Bāī-sunghar Mīrzā wished, did not get a good reception. He therefore turned back for Turkistān a few days later, in disappointment, with nothing done.
Bāī-sunghar Mīrzā had sustained a seven months’ siege; his one hope had been in Shaibānī Khān; this he had lost and he now with 2 or 300 of his hungry suite, drew off from Samarkand, for Khusrau Shāh in Qūndūz.
When he was near Tīrmīẕ, at the Amū ferry, the Governor of Tīrmīẕ, Sayyid Ḥusain Akbar, kinsman and confidant both of Sl. Mas‘ūd Mīrzā, heard of him and went out against him. The Mīrzā himself got across the river but Mīrīm Tarkhān was drowned and all the rest of his people were captured, together with his baggage and the camels loaded with his personal effects; even his page, Muḥammad T̤āhir, falling into Sayyid Ḥusain Akbar’s hands. Khusrau Shāh, for his part, looked kindly on the Mīrzā.
Fol. 44b.When the news of his departure reached us, we got to horse and started from Khwāja Dīdār for Samarkand. To give us honourable meeting on the road, were nobles and braves, one after another. It was on one of the last ten days of the first Rabī‘ (end of November 1497 AD.), that we entered the citadel and dismounted at the Bū-stān Sarāī. Thus, by God’s favour, were the town and the country of Samarkand taken and occupied.
(b. Description of Samarkand.)[345]
Few towns in the whole habitable world are so pleasant as Samarkand. It is of the Fifth Climate and situated in lat. 40° 6’ and long. 99°.[346] The name of the town is Samarkand; its country people used to call Mā warā’u’n-nahr (Transoxania).
They used to call it Baldat-i-maḥfūẓa because no foe laid hands on it with storm and sack.[347] It must have become[348] Musalmān in the time of the Commander of the Faithful, his Highness ‘Usmān. Qus̤am ibn ‘Abbās, one of the Companions[349] must have gone there; his burial-place, known as the Tomb of Shāh-i-zinda (The Living Shāh, i.e., Fāqīr) is outside the Iron Gate. Iskandar must have founded Samarkand. The Turk and Mughūl hordes call it Sīmīz-kīnt.[350] Tīmūr Beg made it his capital; no ruler so great will ever have made it a capital before (qīlghān aīmās dūr). I ordered people to pace round the ramparts of the walled-town; it came out at 10,000 steps.[351] Samarkandīs are all orthodox (sunnī), pure-in-the Faith, law-abiding and religious. The number of LeadersFol. 45. of Islām said to have arisen in Mā warā’u’n-nahr, since the days of his Highness the Prophet, are not known to have arisen in any other country.[352] From the Mātarīd suburb of Samarkand came Shaikh Abū’l-manṣūr, one of the Expositors of the Word.[353] Of the two sects of Expositors, the Mātarīdiyah and the Ash‘ariyah,[354] the first is named from this Shaikh Abū’l-manṣūr. Of Mā warā’u’n-nahr also was Khwāja Ismā‘īl Khartank, the author of the Ṣāḥiḥ-i-bukhārī.[355] From the Farghāna district, Marghīnān—Farghāna, though at the limit of settled habitation, is included in Mā warā’u’n-nahr,—came the author of the Hidāyat,[356] a book than which few on Jurisprudence are more honoured in the sect of Abū Ḥanīfa.
On the east of Samarkand are Farghāna and Kāshghar; on the west, Bukhārā and Khwārizm; on the north, Tāshkīnt and Shāhrukhiya,—in books written Shāsh and Banākat; and on the south, Balkh and Tīrmīẕ.
The Kohik Water flows along the north of Samarkand, at the distance of some 4 miles (2 kuroh); it is so-called because it comes out from under the upland of the Little Hill (Kohik)[357] lying between it and the town. The Dar-i-gham Water (canal) flows along the south, at the distance of some two miles (1 sharī‘). This is a large and swift torrent,[358] indeed it is like a large river, cut off from the Kohik Water. All the gardens and suburbs and some of the tūmāns of Samarkand are cultivated by it. By the Kohik Water a stretch of from 30 to 40 yīghāch,[359] by road, is made habitable and cultivated, as far as Bukhārā and Qarā-kūl. Large as the river is, it is not too large for its dwellings and its culture; during three or four months of theFol. 45b. year, indeed, its waters do not reach Bukhārā.[360] Grapes, melons, apples and pomegranates, all fruits indeed, are good in Samarkand; two are famous, its apple and its ṣāḥibī (grape).[361] Its winter is mightily cold; snow falls but not so much as in Kābul; in the heats its climate is good but not so good as Kābul’s.