d. Qandahār.
The Qandahār of Bābur’s sieges was difficult of capture; he had not taken it in 913 AH. (f. 208b) by siege or assault, but by default after one day’s fight in the open. The strength of its position can be judged from the following account of its ruins as they were seen in 1879 AD., the military details of which supplement Bellew’s description quoted in Appendix J.
The fortifications are of great extent with a treble line of bastioned walls and a high citadel in the centre. The place is in complete ruin and its locality now useful only as a grazing ground.... “The town is in three parts, each on a separate eminence, and capable of mutual defence. The mountain had been covered with towers united by curtains, and the one on the culminating point may be called impregnable. It commanded the citadel which stood lower down on the second eminence, and this in turn commanded the town which was on a table-land elevated above the plain. The triple walls surrounding the city were at a considerable distance from it. After exploring the citadel and ruins, we mounted by the gorge to the summit of the hill with the impregnable fort. In this gorge are the ruins of two tanks, some 80 feet square, all destroyed, with the pillars fallen; the work is pukka in brick and chunām (cement) and each tank had been domed in; they would have held about 400,000 gallons each.” (Le Messurier’s Kandahar in 1879 AD. pp. 223, 245.)
e. Bābur’s sieges of Qandahār.
The term of five years is found associated with Bābur’s sieges of Qandahār, sometimes suggesting a single attempt of five years’ duration. This it is easy to show incorrect; its root may be Mīr Ma‘ṣūm’s erroneous chronology.
The day on which the keys of Qandahār were made over to Bābur is known, from the famous inscription which commemorates the event (Appendix J), as Shawwāl 13th 928 AH. Working backwards from this, it is known that in 927 AH. terms of surrender were made and that Bābur went back to Kābul; he is besieging it in 926 AH.—the year under description; his annals of 925 AH. are complete and contain no siege; the year 924 AH. appears to have had no siege, Shāh Beg was on the Indus and his son was for at least part of it with Bābur; 923 AH. was a year of intended siege, frustrated by Bābur’s own illness; of any siege in 922 AH. there is as yet no record known. So that it is certain there was no unremitted beleaguerment through five years.
f. The siege of 926 AH. (1520 AD.).
When Bābur sat down to lay regular siege to Qandahār, with mining and battering of the walls,[1552] famine was desolating the country round. The garrison was reduced to great distress; “pestilence,” ever an ally of Qandahār, broke out within the walls, spread to Bābur’s camp, and in the month of Tīr (June) led him to return to Kābul.
In the succeeding months of respite, Shāh Beg pushed on in Sind and his former slave, now commander, Mehtar Saṃbhal revictualled the town.
927 AH.—DEC. 12th 1520 to DEC. 1st 1521 AD.