The Bābur-nāma

448

Bābur had been about two lunar years absent from Andijān but his loss of rule was of under 16 months.

449

A scribe’s note entered here on the margin of the Ḥai. MS. is to the effect that certain words are not in the noble archetype (nashka sharīf); this supports other circumstances which make for the opinion that this Codex is a direct copy of Bābur’s own MS. See Index s.n. Ḥai. MS. and JRAS 1906, p. 87.

450

Musalmān here seems to indicate mental contrast with Pagan practices or neglect of Musalmān observances amongst Mughūls.

451

i. e. of his advisors and himself.

452

Cf. f. 34.

453

circa 933 AH. All the revolts chronicled by Bābur as made against himself were under Mughūl leadership. Long Ḥasan, Taṃbal and ‘Alī-dost were all Mughūls. The worst was that of 914 AH. (1518 AD.) in which Qulī Chūnāq disgraced himself (T.R. p. 357).

454

Chūnāq may indicate the loss of one ear.

455

Būqāq, amongst other meanings, has that of one who lies in ambush.

456

This remark has interest because it shews that (as Bābur planned to write more than is now with the B.N. MSS.) the first gap in the book (914 AH. to 925 AH.) is accidental. His own last illness is the probable cause of this gap. Cf. JRAS 1905, p. 744. Two other passages referring to unchronicled matters are one about the Bāgh-i-ṣafā (f. 224), and one about Sl. ‘Alī T̤aghāī (f. 242).

457

I surmise Aīlāīsh to be a local name of the Qarā-daryā affluent of the Sīr.

458

aīkī aūch naubat chāpqūlāb bāsh chīqārghalī qūīmās. I cannot feel so sure as Mr. E. and M. de C. were that the man’s head held fast, especially as for it to fall would make the better story.

459

Tūqā appears to have been the son of a T̤aghāī, perhaps of Sherīm; his name may imply blood-relationship.

460

For the verb awīmāq, to trepan, see f. 67 note 5.

461

The Fr. map of 1904 shews a hill suiting Bābur’s location of this Hill of Pleasure.

462

A place near Kābul bears the same name; in both the name is explained by a legend that there Earth opened a refuge for forty menaced daughters.

463

Elph. MS. f. 47b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 53 and 217 f. 43; Mems. p. 70.

464

From Andijān to Aūsh is a little over 33 miles. Taṃbal’s road was east of Bābur’s and placed him between Andijān and Aūzkīnt where was the force protecting his family.

465

mod. Mazy, on the main Aūsh-Kāshghar road.

466

āb-duzd; de C. i, 144, prise d’eau.

467

This simile seems the fruit of experience in Hindūstān. See f. 333, concerning Chānderi.

468

These two Mughūls rebelled in 914 AH. with Sl. Qulī Chūnāq (T.R. s. n.).

469

awīdī. The head of Captain Dow, fractured at Chunār by a stone flung at it, was trepanned (Saiyār-i-muta‘akhirīn, p. 577 and Irvine l .c. p. 283). Yār-‘alī was alive in 910 AH. He seems to be the father of the great Bairām Khān-i-khānān of Akbar’s reign.

470

chasht-gāh; midway between sunrise and noon.

471

t̤aurī; because providing prisoners for exchange.

472

shakh tūtūlūr īdī, perhaps a palisade.

473

i. e. from Ḥiṣār where he had placed him in 903 AH.

474

qūba yūzlūq (f. 6b and note 4). The Turkmān features would be a maternal inheritance.

475

He is “Saifī Maulānā ‘Arūzī” of Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 525. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 341. His book, ‘Arūz-i-saifī has been translated by Blochmann and by Ranking.

476

namāz aūtār īdī. I understand some irony from this (de Meynard’s Dict. s. n. aūtmāq).

477

The mat̤la‘ of poems serve as an index of first lines.

478

Cf. f. 30.

479

Cf. f. 37b.

480

i. e. scout and in times of peace, huntsman. On the margin of the Elph. Codex here stands a note, mutilated in rebinding; —Sl. Aḥmad pidr-i-Qūch Beg ast * * * pidr-i-Sher-afgan u Sher-afgan * * * u Sl. Ḥusain Khān * * * Qūch Beg ast. Hamesha * * * dar khāna Shaham Khān * * *.

481

pītīldī; W. – i-B. navishta shud, words indicating the use by Bābur of a written record.

482

Cf. f. 6b and note and f. 17 and note.

483

tūlūk; i. e. other food than grain. Fruit, fresh or preserved, being a principal constituent of food in Central Asia, tūlūk will include several, but chiefly melons. “Les melons constituent presque seuls vers le fin d'été, la nourriture des classes pauvres (Th. Radloff. l.c. p. 343).

484

Cf. f. 6b and note.

485

tūlkī var. tūlkū, the yellow fox. Following this word the Ḥai. MS. has u dar kamīn dūr instead of u rangīn dūr.

486

bī ḥadd; with which I.O. 215 agrees but I.O. 217 adds farbih, fat, which is right in fact (f. 2b) but less pertinent here than an unlimited quantity.

487

Here a pun on ‘ajab may be read.

488

Cf. f. 15, note to T̤aghāī.

489

Apparently not the usual Kīndīr-līk pass but one n.w. of Kāsān.

490

A ride of at least 40 miles, followed by one of 20 to Kāsān.

491

Cf. f. 72 and f. 72b. Tīlba would seem to have left Taṃbal.

492

Taṃbalnīng qarāsī.

493

i. e. the Other (Mid-afternoon) Prayer.

494

ātīnīng būīnīnī qātīb. Qātmāq has also the here-appropriate meaning of to stiffen.

495

aīlīk qūshmāq, i. e. Bābur’s men with the Kāsān garrison. But the two W. – i-B. write merely dast burd and dast kardan.

496

The meaning of Ghazna here is uncertain. The Second W. – i-B. renders it by ar. qaryat but up to this point Bābur has not used qaryat for village. Ghazna-namangān cannot be modern Namangān. It was 2 m. from Archīān where Taṃbal was, and Bābur went to Bīshkhārān to be between Taṃbal and Machamī, coming from the south. Archīān and Ghazna-namangān seem both to have been n. or n.w. of Bīshkārān (see maps).

It may be mentioned that at Archīān, in 909 AH. the two Chaghatāī Khāns and Bābur were defeated by Shaibānī.

497

bīzlār. The double plural is rare with Bābur; he writes bīz, we, when action is taken in common; he rarely uses mīn, I, with autocratic force; his phrasing is largely impersonal, e. g. with rare exceptions, he writes the impersonal passive verb.

498

bāshlīghlār. Teufel was of opinion that this word is not used as a noun in the B.N. In this he is mistaken; it is so used frequently, as here, in apposition. See ZDMG, xxxvii, art. Bābur und Abū‘l-faẓl.

499

Cf. f. 54 foot.

500

Cf. f. 20. She may have come from Samarkand and ‘Alī’s household or from Kesh and the Tarkhān households.

501

Cf. f. 26 l. 2 for the same phrase.

502

He is the author of the Shaibānī-nāma.

503

dāng and fils (infra) are small copper coins.

504

Cf. f. 25 l. 1 and note 1.

505

Probably the poet again; he had left Harāt and was in Samarkand (Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 34 l. 14).

506

From what follows, this Mughūl advance seems a sequel to a Tarkhān invitation.

507

By omitting the word Mīr the Turkī text has caused confusion between this father and son (Index s. nn.).

508

bīz khūd kharāb bū mu‘āmla aīdūk. These words have been understood earlier, as referring to the abnormal state of Bābur’s mind described under Sec. r. They better suit the affairs of Samarkand because Bābur is able to resolve on action and also because he here writes bīz, we, and not mīn, I, as in Sec. r.

509

For būlghār, rendezvous, see also f. 78 l. 2 fr. ft.

510

25 m. only; the halts were due probably to belated arrivals.

511

Some of his ties would be those of old acquaintance in Ḥiṣār with ‘Alī’s father’s begs, now with him in Samarkand.

512

Point to point, some 90 m. but further by road.

513

Bū waqi‘ būlghāch, manifestly ironical.

514

Sangzār to Aūrā-tīpā, by way of the hills, some 50 miles.

515

The Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 60, confirms this.

516

Cf. f. 74b.

517

Macham and Awīghūr, presumably.

518

gūzlār tūz tūtī, i. e. he was blinded for some treachery to his hosts.

519

Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ’s well-informed account of this episode has much interest, filling out and, as by Shaibānī’s Boswell, balancing Bābur’s. Bābur is obscure about what country was to be given to ‘Alī. Pāyanda-ḥasan paraphrases his brief words; – Shaibānī was to be as a father to ‘Alī and when he had taken ‘Alī’s father’s wilāyāt, he was to give a country to ‘Alī. It has been thought that the gift to ‘Alī was to follow Shaibānī’s recovery of his own ancestral camping-ground (yūrt) but this is negatived, I think, by the word, wilāyāt, cultivated land.

520

Elp. MS. f. 57b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 63b and I.O. 217 f. 52; Mems. p. 82.

Two contemporary works here supplement the B.N.; (1) the (Tawārikh-i-guzīda) Naṣrat-nāma, dated 908 AH. (B.M. Turkī Or. 3222) of which Berezin’s Shaibāni-nāma is an abridgment; (2) Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā’s Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry trs. cap. xix et seq.). The Ḥ.S. (Bomb. ed. p. 302, and Tehran ed. p. 384) is also useful.

521

i. e. on his right. The Ḥ.S. ii, 302 represents that ‘Alī was well-received. After Shaibāq had had Zuhra’s overtures, he sent an envoy to ‘Alī and Yaḥya; the first was not won over but the second fell in with his mother’s scheme. This difference of view explains why ‘Alī slipped away while Yaḥya was engaged in the Friday Mosque. It seems likely that mother and son alike expected their Aūzbeg blood to stand them in good stead with Shaibāq.

522

He tried vainly to get the town defended. “Would to God Bābur Mīrzā were here!” he is reported as saying, by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ.

523

Perhaps it is for the play of words on ‘Alī and ‘Alī’s life (jān) that this man makes his sole appearance here.

524

i. e. rich man or merchant, but Bī (infra) is an equivalent of Beg.

525

Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, invoking curses on such a mother, mentions that Zuhra was given to a person of her own sort.

526

The Sh. N. and Naṣrat-nāma attempt to lift the blame of ‘Alī’s death from Shaibāq; the second saying that he fell into the Kohik-water when drunk.

527

Harāt might be his destination but the Ḥ.S. names Makka. Some dismissals towards Khurāsān may imply pilgrimage to Meshhed.

528

Used also by Bābur’s daughter, Gul-badan (l.c. f. 31).

529

Cut off by alien lands and weary travel.

530

The Pers. annotator of the Elph. Codex has changed Alāī to wīlāyat, and dābān (pass) to yān, side. For the difficult route see Schuyler, i, 275, Kostenko, i, 129 and Rickmers, JRGS. 1907, art. Fan Valley.

531

Amongst Turks and Mughūls, gifts were made by nines.

532

Ḥiṣār was his earlier home.

533

Many of these will have been climbed in order to get over places impassable at the river’s level.

534

Schuyler quotes a legend of the lake. He and Kostenko make it larger.

535

The second occasion was when he crossed from Sūkh for Kābul in 910 AH. (fol. 120).

536

This name appears to indicate a Command of 10,000 (Bretschneider’s Mediæval Researches, i, 112).

537

It seems likely that the cloth was soiled. Cf. f. 25 and Hughes Dict. of Islām s. n. Eating.

538

As, of the quoted speech, one word only, of three, is Turkī, others may have been dreamed. Shaikh Maṣlaḥat’s tomb is in Khujand where Bābur had found refuge in 903 AH.; it had been circumambulated by Tīmūr in 790 AH. (1390 AD.) and is still honoured.

This account of a dream compares well for naturalness with that in the seemingly-spurious passage, entered with the Ḥai. MS. on f. 118. For examination of the passage see JRAS, Jan. 1911, and App. D.

539

He was made a Tarkhān by diploma of Shaibānī (Ḥ.S. ii, 306, l. 2).

540

Here the Ḥai. MS. begins to use the word Shaibāq in place of its previously uniform Shaibānī. As has been noted (f. 5b n. 2), the Elph. MS. writes Shaibāq. It may be therefore that a scribe has changed the earlier part of the Ḥai. MS. and that Bābur wrote Shaibāq. From this point my text will follow the double authority of the Elph. and Ḥai. MSS.

541

In 875 AH. (1470 AD.). Ḥusain was then 32 years old. Bābur might have compared his taking of Samarkand with Tīmūr’s capture of Qarshī, also with 240 followers (Z̤.N. i, 127). Firishta (lith. ed. p. 196) ascribes his omission to do so to reluctance to rank himself with his great ancestor.

542

This arrival shews that Shaibānī expected to stay in Samarkand. He had been occupying Turkistān under The Chaghatāī Khān.

543

‘Alī-sher died Jan. 3rd. 1501. It is not clear to what disturbances Bābur refers. He himself was at ease till after April 20th. 1502 and his defeat at Sar-i-pul. Possibly the reference is to the quarrels between Binā’ī and ‘Alī-sher. Cf. Sām Mīrzā’s Anthology, trs. S. de Saçy, Notices et Extraits iv, 287 et seq.

544

I surmise a double play-of-words in this verse. One is on two rhyming words, ghala and mallah and is illustrated by rendering them as oat and coat. The other is on pointed and unpointed letters, i. e. ghala and ‘ala. We cannot find however a Persian word ‘ala, meaning garment.

545

Bābur’s refrain is ghūsīdūr, his rhymes būl, (buyur)ūl and tūl. Binā’ī makes būlghūsīdūr his refrain but his rhymes are not true viz. yīr, (sa)mar and lār.

546

Shawwāl 906 AH. began April 20th. 1501.

547

From the Bū-stān, Graf ed. p. 55, l. 246.

548

Sīkīz Yīldūz. See Chardin’s Voyages, v, 136 and Table; also Stanley Lane Poole’s Bābur, p. 56.

549

In 1791 AD. Muḥ. Effendi shot 482 yards from a Turkish bow, before the R. Tox. S.; not a good shot, he declared. Longer ones are on record. See Payne-Gallwey’s Cross-bow and AQR. 1911, H. Beveridge’s Oriental Cross-bows.

550

In the margin of the Elph. Codex, here, stands a Persian verse which appears more likely to be Humāyūn’s than Bābur’s. It is as follows:

This verse is written into the text of the First W. – i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 72) and is introduced by a scribe’s statement that it is by ān Ḥaẓrat, much as notes known to be Humāyūn’s are elsewhere attested in the Elph. Codex. It is not in the Ḥai. and Kehr’s MSS. nor with, at least many, good copies of the Second W. – i-B.

551

This subterranean water-course, issuing in a flowing well (Erskine) gave its name to a bastion (Ḥ.S. ii, 300).

552

nāwak, a diminutive of nāo, a tube. It is described, in a MS. of Bābur’s time, by Muḥ. Budhā’ī, and, in a second of later date, by Amīnu’d-dīn (AQR 1911, H.B.’s Oriental Cross-bows).

553

Kostenko, i, 344, would make the rounds 9 m.

554

bīr yūz ātliqnīng ātinī nāwak aūqī bīla yakhshī atīm. This has been read by Erskine as though būz āt, pale horse, and not yūz ātlīq, Centurion, were written. De. C. translates by Centurion and a marginal note of the Elph. Codex explains yūz ātlīq by ṣad aspagī.

555

The Sh. N. gives the reverse side of the picture, the plenty enjoyed by the besiegers.

556

He may have been attached to the tomb of Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh Anṣārī in Harāt.

557

The brusque entry here and elsewhere of e. g. Taṃbal’s affairs, allows the inference that Bābur was quoting from perhaps a news-writer’s, contemporary records. For a different view of Taṃbal, the Sh. N. cap. xxxiii should be read.

558

Five-villages, on the main Khujand-Tāshkīnt road.

559

turk, as on f. 28 of Khusrau Shāh.

560

Elph. MS. f. 68b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 78 and 217 f. 61b; Mems. p. 97.

The Kehr-Ilminsky text shews, in this year, a good example of its Persification and of Dr. Ilminsky’s dealings with his difficult archetype by the help of the Memoirs.

561

tāshlāb. The Sh. N. places these desertions as after four months of siege.

562

It strikes one as strange to find Long Ḥasan described, as here, in terms of his younger brother. The singularity may be due to the fact that Ḥusain was with Bābur and may have invited Ḥasan. It may be noted here that Ḥusain seems likely to be that father-in-law of ‘Umar Shaikh mentioned on f. 12b and 13b.

563

This laudatory comment I find nowhere but in the Ḥai. Codex.

564

There is some uncertainty about the names of those who left.

565

The Sh. N. is interesting here as giving an eye-witness’ account of the surrender of the town and of the part played in the surrender by Khān-zāda’s marriage (cap. xxxix).

566

The first seems likely to be a relation of Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī Khalīfa; the second was Mole-marked, a foster-sister. The party numbered some 100 persons of whom Abū’l-makāram was one (Ḥ.S. ii, 310).

567

Bābur’s brevity is misleading; his sister was not captured but married with her own and her mother’s consent before attempt to leave the town was made. Cf. Gul-badan’s H.N. f. 3b and Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 145.

568

The route taken avoided the main road for Dīzak; it can be traced by the physical features, mentioned by Bābur, on the Fr. map of 1904. The Sh. N. says the night was extraordinarily dark. Departure in blinding darkness and by unusual ways shews distrust of Shaibāq’s safe-conduct suggesting that Yaḥyā’s fate was in the minds of the fugitives.

569

The texts differ as to whether the last two lines are prose or verse. All four are in Turkī, but I surmise a clerical error in the refrain of the third, where būlūb is written for būldī.

570

The second was in 908 AH. (f. 18b); the third in 914 AH. (f. 216 b); the fourth is not described in the B.N.; it followed Bābur’s defeat at Ghaj-diwān in 918 AH. (Erskine’s History of India, i, 325). He had a fifth, but of a different kind, when he survived poison in 933 AH. (f. 305).

571

Ḥai. MS. qāqāsrāq; Elph. MS. yānasrāq.

572

ātūn, one who instructs in reading, writing and embroidery. Cf. Gulbadan’s H.N. f. 26. The distance walked may have been 70 or 80 m.

573

She was the wife of the then Governor of Aūrā-tīpā, Muḥ. Ḥusain Dūghlāt.

574

It may be noted here that in speaking of these elder women Bābur uses the honorific plural, a form of rare occurrence except for such women, for saintly persons and exceptionally for The supreme Khān. For his father he has never used it.

575

This name has several variants. The village lies, in a valley-bottom, on the Aq-sū and on a road. See Kostenko, i, 119.

576

She had been divorced from Shaibānī in order to allow him to make legal marriage with her niece, Khān-zāda.

577

Amongst the variants of this name, I select the modern one. Macha is the upper valley of the Zar-afshān.

578

Tīmūr took Dihlī in 801 AH. (Dec. 1398), i. e. 103 solar and 106 lunar years earlier. The ancient dame would then have been under 5 years old. It is not surprising therefore that in repeating her story Bābur should use a tense betokening hear-say matter (bārib īkān dūr).

579

The anecdote here following, has been analysed in JRAS 1908, p. 87, in order to show warrant for the opinion that parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky text are retranslations from the Persian W. – i-B.