N.B. At this point two folios of the Elphinstone Codex are missing.
[48] Either a kind of melon or the pear. For local abundance of pears see Āyīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann p. 6; Kostenko and Von Schwarz.
[49] qūrghān, i.e. the walled town within which was the citadel (ark).
[50] Tūqūz tarnau sū kīrār, bū ‘ajab tūr kīm bīr yīrdīn ham chīqmās. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2, nuh jū’ī āb dar qila‘ dar mī āyid u īn ‘ajab ast kah hama az yak jā ham na mī bar āyid. (Cf. Mems. p. 2 and Méms. i, 2.) I understand Bābur to mean that all the water entering was consumed in the town. The supply of Andijān, in the present day, is taken both from the Āq Būrā (i.e. the Aūsh Water) and, by canal, from the Qarā Daryā.
[51] khandaqnīng tāsh yānī. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2 dar kīnār sang bast khandaq. Here as in several other places, this Persian translation has rendered Turkī tāsh, outside, as if it were Turkī tāsh, stone. Bābur’s adjective stone is sangīn (f. 45b l. 8). His point here is the unusual circumstance of a high-road running round the outer edge of the ditch. Moreover Andijān is built on and of loess. Here, obeying his Persian source, Mr. Erskine writes “stone-faced ditch”; M. de C. obeying his Turkī one, “bord extérieur.”
[52] qīrghāwal āsh-kīnasī bīla. Āsh-kīna, a diminutive of āsh, food, is the rice and vegetables commonly served with the bird. Kostenko i, 287 gives a recipe for what seems āsh-kīna.
[53] b. 1440; d. 1500 AD.
[54] Yūsuf was in the service of Bāī-sunghar Mīrzā Shāhrukhī (d. 837 AH.-1434 AD.). Cf. Daulat Shāh’s Memoirs of the Poets (Browne) pp. 340 and 350-1. (H.B.)
[55] gūzlār aīl bīzkāk kūb būlūr. Second W.-i-B. (I.O. 217 f. 2) here and on f. 4 has read Turkī gūz, eye, for Turkī gūz or goz, autumn. It has here a gloss not in the Ḥaidarābād or Kehr’s MSS. (Cf. Mems. p. 4 note.) This gloss may be one of Humāyūn’s numerous notes and may have been preserved in the Elphinstone Codex, but the fact cannot now be known because of the loss of the two folios already noted. (See Von Schwarz and Kostenko concerning the autumn fever of Transoxiana.)
[56] The Pers. trss. render yīghāch by farsang; Ujfalvy also takes the yīghāch and the farsang as having a common equivalent of about 6 kilomètres. Bābur’s statements in yīghāch however, when tested by ascertained distances, do not work out into the farsang of four miles or the kilomètre of 8 kil. to 5 miles. The yīghāch appears to be a variable estimate of distance, sometimes indicating the time occupied on a given journey, at others the distance to which a man’s voice will carry. (Cf. Ujfalvy Expédition scientifique ii, 179; Von Schwarz p. 124 and de C.’s Dict. s.n. yīghāch. In the present instance, if Bābur’s 4 y. equalled 4 f. the distance from Aūsh to Andijān should be about 16 m.; but it is 33 m. 1-3/4 fur. i.e. 50 versts. Kostenko ii, 33.) I find Bābur’s yīghāch to vary from about 4 m. to nearly 8 m.