Two objections to 928 are patent: (1) the doubt engendered by Ma‘ṣūm’s earlier ante-dating; (2) that if 928 be right, Shāh Beg was already dead over two months when Qandahār was surrendered. This he might have been according to Khwānd-amīr’s narrative, but if he died on Sha‘bān 22nd 928 (July 26th 1522), there was time for the news to have reached Qandahār, and to have gone on to Harāt before the surrender. Shāh Beg’s death at that time could not have failed to be associated in Khwānd-amīr’s narrative with the fate of Qandahār; it might have pleaded some excuse with him for ‘Abdu’l-bāqī, who might even have had orders from Shāh Ḥasan to make the town over to Bābur whose suzerainty he had acknowledged at once on succession by reading the khut̤ba in his name. Khwānd-amīr however does not mention what would have been a salient point in the events of the siege; his silence cannot but weigh against the 928 AH.
The year 930 AH. is given by Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad’s T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī (lith. ed. p. 637), and this year has been adopted by Erskine, Beale, and Ney Elias, perhaps by others. Some light on the matter may be obtained incidentally as the sources are examined for a complete history of India, perhaps coming from the affairs of Multān, which was attacked by Shāh Ḥasan after communication with Bābur.
d. Bābur’s literary work in 928 AH. and earlier.
1. The Mubīn. This year, as is known from a chronogram within the work, Bābur wrote the Turkī poem of 2000 lines to which Abū’l-faẓl and Badāyūnī give the name Mubīn (The Exposition), but of which the true title is said by the Nafā’isu’l-ma‘āsir to be Dar fiqa mubaiyan (The Law expounded). Sprenger found it called also Fiqa-i-bāburī (Bābur’s Law). It is a versified and highly orthodox treatise on Muḥammadan Law, written for the instruction of Kāmrān. A Commentary on it, called also Mubīn, was written by Shaikh Zain. Bābur quotes from it (f. 351b) when writing of linear measures. Berézine found and published a large portion of it as part of his Chrestomathie Turque (Kazan 1857); the same fragment may be what was published by Ilminsky. Teufel remarks that the MS. used by Berézine may have descended direct from one sent by Bābur to a distinguished legist of Transoxiana, because the last words of Berézine’s imprint are Bābur’s Begleitschreiben (envoi); he adds the expectation that the legist’s name might be learned. Perhaps this recipient was the Khwāja Kalān, son of Khwāja Yaḥya, a Samarkandī to whom Bābur sent a copy of his Memoirs on March 7th 1520 (935 AH. f. 363).[1556]
2. The Bābur-nāma diary of 925-6 AH. (1519-20 AD.). This is almost contemporary with the Mubīn and is the earliest part of the Bābur-nāma writings now known. It was written about a decade earlier than the narrative of 899 to 914 AH. (1494 to 1507 AD.), carries later annotations, and has now the character of a draft awaiting revision.
3. A Dīwān (Collection of poems). By dovetailing a few fragments of information, it becomes clear that by 925 AH. (1519 AD.) Bābur had made a Collection of poetical compositions distinct from the Rāmpūr Dīwān; it is what he sent to Pūlād Sult̤an in 925 AH. (f. 238). Its date excludes the greater part of the Rāmpūr one. It may have contained those verses to which my husband drew attention in the Asiatic Quarterly Review of 1911, as quoted in the Abūshqa; and it may have contained, in agreement with its earlier date, the verses Bābur quotes as written in his earlier years. None of the quatrains found in the Abūshqa and there attributed to “Bābur Mīrzā”, are in the Rāmpūr Dīwān; nor are several of those early ones of the Bābur-nāma. So that the Dīwān sent to Pūlād Sult̤ān may be the source from which the Abūshqa drew its examples.
On first examining these verses, doubt arose as to whether they were really by Bābur Mīrānshāhī; or whether they were by “Bābur Mīrzā” Shāhrukhī. Fortunately my husband lighted on one of them quoted in the Sanglakh and there attributed to Bābur Pādshāh. The Abūshqa quatrains are used as examples in de Courteille’s Dictionary, but without an author’s name; they can be traced there through my husband’s articles.[1557]
929 AH.—NOV. 20th 1522 to NOV. 10th 1523 AD.
a. Affairs of Hindūstān.
The centre of interest in Bābur’s affairs now moves from Qandahār to a Hindūstān torn by faction, of which faction one result was an appeal made at this time to Bābur by Daulat Khān Lūdī (Yūsuf-khail) and ‘Alāu’d-dīn ‘Ālam Khān Lūdī for help against Ibrāhīm.[1558]