The Bābur-nāma

1122

muḥaddas̤, one versed in the traditional sayings and actions of Muḥammad.

1123

Ḥ.S. iii, 340.

1124

B.M. Or. 218 (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 350). The Commentary was made in order to explain the Nafaḥāt to Jāmī’s son.

1125

He was buried by the Mullā’s side.

1126

Amīr Burhānu’d-dīn ‘Atā’u’l-lāh bin Maḥmūdu’l-ḥusainī was born in Nishāpūr but known as Mashhadī because he retired to that holy spot after becoming blind.

1127

f. 144b and note. Qāẓī Ikhtiyāru’d-dīn Ḥasan (Ḥ.S. iii, 347) appears to be the Khwāja Ikhtiyār of the Āyīn-i-akbarī, and, if so, will have taken professional interest in the script, since Abū’l-faẓl describes him as a distinguished calligrapher in Sl. Ḥusain M.’s presence (Blochmann, p. 101).

1128

Saifu’d-dīn (Sword of the Faith) Aḥmad, presumably.

1129

A sister of his, Apāq Bega, the wife of ‘Alī-sher’s brother Darwīsh-i-‘alī kitābdār, is included as a poet in the Biography of Ladies (Sprenger’s Cat. p. 11). Amongst the 20 women named one is a wife of Shaibāq Khān, another a daughter of Hilālī.

1130

He was the son of Khw. Ni‘amatu’l-lāh, one of Sl. Abū-sa‘īd M.’s wazīrs. When dying aet. 70 (923 AH.), he made this chronogram on his own death, “With 70 steps he measured the road to eternity.” The name Āsaf, so frequent amongst wazīrs, is that of Solomon’s wazīr.

1131

Other interpretations are open; wādī, taken as river, might refer to the going on from one poem to another, the stream of verse; or it might be taken as desert, with disparagement of collections.

1132

Maulānā Jamālu’d-dīn Banā’i was the son of a sabz-banā, an architect, a good builder.

1133

Steingass’s Dictionary allows convenient reference for examples of metres.

1134

Other jokes made by Banā’i at the expense of Nawā’i are recorded in the various sources.

1135

Bābur saw Banā’i in Samarkand at the end of 901 AH. (1496 AD. f. 38).

Here Dr. Leyden’s translation ends; one other fragment which he translated will be found under the year 925 AH. (Erskine). This statement allows attention to be drawn to the inequality of the shares of the work done for the Memoirs of 1826 by Leyden and by Erskine. It is just to Mr. Erskine, but a justice he did not claim, to point out that Dr. Leyden’s share is slight both in amount and in quality; his essential contribution was the initial stimulus he gave to the great labours of his collaborator.

1136

So of Lope de Vega (b. 1562; d. 1635 AD.), “It became a common proverb to praise a good thing by calling it a Lope, so that jewels, diamonds, pictures, etc. were raised into esteem by calling them his” (Montalvan in Ticknor’s Spanish Literature ii, 270).

1137

Maulānā Saifī, known as ‘Arūẓī from his mastery in prosody (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 525).

1138

Here pedantry will be implied in the mullahood.

1139

Khamsatīn (infra f. 180b and note).

1140

This appears to mean that not only the sparse diacritical pointing common in writing Persian was dealt with but also the fuller Arabic.

1141

He is best known by his pen-name Hātifī. The B.M. and I.O. have several of his books.

1142

Khamsatīn. Hātifī regarded himself as the successor of Niz̤āmī and Khusrau; this, taken with Bābur’s use of the word Khamsatīn on f. 7 and here, and Saifī’s just above, leads to the opinion that the Khamsatīn of the Bābur-nāma are always those of Niz̤āmī and Khusrau, the Two Quintets (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 653).

1143

Maulānā Mīr Kamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain of Nishāpūr (Rieu l.c. index s.n.; Ethé’s I.O. Cat. pp. 433 and 1134).

1144

One of his couplets on good and bad fortune is striking; “The fortune of men is like a sand-glass; one hour up, the next down.” See D’Herbélot in his article (Erskine).

1145

Ḥ.S. iii, 336; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 1089.

1146

Āhī (sighing) was with Shāh-i-gharīb before Ibn-i-ḥusain and to him dedicated his dīwān. The words sāḥib-i-dīwān seem likely to be used here with double meaning i. e. to express authorship and finance office. Though Bābur has made frequent mention of authorship of a dīwān and of office in the Dīwān, he has not used these words hitherto in either sense; there may be a play of words here.

1147

Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā Khwārizmī, author of the Shaibānī-nāma which manifestly is the poem (mas̤nawī) mentioned below. This has been published with a German translation by Professor Vambéry and has been edited with Russian notes by Mr. Platon Melioransky (Rieu’s Turkish Cat. p. 74; Ḥ.S. iii, 301).

1148

Jāmī’s Subḥatu’l-abrār (Rosary of the righteous).

1149

The reference may be to things said by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ the untruth of which was known to Bābur through his own part in the events. A crying instance of misrepresentation is Ṣāliḥ’s assertion, in rhetorical phrase, that Bābur took booty in jewels from Khusrau Shāh; other instances concern the affairs of The Khāns and of Bābur in Transoxiana (f. 124b and index s. nn. Aḥmad and Maḥmūd Chaghatāī etc.; T.R. index s. nn.)

1150

The name Fat-land (Taṃbal-khāna) has its parallel in Fat-village (Sīmīz-kīnt) a name of Samarkand; in both cases the nick-name is accounted for by the fertility of irrigated lands. We have not been able to find the above-quoted couplet in the Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry); needless to say, the pun is on the nick-name (taṃbal, fat) of Sl. Aḥmad Taṃbal.

1151

Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ does not show well in his book; he is sometimes coarse, gloats over spoil whether in human captives or goods, and, his good-birth not-forbidding, is a servile flatterer. Bābur’s word “heartless” is just; it must have had sharp prompting from Ṣāliḥ’s rejoicing in the downfall of The Khāns, Bābur’s uncles.

1152

the Longer (Ḥ.S. iii, 349).

1153

Maulānā Badru’d-dīn (Full-moon of the Faith) whose pen-name was Hilālī, was of Astarābād. It may be noted that two dates of his death are found, 936 and 939 AH. the first given by de Saçy, the second by Rieu, and that the second seems to be correct (Not. et Extr. p. 285; Pers. Cat. p. 656; Hammer’s Geschichte p. 368).

1154

B.M. Add. 7783.

1155

Opinions differ as to the character of this work: – Bābur’s is uncompromising; von Hammer (p. 369) describes it as “ein romantisches Gedicht, welches eine sentimentale Männerliebe behandelt”; Sprenger (p. 427), as a mystical mas̤nawī (poem); Rieu finds no spiritual symbolism in it and condemns it (Pers. Cat. p. 656 and, quoting the above passage of Bābur, p. 1090); Ethé, who has translated it, takes it to be mystical and symbolic (I.O. Cat. p. 783).

1156

Of four writers using the pen-name Ahlī (Of-the-people), viz. those of Turān, Shīrāz, Tarshīz (in Khurāsān), and ‘Irāq, the one noticed here seems to be he of Tarshīz. Ahlī of Tarshīz was the son of a locally-known pious father and became a Superintendent of the Mint; Bābur’s ‘āmī may refer to Ahlī’s first patrons, tanners and shoe-makers by writing for whom he earned his living (Sprenger, p. 319). Erskine read 'ummī, meaning that Ahlī could neither read nor write; de Courteille that he was un homme du commun.

1157

He was an occasional poet (Ḥ.S. iii, 350 and iv, 118; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 531; Ethé’s I.O. Cat. p. 428).

1158

Ustād Kamālu’d-dīn Bih-zād (well-born; Ḥ.S. iii, 350). Work of his is reproduced in Dr. Martin’s Painting and Painters of Persia of 1913 AD.

1159

This sentence is not in the Elph. MS.

1160

Perhaps he could reproduce tunes heard and say where heard.

1161

M. Belin quotes quatrains exchanged by ‘Alī-sher and this man (J. Asiatique xvii, 199).

1162

i. e. from his own camp to Bābā Ilāhī.

1163

f. 121 has a fuller quotation. On the dual succession, see T.R. p. 196.

1164

Elph. MS. f. 144; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 148b and 217 f. 125b; Mems. p. 199.

1165

News of Ḥusain’s death in 911 AH. (f. 163b) did not reach Bābur till 912 AH. (f. 184b).

1166

Lone-meadow (f. 195b). Jahāngīr will have come over the ‘Irāq-pass, Bābur’s baggage-convoy, by Shibr-tū. Cf. T. R. p. 199 for Bābur and Jahāngīr at this time.

1167

Servant-of-the-mace; but perhaps, Qilinj-chāq, swords-man.

1168

One of four, a fourth. Chār-yak may be a component of the name of the well-known place, n. of Kābul, “Chārikār”; but also the Chār in it may be Hindūstānī and refer to the permits-to-pass after tolls paid, given to caravans halted there for taxation. Raverty writes it Chārlākār.

1169

Amongst the disruptions of the time was that of the Khānate of Qībchāq (Erskine).

1170

The nearest approach to kipkī we have found in Dictionaries is kupaki, which comes close to the Russian copeck. Erskine notes that the casbeké is an oval copper coin (Tavernier, p. 121); and that a tūmān is a myriad (10,000). Cf. Manucci (Irvine), i, 78 and iv, 417 note; Chardin iv, 278.

1171

Muḥarram 912 AH. – June 1506 AD. (Ḥ.S. iii, 353).

1172

I take Murgh-āb here to be the fortified place at the crossing of the river by the main n.e. road; Bābur when in Dara-i-bām was on a tributary of the Murgh-āb. Khwānd-amīr records that the information of his approach was hailed in the Mīrzās’ camp as good news (Ḥ.S. iii, 354).

1173

Bābur gives the Mīrzās precedence by age, ignoring Muz̤affar’s position as joint-ruler.

1174

mubālgha qīldī; perhaps he laid stress on their excuse; perhaps did more than was ceremonially incumbent on him.

1175

‘irq, to which estrade answers in its sense of a carpet on which stands a raised seat.

1176

Perhaps it was a recess, resembling a gate-way (W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 151 and 217 f. 127b). The impression conveyed by Bābur’s words here to the artist who in B.M. Or. 3714, has depicted the scene, is that there was a vestibule opening into the tent by a door and that the Mīrzā sat near that door. It must be said however that the illustration does not closely follow the text, in some known details.

1177

shīra, fruit-syrups, sherbets. Bābur’s word for wine is chāghīr (q. v. index) and this reception being public, wine could hardly have been offered in Sunnī Herī. Bābur’s strictures can apply to the vessels of precious metal he mentions, these being forbidden to Musalmāns; from his reference to the Tūra it would appear to repeat the same injunctions. Bābur broke up such vessels before the battle of Kanwāha (f. 315). Shāh-i-jahān did the same; when sent by his father Jahāngīr to reconquer the Deccan (1030 AH. -1621 AD.) he asked permission to follow the example of his ancestor Bābur, renounced wine, poured his stock into the Chaṃbal, broke up his cups and gave the fragments to the poor (‘Amal-i-ṣāliḥ, Hughes’ Dict. of Islām quoting the Hidāyah and Mishkāt, s. nn. Drinkables, Drinking-vessels, and Gold; Lane’s Modern Egyptians p. 125 n.).

1178

This may be the Rabāt̤-i-sanghī of some maps, on a near road between the “Forty-daughters” and Harāt; or Bābur may have gone out of his direct way to visit Rabāt̤-i-sang-bast, a renowned halting place at the Carfax of the Herī-T̤ūs and Nishāpūr-Mashhad roads, built by one Arslān Jazāla who lies buried near, and rebuilt with great magnificence by ‘Alī-sher Nawā’i (Daulat-shāh, Browne, p. 176).

1179

The wording here is confusing to those lacking family details. The paternal-aunt begīms can be Pāyanda-sult̤ān (named), Khadīja-sult̤ān, Apāq-sult̤ān, and Fakhr-jahān Begīms, all daughters of Abū-sa‘īd. The Apāq Begīm named above (also on f. 168b q. v.) does not now seem to me to be Abū-sa‘īd’s daughter (Gul-badan, trs. Bio. App.).

1180

yūkūnmāī. Unless all copies I have seen reproduce a primary clerical mistake of Bābur’s, the change of salutation indicated by there being no kneeling with Apāq Begīm, points to a nuance of etiquette. Of the verb yūkūnmāk it may be noted that it both describes the ceremonious attitude of intercourse, i. e. kneeling and sitting back on both heels (Shaw), and also the kneeling on meeting. From Bābur’s phrase Begīm bīla yūkūnūb [having kneeled with], it appears that each of those meeting made the genuflection; I have not found the phrase used of other meetings; it is not the one used when a junior or a man of less degree meets a senior or superior in rank (e. g. Khusrau and Bābur f. 123, or Bābur and Badī‘u’z-zamān f. 186).

1181

Musalmāns employ a set of readers who succeed one another in reading (reciting) the Qorān at the tombs of their men of eminence. This reading is sometimes continued day and night. The readers are paid by the rent of lands or other funds assigned for the purpose (Erskine).

1182

A suspicion that Khadīja put poison in Jahāngīr’s wine may refer to this occasion (T.R. p. 199).

1183

These are jharokha-i-darsān, windows or balconies from which a ruler shews himself to the people.

1184

Mas‘ūd was then blind.

1185

Bābur first drank wine not earlier than 917 AH. (f. 49 and note), therefore when nearing 30.

1186

aīchkīlār, French, intérieur.

1187

The obscure passage following here is discussed in Appendix I, On the weeping-willows of f. 190b.

1188

Here this may well be a gold-embroidered garment.

1189

This, the tomb of Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh Anṣari (d. 481 AH.) stands some 2m. north of Herī. Bābur mentions one of its numerous attendants of his day, Kamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain Gāzur-gāhī. Mohan Lall describes it as he saw it in 1831; says the original name of the locality was Kār-zār-gāh, place-of-battle; and, as perhaps his most interesting detail, mentions that Jalālu’d-dīn Rūmī’s Maṣnawī was recited every morning near the tomb and that people fainted during the invocation (Travels in the Panj-āb etc. p. 252). Colonel Yate has described the tomb as he saw it some 50 years later (JASB 1887); and explains the name Gāzur-gāh (lit. bleaching-place) by the following words of an inscription there found; “His tomb (Anṣarī’s) is a washing-place (gāzur-gāh) wherein the cloud of the Divine forgiveness washes white the black records of men” (p. 88 and p. 102).

1190

juāz-i-kaghazlār (f. 47b and note).

1191

The Ḥabību’s-siyār and Ḥai. MS. write this name with medial “round hā”; this allows it to be Kahad-stān, a running-place, race-course. Khwānd-amīr and Daulat-shāh call it a meadow (aūlāng); the latter speaks of a feast as held there; it was Shaibānī’s head-quarters when he took Harāt.

1192

var. Khatīra; either an enclosure (qūrūq?) or a fine and lofty building.

1193

This may have been a usual halting-place on a journey (safar) north. It was built by Ḥusain Bāī-qarā, overlooked hills and fields covered with arghwān (f. 137b) and seems once to have been a Paradise (Mohan Lall, p. 256).

1194

Jāmī’s tomb was in the ‘Īd-gah of Herī (Ḥ.S. ii, 337), which appears to be the Muṣalla (Praying-place) demolished by Amīr ‘Abdu’r-raḥmān in the 19th century. Col. Yate was shewn a tomb in the Muṣalla said to be Jāmī’s and agreeing in the age, 81, given on it, with Jāmī’s at death, but he found a crux in the inscription (pp. 99, 106).

1195

This may be the Muṣalla (Yate, p. 98).

1196

This place is located by the Ḥ.S. at 5 farsakh from Herī (de Meynard at 25 kilomètres). It appears to be rather an abyss or fissure than a pond, a crack from the sides of which water trickles into a small bason in which dwells a mysterious fish, the beholding of which allows the attainment of desires. The story recalls Wordsworth’s undying fish of Bow-scale Tarn. (Cf. Ḥ.S. Bomb. ed. ii, Khatmat p. 20 and de Meynard, Journal Asiatique xvi, 480 and note.)

1197

This is on maps to the north of Herī.

1198

d. 232 AH. (847 AD.). See Yate, p. 93.

1199

Imām Fakhru’d-dīn Raẓī (de Meynard, Journal Asiatique xvi, 481).

1200

d. 861 AH. -1457 AD. Guhār-shād was the wife of Tīmūr’s son Shāhrukh. See Mohan Lall, p. 257 and Yate, p. 98.

1201

This Marigold-garden may be named after Hārūnu’r-rashīd’s wife Zubaida.

1202

This will be the place n. of Herī from which Maulānā Jalālu’d-dīn Pūrānī (d. 862 AH.) took his cognomen, as also Shaikh Jamālu’d-dīn Abū-sa‘īd Pūrān (f. 206) who was visited there by Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, ill-treated by Shaibānī (f. 206), left Herī for Qandahār, and there died, through the fall of a roof, in 921 AH. (Ḥ.S. iii, 345; Khazīnatu’l-asfiya ii, 321).

1203

His tomb is dated 35 or 37 AH. (656 or 658 AD.; Yate, p. 94).

1204

Mālān was a name of the Herī-rūd (Journal Asiatique xvi, 476, 511; Mohan Lall, p. 279; Ferrier, p. 261; etc.).

1205

Yate, p. 94.

1206

The position of this building between the Khūsh and Qībchāq Gates (de Meynard, l.c. p. 475) is the probable explanation of the variant, noted just below, of Kushk for Khūsh as the name of the Gate. The Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 429), mentions this kiosk in its list of the noted ones of the world.

1207

var. Kushk (de Meynard, l.c. p. 472).

1208

The reference here is, presumably, to Bābur’s own losses of Samarkand and Andijān.

1209

Ākā or Āgā is used of elder relations; a yīnkā or yīngā is the wife of an uncle or elder brother; here it represents the widow of Bābur’s uncle Aḥmad Mīrān-shāhī. From it is formed the word yīnkālīk, levirate.

1210

The almshouse or convent was founded here in Tīmūr’s reign (de Meynard, l.c. p. 500).

1211

i. e. No smoke without fire.

1212

This name may be due to the splashing of water. A Langar which may be that of Mīr Ghiyās̤, is shewn in maps in the Bām valley; from it into the Herī-rūd valley Bābur’s route may well have been the track from that Langar which, passing the villages on the southern border of Gharjistān, goes to Ahangarān.

1213

This escape ought to have been included in the list of Bābur’s transportations from risk to safety given in my note to f. 96.

1214

The right and wrong roads are shewn by the Indian Survey and French Military maps. The right road turns off from the wrong one, at Daulat-yār, to the right, and mounts diagonally along the south rampart of the Herī-rūd valley, to the Zirrīn-pass, which lies above the Bakkak-pass and carries the regular road for Yaka-aūlāng. It must be said, however, that we are not told whether Yaka-aūlāng was Qāsim Beg’s objective; the direct road for Kābul from the Herī-rūd valley is not over the Zirrīn-pass but goes from Daulat-yār by “Āq-zarat”, and the southern flank of Koh-i-bābā (bābār) to the Unai-pass (Holdich’s Gates of India p. 262).

1215

circa Feb. 14th 1507, Bābur’s 24th birthday.

1216

The Hazāras appear to have been wintering outside their own valley, on the Ghūr-bund road, in wait for travellers [cf. T.R. p. 197]. They have been perennial highwaymen on the only pass to the north not closed entirely in winter.

1217

The Ghūr-bund valley is open in this part; the Hazāras may have been posted on the naze near the narrows leading into the Janglīk and their own side valleys.

1218

Although the verses following here in the text are with the Turkī Codices, doubt cannot but be felt as to their authenticity. They do not fit verbally to the sentence they follow; they are a unique departure from Bābur’s plain prose narrative and nothing in the small Hazāra affair shews cause for such departure; they differ from his usual topics in their bombast and comment on his men (cf. f. 194 for comment on shirking begs). They appear in the 2nd Persian translation (217 f. 134) in Turkī followed by a prose Persian rendering (khalāṣa). They are not with the 1st Pers. trs. (215 f. 159), the text of which runs on with a plain prose account suiting the size of the affair, as follows: – “The braves, seeing their (the Hazāras) good soldiering, had stopped surprised; wishing to hurry them i went swiftly past them, shouting ‘Move on! move on!’ They paid me no attention. When, in order to help, I myself attacked, dismounting and going up the hill, they shewed courage and emulation in following. Getting to the top of the pass, we drove that band off, killing many, capturing others, making their families prisoner and plundering their goods.” This is followed by “I myself collected” etc. as in the Turkī text after the verse. It will be seen that the above extract is not a translation of the verse; no translator or even summariser would be likely to omit so much of his original. It is just a suitably plain account of a trivial matter.

1219

Gulistān Cap. I. Story 4.

1220

Bābur seems to have left the Ghūr-bund valley, perhaps pursuing the Hazāras towards Janglīk, and to have come “by ridge and valley” back into it for Ushtur-shahr. I have not located Tīmūr Beg’s Langar. As has been noted already (q. v. index) the Ghūr-bund narrows are at the lower end of the valley; they have been surmised to be the fissured rampart of an ancient lake.