The Bābur-nāma

580

Amongst those thus leaving seem to have been Qaṃbar-‘alī (f. 99b).

581

Cf. f. 107 foot.

582

The Sh. N. speaks of the cold in that winter (Vambéry, p. 160). It was unusual for the Sīr to freeze in this part of its course (Sh. N. p. 172) where it is extremely rapid (Kostenko, i, 213).

583

Cf. f. 4b.

584

Point to point, some 50 miles.

585

Āhangarān-julgasī, a name narrowed on maps to Angren (valley).

586

Faut shūd Nuyān. The numerical value of these words is 907. Bābur when writing, looks back 26 years to the death of this friend.

587

Āb-burdan village is on the Zar-afshān; the pass is 11,200 ft. above the sea. Bābur’s boundaries still hold good and the spring still flows. See Ujfalvy l. c. i. 14; Kostenko, i, 119 and 193; Rickmers, JRGS 1907, p. 358.

588

From the Bū-stān (Graf’s ed. Vienna 1858, p. 561). The last couplet is also in the Gulistān (Platts’ ed. p. 72). The Bombay lith. ed. of the Bū-stān explains (p. 39) that the “We” of the third couplet means Jamshīd and his predecessors who have rested by his fountain.

589

nīma. The First W. – i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 81 l. 8) writes tawārīkh, annals.

590

This may be the Khwāja Hijrī of the A.N. (index s. n.); and Badāyūnī’s Ḥasan Hijrī, Bib. Ind. iii, 385; and Ethé’s Pers. Cat. No. 793; and Bod. Cat. No. 189.

591

The Ḥai. MS. points in the last line as though punning on Khān and Jān, but appears to be wrong.

592

For an account of the waste of crops, the Sh. N. should be seen (p. 162 and 180).

593

I think this refers to last year’s move (f. 94 foot).

594

In other words, the T. preposition, meaning E. in, at, etc. may be written with t or d, as ta(tā) or as da(dā). Also the one meaning E. towards, may be gha, qa, or ka (with long or short vowel).

595

dīm, a word found difficult. It may be a derivative of root de, tell, and a noun with the meaning of English tale (number). The First W. – i-B. renders it by san, and by san, Abū’l-ghāzī expresses what Bābur’s dīm expresses, the numbering of troops. It occurs thrice in the B.N. (here, on f. 183b and on f. 264b). In the Elphinstone Codex it has been written-over into Ivīm, once resembles vīm more than dīm and once is omitted. The L. and E. Memoirs (p. 303) inserts what seems a gloss, saying that a whip or bow is used in the count, presumably held by the teller to ‘keep his place’ in the march past. The Siyāsat-nāma (Schefer, trs. p. 22) names the whip as used in numbering an army.

596

The acclamation of the standards is depicted in B.M. W. – i-B. Or. 3714 f. 128b. One cloth is shewn tied to the off fore-leg of a live cow, above the knee, Bābur’s word being aūrtā aīlīk (middle-hand).

597

The libation was of fermented mares'-milk.

598

lit. their one way.

599

Cf. T.R. p. 308.

600

Elph. MS. f. 74; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 83 and 217 f. 66; Mems. p. 104.

601

It may be noted that Bābur calls his mother’s brothers, not t̤aghāī but dādā father. I have not met with an instance of his saying ‘My t̤aghāī’ as he says ‘My dādā.’ Cf. index s. n. taghāī.

602

kūrūnūsh qīlīb, reflective from kūrmak, to see.

603

A rider’s metaphor.

604

As touching the misnomer, ‘Mughūl dynasty’ for the Tīmūrid rulers in Hindūstān, it may be noted that here, as Bābur is speaking to a Chaghatāī Mughūl, his ‘Turk’ is left to apply to himself.

605

Gulistān, cap. viii, Maxim 12 (Platts’ ed. p. 147).

606

This backward count is to 890 AH. when Aḥmad fled from cultivated lands (T.R. p. 113).

607

It becomes clear that Aḥmad had already been asked to come to Tāshkīnt.

608

Cf. f. 96b for his first departure without help.

609

Yagha (Yaghma) is not on the Fr. map of 1904, but suitably located is Turbat (Tomb) to which roads converge.

610

Elph. MS. tūshkūcha; Ḥai. MS. yūkūnchā. The importance Aḥmad attached to ceremony can be inferred by the details given (f. 103) of his meeting with Maḥmūd.

611

kūrūshkāīlār. Cf. Redhouse who gives no support for reading the verb kūrmak as meaning to embrace.

612

būrk, a tall felt cap (Redhouse). In the adjective applied to the cap there are several variants. The Ḥai. MS. writes muftūl, solid or twisted. The Elph. MS. has muftūn-lūq which has been understood by Mr. Erskine to mean, gold-embroidered.

613

The wording suggests that the decoration is in chain-stitch, pricked up and down through the stuff.

614

tāsh chantāī. These words have been taken to mean whet-stone (bilgū-tāsh). I have found no authority for reading tāsh as whet-stone. Moreover to allow ‘bag of the stone’ to be read would require tāsh (nīng) chantāī-sī in the text.

615

lit. bag-like things. Some will have held spare bow-strings and archers’ rings, and other articles of ‘repairing kit.’ With the gifts, it seems probable that the gosha-gīr (f. 107) was given.

616

Vullers, clava sex foliis.

617

Zenker, casse-tête. Kīstin would seem to be formed from the root, kīs, cutting, but M. de C. describes it as a ball attached by a strap or chain to a handle. Sanglākh, a sort of mace (gurz).

618

The Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā states that The Khāns left Tāshkīnt on Muḥarram 15th (July 21st. 1502), in order to restore Bābur and expel Taṃbal (Erskine).

619

lit. saw the count (dīm). Cf. f. 100 and note concerning the count. Using a Persian substitute, the Kehr-Ilminsky text writes san (kūrdīlār).

620

Elph. MS. aṃbārchī, steward, for Itārchī, a tribal-name. The ‘Mīrzā’ and the rank of the army-begs are against supposing a steward in command. Here and just above, the texts write Mīrzā-i-Itārchī and Mīrzā-i-Dūghlāt, thus suggesting that in names not ending with a vowel, the iẓāfat is required for exact transliteration, e. g. Muḥammad-i-dūghlāt.

621

Alāī-līq aūrchīnī. I understand the march to have been along the northern slope of the Little Alāī, south of Aūsh.

622

As of Ālmālīgh and Ālmātū (fol. 2b) Bābur reports a tradition with caution. The name Aūz-kīnt may be read to mean ‘Own village,’ independent, as Aūz-beg, Own-beg.

623

He would be one of the hereditary Khwājas of Andijān (f. 16).

624

For several battle-cries see Th. Radloff’s Réceuils etc. p. 322.

625

qāshqa ātlīq kīshī. For a parallel phrase see f. 92b.

626

Bābur does not explain how the imbroglio was cleared up; there must have been a dramatic moment when this happened.

627

Darwāna (a trap-door in a roof) has the variant dur-dāna, a single pearl; tūqqāī perhaps implies relationship; lūlū is a pearl, a wild cow etc.

628

Ḥai. MS. sāīrt kīshī. Muḥ. ‘Alī is likely to be the librarian (cf. index s. n.).

629

Elph. MS. ramāqgha u tūr-gā; Ḥai. MS. tārtātgha u tūr-gā. Ilminsky gives no help, varying much here from the true text. The archetype of both MSS. must have been difficult to read.

630

The Ḥai. MS.’s pointing allows the sobriquet to mean ‘Butterfly.’ His family lent itself to nick-names; in it three brothers were known respectively as Fat or Lubberly, Fool and, perhaps, Butterfly.

631

bīrk ārīgh, doubly strong by its trench and its current.

632

I understand that time failed to set the standard in its usual rest. E. and de C. have understood that the yak-tail (qūtās tūghī f. 100) was apart from the staff and that time failed to adjust the two parts. The tūgh however is the whole standard; moreover if the tail were ever taken off at night from the staff, it would hardly be so treated in a mere bivouac.

633

aīshīklīk tūrlūq, as on f. 113. I understand this to mean that the two men were as far from their followers as sentries at a Gate are posted outside the Gate.

634

So too ‘Piero of Cosimo’ and ‘Lorenzo of Piero of the Medici.’ Cf. the names of five men on f. 114.

635

shashtīm. The shasht (thumb) in archery is the thumb-shield used on the left hand, as the zih-gīr (string-grip), the archer’s ring, is on the right-hand thumb.

It is useful to remember, when reading accounts of shooting with the Turkī (Turkish) bow, that the arrows (aūq) had notches so gripping the string that they kept in place until released with the string.

636

sar-i-sabz gosha gīr. The gosha-gīr is an implement for remedying the warp of a bow-tip and string-notch. For further particulars see Appendix C.

The term sar-i-sabz, lit. green-head, occurs in the sense of ‘quite young’ or ‘new,’ in the proverb, ‘The red tongue loses the green head,’ quoted in the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī account of Bābur’s death. Applied here, it points to the gosha-gīr as part of the recent gift made by Aḥmad to Bābur.

637

Taṃbal aīkāndūr. By this tense I understand that Bābur was not at first sure of the identity of the pseudo-sentries, partly because of their distance, partly, it may be presumed, because of concealment of identity by armour.

638

dūwulgha būrkī; i. e. the soft cap worn under the iron helm.

639

Nūyān’s sword dealt the blow (f. 97b). Gul-badan also tells the story (f. 77) à propos of a similar incident in Humāyūn’s career. Bābur repeats the story on f. 234.

640

yāldāghlāmāī dūr aīdīm. The Second W. – i-B. has taken this as from yāltūrmāq, to cause to glisten, and adds the gloss that the sword was rusty (I.O. 217 f. 70b).

641

The text here seems to say that the three men were on foot, but this is negatived by the context.

642

Amongst the various uses of the verb tūshmak, to descend in any way, the B.N. does not allow of ‘falling (death) in battle.’ When I made the index of the Ḥai. MS. facsimile, this was not known to me; I therefore erroneously entered the men enumerated here as killed at this time.

643

Elph. MS. yakhshī. Zenker explains bakhshī (pay-master) as meaning also a Court-physician.

644

The Ḥai. Elph. and Kehr’s MS. all have pūchqāq tāqmāq or it may be pūḥqāq tāqmāq. T. būkhāq means bandage, pūchāq, rind of fruit, but the word clear in the three Turkī MSS. means, skin of a fox’s leg.

645

The daryā here mentioned seems to be the Kāsān-water; the route taken from Bīshkhārān to Pāp is shewn on the Fr. map to lead past modern Tūpa-qūrghān. Pāp is not marked, but was, I think, at the cross-roads east of Touss (Karnān).

646

Presumably Jahāngīr’s.

647

Here his father was killed (f. 6b). Cf. App. A.

648

‘Alī-dost’s son (f. 79b).

649

The sobriquet Khīz may mean Leaper, or Impetuous.

650

kūīlāk, syn. kūnglāk, a shirt not opening at the breast. It will have been a short garment since the under-vest was visible.

651

i. e. when Bābur was writing in Hindūstān. Exactly at what date he made this entry is not sure. ‘Alī was in Koel in 933 AH. (f. 315) and then taken prisoner, but Bābur does not say he was killed, – as he well might say of a marked man, and, as the captor was himself taken shortly after, ‘Alī may have been released, and may have been in Koel again. So that the statement ‘now in Koel’ may refer to a time later than his capture. The interest of the point is in its relation to the date of composition of the Bābur-nāma.

No record of ‘Alī’s bravery in Aūsh has been preserved. The reference here made to it may indicate something attempted in 908 AH. after Bābur’s adventure in Karnān (f. 118b) or in 909 AH. from Sūkh. Cf. Translator’s note f. 118b.

652

aūpchīnlīk. Vambéry, gepanzert; Shaw, four horse-shoes and their nails; Steingass, aūpcha-khāna, a guard-house.

653

Sang is a ferry-station (Kostenko, i, 213). Pāp may well have been regretted (f. 109b and f. 112b)! The well-marked features of the French map of 1904 allows Bābur’s flight to be followed.

654

In the Turkī text this saying is in Persian; in the Kehr-Ilminsky, in Turkī, as though it had gone over with its Persian context of the W. – i-B. from which the K. – I. text here is believed to be a translation.

655

Cf. f. 96b and Fr. Map for route over the Kīndīr-tau.

656

This account of Muḥ. Bāqir reads like one given later to Bābur; he may have had some part in Bābur’s rescue (cf. Translator’s Note to f. 118b).

657

Perhaps reeds for a raft. Sh. N. p. 258, Sāl aūchūn bār qāmīsh, reeds are there also for rafts.

658

Here the Turkī text breaks off, as it might through loss of pages, causing a blank of narrative extending over some 16 months. Cf. App. D. for a passage, supposedly spurious, found with the Ḥaidarābād Codex and the Kehr-Ilminsky text, purporting to tell how Bābur was rescued from the risk in which the lacuna here leaves him.

659

As in the Farghāna Section, so here, reliance is on the Elphinstone and Ḥaidarābād MSS. The Kehr-Ilminsky text still appears to be a retranslation from the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī and verbally departs much from the true text; moreover, in this Section it has been helped out, where its archetype was illegible or has lost fragmentary passages, from the Leyden and Erskine Memoirs. It may be mentioned, as between the First and the Second Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī, that several obscure passages in this Section are more explicit in the First (Pāyanda-ḥasan’s) than in its successor (‘Abdu-r-raḥīm’s).

660

Elph. MS. f. 90b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215, f. 96b and 217, f. 79; Mems. p. 127. “In 1504 AD. Ferdinand the Catholic drove the French out of Naples” (Erskine). In England, Henry VII was pushing forward a commercial treaty, the Intercursus malus, with the Flemings and growing in wealth by the exactions of Empson and Dudley.

661

presumably the pastures of the “Ilak” Valley. The route from Sūkh would be over the ‘Alā‘u’d-dīn-pass, into the Qīzīl-sū valley, down to Āb-i-garm and on to the Aīlāq-valley, Khwāja ‘Imād, the Kāfirnigān, Qabādīān, and Aūbāj on the Amū. See T.R. p. 175 and Farghāna Section, p. 184, as to the character of the journey.

662

Amongst the Turkī tribes, the time of first applying the razor to the face is celebrated by a great entertainment. Bābur’s miserable circumstances would not admit of this (Erskine).

The text is ambiguous here, reading either that Sūkh was left or that Aīlāq-yīlāq was reached in Muḥarram. As the birthday was on the 8th, the journey very arduous and, for a party mostly on foot, slow, it seems safest to suppose that the start was made from Sūkh at the end of 909 AH. and not in Muḥarram, 910 AH.

663

chārūq, rough boots of untanned leather, formed like a moccasin with the lower leather drawn up round the foot; they are worn by Khīrghīz mountaineers and caravan-men on journeys (Shaw).

664

chāpān, the ordinary garment of Central Asia (Shaw).

665

The ālāchūq, a tent of flexible poles, covered with felt, may be the khargāh (kibitka); Persian chādar seems to represent Turkī āq awī, white house.

666

i. e. with Khusrau’s power shaken by Aūzbeg attack, made in the winter of 909 AH. (Shaibānī-nāma cap. lviii).

667

Cf. ff. 81 and 81b. The armourer’s station was low for an envoy to Bābur, the superior in birth of the armourer’s master.

668

var. Chaqānīān and Saghānīān. The name formerly described the whole of the Ḥiṣār territory (Erskine).

669

the preacher by whom the Khut̤ba is read (Erskine).

670

bī bāqī or bī Bāqī; perhaps a play of words with the double meaning expressed in the above translation.

671

Amongst these were widows and children of Bābur’s uncle, Maḥmūd (f. 27b).

672

aūghūl. As being the son of Khusrau’s sister, Aḥmad was nephew to Bāqī; there may be in the text a scribe’s slip from one aūghūl to another, and the real statement be that Aḥmad was the son of Bāqī’s son, Muḥ. Qāsim, which would account for his name Aḥmad-i-qāsim.

673

Cf. f. 67.

674

Bābur’s loss of rule in Farghāna and Samarkand.

675

about 7 miles south of Aībak, on the road to Sar-i-tāgh (mountain-head, Erskine).

676

viz. the respective fathers, Maḥmūd and ‘Umar Shaikh. The arrangement was made in 895 AH. (1490 AD.).

677

Gulistān cap. i, story 3. Part of this quotation is used again on f. 183.

678

Maḥmūd’s sons under whom Bāqī had served.

679

Uncles of all degrees are included as elder brethren, cousins of all degrees, as younger ones.

680

Presumably the ferries; perhaps the one on the main road from the north-east which crosses the river at Fort Murgh-āb.

681

Nine deaths, perhaps where the Amū is split into nine channels at the place where Mīrzā Khān’s son Sulaimān later met his rebel grandson Shāh-rukh (T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī, Elliot & Dowson, v, 392, and A.N. Bib. Ind., 3rd ed., 441). Tūqūz-aūlūm is too far up the river to be Arnold’s “shorn and parcelled Oxus”.

682

Shaibāq himself had gone down from Samarkand in 908 AH. and in 909 AH. and so permanently located his troops as to have sent their families to them. In 909 AH. he drove Khusrau into the mountains of Badakhshān, but did not occupy Qūndūz; thither Khusrau returned and there stayed till now, when Shaibāq again came south (fol. 123). See Sh. N. cap. lviii et seq.

683

From Taṃbal, to put down whom he had quitted his army near Balkh (Sh. N. cap. lix).

684

This, one of the many Red-rivers, flows from near Kāhmard and joins the Andar-āb water near Dūshī.

685

A garī is twenty-four minutes.

686

Qorān, Surat iii, verse 25; Sale’s Qorān, ed. 1825, i, 56.

687

Cf. f. 82.

688

viz. Bāī-sanghar, bowstrung, and Mas‘ūd, blinded.

689

Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ is florid over the rubies of Badakhshān he says Bābur took from Khusrau, but Ḥaidar says Bābur not only had Khusrau’s property, treasure, and horses returned to him, but refused all gifts Khusrau offered. “This is one trait out of a thousand in the Emperor’s character.” Ḥaidar mentions, too, the then lack of necessaries under which Bābur suffered (Sh. N., cap. lxiii, and T.R. p. 176).

690

Cf. T. R. p. 134 n. and 374 n.

691

Jība, so often used to describe the quilted corselet, seems to have here a wider meaning, since the jība-khāna contained both joshan and kūhah, i. e. coats-of-mail and horse-mail with accoutrements. It can have been only from this source that Bābur’s men obtained the horse-mail of f. 127.

692

He succeeded his father, Aūlūgh Beg Kābulī, in 907 AH.; his youth led to the usurpation of his authority by Sherīm Ẕikr, one of his begs; but the other begs put Sherīm to death. During the subsequent confusions Muḥ. Muqīm Arghūn, in 908 AH., got possession of Kābul and married a sister of ‘Abdu’r-razzāq. Things were in this state when Bābur entered the country in 910 AH. (Erskine).

693

var. Ūpīān, a few miles north of Chārikār.

694

Suhail (Canopus) is a most conspicuous star in Afghānistān; it gives its name to the south, which is never called Janūb but Suhail; the rising of Suhail marks one of their seasons (Erskine). The honour attaching to this star is due to its seeming to rise out of Arabia Felix.

695

The lines are in the Preface to the Anwār-i-suhailī (Lights of Canopus).

696

“Die Kirghis-qazzāq drücken die Sonnen-höhe in Pikenaus” (von Schwarz, p. 124).

697

Presumably, dark with shade, as in qarā-yīghāch, the hard-wood elm (f. 47b and note to narwān).

698

i. e. Sayyid Muḥammad ‘Alī, the door-ward. These būlāks seem likely to have been groups of 1,000 fighting-men (Turki Mīng).

699

In-the-water and Water-head.

700

Walī went from his defeat to Khwāst; wrote to Maḥmūd Aūzbeg in Qūndūz to ask protection; was fetched to Qūndūz by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, the author of the Shaibānī-nāma, and forwarded from Qūndūz to Samarkand (Sh. N. cap. lxiii). Cf. f. 29b.