One interesting biographical topic is likely to have found mention in the missing record, viz. the family difficulties which led to ‘Askarī’s supersession by Kāmrān in the government of Multān (f. 359).
Another is the light an account of the second illness of 934 AH. might have thrown on a considerable part of the Collection of verses already written in Hindūstān and now known to us as the Rāmpūr Dīwān. The Bābur-nāma allows the dates of much of its contents to be known, but there remain poems which seem prompted by the self-examination of some illness not found in the B.N. It contains the metrical version of Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh’s Wālidiyyah of which Bābur writes on f. 346 and it is dated Monday Rabī‘ II. 15th 935 AH. (Dec. 29th 1528 AD.). I surmise that the reflective verses following the Wālidiyyah belong to the 40 days’ illness of 934 AH. i.e. were composed in the period of the lacuna. The Collection, as it is in the “Rāmpūr Dīwān”, went to a friend who was probably Khwāja Kalān; it may have been the only such collection made by Bābur. No other copy of it has so far been found. It has the character of an individual gift with verses specially addressed to its recipient. Any light upon it which may have vanished with pages of 934 AH. is an appreciable loss.
935 AH.-SEP. 15th 1528 to SEP. 5th 1529 AD.[2242]
(a. Arrivals at Court.)
(Sep. 18th) On Friday the 3rd[2243] of Muḥarram, ‘Askarī whom I had summoned for the good of Multān[2244] before I moved out for Chandīrī, waited on me in the private-house.[2245]
(Sep. 19th) Next day waited on me the historian Khwānd-amīr, Maulānā Shihāb[2246] the enigmatist, and Mīr Ibrāhīm the harper a relation of Yūnas-i-‘alī, who had all come out of Herī long before, wishing to wait on me.[2247]
(b. Bābur starts for Gūālīār.)[2248]
(Sep. 20th) With the intention of visiting Gūālīār which in books they write Gālīūr,[2249] I crossed the Jūn at the Other Prayer of Sunday the 5th of the month, went into the fort of Āgra to bid farewell to Fakhr-i-jahān Begīm and Khadīja-sult̤ān Begīm who were to start for Kābul in a few days, and got to horse. Muḥammad-i-zamān Mīrzā asked for leave and stayed behind in Āgra. That night we did 3 or 4 kurohs (6-8 m.) of the road, dismounted near a large lake (kūl) and there slept.
(Sep. 21st) We got through the Prayer somewhat before time (Muḥ. 6th) and rode on, nooned[2250] on the bank of the Gamb[h]īr-water[2251], and went on shortly after the Mid-day Prayer. On the way we ate[2252] powders mixed with the flour of parched Fol. 339b. grain,[2253] Mullā Rafī‘ having prepared them for raising the spirits. They were found very distasteful and unsavoury. Near the Other Prayer we dismounted a kuroh (2 m.) west of Dūlpūr, at a place where a garden and house had been ordered made.[2254]