(c. Bābur in Dikh-kat.)
After three or four days of rest in Dīzak, we set out for Aūrā-tīpā. Pashāghar is a little[578] off the road but, as we had occupied it for some time (904 AH.), we made an excursion to it in passing by. In Pashāghar we chanced on one of Khānīm’s old servants, a teacher[579] who had been left behind in Samarkand from want of a mount. We saw one another and on questioning her, I found she had come there on foot.
Khūb-nigār Khānīm, my mother Khānīm’s younger sister[580] already must have bidden this transitory world farewell; for they let Khānīm and me know of it in Aūrā-tīpā. My father’s mother also must have died in Andijān; this too they let usFol. 96b. know in Aūrā-tīpā.[581] Since the death of my grandfather, Yūnas Khān (892 AH.), Khānīm had not seen her (step-)mother or her younger brother and sisters, that is to say, Shāh Begīm, Sl. Maḥmūd Khān, Sult̤ān-nīgār Khānīm and Daulat-sult̤ān Khānīm. The separation had lasted 13 or 14 years. To see these relations she now started for Tāshkīnt.
After consulting with Muḥ. Ḥusain Mīrzā, it was settled for us to winter in a place called Dikh-kat[582] one of the Aūrā-tīpā villages. There I deposited my impedimenta (aūrūq); then set out myself in order to visit Shāh Begīm and my Khān dādā and various relatives. I spent a few days in Tāshkīnt and waited on Shāh Begīm and my Khān dādā. My mother’s elder full-sister, Mihr-nigār Khānīm[583] had come from Samarkand and was in Tāshkīnt. There my mother Khānīm fell very ill; it was a very bad illness; she passed through mighty risks.
His Highness Khwājaka Khwāja, having managed to get out of Samarkand, had settled down in Far-kat; there I visited him. I had hoped my Khān dādā would shew me affection and kindness and would give me a country or a district (pargana). He did promise me Aūrā-tīpā but Muḥ. Ḥusain Mīrzā. did not make it over, whether acting on his own accountFol. 97. or whether upon a hint from above, is not known. After spending a few days with him (in Aūrā-tīpā), I went on to Dikh-kat.
Dikh-kat is in the Aūrā-tīpā hill-tracts, below the range on the other side of which is the Macha[584] country. Its people, though Sārt, settled in a village, are, like Turks, herdsmen and shepherds. Their sheep are reckoned at 40,000. We dismounted at the houses of the peasants in the village; I stayed in a head-man’s house. He was old, 70 or 80, but his mother was still alive. She was a woman on whom much life had been bestowed for she was 111 years old. Some relation of hers may have gone, (as was said), with Tīmūr Beg’s army to Hindūstān;[585] she had this in her mind and used to tell the tale. In Dikh-kat alone were 96 of her descendants, hers and her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and grandchildren’s grandchildren. Counting in the dead, 200 of her descendants were reckoned up. Her grandchild’s grandson was a strong young man of 25 or 26, with full black beard. While in Dikh-kat, I constantly made excursions amongst the mountains round Fol. 97b.about. Generally I went bare-foot and, from doing this so much, my feet became so that rock and stone made no difference to them.[586] Once in one of these wanderings, a cow was seen, between the Afternoon and Evening prayers, going down by a narrow, ill-defined road. Said I, ‘I wonder which way that road will be going; keep your eye on that cow; don’t lose the cow till you know where the road comes out.’ Khwāja Asadu’l-lāh made his joke, ‘If the cow loses her way,’ he said, ‘what becomes of us?’
In the winter several of our soldiers asked for leave to Andijān because they could make no raids with us.[587] Qāsim Beg said, with much insistance, ‘As these men are going, send something special of your own wear by them to Jahāngīr Mīrzā.’ I sent my ermine cap. Again he urged, ‘What harm would there be if you sent something for Taṃbal also?’ Though I was very unwilling, yet as he urged it, I sent Taṃbal a large broad-sword which Nuyān Kūkūldāsh had had made for himself in Samarkand. This very sword it was which, as will be told with the events of next year, came down on my own head![588]
A few days later, my grandmother, Aīsān-daulat Begīm, who, when I left Samarkand, had stayed behind, arrived in Dikh-katFol. 98. with our families and baggage (aūrūq) and a few lean and hungry followers.
(d. Shaibāq Khān raids in The Khān’s country.)
That winter Shaibāq Khān crossed the Khujand river on the ice and plundered near Shāhrukhiya and Bīsh-kīnt. On hearing news of this, we gallopped off, not regarding the smallness of our numbers, and made for the villages below Khujand, opposite Hasht-yak (One-eighth). The cold was mightily bitter,[589] a wind not less than the Hā-darwesh[590] raging violently the whole time. So cold it was that during the two or three days we were in those parts, several men died of it. When, needing to make ablution, I went into an irrigation-channel, frozen along both banks but because of its swift current, not ice-bound in the middle, and bathed, dipping under 16 times, the cold of the water went quite through me. Next day we crossed the river on the ice from opposite Khaṣlār and went on through the dark to Bīsh-kīnt.[591] Shaibāq Khān, however, must have gone straight back after plundering the neighbourhood of Shāhrukhiya.