The Bābur-nāma

893

This will mean, none of the artificial runlets familiar where Bābur had lived before getting to know Hindūstān.

894

sauda-āt, perhaps, pack-ponies, perhaps, bred for sale and not for own use. Burnes observes that in 1837 Lūhānī merchants carried precisely the same articles of trade as in Bābur’s day, 332 years earlier (Report IX p. 99).

895

Mr. Erskine thought it probable that the first of these routes went through Kanigūram, and the second through the Ghwālirī-pass and along the Gūmāl. Birk, fastness, would seem an appropriate name for Kanigūram, but, if Bābur meant to go to Ghaznī, he would be off the ordinary Gūmāl-Ghaznī route in going through Farmūl (Aūrgūn). Raverty’s Notes give much useful detail about these routes, drawn from native sources. For Barak (Birk) see Notes pp. 88, 89; Vigne, p. 102.

896

From this it would seem that the alternative roads were approached by one in common.

897

tūmshūq, a bird’s bill, used here, as in Selsey-bill, for the naze (nose), or snout, the last spur, of a range.

898

Here these words may be common nouns.

899

Nū-roz, the feast of the old Persian New-year (Erskine); it is the day on which the Sun enters Aries.

900

In the [Turkī] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. and in some Persian ones, there is a space left here as though to indicate a known omission.

901

kamarī, sometimes a cattle-enclosure, which may serve as a sangur. The word may stand in one place of its Bābur-nāma uses for Gum-rāhī (R.’s Notes s. n. Gum-rāhān).

902

Index s. n.

903

Vigne, p. 241.

904

This name can be translated “He turns not back” or “He stops not”.

905

i. e. five from Bīlah.

906

Raverty gives the saint’s name as Pīr Kānūn (Ar. kānūn, listened to). It is the well-known Sakhī-sarwār, honoured hy Hindūs and Muḥammadans. (G. of I., xxi, 390; R.’s Notes p. 11 and p. 12 and JASB 1855; Calcutta Review 1875, Macauliffe’s art. On the fair at Sakhi-sarwar; Leech’s Report VII, for the route; Khazīnatu ’l-asfiyā iv, 245.)

907

This seems to be the sub-district of Qandahār, Dūkī or Dūgī.

908

khar-gāh, a folding tent on lattice frame-work, perhaps a khibitka.

909

It may be more correct to write Kāh-mard, as the Ḥai. MS. does and to understand in the name a reference to the grass(kāh) – yielding capacity of the place.

910

f. 121.

911

This may mean, what irrigation has not used.

912

Mr. Erskine notes that the description would lead us to imagine a flock of flamingoes. Masson found the lake filled with red-legged, white fowl (i, 262); these and also what Bābur saw, may have been the China-goose which has body and neck white, head and tail russet (Bellew’s Mission p. 402). Broadfoot seems to have visited the lake when migrants were few, and through this to have been led to adverse comment on Bābur’s accuracy (p. 350).

913

The usual dryness of the bed may have resulted from the irrigation of much land some 12 miles from Ghaznī.

914

This is the Luhūgur (Logar) water, knee-deep in winter at the ford but spreading in flood with the spring-rains. Bābur, not being able to cross it for the direct roads into Kābul, kept on along its left bank, crossing it eventually at the Kamarī of maps, s.e. of Kābul.

915

This disastrous expedition, full of privation and loss, had occupied some four months (T.R. p. 201).

916

f. 145b.

917

f. 133b and Appendix F.

918

They were located in Mandrāwar in 926 AH. (f. 251).

919

This was done, manifestly, with the design of drawing after the families their fighting men, then away with Bābur.

920

f. 163. Shaibāq Khān besieged Chīn Ṣufī, Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā’s man in Khwārizm (T. R. p. 204; Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry, Table of Contents and note 89).

921

Survey Map 1889, Sadda. The Rāgh-water flows n.w. into the Oxus (Amū).

922

birk, a mountain stronghold; cf. f. 149b note to Birk (Barak).

923

They were thus driven on from the Bārān-water (f. 154b).

924

f. 126b.

925

Ḥiṣār, presumably.

926

Here “His Honour” translates Bābur’s clearly ironical honorific plural.

927

These two sult̤āns, almost always mentioned in alliance, may be Tīmūrids by maternal descent (Index s. nn.). So far I have found no direct statement of their parentage. My husband has shewn me what may be one indication of it, viz. that two of the uncles of Shaibāq Khān (whose kinsmen the sult̤āns seem to be), Qūj-kūnjī and Sīūnjak, were sons of a daughter of the Tīmūrid Aūlūgh Beg Samarkandī (Ḥ.S. ii, 318). See Vambéry’s Bukhārā p. 248 note.

928

For the deaths of Taṃbal and Maḥmūd, mentioned in the above summary of Shaibāq Khān’s actions, see the Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry, p. 323.

929

Ḥ.S. ii, 323, for Khusrau Shāh’s character and death.

930

f. 124.

931

Khwāja-of-the-rhubarb, presumably a shrine near rhubarb-grounds (f. 129b).

932

yakshī bārdīlār, lit. went well, a common expression in the Bābur-nāma, of which the reverse statement is yamānlīk bīla bārdī (f. 163). Some Persian MSS. make the Mughūls disloyal but this is not only in opposition to the Turkī text, it is a redundant statement since if disloyal, they are included in Bābur’s previous statement, as being Khusrau Shāh’s retainers. What might call for comment in Mughūls would be loyalty to Bābur.

933

Elph. MS. f. 121b: W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 126 and 217 f. 106b; Mems. p. 169.

934

tāgh-dāmanasī, presumably the Koh-dāman, and the garden will thus be the one of f. 136b.

935

If these heirs were descendants of Aūlūgh Beg M. one would be at hand in ‘Abdu’r-razzāq, then a boy, and another, a daughter, was the wife of Muqīm Arghūn. As Mr. Erskine notes, Musalmāns are most scrupulous not to bury their dead in ground gained by violence or wrong.

936

The news of Aḥmad’s death was belated; he died some 13 months earlier, in the end of 909 AH. and in Eastern Turkistān. Perhaps details now arrived.

937

i. e. the fortieth day of mourning, when alms are given.

938

Of those arriving, the first would find her step-daughter dead, the second her sister, the third, his late wife’s sister (T. R. p. 196).

939

This will be the earthquake felt in Agra on Ṣafar 3rd 911 AH. (July 5th 1505 AD. Erskine’s History of India i, 229 note). Cf. Elliot and Dowson, iv, 465 and v, 99.

940

Raverty’s Notes p. 690.

941

bīr kitta tāsh ātīmī; var. bāsh ātīmī. If tāsh be right, the reference will probably be to the throw of a catapult.

942

Here almost certainly, a drummer, because there were two tambours and because also Bābur uses ‘aūdī & ghachakī for the other meanings of t̤ambourchi, lutanist and guitarist. The word has found its way, as tambourgi, into Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Canto ii, lxxii. H. B.).

943

Kābul-Ghaznī road (R.’s Notes index s. n.).

944

var. Yārī. Tāzī is on the Ghaznī-Qalāt-i-ghilzāī road (R.’s Notes, Appendix p. 46).

945

i. e. in Kābul and in the Trans-Himalayan country.

946

These will be those against Bābur’s suzerainty done by their defence of Qalāt for Muqīm.

947

tabaqa, dynasty. By using this word Bābur shews recognition of high birth. It is noticeable that he usually writes of an Arghūn chief either simply as “Beg” or without a title. This does not appear to imply admission of equality, since he styles even his brothers and sisters Mīrzā and Begīm; nor does it shew familiarity of intercourse, since none seems to have existed between him and Ẕū’n-nūn or Muqīm. That he did not admit equality is shewn on f. 208. The T.R. styles Ẕū’n-nūn “Mīrzā”, a title by which, as also by Shāh, his descendants are found styled (A. – i-a. Blochmann, s. n.).

948

Turkī khachar is a camel or mule used for carrying personal effects. The word has been read by some scribes as khanjar, dagger.

949

In 910 AH. he had induced Bābur to come to Kābul instead of going into Khurāsān (Ḥ.S. iii, 319); in the same year he dictated the march to Kohāt, and the rest of that disastrous travel. His real name was not Bāqī but Muḥammad Bāqir (Ḥ.S. iii, 311).

950

These transit or custom duties are so called because the dutiable articles are stamped with a t̤amghā, a wooden stamp.

951

Perhaps this word is an equivalent of Persian goshī, a tax on cattle and beasts of burden.

952

Bāqī was one only and not the head of the Lords of the Gate.

953

The choice of the number nine, links on presumably to the mystic value attached to it e. g. Tarkhāns had nine privileges; gifts were made by nines.

954

It is near Ḥasan-abdāl (A. – i-A. Jarrett, ii, 324).

955

For the farmān, f. 146b; for Gujūrs, G. of I.

956

var. Khwesh. Its water flows into the Ghūr-bund stream; it seems to be the Dara-i-Turkmān of Stanford and the Survey Maps both of which mark Janglīk. For Hazāra turbulence, f. 135b and note.

957

The repetition of aūq in this sentence can hardly be accidental.

958

t̤aur [dara], which I take to be Turkī, round, complete.

959

Three MSS. of the Turkī text write bīr sīmīzlūq tīwah; but the two Persian translations have yak shuturlūq farbīh, a shuturlūq being a baggage-camel with little hair (Erskine).

960

brochettes, meat cut into large mouthfuls, spitted and roasted.

961

Perhaps he was officially an announcer; the word means also bearer of good news.

962

yīlāng, without mail, as in the common phrase yīgīt yīlāng, a bare brave.

963

aūpchīn, of horse and man (f. 113b and note).

964

Manifestly Bābur means that he twice actually helped to collect the booty.

965

This is that part of a horse covered by the two side-pieces of a Turkī saddle, from which the side-arch springs on either side (Shaw).

966

Bārān-nīng ayāghī. Except the river I have found nothing called Bārān; the village marked Baian on the French Map would suit the position; it is n.e. of Chār-yak-kār (f. 184b note).

967

i. e. prepared to fight.

968

For the Hazāra (Turkī, Mīng) on the Mīrzā’s road see Raverty’s routes from Ghaznī to the north. An account given by the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 196) of Jahāngīr’s doings is confused; its parenthetical “(at the same time)” can hardly be correct. Jahāngīr left Ghaznī now, (911 AH.), as Bābur left Kābul in 912 AH. without knowledge of Ḥusain’s death (911 AH.). Bābur had heard it (f. 183b) before Jahāngīr joined him (912 AH.); after their meeting they went on together to Herī. The petition of which the T. R. speaks as made by Jahāngīr to Bābur, that he might go into Khurāsān and help the Bāī-qarā Mīrzās must have been made after the meeting of the two at Ṣaf-hill (f. 184b).

969

The plurals they and their of the preceding sentence stand no doubt for the Mīrzā, Yūsuf and Buhlūl who all had such punishment due as would lead them to hear threat in Qāsim’s words now when all were within Bābur’s pounce.

970

These are the aīmāqs from which the fighting-men went east with Bābur in 910 AH. and the families in which Nāṣir shepherded across Hindu-kush (f. 154 and f. 155).

971

yamānlīk bīla bārdī; cf. f. 156b and n. for its opposite, yakhshī bārdīlār; and T. R. p. 196.

972

One might be of mail, the other of wadded cloth.

973

Chīn Ṣūfī was Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s man (T.R. p. 204). His arduous defence, faithfulness and abandonment recall the instance of a later time when also a long road stretched between the man and the help that failed him. But the Mīrzā was old, his military strength was, admittedly, sapped by ease; hence his elder Khartum, his neglect of his Gordon.

It should be noted that no mention of the page’s fatal arrow is made by the Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry, p. 442), or by the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 204). Chīn Ṣūfī’s death was on the 21st of the Second Rabī 911 AH. (Aug. 22nd 1505 AD.).

974

This may be the “Baboulei” of the French Map of 1904, on the Herī-Kushk-Marūchāq road.

975

Elph. MS. f. 127; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 132 and 217 f. 111b; Mems. p. 175; Méms. i, 364.

That Bābur should have given his laborious account of the Court of Herī seems due both to loyalty to a great Tīmūrid, seated in Tīmūr Beg’s place (f. 122b), and to his own interest, as a man-of-letters and connoisseur in excellence, in that ruler’s galaxy of talent. His account here opening is not complete; its sources are various; they include the Ḥabību’s-siyār and what he will have learned himself in Herī or from members of the Bāī-qarā family, knowledgeable women some of them, who were with him in Hindūstān. The narrow scope of my notes shews that they attempt no more than to indicate further sources of information and to clear up a few obscurities.

976

Tīmūr’s youngest son, d. 850 AH. (1446 AD.). Cf. Ḥ.S. iii, 203. The use in this sentence of Amīr and not Beg as Tīmūr’s title is, up to this point, unique in the Bābur-nāma; it may be a scribe’s error.

977

Fīrūza’s paternal line of descent was as follows: – Fīrūza, daughter of Sl. Ḥusain Qānjūt, son of Ākā Begīm, daughter of Tīmūr. Her maternal descent was: – Fīrūza, d. of Qūtlūq-sult̤ān Begīm, d. of Mīrān-shāh, s. of Tīmūr. She died Muḥ. 24th 874 AH. (July 25th 1489 AD. Ḥ.S. iii, 218).

978

“No-one in the world had such parentage”, writes Khwānd-amīr, after detailing the Tīmūrid, Chīngīz-khānid, and other noted strains meeting in Ḥusain Bāī-qarā (Ḥ.S. iii, 204).

979

The Elph. MS. gives the Begīm no name; Badī‘u’l-jamāl is correct (Ḥ.S. iii, 242). The curious “Badka” needs explanation. It seems probable that Bābur left one of his blanks for later filling-in; the natural run of his sentence here is “Ākā B. and Badī‘u’l-jamāl B.” and not the detail, which follows in its due place, about the marriage with Aḥmad.

980

Dīwān bāshīdā ḥāṣir būlmās aīdī; the sense of which may be that Bāī-qarā did not sit where the premier retainer usually sat at the head of the Court (Pers. trs. sar-i-dīwān).

981

From this Wais and Sl. Ḥusain M.’s daughter Sult̤ānīm (f. 167b) were descended the Bāī-qarā Mīrzās who gave Akbar so much trouble.

982

As this man might be mistaken for Bābur’s uncle (q. v.) of the same name, it may be well to set down his parentage. He was a s. of Mīrzā Sayyidī Aḥmad, s. of Mīrān-shāh, s. of Tīmūr (Ḥ.S. iii, 217, 241). I have not found mention elsewhere of “Aḥmad s. of Mīrān-shāh”; the sayyidī in his style points to a sayyida mother. He was Governor of Herī for a time, for Sl. H.M.; ‘Alī-sher has notices of him and of his son, Kīchīk Mīrzā (Journal Asiatique xvii, 293, M. Belin’s art. where may be seen notices of many other men mentioned by Bābur).

983

He collected and thus preserved ‘Alī-sher’s earlier poems (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 294). Mu’inu’d-dīn al Zamji writes respectfully of his being worthy of credence in some Egyptian matters with which he became acquainted in twice passing through that country on his Pilgrimage (Journal Asiatique xvi, 476, de Meynard’s article).

984

Kīchīk M.’s quatrain is a mere plagiarism of Jāmī’s which I am indebted to my husband for locating as in the Dīwān I.O. MS. 47 p. 47; B.M. Add. 7774 p. 290; and Add. 7775 p. 285. M. Belin interprets the verse as an expression of the rise of the average good man to mystical rapture, not as his lapse from abstinence to indulgence (l.c. xvii, 296 and notes).

985

Elph. MS. younger but Ḥai. MS. older in which it is supported by the “also” (ham) of the sentence.

986

modern Astrakhan. Ḥusain’s guerilla wars were those through which he cut his way to the throne of Herī. This begīm was married first to Pīr Budāgh Sl. (Ḥ.S. iii, 242); he dying, she was married by Aḥmad, presumably by levirate custom (yīnkālīk; f. 12 and note). By Aḥmad she had a daughter, styled Khān-zāda Begīm whose affairs find comment on f. 206 and Ḥ.S. iii, 359. (The details of this note negative a suggestion of mine that Badka was the Rābī‘a-sult̤ān of f. 168 (Gul-badan, App. s. nn.).)

987

This is a felt wide-awake worn by travellers in hot weather (Shaw); the Turkmān bonnet (Erskine).

988

Ḥai. MS. yamānlīk, badly, but Elph. MS. namāyan, whence Erskine’s showy.

989

This was a proof that he was then a Shī‘a (Erskine).

990

The word perform may be excused in speaking of Musalmān prayers because they involve ceremonial bendings and prostrations (Erskine).

991

If Bābur’s 40 include rule in Herī only, it over-states, since Yādgār died in 875 AH. and Ḥusain in 911 AH. while the intervening 36 years include the 5 or 6 temperate ones. If the 40 count from 861 AH. when Ḥusain began to rule in Merv, it under-states. It is a round number, apparently.

992

Relying on the Ilminsky text, Dr. Rieu was led into the mistake of writing that Bābur gave Ḥusain the wrong pen-name, i. e. Ḥusain, and not Ḥusainī (Turk. Cat. p. 256).

993

Daulat-shāh says that as he is not able to enumerate all Ḥusain’s feats-of-arms, he, Turkmān fashion, offers a gift of Nine. The Nine differ from those of Bābur’s list in some dates; they are also records of victory only (Browne, p. 521; Not. et Extr. iv, 262, de Saçy’s article).

994

Wolves'-water, a river and its town at the s.e. corner of the Caspian, the ancient boundary between Russia and Persia. The name varies a good deal in MSS.

995

The battle was at Tarshīz; Abū-sa‘īd was ruling in Herī; Daulat-shāh (l.c. p. 523) gives 90 and 10,000 as the numbers of the opposed forces!

996

f. 26b and note; Ḥ.S. iii, 209; Daulat-shāh p. 523.

997

The loser was the last Shāhrukhī ruler. Chanārān (variants) is near Abīward, Anwārī’s birth-place (Ḥ.S. iii, 218; D.S. p. 527).

998

f. 85. D.S. (p. 540) and the Ḥ.S. (iii, 223) dwell on Ḥusain’s speed through three continuous days and nights.

999

f. 26; Ḥ.S. iii, 227; D.S. p. 532.

1000

Abū-sa‘īd’s son by a Badakhshī Begīm (T.R. p. 108); he became his father’s Governor in Badakhshān and married Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s daughter Begīm Sultān at a date after 873 AH. (f. 168 and note; Ḥ.S. iii, 196, 229, 234-37; D.S. p. 535).

1001

f. 152.

1002

Abā-bikr was defeated and put to death at the end of Rajah 884 AH. – Oct. 1479 AD. after flight before Ḥusain across the Gurgān-water (Ḥ.S. iii, 196 and 237 but D.S. p. 539, Ṣafar 885 AH.).

1003

f. 41, Pul-i-chirāgh; for Halwā-spring, Ḥ.S. iii, 283 and Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 443.

1004

f. 33 (p. 57) and f. 57b.

1005

In commenting thus Bābur will have had in mind what he best knew, Ḥusain’s futile movements at Qūndūz and Ḥiṣār.

1006

qālīb aīdī; if qālīb be taken as Turkī, survived or remained, it would not apply here since many of Ḥusain’s children predeceased him; Ar. qālab would suit, meaning begotten, born.

There are discrepancies between Bābur’s details here and Khwānd-amīr’s scattered through the Ḥabību’s-siyār, concerning Ḥusain’s family.

1007

bī ḥuẓūrī, which may mean aversion due to Khadīja Begīm’s malevolence.

1008

Some of the several goings into ‘Irāq chronicled by Bābur point to refuge taken with Tīmūrids, descendants of Khalīl and ‘Umar, sons of Mirān-shāh (Lane-Poole’s Muhammadan Dynasties, Table of the Tīmūrids).

1009

He died before his father (Ḥ.S. iii, 327).

1010

He will have been killed previous to Ramẓān 3rd 918 AH. (Nov. 12th, 1512 AD.), the date of the battle of Ghaj-dawān when Nijm S̱ānī died.

1011

The bund here may not imply that both were in prison, but that they were bound in close company, allowing Ismā‘īl, a fervent Shī‘a, to convert the Mīrzā.

1012

The bātmān is a Turkish weight of 13lbs (Meninsky) or 15lbs (Wollaston). The weight seems likely to refer to the strength demanded for rounding the bow (kamān guroha-sī) i. e. as much strength as to lift 40 bātmāns. Rounding or bending might stand for stringing or drawing. The meaning can hardly be one of the weight of the cross-bow itself. Erskine read gūrdehieh for guroha (p. 180) and translated by “double-stringed bow”; de Courteille (i, 373) read guirdhiyeh, arrondi, circulaire, in this following Ilminsky who may have followed Erskine. The Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. and the first W. – i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 113b) have kamān guroha-sī; the second W. – i-B. omits the passage, in the MSS. I have seen.