The Bābur-nāma

1221

Here this may represent a guard- or toll-house (Index s. n.).

1222

As yūrūn is a patch, the bearer of the sobriquet might be Black Aḥmad the repairing-tailor.

1223

Second Afghān War, Map of Kābul and its environs.

1224

I understand that the arrival undiscovered was a result of riding in single-file and thus shewing no black mass.

1225

or gharbīcha, which Mr. Erskine explains to be the four plates of mail, made to cover the back, front and sides; the jība would thus be the wadded under-coat to which they are attached.

1226

This prayer is composed of extracts from the Qorān (Méms, i, 454 note); it is reproduced as it stands in Mr. Erskine’s wording (p. 216).

1227

Bābur’s reference may well be to Sanjar’s birth as well as to his being the holder of Nīngnahār. Sanjar’s father had been thought worthy to mate with one of the six Badakhshī begīms whose line traced back to Alexander (T. R. p. 107); and his father was a Barlās, seemingly of high family.

1228

It may be inferred that what was done was for the protection of the two women.

1229

Not a bad case could have been made out for now putting a Tīmūrid in Bābur’s place in Kābul; viz. that he was believed captive in Herī and that Mīrzā Khān was an effective locum tenens against the Arghūns. Ḥaidar sets down what in his eyes pleaded excuse for his father Muḥ. Ḥusain (T.R. p. 198).

1230

qūsh, not even a little plough-land being given (chand qulba dihya, 215 f. 162).

1231

They were sons of Sl. Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī.

1232

f. 160.

1233

Ḥaidar’s opinion of Bābur at this crisis is of the more account that his own father was one of the rebels let go to the mercy of the “avenging servitor”. When he writes of Bābur, as being, at a time so provoking, gay, generous, affectionate, simple and gentle, he sets before us insight and temper in tune with Kipling’s “If…”

1234

Bābur’s distinction, made here and elsewhere, between Chaghatāī and Mughūl touches the old topic of the right or wrong of the term “Mughūl dynasty”. What he, as also Ḥaidar, allows said is that if Bābur were to describe his mother in tribal terms, he would say she was half-Chaghatāī, half-Mughūl; and that if he so described himself, he would say he was half-Tīmūrid-Turk, half-Chaghatāī. He might have called the dynasty he founded in India Turkī, might have called it Tīmūriya; he would never have called it Mughūl, after his maternal grandmother.

Ḥaidar, with imperfect classification, divides Chīngīz Khān’s “Mughūl horde” into Mughūls and Chaghatāīs and of this Chaghatāī offtake says that none remained in 953 AH. (1547 AD.) except the rulers, i. e. sons of Sl. Aḥmad Khan (T.R. 148). Manifestly there was a body of Chaghatāīs with Bābur and there appear to have been many near his day in the Herī region, – ‘Alī-sher Nawā‘i the best known.

Bābur supplies directions for naming his dynasty when, as several times, he claims to rule in Hindūstān where the “Turk” had ruled (f. 233b, f. 224b, f. 225). To call his dynasty Mughūl seems to blot out the centuries, something as we should do by calling the English Teutons. If there is to be such blotting-out, Abū’l-ghāzī would allow us, by his tables of Turk descent, to go further, to the primal source of all the tribes concerned, to Turk, son of Japhet. This traditional descent is another argument against “Mughūl dynasty.”

1235

They went to Qandahār and there suffered great privation.

1236

Bārān seems likely to be the Baian of some maps. Gul-i-bahār is higher up on the Panjhīr road. Chāsh-tūpa will have been near-by; its name might mean Hill of the heap of winnowed-corn.

1237

f. 136.

1238

Answer; Visions of his father’s sway.

1239

Elph. MS. f. 161; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 164 and 217 f. 139b; Mems. p. 220.

1240

The narrative indicates the location of the tribe, the modern Ghilzāī or Ghilzī.

1241

Sih-kāna lies s.e. of Shorkach, and near Kharbīn. Sar-i-dih is about 25 or 30 miles s. of Ghaznī (Erskine). A name suiting the pastoral wealth of the tribe viz. Mesh-khail, Sheep-tribe, is shewn on maps somewhat s. from Kharbīn. Cf. Steingass s. n. Masht.

1242

yāghrūn, whence yāghrūnchī, a diviner by help of the shoulder-blades of sheep. The defacer of the Elphinstone Codex has changed yāghrūn to yān, side, thus making Bābur turn his side and not his half-back to the north, altering his direction, and missing what looks like a jesting reference to his own divination of the road. The Pole Star was seen, presumably, before the night became quite black.

1243

From the subsequent details of distance done, this must have been one of those good yīghāch of perhaps 5-6 miles, that are estimated by the ease of travel on level lands (Index s. v. yīghāch).

1244

I am uncertain about the form of the word translated by “whim”. The Elph. and Ḥai. Codices read khūd d: lma (altered in the first to y: lma); Ilminsky (p. 257) reads khūd l: ma (de C. ii, 2 and note); Erskine has been misled by the Persian translation (215 f. 164b and 217 f. 139b). Whether khūd-dilma should be read, with the sense of “out of their own hearts” (spontaneously), or whether khūd-yalma, own pace (Turkī, yalma, pace) the contrast made by Bābur appears to be between an unpremeditated gallop and one premeditated for haste. Persian dalama, tarantula, also suggests itself.

1245

chāpqūn, which is the word translated by gallop throughout the previous passage. The Turkī verb chāpmāq is one of those words-of-all-work for which it is difficult to find a single English equivalent. The verb qūīmāq is another; in its two occurrences here the first may be a metaphor from the pouring of molten metal; the second expresses that permission to gallop off for the raid without which to raid was forbidden. The root-notion of qūīmāq seems to be letting-go, that of chāpmāq, rapid motion.

1246

i. e. on the raiders’ own road for Kābul.

1247

f. 198b.

1248

The Fifth taken was manifestly at the ruler’s disposition. In at least two places when dependants send gifts to Bābur the word [tassaduq] used might be rendered as “gifts for the poor”. Does this mean that the pādshāh in receiving this stands in the place of the Imām of the Qorān injunction which orders one-fifth of spoil to be given to the Imām for the poor, orphans, and travellers, – four-fifths being reserved for the troops? (Qorān, Sale’s ed. 1825, i, 212 and Hidāyat, Book ix).

1249

This may be the sum of the separate items of sheep entered in account-books by the commissaries.

1250

Here this comprehensive word will stand for deer, these being plentiful in the region.

1251

Three Turkī MSS. write ṣīghīnīb, but the Elph. MS. has had this changed to yītīb, having reached.

1252

bāsh-sīz, lit. without head, doubtless a pun on Aūz-beg (own beg, leaderless). B.M. Or. 3714 shows an artist’s conception of this tart-part.

1253

Bābā Khākī is a fine valley, some 13 yīghāch e. of Herī (f. 13) where the Herī sult̤āns reside in the heats (J. Asiatique xvi, 501, de Meynard’s article; Ḥ.S. iii, 356).

1254

f. 172b.

1255

aūkhshātā almādī. This is one of many passages which Ilminsky indicates he has made good by help of the Memoirs (p. 261; Mémoires ii, 6).

1256

They are given also on f. 172.

1257

This may be Sirakhs or Sirakhsh (Erskine).

1258

Tūshlīq tūshdīn yūrdī bīrūrlār. At least two meanings can be given to these words. Circumstances seem to exclude the one in which the Memoirs (p. 222) and Mémoires (ii, 7) have taken them here, viz. “each man went off to shift for himself”, and “chacun s’en alla de son côté et s’enfuit comme il put”, because Ẕū’n-nūn did not go off, and the Mīrzās broke up after his defeat. I therefore suggest another reading, one prompted by the Mīrzās’ vague fancies and dreams of what they might do, but did not.

1259

The encounter was between “Belāq-i-marāl and Rabāt̤-i-‘alī-sher, near Bādghīs” (Raverty’s Notes p. 580). For particulars of the taking of Herī see Ḥ.S. iii, 353.

1260

One may be the book-name, the second the name in common use, and due to the colour of the buildings. But Bābur may be making an ironical jest, and nickname the fort by a word referring to the defilement (ālā) of Aūzbeg possession. (Cf. Ḥ.S. iii, 359.)

1261

Mr. Erskine notes that Badī‘u’z-zamān took refuge with Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī who gave him Tabrīz. When the Turkish Emperor Sālim took Tabrīz in 920 AH. (1514 AD.), he was taken prisoner and carried to Constantinople, where he died in 923 AH. (1517 AD.).

1262

In the fort were his wife Kābulī Begīm, d. of Aūlūgh Beg M. Kābulī and Ruqaiya Āghā, known as the Nightingale. A young daughter of the Mīrzā, named the Rose-bud (Chūchak), had died just before the siege. After the surrender of the fort, Kābulī Begīm was married by Mīrzā Kūkūldāsh (perhaps ‘Āshiq-i-muḥammad Arghūn); Ruqaiya by Tīmūr Sl. Aūzbeg (Ḥ.S. iii, 359).

1263

The Khut̤ba was first read for Shaibāq Khān in Herī on Friday Muḥarram 15th 913 AH. (May 27th 1507 AD.).

1264

There is a Persian phrase used when a man engages in an unprofitable undertaking Kīr-i-khar gerift, i. e. Asini nervum deprehendet (Erskine). The Ḥ.S. does not mention Banā’i as fleecing the poets but has much to say about one Maulānā ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm a Turkistānī favoured by Shaibānī, whose victim Khwānd-amīr was, amongst many others. Not infrequently where Bābur and Khwānd-amīr state the same fact, they accompany it by varied details, as here (Ḥ.S. iii, 358, 360).

1265

‘adat. Muḥammadan Law fixes a term after widowhood or divorce within which re-marriage is unlawful. Light is thrown upon this re-marriage by Ḥ.S. iii, 359. The passage, a somewhat rhetorical one, gives the following details: – “On coming into Herī on Muḥarram 11th, Shaibānī at once set about gathering in the property of the Tīmūrids. He had the wives and daughters of the former rulers brought before him. The great lady Khān-zāda Begīm (f. 163b) who was daughter of Aḥmad Khān, niece of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, and wife of Muz̤affar Mīrzā, shewed herself pleased in his presence. Desiring to marry him, she said Muz̤affar M. had divorced her two years before. Trustworthy persons gave evidence to the same effect, so she was united to Shaibānī in accordance with the glorious Law. Mihr-angez Begīm, Muẓaffar M.’s daughter, was married to ‘Ubaidu’llāh Sl. (Aūzbeg); the rest of the chaste ladies having been sent back into the city, Shaibānī resumed his search for property.” Manifestly Bābur did not believe in the divorce Khwānd-amīr thus records.

1266

A sarcasm this on the acceptance of literary honour from the illiterate.

1267

f. 191 and note; Pul-i-sālār may be an irrigation-dam.

1268

Qalāt-i-nādirī, the birth-place of Nādir Shāh, n. of Mashhad and standing on very strong ground (Erskine).

1269

This is likely to be the road passing through the Carfax of Rabāt̤-i-sangbast, described by Daulat-shāh (Browne, p. 176).

1270

This will mean that the Arghūns would acknowledge his suzerainty; Ḥaidar Mīrzā however says that Shāh Beg had higher views (T. R. p. 202). There had been earlier negotiations between Ẕū’n-nūn with Badī‘u’z-zamān and Bābur which may have led to the abandonment of Bābur’s expedition in 911 AD. (f. 158; Ḥ.S. iii, 323; Raverty’s account (Notes p. 581-2) of Bābur’s dealings with the Arghūn chiefs needs revision).

1271

They will have gone first to Tūn or Qāīn, thence to Mashhad, and seem likely to have joined the Begīm after cross-cutting to avoid Herī.

1272

yāghī wilāyatī-ghā kīlādūrghān. There may have been an accumulation of caravans on their way to Herāt, checked in Qalāt by news of the Aūzbeg conquest.

1273

Jahāngīr’s son, thus brought by his mother, will have been an infant; his father had gone back last year with Bābur by the mountain road and had been left, sick and travelling in a litter, with the baggage when Bābur hurried on to Kābul at the news of the mutiny against him (f. 197); he must have died shortly afterwards, seemingly between the departure of the two rebels from Kābul (f. 201b-202) and the march out for Qandahār. Doubtless his widow now brought her child to claim his uncle Bābur’s protection.

1274

Persians pay great attention in their correspondence not only to the style but to the kind of paper on which a letter is written, the place of signature, the place of the seal, and the situation of the address. Chardin gives some curious information on the subject (Erskine). Bābur marks the distinction of rank he drew between the Arghūn chiefs and himself when he calls their letter to him, ‘arẓ-dāsht, his to them khat̤t̤. His claim to suzerainty over those chiefs is shewn by Ḥaidar Mīrzā to be based on his accession to Tīmūrid headship through the downfall of the Bāī-qarās, who had been the acknowledged suzerains of the Arghūns now repudiating Bābur’s claim. Cf. Erskine’s History of India i, cap. 3.

1275

on the main road, some 40 miles east of Qandahār.

1276

var. Kūr or Kawar. If the word mean ford, this might well be the one across the Tarnak carrying the road to Qarā (maps). Here Bābur seems to have left the main road along the Tarnak, by which the British approach was made in 1880 AD., for one crossing west into the valley of the Argand-āb.

1277

Bābā Ḥasan Abdāl is the Bābā Walī of maps. The same saint has given his name here, and also to his shrine east of Atak where he is known as Bābā Walī of Qandahār. The torrents mentioned are irrigation off-takes from the Argand-āb, which river flows between Bābā Walī and Khalishak. Shāh Beg’s force was south of the torrents (cf. Murghān-koh on S.A.W. map).

1278

The narrative and plans of Second Afghan War (Murray 1908) illustrate Bābur’s movements and show most of the places he names. The end of the 280 mile march, from Kābul to within sight of Qandahār, will have stirred in the General of 1507 what it stirred in the General of 1880. Lord Roberts speaking in May 1913 in Glasgow on the rapid progress of the movement for National Service thus spoke: – “A memory comes over me which turns misgiving into hope and apprehension into confidence. It is the memory of the morning when, accompanied by two of Scotland’s most famous regiments, the Seaforths and the Gordons, at the end of a long and arduous march, I saw in the distance the walls and minarets of Qandahar, and knew that the end of a great resolve and a great task was near.”

1279

mīn tāsh ‘imārat qāzdūrghān tūmshūghī-nīng alīdā; 215 f. l68b, ‘imarātī kah az sang yak pāra farmūda būdīm; 217 f. 143b, jāy kah man ‘imāratī sākhtam; Mems. p. 226, where I have built a palace; Méms. ii, 15, l’endroit même où j’ai bâti un palais. All the above translations lose the sense of qāzdūrghān, am causing to dig out, to quarry stone. Perhaps for coolness’ sake the dwelling was cut out in the living rock. That the place is south-west of the main ạrīqs, near Murghān-koh or on it, Bābur’s narrative allows. Cf. Appendix J.

1280

sic, Ḥai. MS. There are two Lakhshas, Little Lakhsha, a mile west of Qandahār, and Great Lakhsha, about a mile s.w. of Old Qandahār, 5 or 6 m. from the modern one (Erskine).

1281

This will be the main irrigation channel taken off from the Argand-āb (Maps).

1282

tamām aīlīkīdīn – aīsh-kīlūr yīkītlār, an idiomatic phrase used of ‘Alī-dost (f. 14b and n.), not easy to express by a single English adjective.

1283

The tawāchī was a sort of adjutant who attended to the order of the troops and carried orders from the general (Erskine). The difficult passage following gives the Turkī terms Bābur selected to represent Arabic military ones.

1284

Ar. aḥad (Āyīn-i-akbarī, Blochmann, index s. n.). The word būī recurs in the text on f. 210.

1285

i. e. the būī tīkīnī of f. 209b, the khāṣa tābīn, close circle.

1286

As Mughūls seem unlikely to be descendants of Muḥammad, perhaps the title Sayyid in some Mughūl names here, may be a translation of a Mughūl one meaning Chief.

1287

Arghūn-nīng qarāsī, a frequent phrase.

1288

in sign of submission.

1289

f. 176. It was in 908 AH. [1502 AD.].

1290

This word seems to be from sānjmāq, to prick or stab; and here to have the military sense of prick, viz. riding forth. The Second Pers. trs. (217 f. 144b) translates it by ghauta khūrda raft, went tasting a plunge under water (215 f. 170; Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. p. 133). Erskine (p. 228), as his Persian source dictates, makes the men sink into the soft ground; de Courteille varies much (ii, 21).

1291

Ar. akhmail, so translated under the known presence of trees; it may also imply soft ground (Lane p. 813 col. b) but soft ground does not suit the purpose of arīqs (channels), the carrying on of water to the town.

1292

The S.A.W. map is useful here.

1293

That he had a following may be inferred.

1294

Ḥai. MS. qāchār; Ilminsky, p. 268; and both Pers. trss. rukhsār or rukhsāra (f. 25 and note to qāchār).

1295

So in the Turkī MSS. and the first Pers. trs. (215 f. 170b). The second Pers. trs. (217 f. 145b) has a gloss of ātqū u tika; this consequently Erskine follows (p. 229) and adds a note explaining the punishment. Ilminsky has the gloss also (p. 269), thus indicating Persian and English influence.

1296

No MS. gives the missing name.

1297

The later favour mentioned was due to Saṃbhal’s laborious release of his master from Aūzbeg captivity in 917 AH. (1511 AD.) of which Erskine quotes a full account from the Tārīkh-i-sind (History of India i, 345).

1298

Presumably he went by Sabzār, Daulatābād, and Washīr.

1299

f. 202 and note to Chaghatāī.

1300

This will be for the Nīngnahār tūmān of Lamghān.

1301

He was thus dangerously raised in his father’s place of rule.

1302

ff. 10b, 11b. Ḥaidar M. writes, “Shāh Begīm laid claim to Badakhshān, saying, “it has been our hereditary kingdom for 3000 years; though I, being a woman, cannot myself attain sovereignty, yet my grandson Mīrzā Khān can hold it” (T. R. p. 203).

1303

tībrādīlār. The agitation of mind connoted, with movement, by this verb may well have been, here, doubt of Bābur’s power to protect.

1304

tūshlūq tūshdīn tāghghā yūrūkāīlār. Cf. 205b for the same phrase, with supposedly different meaning.

1305

qāngshār lit. ridge of the nose.

1306

bīr aūq ham qūīā-ālmādīlār (f. 203b note to chāpqūn).

1307

This will have been news both of Shaibāq Khān and of Mīrzā Khān. The Pers. trss. vary here (215 f. 173 and 217 f. 148).

1308

Index s. n.

1309

Māh-chūchūk can hardly have been married against her will to Qāsim. Her mother regarded the alliance as a family indignity; appealed to Shāh Beg and compassed a rescue from Kābul while Bābur and Qāsim were north of the Oxus [circa 916 AH.]. Māh-chūchūk quitted Kābul after much hesitation, due partly to reluctance to leave her husband and her infant of 18 months, [Nāhīd Begīm,] partly to dread less family honour might require her death (Erskine’s History, i, 348 and Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma).

1310

Erskine gives the fort the alternative name “Kaliūn”, locates it in the Bādghīs district east of Herī, and quotes from Abū’l-ghāzī in describing its strong position (History i, 282). Ḥ.S. Tīrah-tū.

1311

f. 133 and note. Abū’l-faẓl mentions that the inscription was to be seen in his time.

1312

This fief ranks in value next to the Kābul tūmān.

1313

Various gleanings suggest motives for Bābur’s assertion of supremacy at this particular time. He was the only Tīmūrid ruler and man of achievement; he filled Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s place of Tīmūrid headship; his actions through a long period show that he aimed at filling Tīmūr Beg’s. There were those who did not admit his suzerainty, – Tīmūrids who had rebelled, Mughūls who had helped them, and who would also have helped Sa‘īd Khān Chaghatāī, if he had not refused to be treacherous to a benefactor; there were also the Arghūns, Chīngīz-khānids of high pretensions. In old times the Mughūl Khāqāns were pādshāh (supreme); Pādshāh is recorded in history as the style of at least Sātūq-būghra Khān Pādshāh Ghāzī; no Tīmūrid had been lifted by his style above all Mīrzās. When however Tīmūrids had the upper hand, Bābur’s Tīmūrid grandfather Abū-sa‘īd asserted his de facto supremacy over Bābur’s Chaghatāī grandfather Yūnas (T. R. p. 83). For Bābur to re-assert that supremacy by assuming the Khāqān’s style was highly opportune at this moment. To be Bābur Supreme was to declare over-lordship above Chaghatāī and Mughūl, as well as over all Mīrzās. It was done when his sky had cleared; Mīrzā Khān’s rebellion was scotched; the Arghūns were defeated; he was the stronger for their lost possessions; his Aūzbeg foe had removed to a less ominous distance; and Kābul was once more his own.