In the mountains round Farghāna are excellent summer-pastures (yīlāq). There, and nowhere else, the tabalghū[92]grows, a tree (yīghāch) with red bark; they make staves of it; theyFol. 5b. make bird-cages of it; they scrape it into arrows;[93] it is an excellent wood (yīghāch) and is carried as a rarity[94] to distant places. Some books write that the mandrake[95] is found in these mountains but for this long time past nothing has been heard of it. A plant called Āyīq aūtī[96] and having the qualities of the mandrake (mihr-giyāh), is heard of in Yītī-kīnt;[97] it seems to be the mandrake (mihr-giyāh) the people there call by this name (i.e. āyīq aūtī). There are turquoise and iron mines in these mountains.
If people do justly, three or four thousand men[98] may be maintained by the revenues of Farghāna.
(b. Historical narrative resumed.)[99]
As ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā was a ruler of high ambition and great pretension, he was always bent on conquest. On several occasions he led an army against Samarkand; sometimes he was beaten, sometimes retired against his will.[100] More than once he asked his father-in-law into the country, that is to say, my grandfather, Yūnas Khān, the then Khān of the Mughūls in the camping ground (yūrt) of his ancestor, Chaghatāī Khān, the second son of Chīngīz Khān. Each time the Mīrzā brought The Khān into the Farghāna country he gave him lands, but, partly owing to his misconduct, partly to the thwarting of the Fol. 6.Mughūls,[101] things did not go as he wished and Yūnas Khān, not being able to remain, went out again into Mughūlistān. When the Mīrzā last brought The Khān in, he was in possession of
Tāshkīnt, which in books they write Shash, and sometimes Chāch, whence the term, a Chāchī, bow.[102] He gave it to The Khān, and from that date (890AH.-1485AD.) down to 908AH. (1503AD.) it and the Shāhrukhiya country were held by the Chaghatāī Khāns.
At this date (i.e., 899AH.-1494AD.) the Mughūl Khānship was in Sl. Maḥ=mūd Khān, Yūnas Khān’s younger son and a half-brother of my mother. As he and ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā’s elder brother, the then ruler of Samarkand, Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā were offended by the Mīrzā’s behaviour, they came to an agreement together; Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā had already given a daughter to Sl. Maḥmūd Khān;[103] both now led their armies against ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā, the first advancing along the south of the Khujand Water, the second along its north.
Meantime a strange event occurred. It has been mentionedFol. 6b that the fort of Akhsī is situated above a deep ravine;[104] along this ravine stand the palace buildings, and from it, on Monday, Ramẓān 4, (June 8th.) ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā flew, with his pigeons and their house, and became a falcon.[105]
He was 39 (lunar) years old, having been born in Samarkand, in 860AH. (1456AD.) He was Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā’s fourth son,[106] being younger than Sl. Aḥmad M. and Sl. Muḥammad M. and Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā. His father, Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā, was the son of Sl. Muḥammad Mīrzā, son of Tīmūr Beg’s third son, Mīrān-shāh M. and was younger than ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā, (the elder) and Jahāngīr M. but older than Shāhrukh Mīrzā.
c. ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā’s country.