[2094] perhaps the cataphract elephants; perhaps the men in mail.
[2095] Qorān, cap. 101, v. 54.
[2096] Qorān, cap. 101, v. 4.
[2097] bā andākhtan-i-sang u ẓarb-zan tufak bisyārī. As Bābur does not in any place mention metal missiles, it seems safest to translate sang by its plain meaning of stone.
[2098] Also, metaphorically, swords.
[2099] tīr. My husband thinks there is a play upon the two meanings of this word, arrow and the planet Mercury; so too in the next sentence, that there may be allusion in the kuākib s̤awābit to the constellation Pegasus, opposed to Bābur’s squadrons of horse.
[2100] The Fish mentioned in this verse is the one pictured by Muḥammadan cosmogony as supporting the Earth. The violence of the fray is illustrated by supposing that of Earth’s seven climes one rose to Heaven in dust, thus giving Heaven eight. The verse is from Firdausī’s Shāh-nāma, [Turner-Macan’s ed. i, 222]. The translation of it is Warner’s, [ii, 15 and n.]. I am indebted for the information given in this note to my husband’s long search in the Shāh-nāmā.
[2101] Qorān, cap. 3, v. 133.
[2102] Qorān, cap. 61, v. 13.
[2103] Qorān, cap. 48, v. 1.