[1240] Ḥaidar’s opinion of Bābur at this crisis is of the more account that his own father was one of the rebels let go to the mercy of the “avenging servitor”. When he writes of Bābur, as being, at a time so provoking, gay, generous, affectionate, simple and gentle, he sets before us insight and temper in tune with Kipling’s “If....”
[1241] Bābur’s distinction, made here and elsewhere, between Chaghatāī and Mughūl touches the old topic of the right or wrong of the term “Mughūl dynasty”. What he, as also Ḥaidar, allows said is that if Bābur were to describe his mother in tribal terms, he would say she was half-Chaghatāī, half-Mughūl; and that if he so described himself, he would say he was half-Tīmūrid-Turk, half-Chaghatāī. He might have called the dynasty he founded in India Turkī, might have called it Tīmūriya; he would never have called it Mughūl, after his maternal grandmother.
Ḥaidar, with imperfect classification, divides Chīngīz Khān’s “Mughūl horde” into Mughūls and Chaghatāīs and of this Chaghatāī offtake says that none remained in 953 AH. (1547 AD.) except the rulers, i.e. sons of Sl. Aḥmad Khan (T.R. 148). Manifestly there was a body of Chaghatāīs with Bābur and there appear to have been many near his day in the Herī region,—‘Alī-sher Nawā‘i the best known.
Bābur supplies directions for naming his dynasty when, as several times, he claims to rule in Hindūstān where the “Turk” had ruled (f. 233b, f. 224b, f. 225). To call his dynasty Mughūl seems to blot out the centuries, something as we should do by calling the English Teutons. If there is to be such blotting-out, Abū’l-ghāzī would allow us, by his tables of Turk descent, to go further, to the primal source of all the tribes concerned, to Turk, son of Japhet. This traditional descent is another argument against “Mughūl dynasty.”
[1242] They went to Qandahār and there suffered great privation.
[1243] Bārān seems likely to be the Baian of some maps. Gul-i-bahār is higher up on the Panjhīr road. Chāsh-tūpa will have been near-by; its name might mean Hill of the heap of winnowed-corn.
[1244] f. 136.
[1245] Answer; Visions of his father’s sway.
[1246] Elph. MS. f. 161; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 164 and 217 f. 139b; Mems. p. 220.
[1247] The narrative indicates the location of the tribe, the modern Ghilzāī or Ghilzī.