a. The manuscript sources.
Two accounts of the sieges of Qandahār in this and next year are available, one in Khwānd-amīr’s Ḥabību’s-siyar, the other in Ma‘ṣūm Bhakkarī’s Tārīkh-i-sind. As they have important differences, it is necessary to consider the opportunities of their authors for information.
Khwānd-amīr finished his history in 1524-29 AD. His account of these affairs of Qandahār is contemporary; he was in close touch with several of the actors in them and may have been in Harāt through their course; one of his patrons, Amīr Ghiyās̤u’d-dīn, was put to death in this year in Harāt because of suspicion that he was an ally of Bābur; his nephew, another Ghiyās̤u’d-dīn was in Qandahār, the bearer next year of its keys to Bābur; moreover he was with Bābur himself a few years later in Hindūstān.
Mīr Ma‘ṣūm wrote in 1600 AD. 70 to 75 years after Khwānd-amīr. Of these sieges he tells what may have been traditional and mentions no manuscript authorities. Blochmann’s biography of him (Āyīn-i-akbarī p. 514) shews his ample opportunity of learning orally what had happened in the Arghūn invasion of Sind, but does not mention the opportunity for hearing traditions about Qandahār which his term of office there allowed him. During that term it was that he added an inscription, commemorative of Akbar’s dominion, to Bābur’s own at Chihil-zīna, which records the date of the capture of Qandahār (928 AH.-1522 AD.).
b. The Ḥabību’s-siyar account (lith. ed. iii, part 4, p. 97).
Khwānd-amīr’s contemporary narrative allows Ma‘ṣūm’s to dovetail into it as to some matters, but contradicts it in the important ones of date, and mode of surrender by Shāh Beg to Bābur. It states that Bābur was resolved in 926 AH. (1520 AD.) to uproot Shāh Shujā‘ Beg from Qandahār, led an army against the place, and “opened the Gates of war”. It gives no account of the siege of 926 AH. but passes on to the occurrences of 927 AH. (1521 AD.) when Shāh Beg, unable to meet Bābur in the field, shut himself up in the town and strengthened the defences. Bābur put his utmost pressure on the besieged, “often riding his piebald horse close to the moat and urging his men to fiery onset.” The garrison resisted manfully, breaching the “life-fortresses” of the Kābulīs with sword, arrow, spear and death-dealing stone, but Bābur’s heroes were most often victorious, and drove their assailants back through the Gates.
c. Death of Khān Mīrzā reported to Bābur.
Meantime, continues Khwānd-amīr, Khān Mīrzā had died in Badakhshān; the news was brought to Bābur and caused him great grief; he appointed Humāyūn to succeed the Mīrzā while he himself prosecuted the siege of Qandahār and the conquest of the Garm-sīr.[1553]
d. Negociations with Bābur.