concerning Bābur’s acts in 934 AH. the following item, (met with since I was working on 934 AH.), continues his statement (f. 338b) that he spent a few days near Aūd (Ajōdhya) to settle its affairs. The D.G. of Fyzābāa (H. E. Nevill) p. 173 says “In 1528 AD. Bābur came to Ajodhya (Aūd) and halted a week. He destroyed the ancient temple” (marking the birth-place of Rāma) “and on its site built a mosque, still known as Bābur’s Mosque.... It has two inscriptions, one on the outside, one on the pulpit; both are in Persian; and bear the date 935 AH.” This date may be that of the completion of the building.—(Corrigendum:—On f. 339 n. 1, I have too narrowly restricted the use of the name Sarjū. Bābur used it to describe what the maps of Arrowsmith and Johnson shew, and not only what the Gazetteer of India map of the United Provinces does. It applies to the Sardā (f. 339) as Bābur uses it when writing of the fords.)

[2530] Here the lacuna of the Ḥai. Codex ends.

[2531] Perhaps, where there is now the railway station of “Nulibai” (I.S. Map). The direct road on which the army moved, avoids the windings of the river.

[2532] This has been read as T. kīnt, P. dih, Eng. village and Fr. village.

[2533] “Nankunpur” lying to the north of Puhari railway-station suits the distance measured on maps.

[2534] These will be the women-travellers.

[2535] Perhaps jungle tracts lying in the curves of the river.

[2536] jīrga, which here stands for the beaters’ incurving line, witness the exit of the buffalo at the end. Cf. f. 367b for a jīrga of boats.

[2537] aūzūn aūzāgh, many miles and many hours?

[2538] Bulloa? (I.S. Map).

[2539] Anglicé, Sunday after 6 p.m.

[2540] ‘alufa u qunal (f. 359b).

[2541] than the Ganges perhaps; or narrowish compared with other rivers, e.g. Ganges, Ghogrā, and Jūn.

[2542] yīl-tūrgī yūrt, by which is meant, I think, close to the same day a year back, and not an indefinite reference to some time in the past year.

[2543] Maps make the starting-place likely to be Sayyidpūr.

[2544] re-named Zamānīa, after Akbar’s officer ‘Alī-qulī Khān Khān-i-zamān, and now the head-quarters of the Zamānīa pargana of Ghāzīpūr. Madan-Benāres was in Akbar’s sarkār of Ghāzīpūr. (It was not identified by E. or by de C.) Cf. D.G. of Ghāzīpūr.

[2545] In the earlier part of the Ḥai. Codex this Afghān tribal-name is written Nūḥānī, but in this latter portion a different scribe occasionally writes it Lūḥānī (Index s.n.).

[2546] ‘arza-dāsht, i.e. phrased as from one of lower station to a superior.

[2547] His letter may have announced his and his mother Dūdū Bībī’s approach (f. 368-9).

[2548] Naṣīr Khān had been an amīr of Sl. Sikandar Lūdī. Sher Khān Sūr married his widow “Guhar Kusāīn”, bringing him a large dowry (A.N. trs. p. 327; and Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhi, E. & D.’s History of India iv, 346).

[2549] He started from Chaparghatta (f. 361b, p. 650 n. 1).

[2550] yīl-tūrgī yūrt.

[2551] “This must have been the Eclipse of the 10th of May 1528 AD.; a fast is enjoined on the day of an eclipse” (Erskine).

[2552] Karmā-nāśā means loss of the merit acquired by good works.

[2553] The I.S. Map marks a main road leading to the mouth of the Karmā-nāśā and no other leading to the river for a considerable distance up-stream.

[2554] Perhaps “Thora-nadee” (I.S. Map).

[2555] Anglicé, Sunday after 6 p.m.

[2556] aūtkān yīl.

[2557] Perhaps the dū-āba between the Ganges and “Thora-nadee”.

[2558] yīl-tūr ... Gang-sūī-dīn mīn dastak bīla aūtūb, ba‘ẓī āt, ba‘ẓī tīwah mīnīb, kīlīb, sair qīlīlīb aīdī. Some uncertainty as to the meaning of the phrase dastak bīla aūtūb is caused by finding that while here de Courteille agrees with Erskine in taking it to mean swimming, he varies later (f. 373b) to appuyés sur une pièce de bois. Taking the Persian translations of three passages about crossing water into consideration (p. 655 after f. 363b, f. 366b (here), f. 373b), and also the circumstances that E. and de C. are once in agreement and that Erskine worked with the help of Oriental munshīs, I incline to think that dastak bīla does express swimming.—The question of its precise meaning bears on one concerning Bābur’s first swim across the Ganges (p. 655, n. 3).—Perhaps I should say, however, that if the sentence quoted at the head of this note stood alone, without the extraneous circumstances supporting the reading of dastak bīla to mean swimming, I should incline to read it as stating that Bābur went on foot through the water, feeling his footing with a pole (dastak), and that his followers rode through the ford after him. Nothing in the quoted passage suggests that the horses and camels swam. But whether the Ganges was fordable at Baksara in Bābur’s time, is beyond surmise.

[2559] faṣl soz, which, manifestly, were to be laid before the envoy’s master. The articles are nowhere specified; one is summarized merely on f. 365. The incomplete sentence of the Turkī text (supra) needs their specification at this place, and an explicit statement of them would have made clearer the political relations of Bābur with Naṣrat Shāh.—A folio may have been lost from Bābur’s manuscript; it might have specified the articles, and also have said something leading to the next topic of the diary, now needing preliminaries, viz. that of the Mīrzā’s discontent with his new appointment, a matter not mentioned earlier.

[2560] This suits Bābur’s series, but Gladwin and Wüstenfeld have 10th.

[2561] The first is near, the second on the direct road from Buxar for Ārrah.

[2562] The Ḥai. MS. makes an elephant be posted as the sole scout; others post a sardār, or post braves; none post man and beast.

[2563] This should be 5th; perhaps the statement is confused through the gifts being given late, Anglicé, on Tuesday 4th, Islamicé on Wednesday night.

[2564] The Mīrzā’s Tīmūrid birth and a desire in Bābur to give high status to a representative he will have wished to leave in Bihār when he himself went to his western dominions, sufficiently explain the bestowal of this sign of sovereignty.

[2565] jīrgā. This instance of its use shews that Bābur had in mind not a completed circle, but a line, or in sporting parlance, not a hunting-circle but a beaters'-line. [Cf. f. 251, f. 364b and infra of the crocodile.] The word is used also for a governing-circle, a tribal-council.

[2566] aūlūgh (kīma). Does aūlūgh (aūlūq, ūlūq) connect with the “bulky Oolak or baggage-boat of Bengal”? (Hobson-Jobson s.n. Woolock, oolock).

[2567] De Courteille’s reading of Ilminsky’s “Bāburī” (p. 476) as Bāīrī, old servant, hardly suits the age of the boat.

[2568] Bābur anticipated the custom followed e.g. by the White Star and Cunard lines, when he gave his boats names having the same terminal syllable; his is āīsh; on it he makes the quip of the har āīsh of the Farmāīsh.

[2569] As Vullers makes Ar. ghurfat a synonym of chaukandī, the Farmāīsh seems likely to have had a cabin, open at the sides. De Courteille understood it to have a rounded stern. [Cf. E. & D.’s History of India v, 347, 503 n.; and Gul-badan’s H. N. trs. p. 98, n. 2.]

[2570] mīndīn rukhṣat āldī; phrasing which bespeaks admitted equality, that of Tīmūrid birth.

[2571] i.e. subjects of the Afghān ruler of Bengal; many will have been Bihārīs and Pūrbiyas. Makhdūm-i-‘ālam was Naṣrat Shāh’s Governor in Ḥājīpūr.

[2572] This might imply that the Afghāns had been prevented from joining Maḥmūd Khān Lūdī near the Son.

[2573] Sl. Muḥammad Shāh Nūḥānī Afghān, the former ruler of Bihār, dead within a year. He had trained Farīd Khān Sūr in the management of government affairs; had given him, for gallant encounter with a tiger, the title Sher Khān by which, or its higher form Sher Shāh, history knows him, and had made him his young son’s “deputy”, an office Sher Khān held after the father’s death in conjunction with the boy’s mother Dūdū Bībī (Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. & D.’s History of India iv, 325 et seq.).

[2574] gūz bāghī yūsūnlūq; by which I understand they were held fast from departure, as e.g. a mouse by the fascination of a snake.

[2575] f. 365 mentions a letter which may have announced their intention.

[2576] Ganges; they thus evaded the restriction made good on other Afghāns.

[2577] Anglicé, Saturday 8th after 6 p.m.

[2578] The D. G. of Shāhābād (pp. 20 and 127) mentions that “it is said Bābur marched to Ārrah after his victory over Maḥmūd Lūdī”, and that “local tradition still points to a place near the Judge’s Court as that on which he pitched his camp”.

[2579] Kharīd which is now a pargana of the Ballia district, lay formerly on both sides of the Ghogrā. When the army of Kharīd opposed Bābur’s progress, it acted for Naṣrat Shāh, but this Bābur diplomatically ignored in assuming that there was peace between Bengal and himself.—At this time Naṣrat Shāh held the riverain on the left bank of the Ghogrā but had lost Kharīd of the right bank, which had been taken from him by Jūnaid Barlās. A record of his occupation still survives in Kharīd-town, an inscription dated by his deputy as for 1529 AD. (District Gazetteer of Ballia H. R. Nevill), and D. G. of Sāran (L. L. S. O’Malley), Historical Chapters.

[2580] Bābur’s opinion of Naṣrat Shāh’s hostility is more clearly shewn here than in the verbal message of f. 369.

[2581] This will be an unceremonious summary of a word-of-mouth message.

[2582] Cf. f. 366b, p. 661 n. 2.

[2583] This shews that Bābur did not recognize the Sāran riverain down to the Ganges as belonging to Kharīd. His offered escort of Turks would safe-guard the Kharīdīs if they returned to the right bank of the Ghogrā which was in Turk possession.

[2584] The Ḥai. MS. has wālī, clearly written; which, as a word representing Māhīm would suit the sentence best, may make playful reference to her royal commands (f. 361b), by styling her the Governor (wālī). Erskine read the word as a place-name Dipālī, which I have not found; De Courteille omits Ilminsky’s w:ras (p. 478). The MSS. vary and are uncertain.

[2585] This is the “Kadjar” of Réclus’ L’Asie antérieure and is the name of the Turkmān tribe to which the present ruling house of Persia belongs. “Turkmān” might be taken as applied to Shāh T̤aḥmāsp by Dīv Sult̤ān’s servant on f. 354.

[2586] Nelumbium speciosum, a water-bean of great beauty.

[2587] Shaikh Yaḥyā had been the head of the Chishtī Order. His son (d. 782 AH.-1380-1 AD.) was the author of works named by Abū’l-faẓl as read aloud to Akbar, a discursive detail which pleads in my excuse that those who know Bābur well cannot but see in his grandson’s character and success the fruition of his mental characteristics and of his labours in Hindūstān. (For Sharafu’d-dīn Munīrī, cf. Khazīnatu’l-asfiyā ii, 390-92; and Āyīn-i-akbarī s.n.)

[2588] Kostenko’s Turkistān Region describes a regimen for horses which Bābur will have seen in practice in his native land, one which prevented the defect that hindered his at Munīr from accomplishing more than some 30 miles before mid-day.

[2589] The distance from Munīr to the bank of the Ganges will have been considerably longer in Bābur’s day than now because of the change of the river’s course through its desertion of the Burh-gangā channel (cf. next note).

[2590] In trying to locate the site of Bābur’s coming battle with the forces of Naṣrat Shāh, it should be kept in mind that previous to the 18th century, and therefore, presumably, in his day, the Ganges flowed in the “Burh-ganga” (Old Ganges) channel which now is closely followed by the western boundary of the Ballia pargana of Dū-āba; that the Ganges and Ghogrā will have met where this old channel entered the bed of the latter river; and also, as is seen from Bābur’s narrative, that above the confluence the Ghogrā will have been confined to a narrowed channel. When the Ganges flowed in the Burh-ganga channel, the now Ballia pargana of Dū-āba was a sub-division of Bihiya and continuous with Shāhābād. From it in Bihiya Bābur crossed the Ganges into Kharīd, doing this at a place his narrative locates as some 2 miles from the confluence. Cf. D. G. of Ballia, pp. 9, 192-3, 206, 213. It may be observed that the former northward extension of Bihiya to the Burh-ganga channel explains Bābur’s estimate (f. 370) of the distance from Munīr to his camp on the Ganges; his 12k. (24m.) may then have been correct; it is now too high.

[2591] De Courteille, pierrier, which may be a balista. Bābur’s writings give no indication of other than stone-ammunition for any projectile-engine or fire-arm. Cf. R. W. F. Payne-Gallwey’s Projectile-throwing engines of the ancients.

[2592] Sir R. W. F. Payne-Gallwey writes in The Cross-bow (p. 40 and p. 41) what may apply to Bābur’s ẓarb-zan (culverin?) and tufang (matchlock), when he describes the larger culverin as a heavy hand-gun of from 16-18lb., as used by the foot-soldier and requiring the assistance of an attendant to work it; also when he says that it became the portable arquebus which was in extensive use in Europe by the Swiss in 1476 AD.; and that between 1510 and 1520 the arquebus described was superseded by what is still seen amongst remote tribes in India, a matchlock arquebus.

[2593] The two positions Bābur selected for his guns would seem to have been opposite two ferry-heads, those, presumably, which were blocked against his pursuit of Bīban and Bāyazīd. ‘Alī-qulī’s emplacement will have been on the high bank of old alluvium of south-eastern Kharīd, overlooking the narrowed channel demanded by Bābur’s narrative, one pent in presumably by kankar reefs such as there are in the region. As illustrating what the channel might have been, the varying breadth of the Ghogrā along the ‘Azamgarh District may be quoted, viz. from 10 miles to 2/5m., the latter being where, as in Kharīd, there is old alluvium with kankar reefs preserving the banks. Cf. Reid’s Report of Settlement Operations in ‘Azamgarh, Sikandarpur, and Bhadaon.—Firishta gives Badrū as the name of one ferry (lith. ed. i. 210).

[2594] Muṣt̤afa, like ‘Alī-qulī, was to take the offensive by gun-fire directed on the opposite bank. Judging from maps and also from the course taken by the Ganges through the Burh-ganga channel and from Bābur’s narrative, there seems to have been a narrow reach of the Ghogrā just below the confluence, as well as above.

[2595] This ferry, bearing the common name Haldī (turmeric), is located by the course of events as at no great distance above the enemy’s encampment above the confluence. It cannot be the one of Sikandarpūr West.

[2596] guẕr, which here may mean a casual ford through water low just before the Rains. As it was not found, it will have been temporary.

[2597] i.e. above Bābur’s positions.

[2598] sarwar (or dar) waqt.

[2599] The preceding sentence is imperfect and varies in the MSS. The 1st Pers. trs., the wording of which is often explanatory, says that there were no passages, which, as there were many ferries, will mean fords. The Haldī-guẕr where ‘Askarī was to cross, will have been far below the lowest Bābur mentions, viz. Chatur-mūk (Chaupāra).

[2600] This passage presupposes that guns in Kharīd could hit the hostile camp in Sāran. If the river narrowed here as it does further north, the Ghāzī mortar, which seems to have been the only one Bābur had with him, would have carried across, since it threw a stone 1,600 paces (qadam, f. 309). Cf. Reid’s Report quoted above.

[2601] Anglicé, Saturday after 6p.m.

[2602] yaqīn būlghān fauj, var. ta‘īn būlghān fauj, the army appointed (to cross). The boats will be those collected at the Haldī-ferry, and the army ‘Askarī’s.

[2603] i.e. near ‘Alī-qulī’s emplacement.

[2604] Cf. f. 303, f. 309, f. 337 and n. 4.

[2605] “The yasāwal is an officer who carries the commands of the prince, and sees them enforced” (Erskine). Here he will have been the superintendent of coolies moving earth.

[2606] ma‘jūn-nāk which, in these days of Bābur’s return to obedience, it may be right to translate in harmony with his psychical outlook of self-reproach, by ma‘jūn-polluted. Though he had long ceased to drink wine, he still sought cheer and comfort, in his laborious days, from inspiriting and forbidden confections.

[2607] Probably owing to the less precise phrasing of his Persian archetype, Erskine here has reversed the statement, made in the Turkī, that Bābur slept in the Asāīsh (not the Farmāīsh).

[2608] aūstīdā tāshlār. An earlier reading of this, viz. that stones were thrown on the intruder is negatived by Bābur’s mention of wood as the weapon used.

[2609] sū sārī which, as the boats were between an island and the river’s bank, seems likely to mean that the man went off towards the main stream. Mems. p. 415, “made his escape in the river”; Méms. ii, 418, dans la direction du large.

[2610] This couplet is quoted by Jahāngīr also (Tūzūk, trs. Rogers & Beveridge, i, 348).

[2611] This, taken with the positions of other crossing-parties, serves to locate ‘Askarī’s “Haldī-passage” at no great distance above ‘Alī-qulī’s emplacement at the confluence, and above the main Bengal force.

[2612] perhaps, towed from the land. I have not found Bābur using any word which clearly means to row, unless indeed a later rawān does so. The force meant to cross in the boats taken up under cover of night was part of Bābur’s own, no doubt.

[2613] ātīsh-bāzī lit. fire-playing, if a purely Persian compound; if ātīsh be Turkī, it means discharge, shooting. The word “fire-working” is used above under the nearest to contemporary guidance known to me, viz. that of the list of persons who suffered in the Patna massacre “during the troubles of October 1763 AD.”, in which list are the names of four Lieutenants fire-workers (Calcutta Review, Oct. 1884, and Jan. 1885, art. The Patna Massacre, H. Beveridge).

[2614] bī tahāshī, without protest or demur.

[2615] Anglicé, Wednesday after 6 p.m.

[2616] Perhaps those which had failed to pass in the darkness; perhaps those from Haldī-guẕr, which had been used by ‘Askarī’s troops. There appear to be obvious reasons for their keeping abreast on the river with the troops in Sāran, in order to convey reinforcements or to provide retreat.

[2617] kīmalār aūstīdā, which may mean that he came, on the high bank, to where the boats lay below.

[2618] as in the previous note, kīmalār aūstīdā. These will have been the few drawn up-stream along the enemy’s front.

[2619] The reproach conveyed by Bābur’s statement is borne out by the strictures of Ḥaidar Mīrzā Dūghlāt on Bābā Sult̤ān’s neglect of duty (Tārīkh-ī-rashīdī trs. cap. lxxvii).

[2620] yūsūnlūq tūshī, Pers. trss. t̤arf khūd, i.e. their place in the array, a frequent phrase.

[2621] dastak bīla dosta-i-qāmīsh bīla. Cf. f. 363b and f. 366b, for passages and notes connected with swimming and dastak. Erskine twice translates dastak bīla by swimming; but here de Courteille changes from his earlier à la nage (f. 366b) to appuyés sur une pièce de bois. Perhaps the swift current was crossed by swimming with the support of a bundle of reeds, perhaps on rafts made of such bundles (cf. Illustrated London News, Sep. 16th, 1916, for a picture of Indian soldiers so crossing on rafts).

[2622] perhaps they were in the Burh-ganga channel, out of gun-fire.

[2623] If the Ghogrā flowed at this point in a narrow channel, it would be the swifter, and less easy to cross than where in an open bed.

[2624] chīrīk-aīlī, a frequent compound, but one of which the use is better defined in the latter than the earlier part of Bābur’s writings to represent what then answered to an Army Service Corps. This corps now crosses into Sāran and joins the fighting force.

[2625] This appears to refer to the crossing effected before the fight.

[2626] or Kūndbah. I have not succeeded in finding this name in the Nirhun pargana; it may have been at the southern end, near the “Domaigarh” of maps. In it was Tīr-mūhānī, perhaps a village (f. 377, f. 381).

[2627] This passage justifies Erskine’s surmise (Memoirs, p. 411, n. 4) that the Kharīd-country lay on both banks of the Ghogrā. His further surmise that, on the east bank of the Ghogrā, it extended to the Ganges would be correct also, since the Ganges flowed, in Bābur’s day, through the Burh-ganga (Old Ganges) channel along the southern edge of the present Kharīd, and thus joined the Ghogrā higher than it now does.

[2628] Bāyazīd and Ma‘rūf Farmūlī were brothers. Bāyazīd had taken service with Bābur in 932 AH. (1526 AD.), left him in 934 AH. (end of 1527 AD.) and opposed him near Qanūj. Ma‘rūf, long a rebel against Ibrāhīm Lūdī, had never joined Bābur; two of his sons did so; of the two, Muḥammad and Mūsa, the latter may be the one mentioned as at Qanūj, “Ma‘rūf’s son” (f. 336).—For an interesting sketch of Ma‘rūf’s character and for the location in Hindūstān of the Farmūlī clan, see the Wāqi‘āt-i-mushtāqī, E. & D.’s History of India, iv, 584.—In connection with Qanūj, the discursive remark may be allowable, that Bābur’s halt during the construction of the bridge of boats across the Ganges in 934 AH. is still commemorated by the name Bādshāh-nagar of a village between Bangarmau and Nānāmau (Elliot’s Onau, p. 45).

[2629] On f. 381 ‘Abdu’l-lāh’s starting-place is mentioned as Tīr-mūhānī.

[2630] The failure to join would be one of the evils predicted by the dilatory start of the ladies from Kābul (f. 360b).

[2631] The order for these operations is given on f. 355b.

[2632] f. 369. The former Nūḥānī chiefs are now restored to Bihār as tributaries of Bābur.

[2633] Erskine estimated the krūr at about £25,000, and the 50 laks at about £12,500.

[2634] The Mīrzā thus supersedes Junaid Barlās in Jūnpūr.—The form Jūnapūr used above and elsewhere by Bābur and his Persian translators, supports the Gazetteer of India xlv, 74 as to the origin of the name Jūnpūr.

[2635] a son of Naṣrat Shāh. No record of this earlier legation is with the Bābur-nāma manuscripts; probably it has been lost. The only article found specified is the one asking for the removal of the Kharīd army from a ferry-head Bābur wished to use; Naṣrat Shāh’s assent to this is an anti-climax to Bābur’s victory on the Ghogrā.

[2636] Chaupāra is at the Sāran end of the ferry, at the Sikandarpūr one is Chatur-mūk (Four-faces, an epithet of Brahma and Vishnu).

[2637] It may be inferred from the earlier use of the phrase Gogar (or Gagar) and Sarū (Sīrū or Sīrd), on f. 338-8b, that whereas the rebels were, earlier, for crossing Sarū only, i.e. the Ghogrā below its confluence with the Sarda, they had now changed for crossing above the confluence and further north. Such a change is explicable by desire to avoid encounter with Bābur’s following, here perhaps the army of Aūd, and the same desire is manifested by their abandonment of a fort captured (f. 377b) some days before the rumour reached Bābur of their crossing Sarū and Gogar.—Since translating the passage on f. 338, I have been led, by enforced attention to the movement of the confluence of Ghogrā with Ganges (Sarū with Gang) to see that that translation, eased in obedience to distances shewn in maps, may be wrong and that Bābur’s statement that he dismounted 2-3 kurohs (4-6 m.) above Aūd at the confluence of Gogar with Sarū, may have some geographical interest and indicate movement of the two affluents such e.g. as is indicated of the Ganges and Ghogrā by tradition and by the name Burh-ganga (cf. f. 370, p. 667, n. 2).

[2638] or L:knūr, perhaps Liknū or Liknūr. The capricious variation in the MSS. between L:knū and L:knūr makes the movements of the rebels difficult to follow. Comment on these variants, tending to identify the places behind the words, is grouped in Appendix T, On L:knū (Lakhnau) and L:knūr (Lakhnār).

[2639] Taking guẕr in the sense it has had hitherto in the Bābur-nāma of ferry or ford, the detachment may have been intended to block the river-crossings of “Sarū and Gogar”. If so, however, the time for this was past, the rebels having taken a fort west of those rivers on Ramẓān 13th. Nothing further is heard of the detachment.—That news of the rebel-crossing of the rivers did not reach Bābur before the 18th and news of their capture of L:knū or L:knūr before the 19th may indicate that they had crossed a good deal to the north of the confluence, and that the fort taken was one more remote than Lakhnau (Oude). Cf. Appendix T.

[2640] Anglicé, Wednesday after 6 p.m.

[2641] These are recited late in the night during Ramẓān.

[2642] kaghaẕ u ajzā', perhaps writing-paper and the various sections of the Bābur-nāma writings, viz. biographical notices, descriptions of places, detached lengths of diary, farmāns of Shaikh Zain. The lacunæ of 934 AH., 935 AH., and perhaps earlier ones also may be attributed reasonably to this storm. It is easy to understand the loss of e.g. the conclusion of the Farghāna section, and the diary one of 934 AH., if they lay partly under water. The accident would be better realized in its disastrous results to the writings, if one knew whether Bābur wrote in a bound or unbound volume. From the minor losses of 935 AH., one guesses that the current diary at least had not reached the stage of binding.

[2643] The tūnglūq is a flap in a tent-roof, allowing light and air to enter, or smoke to come out.

[2644] ajzā’ u kitāb. See last note but one. The kitāb (book) might well be Bābur’s composed narrative on which he was now working, as far as it had then gone towards its untimely end (Ḥai. MS. f. 216b).

[2645] saqarlāt̤ kut-zīlūcha, where saqarlāt̤ will mean warm and woollen.

[2646] Kharīd-town is some 4 m. s.e. of the town of Sikandarpūr.

[2647] or L:knū. Cf. Appendix T. It is now 14 days since ‘Abdu’l-lāh kitābdār had left Tīr-mūhānī (f. 380) for Saṃbhal; as he was in haste, there had been time for him to go beyond Aūd (where Bāqī was) and yet get the news to Bābur on the 19th.

[2648] In a way not usual with him, Bābur seems to apply three epithets to this follower, viz. mīng-begī, shaghāwal, Tāshkīndī (Index s.n.).

[2649] or Kandla; cf. Revenue list f. 293; is it now Sāran Khāṣ?

[2650] £18,000 (Erskine). For the total yield of Kundla (or Kandla) and Sarwār, see Revenue list (f. 293).

[2651] f. 375. P. 675 n. 2 and f. 381, p. 687 n. 3.

[2652] A little earlier Bābur has recorded his ease of mind about Bihār and Bengal, the fruit doubtless of his victory over Maḥmūd Lūdī and Naṣrat Shāh; he now does the same about Bihār and Sarwār, no doubt because he has replaced in Bihār, as his tributaries, the Nūḥānī chiefs and has settled other Afghāns, Jalwānīs and Farmūlīs in a Sarwār cleared of the Jalwānī (?) rebel Bīban and the Farmūlī opponents Bāyazīd and Ma‘rūf. The Farmūlī Shaikh-zādas, it may be recalled, belonged by descent to Bābur’s Kābul district of Farmūl.—The Wāqi‘āt-i-mushtāqī (E. & D.’s H. of I. iv, 548) details the position of the clan under Sikandar Lūdī.

[2653] The MSS. write Fatḥpūr but Natḥpūr suits the context, a pargana mentioned in the Āyīn-i-akbarī and now in the ‘Azamgarh district. There seems to be no Fatḥpūr within Bābur’s limit of distance. The D. G. of ‘Azamgarh mentions two now insignificant Fatḥpūrs, one as having a school, the other a market. The name G:l:r:h (K:l:r:h) I have not found.

[2654] The passage contained in this section seems to be a survival of the lost record of 934 AH. (f. 339). I have found it only in the Memoirs p. 420, and in Mr. Erskine’s own Codex of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (now B.M. Add. 26,200), f. 371 where however several circumstances isolate it from the context. It may be a Persian translation of an authentic Turkī fragment, found, perhaps with other such fragments, in the Royal Library. Its wording disassociates it from the ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm text. The Codex (No. 26,200) breaks off at the foot of a page (supra, Fatḥpūr) with a completed sentence. The supposedly-misplaced passage is entered on the next folio as a sort of ending of the Bābur-nāma writings; in a rough script, inferior to that of the Codex, and is followed by Tam, tam (Finis), and an incomplete date 98-, in words. Beneath this a line is drawn, on which is subtended the triangle frequent with scribes; within this is what seems to be a completion of the date to 980 AH. and a pious wish, scrawled in an even rougher hand than the rest.—Not only in diction and in script but in contents also the passage is a misfit where it now stands; it can hardly describe a village on the Sarū; Bābur in 935 AH. did not march for Ghāzīpūr but may have done so in 934 AH. (p. 656, n. 3); Ismā‘īl Jalwānī had had leave given already in 935 AH. (f. 377) under other conditions, ones bespeaking more trust and tried allegiance.—Possibly the place described as having fine buildings, gardens etc. is Aūd (Ajodhya) where Bābur spent some days in 934 AH. (cf. f. 363b, p. 655 n. 3).

[2655] “Here my Persian manuscript closes” (This is B.M. Add. 26,200). “The two additional fragments are given from Mr. Metcalfe’s manuscript alone” (now B.M. Add. 26,202) “and unluckily, it is extremely incorrect” (Erskine). This note will have been written perhaps a decade before 1826, in which year the Memoirs of Bābur was published, after long delay. Mr. Erskine’s own Codex (No. 26,200) was made good at a later date, perhaps when he was working on his History of India (pub. 1854), by a well-written supplement which carries the diary to its usual end s.a. 936 AH. and also gives Persian translations of Bābur’s letters to Humāyūn and Khwāja Kalān.

[2656] Here, as earlier, Natḥpūr suits the context better than Fatḥpūr. In the Natḥpūr pargana, at a distance from Chaupāra approximately suiting Bābur’s statement of distance, is the lake “Tal Ratoi”, formerly larger and deeper than now. There is a second further west and now larger than Tal Ratoi; through this the Ghogrā once flowed, and through it has tried within the last half-century to break back. These changes in Tal Ratoi and in the course of the Ghogrā dictate caution in attempting to locate places which were on it in Bābur’s day e.g. K:l:r:h (supra).

[2657] Appendix T.

[2658] This name has the following variants in the Ḥai. MS. and in Kehr’s:—Dalm-ū-ūū-ūr-ūd-ūt̤. The place was in Akbar’s sarkār of Mānikpūr and is now in the Rai Bareilly district.

[2659] Perhaps Chaksar, which was in Akbar’s sarkār of Jūnpūr, and is now in the ‘Azamgarh district.

[2660] Ḥai. MS. J:nāra khūnd tawābī sī bīla (perhaps tawābī‘sī but not so written). The obscurity of these words is indicated by their variation in the manuscripts. Most scribes have them as Chunār and Jūnpūr, guided presumably by the despatch of a force to Chunār on receipt of the news, but another force was sent to Dalmau at the same time. The rebels were defeated s.w. of Dalmau and thence went to Mahūba; it is not certain that they had crossed the Ganges at Dalmau; there are difficulties in supposing the fort they captured and abandoned was Lakhnau (Oude); they might have gone south to near Kālpī and Ādampūr, which are at no great distance from where they were defeated by Bāqī shaghāwal, if Lakhnūr (now Shahābād in Rāmpūr) were the fort. (Cf. Appendix T.)—To take up the interpretation of the words quoted above, at another point, that of the kinsfolk or fellow-Afghāns the rebels planned to join:—these kinsfolk may have been, of Bāyazīd, the Farmūlīs in Sarwār, and of Bīban, the Jalwānīs of the same place. The two may have trusted to relationship for harbourage during the Rains, disloyal though they were to their kinsmen’s accepted suzerain. Therefore if they were once across Ganges and Jumna, as they were in Mahūba, they may have thought of working eastwards south of the Ganges and of getting north into Sarwār through territory belonging to the Chunār and Jūnpūr governments. This however is not expressed by the words quoted above; perhaps Bābur’s record was hastily and incompletely written.—Another reading may be Chunār and Jaund (in Akbar’s sarkār of Rohtās).

[2661] yūlīinī tūshqāīlār. It may be observed concerning the despatch of Muḥammad-i-zamān M. and of Junaid Barlās that they went to their new appointments Jūnpūr and Chunār respectively; that their doing so was an orderly part of the winding-up of Bābur’s Eastern operations; that they remained as part of the Eastern garrison, on duty apart from that of blocking the road of Bīban and Bāyazīd.

[2662] This mode of fishing is still practised in India (Erskine).

[2663] Islāmicé, Saturday night; Anglicé, Friday after 6 p.m.

[2664] This Tūs, “Tousin, or Tons, is a branch from the Ghogrā coming off above Faizābād and joining the Sarju or Parsarū below ‘Azamgarh” (Erskine).

[2665] Kehr’s MS. p. 1132, Māng (or Mānk); Ḥai. MS. Tāīk; I.O. 218 f. 328 Bā:k; I.O. 217 f. 236b, Bīāk. Māīng in the Sult̤ānpūr district seems suitably located (D.G. of Sult̤ānpūr, p. 162).

[2666] This will be the night-guard (‘asas); the librarian (kitābdār) is in Saṃbhal. I.O. 218 f. 325 inserts kitābdār after ‘Abdu’l-lāh’s name where he is recorded as sent to Saṃbhal (f. 375).

[2667] He will have announced to Tāj Khān the transfer of the fort to Junaid Barlās.

[2668] £3750. Parsarūr was in Akbar’s ṣūbah of Lāhor; G. of I. xx, 23, Pasrūr.

[2669] The estimate may have been made by measurement (f. 356) or by counting a horse’s steps (f. 370). Here the Ḥai. MS. and Kehr’s have D:lmūd, but I.O. 218 f. 328b (D:lmūū).

[2670] As on f. 361b, so here, Bābur’s wording tends to locate Ādampūr on the right (west) bank of the Jumna.

[2671] Ḥai. MS. aūta, presumably for aūrta; Kehr’s p. 1133, Aūd-dāghī, which, as Bāqī led the Aūd army, is ben trovato; both Persian translations, mīāngānī, central, inner, i.e. aūrta, perhaps household troops of the Centre.

[2672] Anglicé, Saturday 12th after 6 p.m.

[2673] In Akbar’s sarkār of Kālanjar, now in the Hamirpūr district.

[2674] £7500 (Erskine). Amrohā is in the Morādābād district.

[2675] At the Chaupāra-Chaturmūk ferry (f. 376).—Corrigendum:—In the Index of the Bābur-nāma Facsimile, Mūsa Farmūlī and Mūsa Sl. are erroneously entered as if one man.

[2676] i.e. riding light and fast. The distance done between Ādampūr and Āgra was some 157 miles, the time was from 12 a.m. on Tuesday morning to about 9 p.m. of Thursday. This exploit serves to show that three years of continuous activity in the plains of Hindūstān had not destroyed Bābur’s capacity for sustained effort, spite of several attacks of (malarial?) fever.

[2677] Anglicé, Tuesday 12.25 a.m.

[2678] He was governor of Etāwa.

[2679] Islamicé, Friday, Shawwāl 18th, Anglicé, Thursday, June 24th, soon after 9 p.m.

[2680] Anglicé, she arrived at mid-night of Saturday.—Gul-badan writes of Māhīm’s arrival as unexpected and of Bābur’s hurrying off on foot to meet her (Humāyūn-nāma f. 14, trs. p. 100).

[2681] Māhīm’s journey from Kābul to Āgra had occupied over 5 months.

[2682] Hindū Beg qūchīn had been made Humāyūn’s retainer in 932 AH. (f. 297), and had taken possession of Saṃbhal for him. Hence, as it seems, he was ordered, while escorting the ladies from Kābul, to go to Saṃbhal. He seems to have gone before waiting on Bābur, probably not coming into Āgra till now.—It may be noted here that in 933 AH. he transformed a Hindū temple into a Mosque in Saṃbhal; it was done by Bābur’s orders and is commemorated by an inscription still existing on the Mosque, one seeming not to be of his own composition, judging by its praise of himself. (JASB. Proceedings, May 1873, p. 98, Blochmann’s art. where the inscription is given and translated; and Archæological Survey Reports, xii, p. 24-27, with Plates showing the Mosque).

[2683] Cf. f. 375, f. 377, with notes concerning ‘Abdu’l-lāh and Tīr-mūhānī. I have not found the name Tīr-mūhānī on maps; its position can be inferred from Bābur’s statement (f. 375) that he had sent ‘Abdu’l-lāh to Saṃbhal, he being then at Kunba or Kunīa in the Nurhun pargana.—The name Tīr-mūhānī occurs also in Gorakhpūr.—It was at Tīr-mūhānī (Three-mouths) that Khwānd-amīr completed the Ḥabībū’s-siyar (lith. ed. i, 83; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 1079). If the name imply three water-mouths, they might be those of Ganges, Ghogrā and Dāhā.

[2684] nīm-kāra. E. and de C. however reverse the rôles.

[2685] The Tārīkh-i-gūālīārī (B.M. Add. 16, 709, p. 18) supplements the fragmentary accounts which, above and s.a. 936 AH., are all that the Bābur-nāma now preserves concerning Khwāja Rāḥīm-dād’s misconduct. It has several mistakes but the gist of its information is useful. It mentions that the Khwāja and his paternal-uncle Mahdī Khwāja had displeased Bābur; that Raḥīm-dād resolved to take refuge with the ruler of Mālwā (Muḥammad Khīljī) and to make over Gūālīār to a Rājpūt landholder of that country; that upon this Shaikh Muḥammad Ghaus̤ went to Āgra and interceded with Bābur and obtained his forgiveness for Raḥīm-dād. Gūālīār was given back to Raḥīm-dād but after a time he was superseded by Abū’l-fatḥ [Shaikh Gūran]. For particulars about Mahdī Khwāja and a singular story told about him by Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad in the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī, vide Gul-badan’s Ḥumāyūn-nāma, Appendix B, and Translator’s Note p. 702, Section f.

[2686] He may have come about the misconduct of his nephew Raḥīm-dād.

[2687] The ‘Īdu’l-kabīr, the Great Festival of 10th Ẕū’l-ḥijja.

[2688] About £1750 (Erskine).

[2689] Perhaps he was from the tract in Persia still called Chaghatāī Mountains. One Ibrāhīm Chaghatāī is mentioned by Bābur (f. 175b) with Turkmān begs who joined Ḥusain Bāī-qarā. This Ḥasan-i-‘alī Chaghatāī may have come in like manner, with Murād the Turkmān envoy from ‘Irāq (f. 369 and n. 1).

[2690] Several incidents recorded by Gul-badan (writing half a century later) as following Māhīm’s arrival in Āgra, will belong to the record of 935 AH. because they preceded Humāyūn’s arrival from Badakhshān. Their omission from Bābur’s diary is explicable by its minor lacunæ. Such are:—(1) a visit to Dhūlpūr and Sīkrī the interest of which lies in its showing that Bībī Mubārika had accompanied Māhīm Begīm to Āgra from Kābul, and that there was in Sīkrī a quiet retreat, a chaukandī, where Bābur “used to write his book”;—(2) the arrival of the main caravan of ladies from Kābul, which led Bābur to go four miles out, to Naugrām, in order to give honouring reception to his sister Khān-ẓāda Begīm;—(3) an excursion to the Gold-scattering garden (Bāgh-i-zar-afshān), where seated among his own people, Bābur said he was “bowed down by ruling and reigning”, longed to retire to that garden with a single attendant, and wished to make over his sovereignty to Humāyūn;—(4) the death of Dil-dār’s son Alwār (var. Anwār) whose birth may be assigned to the gap preceding 932 AH. because not chronicled later by Bābur, as is Farūq’s. As a distraction from the sorrow for this loss, a journey was “pleasantly made by water” to Dhūlpūr.

[2691] Cf. f. 381b n. 2. For his earlier help to Raḥīm-dād see f. 304. For Biographies of him see Blochmann’s A.-i-A. trs. p. 446, and Badāyūnī’s Muntakhabu-'t-tawārīkh (Ranking’s and Lowe’s trss.).

[2692] Beyond this broken passage, one presumably at the foot of a page in Bābur’s own manuscript, nothing of his diary is now known to survive. What is missing seems likely to have been written and lost. It is known from a remark of Gul-badan’s (H.N. p. 103) that he “used to write his book” after Māhīm’s arrival in Āgra, the place coming into her anecdote being Sīkrī.

[2693] Jauhar’s Humāyūn-nāma and Bāyazīd Bīyāt’s work of the same title were written under the same royal command as the Begīm’s. They contribute nothing towards filling the gap of 936 AH.; their authors, being Humāyūn’s servants, write about him. It may be observed that criticism of these books, as recording trivialities, is disarmed if they were commanded because they would obey an order to set down whatever was known, selection amongst their contents resting with Abū’l-faẓl. Even more completely must they be excluded from a verdict on the literary standard of their day.—Abū’l-faẓl must have had a source of Bāburiana which has not found its way into European libraries. A man likely to have contributed his recollections, directly or transmitted, is Khwāja Muqīm Harāwī. The date of Muqīm’s death is conjectural only, but he lived long enough to impress the worth of historical writing on his son Niz̤āmu'-d-dīn Aḥmad. (Cf. E. and D.’s H. of I. art. T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī v, 177 and 187; T̤.-i-A. lith. ed. p. 193; and for Bāyazīd Bīyāt’s work, JASB. 1898, p. 296.)

[2694] Ibn Batuta (Lee’s trs. p. 133) mentions that after his appointment to Gūālīār, Raḥīm-dād fell from favour ... but was restored later, on the representation of Muḥammad Ghaus̤; held Gūālīār again for a short time, (he went to Bahādur Shāh in Gujrāt) and was succeeded by Abū’l-fatḥ (i.e. Shaikh Gūran) who held it till Bābur’s death.

[2695] Its translation and explanatory noting have filled two decades of hard-working years. Tanti labores auctoris et traductoris!

[2696] I am indebted to my husband for acquaintance with Niz̤āmu'-d-dīn Aḥmad’s record about Bābur and Kashmīr.

[2697] In view of the vicissitudes to which under Humāyūn the royal library was subjected, it would be difficult to assert that this source was not the missing continuation of Bābur’s diary.

[2698] E. and D.’s H. of I. art. Tārīkh-i Khān-i-jahān Lūdī v, 67. For Aḥmad-i-yādgār’s book and its special features vide l.c. v, 2, 24, with notes; Rieu’s Persian Catalogue iii, 922a; JASB. 1916, H. Beveridge’s art. Note on the Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afāghana.

[2699] Humāyūn’s last recorded act in Hindūstān was that of 933 AH. (f. 329b) when he took unauthorized possession of treasure in Dihlī.

[2700] Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs. p. 387.

[2701] T.-i-R. trs. p. 353 et seq. and Mr. Ney Elias’ notes.

[2702] Abū’l-faẓl’s record of Humāyūn’s sayings and minor doings at this early date in his career, can hardly be anything more accurate than family-tradition.

[2703] The statement that Khalīfa was asked to go so far from where he was of the first importance as an administrator, leads to consideration of why it was done. So little is known explicitly of Bābur’s intentions about his territories after his death that it is possible only to put that little together and read between its lines. It may be that he was now planning an immediate retirement to Kābul and an apportionment during life of his dominions, such as Abū-sa‘īd had made of his own. If so, it would be desirable to have Badakhshān held in strength such as Khalīfa’s family could command, and especially desirable because as Barlās Turks, that family would be one with Bābur in desire to regain Transoxiana. Such a political motive would worthily explain the offer of the appointment.

[2704] The “Shāh” of this style is derived from Sulaimān’s Badakhshī descent through Shāh Begīm; the “Mīrzā” from his Mīrān-shāhī descent through his father Wais Khān Mīrzā. The title Khān Mīrzā or Mīrzā Khān, presumably according to the outlook of the speaker, was similarly derived from forbears, as would be also Shāh Begīm’s; (her personal name is not mentioned in the sources).

[2705] Sa‘īd, on the father’s, and Bābur, on the mother’s side, were of the same generation in descent from Yūnas Khān; Sulaimān was of a younger one, hence his pseudo-filial relation to the men of the elder one.

[2706] Sa‘īd was Shāh Begīm’s grandson through her son Aḥmad, Sulaimān her great-grandson through her daughter Sult̤ān-Nigār, but Sulaimān could claim also as the heir of his father who was nominated to rule by Shāh Begīm; moreover, he could claim by right of conquest on the father’s side, through Abū-sa‘īd the conqueror, his son Maḥmūd long the ruler, and so through Maḥmūd’s son Wais Khān Mīrzā.

[2707] The menace conveyed by these words would be made the more forceful by Bābur’s move to Lāhor, narrated by Aḥmad-i-yādgār. Some ill-result to Sa‘īd of independent rule by Sulaimān seems foreshadowed; was it that if Bābur’s restraining hand were withdrawn, the Badakhshīs would try to regain their lost districts and would have help in so-doing from Bābur?

[2708] It is open to conjecture that if affairs in Hindūstān had allowed it, Bābur would now have returned to Kābul. Aḥmad-i-yādgār makes the expedition to be one for pleasure only, and describes Bābur as hunting and sight-seeing for a year in Lāhor, the Panj-āb and near Dihlī. This appears a mere flourish of words, in view of the purposes the expedition served, and of the difficulties which had arisen in Lāhor itself and with Sa‘īd Khān. Part of the work effected may have been the despatch of an expedition to Kashmīr.

[2709] This appears a large amount.

[2710] The precision with which the Rāja’s gifts are stated, points to a closely-contemporary and written source. A second such indication occurs later where gifts made to Hind-āl are mentioned.

[2711] An account of the events in Multān after its occupation by Shāh Ḥasan Arghūn is found in the latter part of the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī and in Erskine’s H. of I. i, 393 et seq.—It may be noted here that several instances of confusion amongst Bābur’s sons occur in the extracts made by Sir H. Elliot and Professor Dowson in their History of India from the less authoritative sources [e.g. v, 35 Kāmrān for Humāyūn, ‘Askarī said to be in Kābul (pp. 36 and 37); Hind-āl for Humāyūn etc.] and that these errors have slipped into several of the District Gazetteers of the United Provinces.

[2712] As was said of the offering made by the Rāja of Kahlūr, the precision of statement as to what was given to Hind-āl, bespeaks a closely-contemporary written source. So too does the mention (text, infra) of the day on which Bābur began his return journey from Lāhor.

[2713] Cf. G. of I. xvi, 55; Ibbetson’s Report on Karnāl.

[2714] It is noticeable that no one of the three royal officers named as sent against Mohan Mundāhir, is recognizable as mentioned in the Bābur-nāma. They may all have had local commands, and not have served further east. Perhaps this, their first appearance, points to the origin of the information as independent of Bābur, but he might have been found to name them, if his diary were complete for 936 AH.

[2715] The E. and D. translation writes twice as though the inability to “pull” the bows were due to feebleness in the men, but an appropriate reading would refer the difficulty to the hardening of sinews in the composite Turkish bows, which prevented the archers from bending the bows for stringing.

[2716] One infers that fires were burned all night in the bivouac.

[2717] At this point the A.S.B. copy (No. 137) of the Tārīkh-i-salāt̤in-i-afāghana has a remark which may have been a marginal note originally, and which cannot be supposed made by Aḥmad-i-yādgār himself because this would allot him too long a spell of life. It may show however that the interpolations about the two Tīmūrids were not inserted in his book by him. Its purport is that the Mundāhir village destroyed by Bābur’s troops in 936 AH.-1530 AD. was still in ruins at the time it was written 160 (lunar) years later (i.e. in 1096 AH.-1684-85 AD.). The better Codex (No. 3887) of the Imperial Library of Calcutta has the same passage.—Both that remark and its context show acquaintance with Samāna and Kaithal.—The writings now grouped under the title Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afāghana present difficulties both as to date and contents (cf. Rieu’s Persian Catalogue s. n.).

[2718] Presumably in Tihrind.

[2719] Cf. G. B.’s H. N. trs. and the Akbar-nāma Bib. Ind. ed. and trs., Index s.nn.; Hughes’ Dictionary of Islām s.n. Intercession.

[2720] A closer translation would be, “I have taken up the burden.” The verb is bardāshtan (cf. f. 349, p. 626 n. 1).

[2721] See Erskine’s History of India ii, 9.

[2722] At this point attention is asked to the value of the Aḥmad-i-yādgār interpolation which allows Bābur a year of active life before Humāyūn’s illness and his own which followed. With no chronicle known of 936 AH. Bābur had been supposed ill all through the year, a supposition which destroys the worth of his self-sacrifice. Moreover several inferences have been drawn from the supposed year of illness which are disproved by the activities recorded in that interpolation.

[2723] E. and D.’s History of India v, 187; G. B.’s Humāyūn-nāma trs. p. 28.

[2724] dar khidmat-i-dīwānī-i-buyūtāt; perhaps he was a Barrack-officer. His appointment explains his attendance on Khalīfa.

[2725] Khalīfa prescribed for the sick Bābur.

[2726] khānwāda-i-bīgānah, perhaps, foreign dynasty.

[2727] From Saṃbhal; Gul-badan, by an anachronism made some 60 years later, writes Kālanjar, to which place Humāyūn moved 5 months after his accession.

[2728] I am indebted to my husband’s perusal of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān’s As̤ār-i-ṣanādīd (Dihlī ed. 1854 p. 37, and Lakhnau ed. 1895 pp. 40, 41) for information that, perhaps in 935 AH., Mahdī Khwāja set up a tall slab of white marble near Amīr Khusrau’s tomb in Dihlī, which bears an inscription in praise of the poet, composed by that Shihābu’d-dīn the Enigmatist who reached Āgra with Khwānd-amīr in Muḥarram 935 AH. (f. 339b). The inscription gives two chronograms of Khusrau’s death (725 AH.), mentions that Mahdī Khwāja was the creator of the memorial, and gives its date in the words, “The beautiful effort of Mahdī Khwāja.”—The Dihlī ed. of the As̤ār-i-ṣanādīd depicts the slab with its inscription; the Lakhnau ed. depicts the tomb, may show the slab in sitû, and contains interesting matter by Sayyid Aḥmad Khān. The slab is mentioned without particulars in Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal, p. 329.

[2729] Lee’s Ibn Batuta p. 133 and Hirāman’s Tārīkh-i-gūālīārī. Cf. G. B.’s Humāyūn-nāma trs. (1902 AD.), Appendix B.—Mahdī Khwāja.

[2730] In an anonymous Life of Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī, Mahdī Khwāja [who may be a son of the Mūsa Khwāja mentioned by Bābur on f. 216] is described as being, in what will be 916-7 AH., Bābur’s Dīwān-begī and as sent towards Bukhārā with 10,000 men. This was 29 years before the story calls him a young man. Even if the word jawān (young man) be read, as T. yīgīt is frequently to be read, in the sense of “efficient fighting man”, Mahdī was over-age. Other details of the story, besides the word jawān, bespeak a younger man.

[2731] G. B.’s H. N. trs. p. 126; Ḥabību’s-siyar, B. M. Add. 16,679 f. 370, l. 16, lith. ed. Sec. III. iii, 372 (where a clerical error makes Bābur give Māhdī two of his full-sisters in marriage).—Another yazna of Bābur was Khalīfā’s brother Junaid Barlās, the husband of Shahr-bānū, a half-sister of Bābur.

[2732] Bābur, shortly before his death, married Gul-rang to Aīsān-tīmūr and Gul-chihra to Tūkhta-būghā Chaghatāī. Cf. post, Section h, Bābur’s wives and children; and G. B.’s H. N. trs. Biographical Appendix s.nn. Dil-dār Begīm and Salīma Sult̤ān Begīm Mirān-shāhi.

[2733] Cf. G. B.’s H. N. trs. p. 147.

[2734] She is the only adult daughter of a Tīmūrid mother named as being such by Bābur or Gul-badan, but various considerations incline to the opinion that Dil-dār Begīm also was a Tīmūrid, hence her three daughters, all named from the Rose, were so too. Cf. references of penultimate note.

[2735] It attaches interest to the Mīrzā that he can be taken reasonably as once the owner of the Elphinstone Codex (cf. JRAS. 1907, pp. 136 and 137).

[2736] Death did not threaten when this gift was made; life in Kābul was planned for.—Here attention is asked again to the value of Aḥmad-i-yādgār’s Bāburiana for removing the impression set on many writers by the blank year 936 AH. that it was one of illness, instead of being one of travel, hunting and sight-seeing. The details of the activities of that year have the further value that they enhance the worth of Bābur’s sacrifice of life.—Ḥaidar Mīrzā also fixes the date of the beginning of illness as 937 AH.

[2737] The author, or embroiderer, of that anonymous story did not know the Bābur-nāma well, or he would not have described Bābur as a wine-drinker after 933 AH. The anecdote is parallel with Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad’s, the one explaining why the Mīrzā was selected, the other why the dāmād was dropped.

[2738] Bib. Ind. i, 341; Ranking’s trs. p. 448.

[2739] The night-guard; perhaps Māhīm Begīm’s brother (G. B.’s H. N. trs. pp. 27-8).

[2740] G. B.’s H. N. trs. f. 34b, p. 138; Jauhar’s Memoirs of Humāyūn, Stewart’s trs. p. 82.

[2741] Cf. G. B.’s H. N. trs. p. 216, Bio. App. s.n. Bega Begam.

[2742] f. 128, p. 200 n. 3. Cf. Appendix U.—Bābur’s Gardens in and near Kābul.

[2743] Cf. H. H. Hayden’s Notes on some monuments in Afghānistān, [Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal ii, 344]; and Journal asiatique 1888, M. J. Darmesteter’s art. Inscriptions de Caboul.

[2744] ān, a demonstrative suggesting that it refers to an original inscription on the second, but now absent, upright slab, which presumably would bear Bābur’s name.

[2745] Ruẓwān is the door-keeper of Paradise.

[2746] Particulars of the women mentioned by Bābur, Ḥaidar, Gul-badan and other writers of their time, can be seen in my Biographical Appendix to the Begīm’s Humāyūn-nāma. As the Appendix was published in 1902, variants from it occurring in this work are corrections superseding earlier and less-informed statements.

[2747] Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs. Ney Elias and Ross p. 308.

[2748] Bio. App. s.n. Gul-chihra.

[2749] The story of the later uprisings against Māhīm’s son Humāyūn by his brothers, by Muḥammad-i-zamān Bāī-qarā and others of the same royal blood, and this in spite of Humāyūn’s being his father’s nominated successor, stirs surmise as to whether the rebels were not tempted by more than his defects of character to disregard his claim to supremacy; perhaps pride of higher maternal descent, this particularly amongst the Bāī-qarā group, may have deepened a disregard created by antagonisms of temperament.

[2750] Until the Yāngī-ārīq was taken off the Sīr, late in the last century, for Namangān, the oasis land of Farghāna was fertilized, not from the river but by its intercepted tributaries.

[2751] Ujfalvy’s translation of Yāqūt (ii, 179) reads one farsākh from the mountains instead of ‘north of the river.’

[2752] Kostenko describes a division of Tāshkīnt, one in which is Ravine-lane (jar-kucha), as divided by a deep ravine; of another he says that it is cut by deep ravines (Bābur’s ‘umīq jarlār).

[2753] Bābur writes as though Akhsī had one Gate only (f. 112b). It is unlikely that the town had come down to having a single exit; the Gate by which he got out of Akhsī was the one of military importance because served by a draw-bridge, presumably over the ravine-moat, and perhaps not close to that bridge.

[2754] For mention of upper villages see f. 110 and note 1.

[2755] Cf. f. 114 for distances which would be useful in locating Akhsī if Bābur’s yīghāch were not variable; Ritter, vii, 3 and 733; Réclus, vi, index s.n. Farghāna; Ujfalvy ii, 168, his quotation from Yāqūt and his authorities; Nalivkine’s Histoire du Khanat de Kokand, p. 14 and p. 53; Schuyler, i, 324; Kostenko, Tables of Contents for cognate general information and i, 320, for Tāshkīnt; von Schwarz, index under related names, and especially p. 345 and plates; Pumpelly, p. 18 and p. 115.

[2756] This Turkī-Persian Dictionary was compiled by Mīrzā Mahdī Khān. Nādir Shāh’s secretary and historian, whose life of his master Sir William Jones translated into French (Rieu’s Turkī Cat. p. 264b).

[2757] The Pādshāh-nāma whose author, ‘Abdu’l-ḥamīd, the biographer of Shāh-jahān, died in 1065 AH. (1655 AD.) mentions the existence of lacunæ in a copy of the Bābur-nāma, in the Imperial Library and allowed by his wording to be Bābur’s autograph MS. (i, 42 and ii, 703).

[2758] Akbar-nāma, Bib. Ind. ed. i, 305; H. B. i, 571.

[2759] Ḥai. MS. f. 118b; aūshāl bāghdā sū āqīb kīlā dūr aīdī. Bābur-nāma, sū āqīb, water flowed and aūshal is rare, but in the R.P. occurs 7 times.

[2760] gūzūm āwīqī-ghā bārīb tūr. B.N. f. 117b, gūzūm āwīqū-ghā bārdī.

[2761] kūrā dūr mīn, B.N. f. 83, tūsh kūrdūm and tūsh kūrār mīn.

[2762] ablaq suwār bīlān; P. suwār for T. ātlīq or ātlīq kīshī; bīlān for B.N. bīla, and an odd use of piebald (ablaq).

[2763] masnad, B.N. takht, throne. Masnad betrays Hindūstān.

[2764] Hamrā‘īlārī (sic) bir bir gā (sic) maṣlaḥat qīlā dūrlār. Maṣlaḥat for B.N. kīngāsh or kīngāīsh; hamrāh, companion, for mīnīng bīla bār, etc.

[2765] bāghlāmāq and f. 119b bāghlāghānlār; B.N. ālmāk or tūtmāq to seize or take prisoner.

[2766] dīwār for tām.

[2767] f. 119, āt-tīn aūzlār-nī tāshlāb; B.N. tūshmāk, dismount. Tāshlāmaq is not used in the sense of dismount by B.

[2768] pādshāh so used is an anachronism (f. 215); Bābur Mīrzā would be correct.

[2769] z̤āhirān; B.N. yāqīn.

[2770] Ilminsky’s imprint stops at dīb; he may have taken kīm-dīb for signs of quotation merely. (This I did earlier, JRAS 1902, p. 749.)

[2771] Aligarh ed. p. 52; Rogers’ trs. i, 109.

[2772] Cf. f. 63b, n. 3.

[2773] Another but less obvious objection will be mentioned later.

[2774] Julien notes (Voyages des pélerins Bouddhistes, ii, 96), “Dans les annales des Song on trouve Nang-go-lo-ho, qui répond exactement à l’orthographe indienne Nangarahāra, que fournit l’inscription découvert par le capitaine Kittoe” (JASB. 1848). The reference is to the Ghoswāra inscription, of which Professor Kielhorn has also written (Indian Antiquary, 1888), but with departure from Nangarahāra to Nagarahāra.

[2775] The scribe of the Ḥaidarābād Codex appears to have been somewhat uncertain as to the spelling of the name. What is found in histories is plain, N:g:r:hār. The other name varies; on first appearance (fol. 131b) and also on fols. 144 and 154b, there is a vagrant dot below the word, which if it were above would make Nīng-nahār. In all other cases the word reads N:g:nahār. Nahār is a constant component, as is also the letter g(or k).

[2776] Some writers express the view that the medial r in this word indicates descent from Nagarahāra, and that the medial n of Elphinstone’s second form is a corruption of it. Though this might be, it is true also that in local speech r and n often interchange, e.g. Chighār- and Chighān-sarāī, Sūhār and Sūhān (in Nūr-valley).

[2777] This asserts n to be the correct consonant, and connects with the interchange of n and r already noted.

[2778] Since writing the above I have seen Laidlaw’s almost identical suggestion of a nasal interpolated in Nagarahāra (JASB. 1848, art. on Kittoe). The change is of course found elsewhere; is not Tānk for Tāq an instance?

[2779] These affluents I omit from main consideration as sponsors because they are less obvious units of taxable land than the direct affluents of the Kābul-river, but they remain a reserve force of argument and may or may not have counted in Bābur’s nine.

[2780] Cunningham, i, 42. My topic does not reach across the Kābul-river to the greater Udyānapūra of Beal’s Buddhist Records (p. 119) nor raise the question of the extent of that place.

[2781] The strong form Nīng-nahār is due to euphonic impulse.

[2782] Some discussion about these coins has already appeared in JRAS. 1913 and 1914 from Dr. Codrington, Mr. M. Longworth Dames and my husband.

[2783] This variant from the Turkī may be significant. Should tamghānat(-i-)sikka be read and does this describe countermarking?

[2784] It will be observed that Bābur does not explicitly say that Ḥusain put the beg’s name on the coin.

[2785] Ḥabību’s-siyar lith. ed. iii, 228; Ḥaidarābād Codex text and trs. f. 26b and f. 169; Browne’s Daulat Shāh p. 533.

[2786] Ḥusain born 842 AH. (1438 AD.); d. 911 AH. (1506 AD.).

[2787] Cf. f. 7b note to braves (yīgītlār). There may be instances, in the earlier Farghāna section where I have translated chuhra wrongly by page. My attention had not then been fixed on the passage about the coins, nor had I the same familiarity with the Kābul section. For a household page to be clearly recognizable as such from the context, is rare—other uses of the word are translated as their context dictates.

[2788] They can be traced through my Index and in some cases their careers followed. Since I translated chuhra-jīrga-si on f. 15b by cadet-corps, I have found in the Kābul section instances of long service in the corps which make the word cadet, as it is used in English, too young a name.

[2789] This Mr. M. Longworth Dames pointed out in JRAS. 1913.

[2790] Habību’s-siyar lith. ed. iii, 219; Ferté trs. p. 28. For the information about Ḥusain’s coins given in this appendix I am indebted to Dr. Codrington and Mr. M. Longworth Dames.

[2791] Elphinstone MS. f. 150b; Ḥaidarābād MS. f. 190b; Ilminsky, imprint p. 241.

[2792] Muḥ. Ma‘ṣūm Bhakkarí’s Tārīkh-i-sind 1600, Malet’s Trs. 1855, p. 89; Mohan Lall’s Journal 1834, p. 279 and Travels 1846, p. 311; Bellew’s Political Mission to Afghānistān 1857, p. 232; Journal Asiatique 1890, Darmesteter’s La grande inscription de Qandahār; JRAS. 1898, Beames’ Geography of the Qandahār inscription. Murray’s Hand-book of the Panjab etc. 1883 has an account which as to the Inscriptions shares in the inaccuracies of its sources (Bellew & Lumsden).

[2793] The plan of Qandahār given in the official account of the Second Afghān War, makes Chihil-zīna appear on the wrong side of the ridge, n.w. instead of n.e.

[2794] destroyed in 1714 AD. It lay 3 m. west of the present Qandahār (not its immediate successor). It must be observed that Darmesteter’s insufficient help in plans and maps led him to identify Chihil-zīna with Chihil-dukhtarān (Forty-daughters).

[2795] Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs. p. 387; Akbar-nāma trs. i, 290.

[2796] Ḥai. Codex, Index sn.n.

[2797] It is needless to say that a good deal in this story may be merely fear and supposition accepted as occurrence.

[2798] Always left beyond the carpet on which a reception is held.

[2799] This is not in agreement with Bābur’s movements.

[2800] i.e. Humāyūn wished for a full-brother or sister, another child in the house with him. The above names of his brother and sister are given elsewhere only by Gulbadan (f. 6b).

[2801] The “we” might be Māhīm and Humāyūn, to Bābur in camp.

[2802] Perhaps before announcing the birth anywhere.

[2803] Presumably this plural is honorific for the Honoured Mother Māhīm.

[2804] Māhīm’s and Humāyūn’s quarters.

[2805] Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma, f. 8.

[2806] JRAS. A. S. Beveridge’s Notes on Bābur-nāma MSS. 1900, [1902,] 1905, 1906, [1907,] 1908 (Kehr’s transcript, p. 76, and Latin translation with new letter of Bābur p. 828).

[2807] In all such matters of the Bābur-nāma Codices, it has to be remembered that their number has been small.

[2808] Vigne’s Travels in Kāshmīr ii, 277-8; Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs., p. 302 and n. and p. 466 and note.

[2809] It is not likely to be one heard current in Hindūstān, any more than is Bābur’s Ar. bū-qalamūn as a name of a bird (Index s.n.); both seem to be “book-words” and may be traced or known as he uses them in some ancient dictionary or book of travels originating outside Hindūstān.

[2810] My note 6 on p. 421 shows my earlier difficulties, due to not knowing (when writing it) that kabg-ī-darī represents the snow-cock in the Western Himālayas.

[2811] By over-sight mention of this note was omitted from my article on the Elphinstone Codex (JRAS. 1907, p. 131).

[2812] Speede’s Indian Hand-book (i, 212) published in 1841 AD. thus writes, “It is a curious circumstance that the finest and most esteemed fruit are produced from the roots below the surface of the ground, and are betrayed by the cracking of the earth above them, and the effluvia issuing from the fissure; a high price is given by rich natives for fruit so produced.”

[2813] In the margin of the Elphinstone Codex opposite the beginning of the note are the words, “This is a marginal note of Humāyūn Pādshāh’s.”

[2814] Every Emperor of Hindūstān has an epithet given him after his death to distinguish him, and prevent the necessity of repeating his name too familiarly. Thus Firdaus-makān (dweller-in-paradise) is Bābur’s; Humāyūn’s is Jannat-ashi-yānī, he whose nest is in Heaven; Muḥammad Shāh’s Firdaus-āramgāh, he whose place of rest is Paradise; etc. (Erskine).

[2815] Here Mr. Erskine notes, “Literally, nectar-fruit, probably the mandarin orange, by the natives called nāringī. The name amrat, or pear, in India is applied to the guava or Psidium pyriferum—(Spondias mangifera, Hort. Ben.—D. Wallich).”... Mr. E. notes also that the note on the amrit-phal “is not found in either of the Persian translations”.

[2816] chūchūmān, Pers. trs. shīrīni bī maza, perhaps flat, sweet without relish. Bābur does not use the word, nor have I traced it in a dictionary.

[2817] chūchūk, savoury, nice-tasting, not acid (Shaw).

[2818] chūchūk nāranj āndāq (?) mat̤‘ūn aīdī kīm har kīm-nī shīrīn-kārlīghī bī masa qīlkāndī, nāranj-sū’ī dīk tūr dīrlār aīdī.

[2819] The lemu may be Citrus limona, which has abundant juice of a mild acid flavour.

[2820] The kāmila and samt̤ara are the real oranges (kauṅlā and sangtāra), which are now (cir. 1816 AD.) common all over India. Dr. Hunter conjectures that the sangtāra may take its name from Cintra, in Portugal. This early mention of it by Bābur and Humāyūn may be considered as subversive of that supposition. (This description of the samt̤ara, vague as it is, applies closer to the Citrus decumana or pampelmus, than to any other.—D. Wallich.)—Erskine.

[2821] Humāyūn writes of this fruit as though it were not the sang-tara described by his father on f. 287 (p. 511 and note).

[2822] M. de Courteille translated jama‘ in a general sense by totalit.’ instead of in its Indian technical one of revenue (as here) or of assessment. Hence Professor Dowson’s “totality” (iv, 262 n.).

[2823] The B.M. has a third copy, Or. 5879, which my husband estimates as of little importance.

[2824] Sir G. A. Grierson, writing in the Indian Antiquary (July 1885, p. 187), makes certain changes in Ajodhya Prasad’s list of the Brahman rulers of Tirhut, on grounds he states.

[2825] Index s.n. Bābur’s letters. The passage Shaikh Zain quotes is found in Or. 1999, f. 65b, Add. 26,202, f. 66b, Or. 5879, f. 79b.

[2826] Cf. Index in loco for references to Bābur’s metrical work, and for the Facsimile, JASB. 1910, Extra Number.

[2827] Monday, Rabi‘ II. 15th 935 AH.—Dec. 27th 1528 AD. At this date Bābur had just returned from Dhūlpūr to Āgra (f. 354, p. 635, where in note 1 for Thursday read Monday).

[2828] Owing to a scribe’s “skip” from one yībārīldī (was sent) to another at the end of the next sentence, the passage is not in the Ḥai. MS. It is not well given in my translation (f. 357b, p. 642); what stands above is a closer rendering of the full Turkī, Humāyūngha tarjuma [u?] nī-kīm Hindūstāngha kīlkānī aītqān ash’ārnī yībārīldī (Ilminsky p. 462, 1. 4 fr. ft., where however there appears a slight clerical error).

[2829] Hesitation about accepting the colophon as unquestionably applying to the whole contents of the manuscript is due to its position of close association with one section only of the three in the manuscript (cf. post p. lx).

[2830] Plate XI, and p. 15 (mid-page) of the Facsimile booklet.—The Facsimile does not show the whole of the marginal quatrain, obviously because for the last page of the manuscript a larger photographic plate was needed than for the rest. With Dr. Ross’ concurrence a photograph in which the defect is made good, accompanies this Appendix.

[2831] The second section ends on Plate XVII, and p. 21 of the Facsimile booklet.

[2832] Needless to say that whatever the history of the manuscript, its value as preserving poems of which no other copy is known publicly, is untouched. This value would be great without the marginal entries on the last page; it finds confirmation in the identity of many of the shorter poems with counterparts in the Bābur-nāma.

[2833] Another autograph of Shāh-i-jahān’s is included in the translation volume (p. xiii) of Gul-badan Begam’s Humāyūn-nāma. It surprises one who works habitually on historical writings more nearly contemporary with Bābur, in which he is spoken of as Firdaus-makānī or as Gītī-sitānī Firdaus-makānī and not by the name used during his life, to find Shāh-i-jahān giving him the two styles (cf. Jahāngīr’s Memoirs trs. ii, 5). Those familiar with the writings of Shāh-i-jahān’s biographers will know whether this is usual at that date. There would seem no doubt as to the identity of ān Ḥaẓrat.—The words ān ḥaẓrat by which Shāh-i-jahān refers to Bābur are used also in the epitaph placed by Jahāngīr at Bābur’s tomb (Trs. Note p. 710-711).

[2834] The Qāẓī’s rapid acquirement of the mufradāt of the script allows the inference that few letters only and those of a well-known script were varied.—Mufradāt was translated by Erskine, de Courteille and myself (f. 357b) as alphabet but reconsideration by the light of more recent information about the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ leads me to think this is wrong because “alphabet” includes every letter.—On f. 357b three items of the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ are specified as despatched with the Hindūstān poems, viz. mufradāt, qita‘lār and sar-i-khat̤t̤. Of these the first went to Hind-āl, the third to Kāmrān, and no recipient is named for the second; all translators have sent the qita‘lār to Hind-āl but I now think this wrong and that a name has been omitted, probably Humāyūn’s.

[2835] f. 144b, p. 228, n. 3. Another interesting matter missing from the Bābur-nāma by the gap between 914 and 925 AH. is the despatch of an embassy to Czar Vassili III. in Moscow, mentioned in Schuyler’s Turkistan ii, 394, Appendix IV, Grigorief’s Russian Policy in Central Asia. The mission went after “Sulṯān Bābur” had established himself in Kābul; as Bābur does not write of it before his narrative breaks off abruptly in 914 AH. it will have gone after that date.

[2836] I quote from the Véliaminof-Zernov edition (p. 287) from which de Courteille’s plan of work involved extract only; he translates the couplet, giving to khat̤t̤ the double-meanings of script and down of youth (Dictionnaire Turque s.n. sīghnāqī). The Sanglākh (p. 252) s.n. sīghnāq has the following as Bābur’s:—

Chū balai khat̤t̤ī naṣīb’ng būlmāsa Bābur nī tang?

Bare khat̤t̤ almanṣūr khat̤t̤ sighnāqī mū dūr?

[2837] Gibb’s History of Ottoman Poetry i, 113 and ii, 137.

[2838] Réclus’ L’Asie Russe p. 238.

[2839] On this same taḥrīr qīldīm may perhaps rest the opinion that the Rāmpūr MS. is autograph.

[2840] I have found no further mention of the tract; it may be noted however that whereas Bābur calls his Treatise on Prosody (written in 931 AH.) the ‘Arūẓ, Abū’l-faẓl writes of a Mufaṣṣal, a suitable name for 504 details of transposition.

[2841] Tūzūk-i-jahāngīr lith. ed. p. 149; and Memoirs of jahāngīr trs. i, 304. [In both books the passage requires amending.]

[2842] Rāmpūr MS. Facsimile Plate XIV and p. 16, verse 3; Akbar-nāma trs. i, 279, and lith. ed. p. 91.

[2843] Cf. Index s.n. Dalmau and Bangarmau for the termination in double ū.

[2844] Dr. Ilminsky says of the Leyden & Erskine Memoirs of Bābur that it was a constant and indispensable help.

[2845] My examination of Kehr’s Codex has been made practicable by the courtesy of the Russian Foreign Office in lending it for my use, under the charge of the Librarian of the India Office, Dr. F. W. Thomas.—It should be observed that in this Codex the Hindūstān Section contains the purely Turkī text found in the Ḥaidarābād Codex (cf. JRAS. 1908, p. 78).

[2846] It may indicate that the List was not copied by Bābur but lay loose with his papers, that it is not with the Elphinstone Codex, and is not with the ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm Persian translation made from a manuscript of that same annotated line.

[2847] Cf. in loco p. 656, n. 3.

[2848] A few slight changes in the turn of expressions have been made for clearness sake.

[2849] Index s.n. Mīr Bāqī of Tāshkīnt. Perhaps a better epithet for sa‘ādạt-nishān than “good-hearted” would be one implying his good fortune in being designated to build a mosque on the site of the ancient Hindū temple.

[2850] There is a play here on Bāqī’s name; perhaps a good wish is expressed for his prosperity together with one for the long permanence of the sacred building khair (khairat).

[2851] Presumably the order for building the mosque was given during Bābur’s stay in Aūd (Ajodhya) in 934 AH. at which time he would be impressed by the dignity and sanctity of the ancient Hindū shrine it (at least in part) displaced, and like the obedient follower of Muḥammad he was in intolerance of another Faith, would regard the substitution of a temple by a mosque as dutiful and worthy.—The mosque was finished in 935 AH. but no mention of its completion is in the Bābur-nāma. The diary for 935 AH. has many minor lacunæ; that of the year 934 AH. has lost much matter, breaking off before where the account of Aūd might be looked for.

[2852] The meaning of this couplet is incomplete without the couplet that followed it and is (now) not legible.

[2853] Firishta gives a different reason for Bābur’s sobriquet of qalandar, namely, that he kept for himself none of the treasure he acquired in Hindūstān (Lith. ed. p. 206).

[2854] Jahāngīr who encamped in the Shahr-ārā-garden in Ṣafar 1016 AH. (May 1607 AD.) says it was made by Bābur’s aunt, Abū-sa‘īd’s daughter Shahr-bānū (Rogers and Beveridge’s Memoirs of Jahāngīr i, 106).

[2855] A jalau-khāna might be where horse-head-gear, bridles and reins are kept, but Āyīn 60 (A.-i-A.) suggests there may be another interpretation.

[2856] She was a daughter of Hind-āl, was a grand-daughter therefore of Bābur, was Akbar’s first wife, and brought up Shāh-i-jahān. Jahāngīr mentions that she made her first pilgrimage to her father’s tomb on the day he made his to Bābur’s, Friday Ṣafar 26th 1016 AH. (June 12th 1607 AD.). She died æt. 84 on Jumāda I. 7th 1035 AH. (Jan. 25th 1626 AD.). Cf. Tūzūk-i-jahāngīrī, Muḥ. Hādī’s Supplement lith. ed. p. 401.

[2857] Mr. H. H. Hayden’s photograph of the mosque shows pinnacles and thus enables its corner to be identified in his second of the tomb itself.

[2858] One of Daniel’s drawings (which I hope to reproduce) illuminates this otherwise somewhat obscure passage, by showing the avenue, the borders of running-water and the little water-falls,—all reminding of Madeira.

[2859] chokī, perhaps “shelter”; see Hobson-Jobson s.n.

[2860] If told with leisurely context, the story of the visits of Bābur’s descendants to Kābul and of their pilgrimages to his tomb, could hardly fail to interest its readers.

[2861] The fist indicates Translator’s matter.

[2862] See Abū’l-ghāzī’s Shajarat-i-turkī on the origin and characteristics of the tribe (Désmaisons trs. Index s.n. Oūīghūr, especially pp. 16, 37, 39).

[2863] This date is misplaced in my text and should be transferred from p. 83, l. 3 fr. ft. to p. 86, l. 1, there to follow “two years”.

[2864] A fuller reference to the Ḥ.S. than is given on p. 85 n. 2, is ii, 44 and iii, 167.

[2865] Cf. s.n. ‘Abdu’l-lāh Mīrzā Shāh-rukhī for a date misplaced in my text.

[2866] The date 935 AH. is inferred from p. 483.

[2867] Cf. Badāyūnī’s Muntakhabu’t-tawārīkh and Ranking’s trs. i, 616 and n. 4, 617.

[2868] Ferté translates this sobriquet by le dévoué (Vie de Sl. Hossein Baikara p. 40 n. 3).

[2869] At p. 22 n. 8 fill out to Cf. f. 6b (p. 13) n. 5.

[2870] For an account of his tomb see Schuyler’s Turkistān, 1, 70-72.

[2871] Or Aīgū (Āyāgū) from āyāgh, foot, perhaps expressing close following of Tīmūr, whose friend the Beg was.

[2872] Daulat-shāh celebrates the renown of the Jalāīr section (farqa) of the Chaghatāī tribes (aqwām) of the Mughūl horde (aūlūs, ūlūs), styles the above-entered ‘Alī Beg a veteran hero, and links his family with that of the Jalāīr Sultāns of Bāghdād (Browne’s ed. p. 519).

[2873] See H. S. lith. ed. iii, 224, for three men who conveyed helpful information to Husain.

[2874] Later consideration has cast doubts on his identification with Darwesh-i-‘alī suggested, p. 345 n. 4.

[2875] On p. 69 n. 2 for aūnūlūng read aūnūtūng and reverse bakunīd with nakunīd.

[2876] On p. 49 l. 3 for “Black Sheep” read White Sheep.

[2877] Like his brother Hind-āl’s name, Alūr’s may be due to the taking (al) of Hind.

[2878] See the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī account of the rulers of Multān.

[2879] On p. 85 l. 9 for “872 AH.-1467 AD.”, read 851 AH.-1447 AD.

[2880] On p. 79 transfer the note-reference “3” to qibla.

[2881] See Daulat-shāh (Browne’s ed. p. 362) for an entertaining record of the Mīrzā’s zeal as a sportsman and an illustrative anecdote by Shaikh ‘Ārif ‘azarī q.v. (H.B.).

[2882] I have found no statement of his tribe or race; he and his brother are styled Khwāja (Ḥ.S. lith. ed. iii, 272); he is associated closely with Aḥmad Taṃbal Mughūl and Mughūls of the Horde; also his niece’s name Aūlūs Āghā translates as Lady of the Horde (ūlūs, aūlūs). But he may have been a Turkmān.

[2883] The MS. variants between ‘Alī and -qulī are confusing. What stands in my text (p. 27) may be less safe than the above.

[2884] Bābā Qashqa was murdered by Muḥammad-i-zamān Bāī-qarā. For further particulars of his family group see Add. Notes under p. 404.

[2885] Sult̤an Bābā-qulī Beg is found variously designated Qulī Beg, Qulī Bābā, Sl. ‘Alī Bābā-qulī, Sult̤ān-qūlī Bābā and Bābā-qulī Beg. Several forms appear to express his filial relationship with Sult̤ān Bābā ‘Alī (q.v.).

[2886] Down to p. 346 Bābur’s statements are retrospective; after p. 346 they are mostly contemporary with the dates of his diary—when not so are in supplementing passages of later date.

[2887] He may be the father of Mun‘im Khān (Blochmann’s Biographies A.-i-A. trs. 317 and n. 2).

[2888] See note, Index, s.n. Muḥammad Ẕakarīa.

[2889] He is likely to have been introduced with some particulars of tribe, in one of the now unchronicled years after Bābur’s return from his Trans-oxus campaign.

[2890] His wife, daughter of a wealthy man and on the mother’s side niece of Sult̤ān Buhlūl Lūdī, financed the military efforts of Bāyazīd and Bīban (Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. and D. iv, 353 ff.).

[2891] My translation on p. 621 l. 12 is inaccurate inasmuch as it hides the circumstance that Beg-gīna alone was the “messenger of good tidings”.

[2892] In taking Bīban for a Jilwānī, I follow Erskine, (as inferences also warrant,) but he may be a Lūdī.

[2893] For the same uncertainty between Bihār and Pahār see E. and D.’s History of India iv, 352 n. 2.

[2894] Firishta lith. ed. i, 202.

[2895] For “Mū’min” read Mūmin, which form is constant in the Ḥai. MS.

[2896] He may be Ḥamīda-bānū’s father and, if so, became grandfather of Akbar.

[2897] Ilminsky, anlū, Erskine, angū. Daulat-shāh mentions a Muḥammad Shāh anjū (see Brown’s ed. Index s.n.).

[2898] On p. 22 n. 2 delete “Chaghatāī Mughūl” on grounds given in Additional Note, Page 22.

[2899] For Humāyūn’s annotation of the Bābur-nāma, see General Index s.n. Humāyūn’s Notes.

[2900] For a correction of dates, see s.n. Aūlūgh Beg.

[2901] On p. 279 l. 3 from foot read “There was also Ibrāhīm Chaghatāī” after “Muḥammad-i-zamān Mīrzā”.

[2902] Addendum:—p. 49 l. 4, read “wife” of Muḥammadī “son” of Jahān-shāh.

[2903] His name might mean Welcome, Bien-venu.

[2904] Khusrau-shāh may be the more correct form.

[2905] The “afterwards” points to an omission which Khwānd-amīr’s account of Ḥusain’s daughters fills (lith. ed. iii, 327).

[2906] No record survives of the Khwāja’s deeds of daring other than those entered above; perhaps the other instances Bābur refers to occurred during the gap 908-9 AH.

[2907] This may be a tribal or a family name. Abū’l-ghāzī mentions two individuals named “Kouk”. One was Chīngīz Khān’s grandson who is likely to have had descendants or followers distinguishable as Kūkī. See Add. Note P. 673 on Kūkī fate.

[2908] Cf. E. and D. for “KARĀNĪ” (e.g. vol. iv, 530). The Ḥai. MS. sometimes doubles the r, sometimes not.

[2909] See Wāqi‘āt-i-mushtāqī, E. and D. iv, 548.

[2910] Shaikhīm Suhailī however was named Aḥmad (277) not Muhammad.

[2911] The record of the first appears likely to be lost in the lacuna of 934 AH.

[2912] See Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry’s ed. Cap. xv, l. 12, for his changes of service, and Sām Mīrzā’s Tuḥfa-i-sāmī for various particulars including his classification as a Chaghatāī.

[2913] He died serving Bābur, at Kūl-i-malik (Ḥ.S. iii, 344).—Further information negatives my suggestion (201 n. 7) that he and Mīr Ḥusain (p. 288 and n. 7) were one.

[2914] “Zaitun is the name of the Chinese city from which satin was brought (hodie Thsiuancheu or Chincheu) and my belief is that our word satin came from it” (Col. H. Yule, E. and D. iv, 514).

[2915] My text omits to translate yīgīt (aūghūl) and thus loses the information that Yaḥyā’s sons Bāqī and Ẕakarīa were above childhood, were grown to fighting age—braves—but not yet begs (see Index s.n. chuhra).

[2916] See Add. Notes under p. 39.

[2917] See Add. Notes under p. 266.

[2918] For emendation of 266 n. 7, see Add. Notes under P. 266.

[2919] On p. 49 l. 3 for “Black” read White; and in L. 3 read (“wife of”) Muḥammadi son of (“Jahān-shāh”).

[2920] Cf. Ḥ.S. Fertī’s trs. p. 70 for the same name Qaitmās.

[2921] His capture is not recorded.

[2922] He joined Bābur with his father Yār-i-‘alī Balāl (q.v.) in 910 AH. (Blochmann’s Biographies, A.-i-A. trs. 315).

[2923] Concerning the date of his death, see Additional Notes under p. 603.

[2924] Since my text was printed, my husband has lighted upon what shows that the guest at the feast was an ambassador sent by Burhān Niz̤ām Shāh of Aḥmadnagar to congratulate Bābur on his conquest of Dihlī, namely, Shāh T̤āhir the apostle of Shiism in the Dakkan. He is thus distinguished from Sayyid Daknī, (Ruknī, Zaknī) infra and my text needs suitable correction. (See Add. Notes under p. 631 for further particulars of the Sayyid and his embassy.)

[2925] For further particulars see Add. Note under p. 688.

[2926] For “H.S. II” read iii (as also in some other places).

[2927] Down to p. 131 the Ḥai. MS. uses the name Shaibānī or Shaibānī Khān; from that page onwards it writes Shaibāq Khān, in agreement with the Elphinstone MS.—Other names found are e.g. Gulbadan’s Shāhī Beg Khān and Shah-bakht. (My note 2 on p. 12 needs modification.)

[2928] The title “Aūghlān” (child, boy) indicates that the bearer died without ruling.

[2929] This cognomen was given because the bearer was born during an eclipse of the moon (āī, moon and the root al taking away); see Badāyūnī Bib. Ind. ed. i, 62.

[2930] Here delete “Sult̤ān-nigar Khānīm”, who was his grandmother and not his mother.

[2931] On p. 433 n. 1 her name is mistakenly entered as that of Sulaimān’s mother.

[2932] Concerning this title, see Add. Notes under p. 540.

[2933] He may be the Tūlik Khān qūchīn of the Ma‘asiru’l-umrā i, 475.

[2934] Ḥaidar Mīrzā gives an interesting account of his character and attainments (T.R. trs. p. 283).

[2935] See Additional Note under P. 372.

[2936] See Additional Notes under P. 51.

[2937] Here the Ḥai. MS. and Ilminsky’s Imprint add “Nāṣir”.

[2938] The natural place for this Section of record is at the first mention of Yūnas Khān (p. 12) and not, as now found, interrupting another Section. See p. 678 and n. 4 as to “Sections”.

[2939] The entries of 934 and 935 may concern a second man ‘Alī-i-yūsuf.

[2940] Perhaps skilled in the art of metaphors and tropes (‘ilmu’l-badī‘).

[2941] My text has julgāsī, but I am advised to omit the genitive sī; so, too, in aīkī-sū-ārā-sī, Rabāṭjk-aūrchīn-ī q.v.

[2942] Cf. s.n. Āhangaran-julga n. as to form of the name.

[2943] Asterisks indicate Translator’s matter.

[2944] Bābur uses this name for, Anglicé, the Kābul-river as low as nearly to Dakka.

[2945] “the Dara-i-ṣūf, often mentioned by the Arabian writers, seems to lie west of Bāmīān” (Erskine, Memoirs, p. 152 n. 1).

[2946] Bābur’s itinerary gives Gharjistan a greater eastward extent than the Fr. map Maïmènè allows, thus agreeing with Erskine’s surmise (Memoirs p. 152 n. 1).—The first syllable of the name may be “Ghur”.

[2947] On p. 7, l. 1, after “turbulent”, add, “ They are notorious in Māwarā’u’n-nahr for their bullying.”

[2948] On p. 134 for “(I WAS) 19” read in my 19th (lunar) year.

[2949] Cf. Life of Busbecq (Forster and Daniels) i, 252-7, for feats of Turkish archery.

[2950] For the Bukhara (Bābur-nāma) Compilation see Wāqi‘-nāma-i-pādshāhi; as also for its Codices, descendants and offtakes, viz. Ilminski’s “Bābur-nāma” and de Courteille’s Mémoires de Baber.

[2951] The confusion of identity has become clear to me in 1921 only.

[2952] One of the nine great gods of the Etruscans was called Tūrān. Etr. Tūr means strong, a strong place (fortress); with it may connect L. turma (troop) and the name of Virgil’s Rutulian hero Turmus may root in the Mongol tongue. Professor Jules Marthe writes in La Langue Etrusque (Pref. vi), “Il m’a paru qu’il y avait entre l’Etrusque et les langues finns-ougriennes d'étroites affinités” (hence with the Mongol tongue). “Tarkhān” is “Tūrkhān” in Miles trs. p. 71 of the Shajaratu’l-atrāk (H. B.).

[2953] This Cat. contains the Turkī MS. of the Bukhara Compilation, once owned by Leyden.

[2954] where, in n. 3, for f. 183b and f. 264b read f. 103b and f. 264.

[2955] For “Ḥ.S. II” read Ḥ.S. iii—also on p. 244.

[2956] On this peg may be hung the following note:—The Pādshāh-nāma (q.v.) calls the author and presenter of the above translation “Abū-t̤ālib” Ḥusainī (Bib. Ind. ed. vol. i, part 2, p. 288), but its index contains many references seemingly to the same man as Khwāja Abū’l-husain Turbati. The P. N. says the book which it entitles Wāqi‘āt-i-ṣaḥib-qirān (The Acts of Tīmūr), was in Turki, was brought forth from the Library of the (Turk) Governor of Yemen and translated by Mīr Abū-t̤ālib Ḥusainī; that what ‘ had done with this book of counsel (dastān-i-nasā’iḥ) when he sent it to his son Pīr-i-muhammad, then succeeding (his brother) Jahāngīr [in Kābul, the Ghaznis, Qandahār, etc.] Shāhjahān also did by sending it, out of love, to his son Aurangzīb who had been ordered to the Deccan.

[2957] In n. 5 for “parwān” read parrān, and read Blanford.

[2958] Which read (l. 17) for yak rang. The name bak-dīng appears due to the clapping of the bird’s mandibles and its pompous strut; (cf. Ross’ Polyglot List, No. 336).

[2959] Following the zammaj insert “Another is the buzzard (T. Sār); its back and tail are red”. (Cf. Omission List under p. 500.)

[2960] See Omission List under p. 498.

[2961] After “Tramontane”, add Its breast is less deeply black.

[2962] The bird being black, its name cannot be translated “yellow-bird”; as noted on p. 373 sārīgh = thief; [sārāgh or sārīgh means a bird’s song].

[2963] For references to Niz̤āmi’s text, I am indebted to Mr. Beveridge’s knowledge of the poems.

[2964] Cf. Mr. G. Murray’s trs. (Euripides i, 86) suggesting that the Wooden Horse was a sar-kob.

[2965] Abū’l-ghāzī classes Manghīt with Mughul tribes, Radloff with Turk tribes (Récueils p. 325), Erskine says, “modern Nogais.”

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