The Bābur-nāma

Salīma Sult̤ān Begīm who was given in marriage by Humāyūn to Bairām Khān, later was married by Akbar, and was a woman of charm and literary accomplishments. Later historians, Abū’l-faẓl amongst their number, say that Salīma’s mother was a daughter of Bābur’s wife Sālḥa Sult̤ān Begīm, and vary that daughter’s name as Gul-rang-rukh-barg or – ‘iẕār (the last form being an equivalent of chihra, face). As there cannot have been a wife with her daughter growing up in Bābur’s household, who does not appear in some way in Gul-badan’s chronicle, and as Salīma’s descent from Bābur need not be questioned, the knot is most readily loosened by surmising that “Sālḥa” is the real name of Gul-badan’s “Dildār”. Instances of double names are frequent, e. g. Māhīm, Māh-chīchām, Qarā-gūz, Āq, (My Moon, My Moon sister, Black-eyed, Fair). “Heart-holding” (Dil-dār) sounds like a home-name of affection. It is the Ma‘āsir-ī-raḥīmī which gives Sālḥa as the name of Bābur’s wife, Pasha’s third daughter. Its author may be wrong, writing so late as he did (1025 AH. -1616 AD.), or may have been unaware that Sālḥa was (if she were) known as Dil-dār. It would not war against seeming facts to take Pasha’s third daughter to be Bābur’s wife Dil-dār, and Dil-dār’s daughter Gul-chihra to be Salīma’s mother. Gul-chihra was born in about 1516 AD., married to Tūkhta-būghā in 1530 AD., widowed in cir. 1533 AD., might have remarried with Nūru’d-dīn Chaqānīānī (Sayyid Amīr), and in 945 AH. might have borne him Salīma; she was married in 1547 AD. (954 AH.) to ‘Abbās Sult̤ān Aūzbeg.2741 Two matters, neither having much weight, make against taking Dil-dār to be a Mīrān-shāhī; the first being that the anonymous annotator who added to the archetype of Kehr’s Codex what is entered in Appendix L. —On Māhīm’s adoption of Hind-āl, styles her Dil-dār Āghācha; he, however, may have known no more than others knew of her descent; the second, that Māhīm forcibly took Dil-dār’s child Hind-āl to rear; she was the older wife and the mother of the heir, but could she have taken the upper hand over a Mīrān-shāhī? A circumstance complicating the question of Salīma’s maternal descent is, that historians searching the Bābur-nāma or its Persian translation the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī for information about the three daughters of Maḥmūd Mīrān-shāhī and Pasha Bahārlū Turkmān, would find an incomplete record, one in which the husbands of the first and second daughters are mentioned and nothing is said about the third who was Bābur’s wife and the grandmother of Salīma. Bābur himself appears to have left the record as it is, meaning to fill it in later; presumably he waited for the names of the elder two sisters to complete his details of the three. In the Ḥaidarabad Codex, which there is good ground for supposing a copy of his original manuscript, about three lines are left blank (f. 27) as if awaiting information; in most manuscripts, however, this indication of intention is destroyed by running the defective passage on to join the next sentence. Some chance remark of a less well-known writer, may clear up the obscurity and show that Sālḥa was Dil-dār.

Māhīm’s case seems one having a different cause for silence about her parentage. When she was married in Herāt, shortly after the death of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, Bābur had neither wife nor child. What Abū’l-faẓl tells about her is vague; her father’s name is not told; she is said to have belonged to a noble Khurāsān family, to have been related (nisbat-i-khwesh) to Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā and to have traced her descent to Shaikh Aḥmad of Jām. If her birth had been high, even though not royal, it is strange that it is not stated by Bābur when he records the birth of her son Humāyūn, incidentally by Gul-badan, or more precisely by Abū’l-faẓl. Her brothers belonged to Khost, and to judge from a considerable number of small records, seem to have been quiet, unwarlike Khwājas. Her marriage took place in a year of which a full record survives; it is one in the composed narrative, not in the diary. In the following year, this also being one included in the composed narrative, Bābur writes of his meeting with Ma‘ṣūma Mīrān-shāhī in Herāt, of their mutual attraction, and of their marriage. If the marriage with Humāyūn’s mother had been an equal alliance, it would agree with Bābur’s custom to mention its occurrence, and to give particulars about Māhīm’s descent.2742

i. Mr. William Erskine’s estimate of Bābur.

“Z̤ahīru’d-dīn Muḥammad Bābur was undoubtedly one of the most illustrious men of his age, and one of the most eminent and accomplished princes that ever adorned an Asiatic throne. He is represented as having been above the middle size, of great vigour of body, fond of all field and warlike sports, an excellent swordsman, and a skilful archer. As a proof of his bodily strength, it is mentioned, that he used to leap from one pinnacle to another of the pinnacled ramparts used in the East, in his double-soled boots; and that he even frequently took a man under each arm and went leaping along the rampart from one of the pointed pinnacles to another. Having been early trained to the conduct of business, and tutored in the school of adversity, the powers of his mind received full development. He ascended the throne at the age of twelve, and before he had attained his twentieth year, had shared every variety of fortune; he had not only been the ruler of subject provinces but had been in thraldom to his own ambitious nobles, and obliged to conceal every sentiment of his heart; he had been alternately hailed and obeyed as a conqueror and deliverer by rich and extensive kingdoms, and forced to lurk in the deserts and mountains of Farghāna as a houseless wanderer. Down to the last dregs of life, we perceive in him strong feelings of affection for his early friends and early enjoyments. * * * He had been taught betimes, by the voice of events that cannot lie, that he was a man dependent on the kindness and fidelity of other men; and, in his dangers and escapes with his followers, had learned that he was only one of an association. * * * The native benevolence and gaiety of his disposition seems ever to overflow on all around him; * * * of his companions in arms he speaks with the frank gaiety of a soldier. * * * Ambitious he was and fond of conquest and glory in all its shapes; the enterprise in which he was for a season engaged, seems to have absorbed his whole soul, and all his faculties were exerted to bring it to a fortunate issue. His elastic mind was not broken by discomfiture, and few who have achieved such glorious conquests, have suffered more numerous or more decisive defeats. His personal courage was conspicuous during his whole life. Upon the whole, if we review with impartiality the history of Asia, we find few princes entitled to rank higher than Bābur in genius and accomplishments. * * * In activity of mind, in the gay equanimity and unbroken spirit with which he bore the extremes of good and bad fortune, in the possession of the manly and social virtues, in his love of letters and his success in the cultivation of them, we shall probably find no other Asiatic prince who can justly be placed beside him.”

The End

APPENDICES

A. – THE SITE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD AKHSĪ

Some modern writers, amongst whom are Dr. Schuyler, General Nalivkine and Mr. Pumpelly, have inferred from the Bābur-nāma account of Akhsī, (in its translations?) that the landslip through which Bābur’s father died and the disappearance of old Akhsī were brought about by erosion. Seen by the light of modern information, this erosion theory does not seem to cover the whole ground and some other cause seems necessary in explanation of both events.

For convenience of reference, the Bābur-nāma passages required, are quoted here, with their translations.

Ḥai. MS. f. 4b. Saiḥūn daryā-sī qūrghānī astīdīn āqār. Qūrghānī baland jar austīdā wāqī’ būlūb tūr. Khandaqī-nīng aūrunīgha ‘umīq jārlār dūr. ‘Umar Shaikh M. kīm mūnī pāy-takht qīldī, bīr īkī martaba tāshrāq-dīn yana jarlār sāldī.

Of this the translations are as follows: —

(a) Pers. trans. (I.O. 217, f. 3b): Daryā-i Saiḥūn az pāyhā qila‘-i o mīrezad u qila‘-i o bar jar balandī wāqi‘ shuda ba jāy khandaq jarhā-i ‘umīq uftāda. ‘U. Sh. M. kah ānrā pāy-takht sākhta, yak du martaba az bīrūn ham bāz jarhā andākht.

(b) Erskine (p. 5, translating from the Persian): ‘The river Saiḥūn flows under the walls of the castle. The castle is situated on a high precipice, and the steep ravines around serve instead of a moat. When U. Sh. M. made it his capital he, in one or two instances, scarped the ravines outside the fort.’

(c) De Courteille (i, 8, translating from Ilminsky’s imprint, p. 6): ‘Le Seihoun coule au pied de la fortresse qui se dresse sur le sommet d’un ravin, dont les profondeurs lui tiennent lieu d’un fossé. ‘U. Sh. M. à l'époque où il en avait fait son capitale, avait augmenté à une ou deux réprises, les escarpements qui la ceignent naturellement.’

Concerning ‘Umar Shaikh’s death, the words needed are (f. 6b); —

Maẕkūr būlūb aīdī kīm Akhsī qūrghānī buland jar austīdā wāqi‘ būlūb tūr. ‘Imāratlār jar yāqāsīdā aīrdī… Mīrzā jardīn kabūtar u kabūtar-khāna bīla aūchūb shunqār būldī; – 'It has been mentioned that the walled-town of Akhsī is situated above ravine(s). The royal dwellings are along a ravine. The Mīrzā, having flown with his pigeons and their house from the ravine, became a falcon (i. e. died).’

A few particulars about Akhsī will shew that, in the translations just quoted, certain small changes of wording are dictated by what, amongst other writers, Kostenko and von Schwarz have written about the oases of Turkistān.

The name Akhsī, as used by Ibn Haukal, Yāqūt and Bābur, describes an oasis township, i. e. a walled-town with its adjacent cultivated lands. In Yāqūt’s time Akhsī had a second circumvallation, presumably less for defence than for the protection of crops against wild animals. The oasis was created by the Kāsān-water,2743 upon the riverain loess of the right and higher bank of the Saiḥūn (Sīr), on level ground west of the junction of the Nārīn and the Qarā-daryā, west too of spurs from the northern hills which now abut upon the river. Yāqūt locates it in the 12th century, at one farsākh (circa 4 m.) north of the river.2744 Depending as it did solely on the Kāsān-water, nothing dictated its location close to the Sīr, along which there is now, and there seems to have been in the 12th century, a strip of waste land. Bābur says of Akhsī what Kostenko says (i, 321) of modern Tāshkīnt, that it stood above ravines (jarlār). These were natural or artificial channels of the Kāsān-water.2745

To turn now to the translations; – Mr. Erskine imaged Akhsī as a castle, high on a precipice in process of erosion by the Sīr. But Bābur’s word, qūrghān means the walled-town; his word for a castle is ark, citadel; and his jar, a cleft, is not rendered by ‘precipice.’ Again; – it is no more necessary to understand that the Sīr flowed close to the walls than it is to understand, when one says the Thames flows past below Richmond, that it washes the houses on the hill.

The key to the difficulties in the Turkī passage is provided by a special use of the word jar for not only natural ravines but artificial water-cuts for irrigation. This use of it makes clear that what ‘Umar Shaikh did at Akhsī was not to make escarpments but to cut new water-channels. Presumably he joined those ‘further out’ on the deltaic fan, on the east and west of the town, so as to secure a continuous defensive cleft round the town2746 or it may be, in order to bring it more water.

Concerning the historic pigeon-house (f. 6b), it can be said safely that it did not fall into the Sīr; it fell from a jar, and in this part of its course, the river flows in a broad bed, with a low left bank. Moreover the Mīrzā’s residence was in the walled-town (f. 110b) and there his son stayed 9 years after the accident. The slip did not affect the safety of the residence therefore; it may have been local to the birds’ house. It will have been due to some ordinary circumstance since no cause for it is mentioned by Bābur, Ḥaidar or Abū’l-faẓl. If it had marked the crisis of the Sīr’s approach, Akhsī could hardly have been described, 25 years later, as a strong fort.

Something is known of Akhsī, in the 10th, the 12th, the 15th and the 19th centuries, which testifies to sæcular decadence. Ibn Haukal and Yāqūt give the township an extent of 3 farsākh (12 miles), which may mean from one side to an opposite one. Yāqūt’s description of it mentions four gates, each opening into well-watered lands extending a whole farsākh, in other words it had a ring of garden-suburb four miles wide.

Two meanings have been given to Bābur’s words indicating the status of the oasis in the 15th century. They are, maḥallātī qūrghān-dīn bīr shar‘ī yurāqrāq tūshūb tūr. They have been understood as saying that the suburbs were two miles from their urbs. This may be right but I hesitate to accept it without pointing out that the words may mean, ‘Its suburbs extend two miles farther than the walled-town.’ Whichever verbal reading is correct, reveals a decayed oasis.

In the 19th century, Nalivkine and Ujfalvy describe the place then bearing the name Akhsī, as a small village, a mere winter-station, at some distance from the river’s bank, that bank then protected from denudation by a sand-bank.

Three distinctly-marked stages of decadence in the oasis township are thus indicated by Yāqūt, Bābur and the two modern travellers.

It is necessary to say something further about the position of the suburbs in the 15th century. Bābur quotes as especially suitable to Akhsī, the proverbial questions, ‘Where is the village?'2747 (qy. Akhsī-kīnt.) ‘Where are the trees?’ and these might be asked by some-one in the suburbs unable to see Akhsī or vice versâ. But granting that there were no suburbs within two miles of the town, why had the whole inner circle, two miles of Yāqūt’s four, gone out of cultivation? Erosion would have affected only land between the river and the town.

Again; – if the Sīr only were working in the 15th century to destroy a town standing on the Kāsān-water, how is it that this stream does not yet reach the Sīr?

Various ingatherings of information create the impression that failure of Kāsān-water has been the dominant factor in the loss of the Akhsī township. Such failure might be due to the general desiccation of Central Asia and also to increase of cultivation in the Kāsān-valley itself. There may have been erosion, and social and military change may have had its part, but for the loss of the oasis lands and for, as a sequel, the decay of the town, desiccation seems a sufficient cause.

The Kāsān-water still supports an oasis on its riverain slope, the large Aūzbeg town of Tūpa-qūrghān (Town-of-the-hill), from the modern castle of which a superb view is had up the Kāsān-valley, now thickly studded with villages.2748

B. – THE BIRDS, QĪL QŪYIRŪGH AND BĀGHRĪ QARĀ

Describing a small bird (qūsh-qīna), abundant in the Qarshī district (f. 49b), Bābur names it the qīl-qūyirūgh, horse-tail, and says it resembles the bāghrī qarā.

Later on he writes (f. 280) that the bāghrī qarā of India is smaller and more slender than ‘those’ i. e. of Transoxiana (f. 49b, n. 1), the blackness of its breast less deep, and its cry less piercing.

We have had difficulty in identifying the birds but at length conclude that the bāghrī qarā of Transoxiana is Pterocles arenarius, Pallas’s black-bellied sand-grouse and that the Indian one is a smaller sand-grouse, perhaps a Syrrhaptes. As the qīl qūyirūgh resembles the other two, it may be a yet smaller Syrrhaptes.

Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, writing of sport Shaibāq Khān had in Qarshī (Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry, p. 192) mentions the ‘Little bird (murghak) of Qarshī,’ as on all sides making lament. The Sang-lākh2749 gives its Persian name as khar-pala, ass-hair, says it flies in large flocks and resembles the bāghrī qarā. Of the latter he writes as abundant in the open country and as making noise (bāghīr).

The Sang-lākh (f. 119) gives the earliest and most informing account we have found of the bāghrī qarā. Its says the bird is larger than a pigeon, marked with various colours, yellow especially, black-breasted and a dweller in the stony and waterless desert. These details are followed by a quotation from ‘Alī-sher Nawā’ī, in which he likens his own heart to that of the bird of the desert, presumably referring to the gloom of the bird’s plumage. Three synonyms are then given; Ar. qit̤ā, one due to its cry (Meninsky); Pers. sang-shikan, stone-eating, (Steingass, sang-khwāra, stone-eating); and Turkī bāghīr-tīlāq which refers, I think, to its cry.

Morier (Ḥājī Bābā) in his Second journey through Persia (Lond. 1818, p. 181), mentions that a bird he calls the black-breasted partridge, (i. e. Francolinus vulgaris) is known in Turkish as bokara kara and in Persian as siyāh-sīna, both names, (he says), meaning black-breast; that it has a horse-shoe of black feathers round the forepart of the trunk, more strongly marked in the female than in the male; that they fly in flocks of which he saw immense numbers near Tabrīz (p. 283), have a soft note, inhabit the plains, and, once settled, do not run. Cock and hen alike have a small spur, – a characteristic, it may be said, identifying rather with Francolinus vulgaris than with Pterocles arenarius. Against this identification, however, is Mr. Blandford’s statement that siyāh-sīna (Morier’s bokara kara) is Pterocles arenarius (Report of the Persian Boundary Commission, ii, 271).

In Afghānistān and Bikanir, the sand-grouse is called tūtūrak and boora kurra (Jerdon, ii, 498). Scully explains baghītāq as Pterocles arenarius.

Perhaps I may mention something making me doubt whether it is correct to translate bāghrī qarā by black-liver and gorge-noir or other names in which the same meaning is expressed. To translate thus, is to understand a Turkī noun and adjective in Persian construction, and to make exception to the rule, amply exemplified in lists of birds, that Turkī names of birds are commonly in Turkī construction, e. g. qarā bāsh (black-head), āq-bāsh (white-head), sārīgh-sūndūk (yellow-headed wagtail). Bāghīr may refer to the cry of the bird. We learn from Mr. Ogilvie Grant that the Mongol name for the sand-grouse njūpterjūn, is derived from its cry in flight, truck, truck, and its Arabic name qit̤ā is said by Meninsky to be derived from its cry kaetha, kaetha. Though the dissimilarity of the two cries is against taking the njūpterjūn and the qit̤ā to be of one class of sand-grouse, the significance of the derivation of the names remains, and shows that there are examples in support of thinking that when a sand-grouse is known as bāghrī qarā, it may be so known because of its cry (bāghir).

The word qarā finds suggestive interpretation in a B. N. phrase (f. 72b) Taṃbal-nīng qarā-sī, Taṃbal’s blackness, i. e. the dark mass of his moving men, seen at a distance. It is used also for an indefinite number, e. g. ‘family, servants, retainers, followers, qarā,’ and I think it may imply a massed flock.

Bābur’s words (f. 280) bāghrī-nīng qarā-sī ham kam dūr, [its belly (lit. liver) also is less black], do not necessarily contradict the view that the word bāghrī in the bird’s name means crying. The root bāgh has many and pliable derivatives; I suspect both Bābur (here) and Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ (l. c.) of ringing changes on words.

We are indebted for kind reply to our questions to Mr. Douglas Carruthers, Mr. Ogilvie Grant and to our friend, Mr. R. S. Whiteway.

C. – ON THE GOSHA-GĪR

I am indebted to my husband’s examination of two Persian MSS. on archery for an explanation of the word gosha-gīr, in its technical sense in archery. The works consulted are the Cyclopædia of Archery (Kulliyatu’r-rāmī I. O. 2771) and the Archer’s Guide (Hidāyatu’r-rāmī I. O. 2768).

It should be premised that in archery, the word gosha describes, in the arrow, the notch by which it grips and can be carried on the string, and, in the bow, both the tip (horn) and the notch near the tip in which the string catches. It is explained by Vullers as cornu et crena arcûs cui immititur nervus.

Two passages in the Cyclopædia of Archery (f. 9 and f. 36b) shew gosha as the bow-tip. One says that to bend the bow, two men must grasp the two gosha; the other reports a tradition that the Archangel Gabriel brought a bow having its two gosha (tips) made of ruby. The same book directs that the gosha be made of seasoned ivory, the Archer’s Guide prescribing seasoned mulberry wood.

The C. of A. (f. 125b) says that a bowman should never be without two things, his arrows and his gosha-gīr. The gosha-gīr may be called an item of the repairing kit; it is an implement (f. 53) for making good a warped bow-tip and for holding the string into a displaced notch. It is known also as the chaprās, brooch or buckle, and the kardāng; and is said to bear these names because it fastens in the string. Its shape is that of the upper part of the Ar. letter jīm, two converging lines of which the lower curves slightly outward. It serves to make good a warped bow, without the use of fire and it should be kept upon the bow-tip till this has reverted to its original state. Until the warp has been straightened by the gosha-gīr, the bow must be kept from the action of fire because it, (composite of sinew and glutinous substance,) is of the nature of wax.

The same implement can be used to straighten the middle of the bow, the kamān khāna. It is then called kar-dāng. It can be used there on condition that there are not two daur (curves) in the bow. If there are two the bow cannot be repaired without fire. The halāl daur is said to be characteristic of the Turkish bow. There are three daur. I am indebted to Mr. Inigo Simon for the suggestions that daur in this connection means warp and that the three twists (daur) may be those of one horn (gosha), of the whole bow warped in one curve, and of the two horns warped in opposite directions.

Of repair to the kamān-khāna it is said further that if no kardāng be available, its work can be done by means of a stick and string, and if the damage be slight only, the bow and the string can be tightly tied together till the bow comes straight. ‘And the cure is with God!'

Both manuscripts named contain much technical information. Some parts of this are included in my husband’s article, Oriental Crossbows (A. Q. R. 1911, p. 1). Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey’s interesting book on the Cross-bow allows insight into the fine handicraft of Turkish bow-making.

D. – ON THE RESCUE PASSAGE

I have omitted from my translation an account of Bābur’s rescue from expected death, although it is with the Ḥaidarābād Codex, because closer acquaintance with its details has led both my husband and myself to judge it spurious. We had welcomed it because, being with the true Bābur-nāma text, it accredited the same account found in the Kehr-Ilminsky text, and also because, however inefficiently, it did something towards filling the gap found elsewhere within 908 AH.

It is in the Ḥaidarābād MS. (f. 118b), in Kehr’s MS. (p. 385), in Ilminsky’s imprint (p. 144), in Les Mémoires de Bābour (i, 255) and with the St. P. University Codex, which is a copy of Kehr’s.

On the other hand, it is not with the Elphinstone Codex (f. 89b); that it was not with the archetype of that codex the scribe’s note shews (f. 90); it is with neither of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (Pers. translations) nor with Leyden and Erskine’s Memoirs (p. 122).2750