[1220] This escape ought to have been included in the list of Bābur’s transportations from risk to safety given in my note to f. 96.
[1221] The right and wrong roads are shewn by the Indian Survey and French Military maps. The right road turns off from the wrong one, at Daulat-yār, to the right, and mounts diagonally along the south rampart of the Herī-rūd valley, to the Zirrīn-pass, which lies above the Bakkak-pass and carries the regular road for Yaka-aūlāng. It must be said, however, that we are not told whether Yaka-aūlāng was Qāsim Beg’s objective; the direct road for Kābul from the Herī-rūd valley is not over the Zirrīn-pass but goes from Daulat-yār by “Āq-zarat”, and the southern flank of Koh-i-bābā (bābār) to the Unai-pass (Holdich’s Gates of India p. 262).
[1222] circa Feb. 14th 1507, Bābur’s 24th birthday.
[1223] The Hazāras appear to have been wintering outside their own valley, on the Ghūr-bund road, in wait for travellers [cf. T.R. p. 197]. They have been perennial highwaymen on the only pass to the north not closed entirely in winter.
[1224] The Ghūr-bund valley is open in this part; the Hazāras may have been posted on the naze near the narrows leading into the Janglīk and their own side valleys.
[1225] Although the verses following here in the text are with the Turkī Codices, doubt cannot but be felt as to their authenticity. They do not fit verbally to the sentence they follow; they are a unique departure from Bābur’s plain prose narrative and nothing in the small Hazāra affair shews cause for such departure; they differ from his usual topics in their bombast and comment on his men (cf. f. 194 for comment on shirking begs). They appear in the 2nd Persian translation (217 f. 134) in Turkī followed by a prose Persian rendering (khalāṣa). They are not with the 1st Pers. trs. (215 f. 159), the text of which runs on with a plain prose account suiting the size of the affair, as follows:—“The braves, seeing their (the Hazāras) good soldiering, had stopped surprised; wishing to hurry them i went swiftly past them, shouting ‘Move on! move on!’ They paid me no attention. When, in order to help, I myself attacked, dismounting and going up the hill, they shewed courage and emulation in following. Getting to the top of the pass, we drove that band off, killing many, capturing others, making their families prisoner and plundering their goods.” This is followed by “I myself collected” etc. as in the Turkī text after the verse. It will be seen that the above extract is not a translation of the verse; no translator or even summariser would be likely to omit so much of his original. It is just a suitably plain account of a trivial matter.
[1226] Gulistān Cap. I. Story 4.
[1227] Bābur seems to have left the Ghūr-bund valley, perhaps pursuing the Hazāras towards Janglīk, and to have come “by ridge and valley” back into it for Ushtur-shahr. I have not located Tīmūr Beg’s Langar. As has been noted already (q.v. index) the Ghūr-bund narrows are at the lower end of the valley; they have been surmised to be the fissured rampart of an ancient lake.
[1228] Here this may represent a guard- or toll-house (Index s.n.).
[1229] As yūrūn is a patch, the bearer of the sobriquet might be Black Aḥmad the repairing-tailor.