(u. Marriage of Muqīm’s daughter.)
While we were near Mandrāwar in those days, an alliance was concluded between Muqīm’s daughter Māh-chūchūk, now married to Shāh Ḥasan Arghūn, and Qāsim Kūkūldāsh.[1316]
(v. Abandonment of the Hindūstān project.)
As it was not found desirable to go on into Hindūstān, I sent Mullā Bābā of Pashāghar back to Kābul with a few braves. Meantime I marched from near Mandrāwar to Atar and Shīwa and lay there for a few days. From Atar I visited Kūnār and Nūr-gal; from Kūnār I went back to camp on a raft; it was the first time I had sat on one; it pleased me much, and the raft came into common use thereafter.
(w. Shaibāq Khān retires from Qandahār.)
In those same days Mullā Bābā of Farkat came from Nāṣir Mīrzā with news in detail that Shaibāq Khān, after taking the outer-fort of Qandahār, had not been able to take the citadel but had retired; also that the Mīrzā, on various accounts, had left Qandahār and gone to Ghaznī.
Shaibāq Khān’s arrival before Qandahār, within a few daysFol. 215. of our own departure, had taken the garrison by surprise, and they had not been able to make fast the outer-fort. He ran mines several times round about the citadel and made several assaults. The place was about to be lost. At that anxious time Khwāja Muḥ. Amīn, Khwāja Dost Khāwand, Muḥ. ‘Alī, a foot-soldier, and Shāmī (Syrian?) let themselves down from the walls and got away. Just as those in the citadel were about to surrender in despair, Shaibāq Khān interposed words of peace and uprose from before the place. Why he rose was this:—It appears that before he went there, he had sent his ḥaram to Nīrah-tū,[1317] and that in Nīrah-tū some-one lifted up his head and got command in the fort; the Khān therefore made a sort of peace and retired from Qandahār.
(x. Bābur returns to Kābul.)
Mid-winter though it was we went back to Kābul by the Bād-i-pīch road. I ordered the date of that transit and that crossing of the pass to be cut on a stone above Bād-i-pīch;[1318] Ḥāfiẓ Mīrak wrote the inscription, Ustād Shāh Muḥammad did the cutting, not well though, through haste.