(Jan. 22nd) At dawn (Ṣafar 1st) we rode out and had a fishing-net cast, at mid-day went into ‘Alī-shang and drank in a garden.
(Jan. 23rd) Next day (Ṣafar 2nd) Ḥamza Khān, Malik of ‘Alī-shang was made over to the avengers-of-blood[1543] for his evil deeds in shedding innocent blood, and retaliation was made.
(Jan. 24th) On Tuesday, after reading a chapter of the QorānFol. 251b. (wird), we turned for Kābul by the Yān-būlāgh road. At the Other Prayer, we passed the [Bārān]-water from Aūlūgh-nūr (Great-rock); reached Qarā-tū by the Evening Prayer, there gave our horses corn and had a hasty meal prepared, rode on again as soon as they had finished their barley.[1544]
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ON 926 to 932 AH.-1520 to 1525 AD.
Bābur’s diary breaks off here for five years and ten months.[1545] His activities during the unrecorded period may well have left no time in which to keep one up, for in it he went thrice to Qandahār, thrice into India, once to Badakhshān, once to Balkh; twice at least he punished refractory tribesmen; he received embassies from Hindūstān, and must have had much to oversee in muster and equipment for his numerous expeditions. Over and above this, he produced the Mubīn, a Turkī poem of 2000 lines.
That the gap in his autobiography is not intentional several passages in his writings show;[1546] he meant to fill it; there is no evidence that he ever did so; the reasonable explanation of his failure is that he died before he had reached this part of his book.
The events of these unrecorded years are less interesting than those of the preceding gap, inasmuch as their drama of human passion is simpler; it is one mainly of cross-currents of ambition, nothing in it matching the maelstrom of sectarian hate, tribal antipathy, and racial struggle which engulphed Bābur’s fortunes beyond the Oxus.
None-the-less the period has its distinctive mark, the biographical one set by his personality as his long-sustained effort works out towards rule in Hindūstān. He becomes felt; his surroundings bend to his purpose; his composite following accepts his goal; he gains the southern key of Kābul and Hindūstān and presses the Arghūns out from his rear; in the Panj-āb he becomes a power; the Rājpūt Rānā of Chitor proffers him alliance against Ibrāhīm; and his intervention is sought in those warrings of the Afghāns which were the matrix of his own success.