The Bābur-nāma

I made over to Qāsim Beg Muqīm’s retainers in Qalāt, under Qūj Arghūn and Tāju’d-dīn Maḥmūd, with their goods and effects. Qāsim Beg was a knowing person; he saw it unadvisable for us to stay long near Qandahār, so, by talking and talking, worrying and worrying, he got us to march off. As has been said, I had bestowed Qandahār on Nāṣir Mīrzā; he was given leave to go there; we started for Kābul.

There had been no chance of portioning out the spoils while we were near Qandahār; it was done at Qarā-bāgh where we delayed two or three days. To count the coins being difficult, they were apportioned by weighing them in scales. Begs of all ranks, retainers and household (tābīn) loaded up ass-load after ass-load of sacks full of white tankas, and took them away for their own subsistence and the pay of their soldiers.

We went back to Kābul with masses of goods and treasure, great honour and reputation.

(o. Bābur’s marriage with Ma‘ṣūma-sult̤ān.)

After this return to Kābul I concluded alliance (‘aqd qīldīm) with Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā’s daughter Ma‘ṣūma-sult̤ān Begīm whom I had asked in marriage at Khurāsān, and had had brought from there.

(p. Shaibāq Khān before Qandahār.)

A few days later a servant of Nāṣir Mīrzā brought the news that Shaibāq Khān had come and laid siege to Qandahār. That Muqīm had fled to Zamīn-dāwar has been said already; from there he went on and saw Shaibāq Khān. From Shāh Beg also one person after another had gone to Shaibāq Khān. At the instigation and petition of these two, the Khān came swiftly down on Qandahār by the mountain road,1298 thinking to find me there. This was the very thing that experienced person

Qāsim Beg had in his mind when he worried us into marching off from near Qandahār.

(Persian) What a mirror shews to the young man,

A baked brick shews to the old one!

Shaibāq Khān arriving, besieged Nāṣir Mīrzā in Qandahār.

(q. Alarm in Kābul.)

When this news came, the begs were summoned for counsel. The matters for discussion were these: – Strangers and ancient foes, such as are Shaibāq Khān and the Aūzbegs, are in possession of all the countries once held by Tīmūr Beg’s descendants; even where Turks and Chaghatāīs1299 survive in corners and border-lands, they have all joined the Aūzbeg, willingly or with aversion; one remains, I myself, in Kābul, the foe mightily strong, I very weak, with no means of making terms, no strength to oppose; that, in the presence of such power and potency, we had to think of some place for ourselves and, at this crisis and in the crack of time there was, to put a wider space between us and the strong foeman; that choice lay between Badakhshān and Hindūstān and that decision must now be made.

Qāsim Beg and Sherīm T̤aghāī were agreed for Badakhshān;

(Author’s note on Badakhshān.) Those holding their heads up in Badakhshān at this crisis were, of Badakhshīs, Mubārak Shāh and Zubair, Jahāngīr Turkmān and Muḥammad the armourer. They had driven Nāṣir Mīrzā out but had not joined the Aūzbeg.

I and several household-begs preferred going towards Hindūstān and were for making a start to Lamghān.1300

(r. Movements of some Mīrzās.)

After taking Qandahār, I had bestowed Qalāt and the Turnūk (Tarnak) country on ‘Abdu’r-razzāq Mīrzā and had left him in Qalāt, but with the Aūzbeg besieging Qandahār, he could not stay in Qalāt, so left it and came to Kābul. He arriving just as we were marching out, was there left in charge.1301

There being in Badakhshān no ruler or ruler’s son, Mīrzā Khān inclined to go in that direction, both because of his relationship to Shāh Begīm1302 and with her approval. He was allowed to go and the honoured Begīm herself started off with him. My honoured maternal-aunt Mihr-nigār Khānīm also wished to go to Badakhshān, notwithstanding that it was more seemly for her to be with me, a blood-relation; but whatever objection was made, she was not to be dissuaded; she also betook1303 herself to Badakhshān.

(s. Bābur’s second start for Hindūstān.)

Under our plan of going to Hindūstān, we marched out of Kābul in the month of the first Jumāda (September 1507 AD.), taking the road through Little Kābul and going down by Sūrkh-rabāt̤ to Qūrūq-sāī.

The Afghāns belonging between Kābul and Lamghān (Ningnahār) are thieves and abettors of thieves even in quiet times; for just such a happening as this they had prayed in vain. Said they, “He has abandoned Kābul”, and multiplied their misdeeds by ten, changing their very merits for faults. To such lengths did things go that on the morning we marched from Jagdālīk, the Afghāns located between it and Lamghān, such as the Khiẓr-khail, Shimū-khail, Khirilchī and Khūgīanī, thought of blocking the pass, arrayed on the mountain to the north, and advancing with sound of tambour and flourish of sword, began to shew themselves off. On our mounting I ordered our men to move along the mountain-side, each man from where he had dismounted;1304 off they set at the gallop up every ridge and every valley of the saddle.1305 The Afghāns stood awhile, but could not let even one arrow fly,1306 and betook themselves to flight. While I was on the mountain during the pursuit, I shot one in the hand as he was running back below me. That arrow-stricken man and a few others were brought in; some were put to death by impalement, as an example.

We dismounted over against the Adīnapūr-fort in the Nīngnahār tūmān.

(t. A raid for winter stores.)

Up till then we had taken no thought where to camp, where to go, where to stay; we had just marched up and down, camping in fresh places, while waiting for news.1307 It was late in the autumn; most lowlanders had carried in their rice. People knowing the local land and water represented that the Mīl Kāfirs up the water of the ‘Alīshang tūmān grow great quantities of rice, so that we might be able to collect winter supplies from them for the army. Accordingly we rode out of the Nīngnahār dale (julga), crossed (the Bārān-water) at Sāīkal, and went swiftly as far as the Pūr-amīn (easeful) valley. There the soldiers took a mass of rice. The rice-fields were all at the bottom of the hills. The people fled but some Kāfirs went to their death. A few of our braves had been sent to a look-out (sar-kūb)1308 on a naze of the Pūr-anīm valley; when they were returning to us, the Kāfirs rushed from the hill above, shooting at them. They overtook Qāsim Beg’s son-in-law Pūrān, chopped at him with an axe, and were just taking him when some of the braves went back, brought strength to bear, drove them off and got Pūrān away. After one night spent in the Kāfirs’ rice-fields, we returned to camp with a mass of provisions collected.

(u. Marriage of Muqīm’s daughter.)

While we were near Mandrāwar in those days, an alliance was concluded between Muqīm’s daughter Māh-chūchūk, now married to Shāh Ḥasan Arghūn, and Qāsim Kūkūldāsh.1309

(v. Abandonment of the Hindūstān project.)

As it was not found desirable to go on into Hindūstān, I sent Mullā Bābā of Pashāghar back to Kābul with a few braves. Meantime I marched from near Mandrāwar to Atar and Shīwa and lay there for a few days. From Atar I visited Kūnār and Nūr-gal; from Kūnār I went back to camp on a raft; it was the first time I had sat on one; it pleased me much, and the raft came into common use thereafter.

(w. Shaibāq Khān retires from Qandahār.)

In those same days Mullā Bābā of Farkat came from Nāṣir Mīrzā with news in detail that Shaibāq Khān, after taking the outer-fort of Qandahār, had not been able to take the citadel but had retired; also that the Mīrzā, on various accounts, had left Qandahār and gone to Ghaznī.

Shaibāq Khān’s arrival before Qandahār, within a few days of our own departure, had taken the garrison by surprise, and they had not been able to make fast the outer-fort. He ran mines several times round about the citadel and made several assaults. The place was about to be lost. At that anxious time Khwāja Muḥ. Amīn, Khwāja Dost Khāwand, Muḥ. ‘Alī, a foot-soldier, and Shāmī (Syrian?) let themselves down from the walls and got away. Just as those in the citadel were about to surrender in despair, Shaibāq Khān interposed words of peace and uprose from before the place. Why he rose was this: – It appears that before he went there, he had sent his ḥaram to Nīrah-tū,1310 and that in Nīrah-tū some-one lifted up his head and got command in the fort; the Khān therefore made a sort of peace and retired from Qandahār.

(x. Bābur returns to Kābul.)

Mid-winter though it was we went back to Kābul by the Bād-i-pīch road. I ordered the date of that transit and that crossing of the pass to be cut on a stone above Bād-i-pīch;1311 Ḥāfiẓ Mīrak wrote the inscription, Ustād Shāh Muḥammad did the cutting, not well though, through haste.

I bestowed Ghaznī on Nāṣir Mīrzā and gave ‘Abdu’r-razzāq Mīrzā the Nīngnahār tūmān with Mandrāwar, Nūr-valley, Kūnār and Nūr-gal.1312

(y. Bābur styles himself Pādshāh.)

Up to that date people had styled Tīmūr Beg’s descendants Mīrzā, even when they were ruling; now I ordered that people should style me Pādshāh.1313

(z. Birth of Bābur’s first son.)

At the end of this year, on Tuesday the 4th day of the month of Ẕū’l-qa‘da (March 6th 1506 AD.), the Sun being in Pisces (Ḥūt), Humāyūn was born in the citadel of Kābul. The date of his birth was found by the poet Maulānā Masnadī in the words Sult̤ān Humāyūn Khān,1314 and a minor poet of Kābul found it in Shāh-i-fīrūs-qadr (Shāh of victorious might). A few days later he received the name Humāyūn; when he was five or six days old, I went out to the Chār-bāgh where was had the feast of his nativity. All the begs, small and great, brought gifts; such a mass of white tankas was heaped up as had never been seen before. It was a first-rate feast!

914 AH. – MAY 2nd 1508 to APRIL 21st 1509 AD.1315

This spring a body of Mahmand Afghāns was over-run near Muqur.1316

(a. A Mughūl rebellion.)

A few days after our return from that raid, Qūj Beg, Faqīr-i-‘alī, Karīm-dād and Bābā chuhra were thinking about deserting, but their design becoming known, people were sent who took them below Astarghach. As good-for-nothing words of theirs had been reported to me, even during Jahāngīr M.’s life-time,1317 I ordered that they should be put to death at the top of the bāzār. They had been taken to the place; the ropes had been fixed; and they were about to be hanged when Qāsim Beg sent Khalīfa to me with an urgent entreaty that I would pardon their offences. To please him I gave them their lives, but I ordered them kept in custody.

What there was of Khusrau Shāh’s retainers from Ḥiṣār and Qūndūz, together with the head-men of the Mughūls, Chilma, ‘Alī Sayyid,1318 Sakma (?), Sher-qulī and Aīkū-sālam (?), and also Khusrau Shāh’s favourite Chaghatāī retainers under Sl. ‘Alī chuhra and Khudabakhsh, with also 2 or 3000 serviceable Turkmān braves led by Sīūndūk and Shāh Naz̤ar,1319 the whole of these, after consultation, took up a bad position towards me. They were all seated in front of Khwāja Riwāj, from the Sūng-qūrghān meadow to the Chālāk; ‘Abdu’r-razzāq Mīrzā, come in from Nīng-nahār, being in Dih-i-afghān.1320

Earlier on Muḥibb-i-‘alī the armourer had told Khalīfa and Mullā Bābā once or twice of their assemblies, and both had given me a hint, but the thing seeming incredible, it had had no attention. One night, towards the Bed-time Prayer, when I was sitting in the Audience-hall of the Chār-bāgh, Mūsa Khwāja, coming swiftly up with another man, said in my ear, “The Mughūls are really rebelling! We do not know for certain whether they have got ‘Abdu’r-razzāq M. to join them. They have not settled to rise to-night.” I feigned disregard and a little later went towards the ḥarams which at the time were in the Yūrūnchqa-garden1321 and the Bāgh-i-khilwat, but after page, servitor and messenger (yasāwal) had turned back on getting near them, I went with the chief-slave towards the town, and on along the ditch. I had gone as far as the Iron-gate when Khwāja Muḥ. ‘Alī1322 met me, he coming by the bāzār road from the opposite direction. He joined me … of the porch of the Hot-bath (ḥammām)…1323

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ON 914 to 925 AH. – 1508 to 1519 AD

From several references made in the Bābur-nāma and from a passage in Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma (f. 15), it is inferrible that Bābur was composing the annals of 914 AH. not long before his last illness and death.1324

Before the diary of 925 AH. (1519 AD.) takes up the broken thread of his autobiography, there is a lacuna of narrative extending over nearly eleven years. The break was not intended, several references in the Bābur-nāma shewing Bābur’s purpose to describe events of the unchronicled years.1325 Mr. Erskine, in the Leyden and Erskine Memoirs, carried Bābur’s biography through the major lacunæ, but without firsthand help from the best sources, the Habību’s-siyar and Tārīkh-i-rashīdī. He had not the help of the first even in his History of India. M. de Courteille working as a translator only, made no attempt to fill the gaps.

Bābur’s biography has yet to be completed; much time is demanded by the task, not only in order to exhaust known sources and seek others further afield, but to weigh and balance the contradictory statements of writers deep-sundered in sympathy and outlook. To strike such a balance is essential when dealing with the events of 914 to 920 AH. because in those years Bābur had part in an embittered conflict between Sunni and Shī‘a. What I offer below, as a stop-gap, is a mere summary of events, mainly based on material not used by Mr. Erskine, with a few comments prompted by acquaintance with Bāburiana.

USEFUL SOURCES

Compared with what Bābur could have told of this most interesting period of his life, the yield of the sources is scant, a natural sequel from the fact that no one of them had his biography for its main theme, still less had his own action in crises of enforced ambiguity.

Of all known sources the best are Khwānd-amīr’s Ḥabību’s-siyar and Ḥaidar Mīrzā Dūghlāt’s Tārīkh-i-rashīdī. The first was finished nominally in 930 AH. (1524-5 AD.), seven years therefore before Bābur’s death, but it received much addition of matter concerning Bābur after its author went to Hindūstān in 934 AH. (f. 339). Its fourth part, a life of Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī is especially valuable for the years of this lacuna. Ḥaidar’s book was finished under Humāyūn in 953 AH. (1547 AD.), when its author had reigned five years in Kashmīr. It is the most valuable of all the sources for those interested in Bābur himself, both because of Ḥaidar’s excellence as a biographer, and through his close acquaintance with Bābur’s family. From his eleventh to his thirteenth year he lived under Bābur’s protection, followed this by 19 years service under Sa‘īd Khān, the cousin of both, in Kāshghar, and after that Khān’s death, went to Bābur’s sons Kāmrān and Humāyūn in Hindūstān.

A work issuing from a Sunnī Aūzbeg centre, Faẓl bin Ruzbahān Isfahānī’s Sūlūku’l-mulūk, has a Preface of special value, as shewing one view of what it writes of as the spread of heresy in Māwarā’u’n-nahr through Bābur’s invasions. The book itself is a Treatise on Musalmān Law, and was prepared by order of ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Khān Aūzbeg for his help in fulfilling a vow he had made, before attacking Bābur in 918 AH., at the shrine of Khwāja Aḥmad Yasawī [in Ḥaẓrat Turkistān], that, if he were victorious, he would conform exactly with the divine Law and uphold it in Māwarā’u’n-nahr (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. ii, 448).

The Tārīkh-i Ḥājī Muḥammad ‘Ārif Qandahārī appears, from the frequent use Firishta made of it, to be a useful source, both because its author was a native of Qandahār, a place much occupying Bābur’s activities, and because he was a servant of Bairām Khān-i-khānān, whose assassination under Akbar he witnessed.1326 Unfortunately, though his life of Akbar survives no copy is now known of the section of his General History which deals with Bābur’s.

An early source is Yahya Kazwīnī’s Lubbu’t-tawārīkh, written in 948 AH. (1541 AD.), but brief only in the Bābur period. It issued from a Shī‘a source, being commanded by Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī’s son Bahrām.

Another work issuing also from a Ṣafawī centre is Mīr Sikandar’s Tārīkh-i-‘ālam-arāī, a history of Shāh ‘Abbas I, with an introduction treating of his predecessors which was completed in 1025 AH. (1616 AD.). Its interest lies in its outlook on Bābur’s dealings with Shāh Ismā‘īl.

A later source, brief only, is Firishta’s Tārīkh-i-firishta, finished under Jahāngīr in the first quarter of the 17th century.

Mr. Erskine makes frequent reference to Kh(w)āfī Khān’s Tārīkh, a secondary authority however, written under Aurangzīb, mainly based on Firishta’s work, and merely summarizing Bābur’s period. References to detached incidents of the period are found in Shaikh ‘Abdu’l-qādir’s Tārīkh-i-badāyūnī and Mīr Ma‘ṣūm’s Tārīkh-i-sind.

EVENTS OF THE UNCHRONICLED YEARS

914 AH. – MAY 2nd 1508 to APRIL 21st 1509 AD

The mutiny, of which an account begins in the text, was crushed by the victory of 500 loyalists over 3,000 rebels, one factor of success being Bābur’s defeat in single combat of five champions of his adversaries.1327 The disturbance was not of long duration; Kābul was tranquil in Sha‘bān (November) when Sl. Sa‘īd Khān Chaghatāī, then 21, arrived there seeking his cousin’s protection, after defeat by his brother Manṣūr at Almātū, escape from death, commanded by Shaibānī, in Farghāna, a winter journey through Qarā-tīgīn to Mīrzā Khān in Qilā'-i-z̤afar, refusal of an offer to put him in that feeble Mīrzā’s place, and so on to Kābul, where he came a destitute fugitive and enjoyed a freedom from care never known by him before (f. 200b; T.R. p. 226). The year was fatal to his family and to Ḥaidar’s; in it Shaibānī murdered Sl. Maḥmūd Khān and his six sons, Muḥammad Ḥusain Mīrzā and other Dūghlāt sult̤āns.

915 AH. – APRIL 21st 1509 to APRIL 11th 1510 AD

In this year hostilities began between Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī and Muḥ. Shaibānī Khān Aūzbeg, news of which must have excited keen interest in Kābul.

In it occurred also what was in itself a minor matter of a child’s safety, but became of historical importance, namely, the beginning of personal acquaintance between Bābur and his sympathetic biographer Ḥaidar Mīrzā Dūghlāt. Ḥaidar, like Sa‘īd, came a fugitive to the protection of a kinsman; he was then eleven, had been saved by servants from the death commanded by Shaibānī, conveyed to Mīrzā Khān in Badakhshān, thence sent for by Bābur to the greater security of Kābul (f. 11; Index s. n.; T.R. p. 227).

916 AH. – APRIL 11th 1510 to MARCH 31st 1510 AD

a. News of the battle of Merv.

Over half of this year passed quietly in Kābul; Ramẓān (December) brought from Mīrzā Khān (Wāis) the stirring news that Ismā‘īl had defeated Shaibānī near Merv.1328 “It is not known,” wrote the Mīrzā, “whether Shāhī Beg Khān has been killed or not. All the Aūzbegs have crossed the Amū. Amīr Aūrūs, who was in Qūndūz, has fled. About 20,000 Mughūls, who left the Aūzbeg at Merv, have come to Qūndūz. I have come there.” He then invited Bābur to join him and with him to try for the recovery of their ancestral territories (T.R. p. 237).

b. Bābur’s campaign in Transoxiana begun.

The Mīrzā’s letter was brought over passes blocked by snow; Bābur, with all possible speed, took the one winter-route through Āb-dara, kept the Ramẓān Feast in Bāmīān, and reached Qūndūz in Shawwāl (Jan. 1511 AD.). Ḥaidar’s detail about the Feast seems likely to have been recorded because he had read Bābur’s own remark, made in Ramẓān 933 AH. (June 1527) that up to that date, when he kept it in Sīkrī, he had not since his eleventh year kept it twice in the same place (f. 330).

c. Mughūl affairs.

Outside Qūndūz lay the Mughūls mentioned by Mīrzā Khān as come from Merv and so mentioned, presumably, as a possible reinforcement. They had been servants of Bābur’s uncles Maḥmūd and Aḥmad, and when Shaibānī defeated those Khāns at Akhsī in 908 AH., had been compelled by him to migrate into Khurāsān to places remote from Mughūlistān. Many of them had served in Kāshghar; none had served a Tīmūrid Mīrzā. Set free by Shaibānī’s death, they had come east, a Khān-less 20,000 of armed and fully equipped men and they were there, as Ḥaidar says, in their strength while of Chaghatāīs there were not more than 5,000. They now, and with them the Mughūls from Kābul, used the opportunity offering for return to a more congenial location and leadership, by the presence in Qūndūz of a legitimate Khāqān and the clearance in Andijān, a threshold of Mughūlistān, of its Aūzbeg governors (f. 200b). The chiefs of both bodies of Mughūls, Sherīm Taghāī at the head of one, Ayūb Begchīk of the other, proffered the Mughūl Khānship to Sa‘īd with offer to set Bābur aside, perhaps to kill him. It is improbable that in making their offer they contemplated locating themselves in the confined country of Kābul; what they seem to have wished was what Bābur gave, Sa‘īd for their Khāqān and permission to go north with him.

Sa‘īd, in words worth reading, rejected their offer to injure Bābur, doing so on the grounds of right and gratitude, but, the two men agreeing that it was now expedient for them to part, asked to be sent to act for Bābur where their friendship could be maintained for their common welfare. The matter was settled by Bābur’s sending him into Andijān in response to an urgent petition for help there just arrived from Ḥaidar’s uncle. He “was made Khān” and started forth in the following year, on Ṣafar 14th 917 AH. (May 13th 1511 AD.); with him went most of the Mughūls but not all, since even of those from Merv, Ayūb Begchīk and others are found mentioned on several later occasions as being with Bābur.

Bābur’s phrase “I made him Khān” (f. 200b) recalls his earlier mention of what seems to be the same appointment (f. 10b), made by Abū-sa‘īd of Yūnas as Khān of the Mughūls; in each case the meaning seems to be that the Tīmūrid Mīrzā made the Chaghatāī Khān Khāqān of the Mughūls.

d. First attempt on Ḥiṣār.

After spending a short time in Qūndūz, Bābur moved for Ḥiṣār in which were the Aūzbeg sult̤āns Mahdī and Ḥamza. They came out into Wakhsh to meet him but, owing to an imbroglio, there was no encounter and each side retired (T.R. p. 238).

e. Intercourse between Bābur and Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī.

While Bābur was now in Qūndūz his sister Khān-zāda arrived there, safe-returned under escort of the Shāh’s troops, after the death in the battle of Merv of her successive husbands Shaibānī and Sayyid Hādī, and with her came an envoy from Ismā‘īl proffering friendship, civilities calculated to arouse a hope of Persian help in Bābur. To acknowledge his courtesies, Bābur sent Mīrzā Khān with thanks and gifts; Ḥaidar says that the Mīrzā also conveyed protestations of good faith and a request for military assistance. He was well received and his request for help was granted; that it was granted under hard conditions then stated later occurrences shew.

917 AH. – MARCH 31st 1511 to MARCH 19th 1512 AD

a. Second attempt on Ḥiṣār.

In this year Bābur moved again on Ḥiṣār. He took post, where once his forbear Tīmūr had wrought out success against great odds, at the Pul-i-sangīn (Stone-bridge) on the Sūrkh-āb, and lay there a month awaiting reinforcement. The Aūzbeg sult̤āns faced him on the other side of the river, they too, presumably, awaiting reinforcement. They moved when they felt themselves strong enough to attack, whether by addition to their own numbers, whether by learning that Bābur had not largely increased his own. Concerning the second alternative it is open to surmise that he hoped for larger reinforcement than he obtained; he appears to have left Qūndūz before the return of Mīrzā Khān from his embassy to Ismā‘īl, to have expected Persian reinforcement with the Mīrzā, and at Pul-i-sangīn, where the Mīrzā joined him in time to fight, to have been strengthened by the Mīrzā’s own following, and few, if any, foreign auxiliaries. These surmises are supported by what Khwānd-amīr relates of the conditions [specified later] on which the Shāh’s main contingent was despatched and by his shewing that it did not start until after the Shāh had had news of the battle at Pul-i-sangīn.