The Bābur-nāma

Gul-badan writes as if the birth of his first-born son Humāyūn were a part of the uplift in her father’s style, but his narrative does not support her in this, since the order of events forbids.

1314

The “Khān” in Humāyūn’s title may be drawn from his mother’s family, since it does not come from Bābur. To whose family Māhīm belonged we have not been able to discover. It is one of the remarkable omissions of Bābur, Gul-badan and Abū’l-faẓl that they do not give her father’s name. The topic of her family is discussed in my Biographical Appendix to Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma and will be taken up again, here, in a final Appendix on Bābur’s family.

1315

Elph. MS. f. 172b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 174b and 217 f. 148b; Mems. p. 234.

1316

on the head-waters of the Tarnak (R.’s Notes App. p. 34).

1317

Bābur has made no direct mention of his half-brother’s death (f. 208 and n. to Mīrzā).

1318

This may be Darwesh-i-‘alī of f. 210; the Sayyid in his title may merely mean chief, since he was a Mughūl.

1319

Several of these mutineers had fought for Bābur at Qandahār.

1320

It may be useful to recapitulate this Mīrzā’s position: – In the previous year he had been left in charge of Kābul when Bābur went eastward in dread of Shaibānī, and, so left, occupied his hereditary place. He cannot have hoped to hold Kābul if the Aūzbeg attacked it; for its safety and his own he may have relied, and Bābur also in appointing him, upon influence his Arghūn connections could use. For these, one was Muqim his brother-in-law, had accepted Shaibānī’s suzerainty after being defeated in Qandahār by Bābur. It suited them better no doubt to have the younger Mīrzā rather than Bābur in Kābul; the latter’s return thither will have disappointed them and the Mīrzā; they, as will be instanced later, stood ready to invade his lands when he moved East; they seem likely to have promoted the present Mughūl uprising. In the battle which put this down, the Mīrzā was captured; Bābur pardoned him; but he having rebelled again, was then put to death.

1321

Bāgh-i-yūrūnchqā may be an equivalent of Bāgh-i-safar, and the place be one of waiting “up to” (ūnchqā) the journey (yūr). Yūrūnchqā also means clover (De Courteille).

1322

He seems to have been a brother or uncle of Humāyūn’s mother Māhīm (Index; A. N. trs. i, 492 and note).

1323

In all MSS. the text breaks off abruptly here, as it does on f. 118b as though through loss of pages, and a blank of narrative follows. Before the later gap of f. 251b however the last sentence is complete.

1324

Index s. n. Bābur-nāma, date of composition and gaps.

1325

ibid.

1326

Jumāda I, 14th 968 AH. – Jan. 31st 1561 AD. Concerning the book see Elliot and Dowson’s History of India vi, 572 and JRAS 1901 p. 76, H. Beveridge’s art. On Persian MSS. in Indian Libraries.

1327

The T. R. gives the names of two only of the champions but Firishta, writing much later gives all five; we surmise that he found his five in the book of which copies are not now known, the Tārīkh-i Muḥ. ‘Ārif Qandahārī. Firishta’s five are ‘Ali shab-kūr (night-blind), ‘Alī Sīstānī, Naz̤ar Bahādur Aūzbeg, Ya‘qūb tez-jang (swift in fight), and Aūzbeg Bahādur. Ḥaidar’s two names vary in the MSS. of the T. R. but represent the first two of Firishta’s list.

1328

There are curious differences of statement about the date of Shaibānī’s death, possibly through confusion between this and the day on which preliminary fighting began near Merv. Ḥaidar’s way of expressing the date carries weight by its precision, he giving roz-i-shakk of Ramẓān, i. e. a day of which there was doubt whether it was the last of Sha‘bān or the first of Ramẓān (Lane, yauma’u’l-shakk). As the sources support Friday for the day of the week and on a Friday in the year 915 AH. fell the 29th of Sha‘bān, the date of Shaibānī’s death seems to be Friday Sha‘bān 29th 915 AH. (Friday December 2nd 1510 AD.).

1329

If my reading be correct of the Turkī passage concerning wines drunk by Bābur which I have noted on f. 49 (in loco p. 83 n. 1), it was during this occupation of Kābul that Bābur first broke the Law against stimulants.

1330

Mr. R. S. Poole found a coin which he took to be one struck in obedience to Bābur’s compact with the Shāh (B.M.Cat. of the coins of Persian Shāhs 1887, pp. xxiv et seq.; T.R. p. 246 n.).

1331

It was held by Aḥmad-i-qāsim Kohbur and is referred to on f. 234b, as one occasion of those in which Dost Beg distinguished himself.

1332

Schuyler’s Turkistān has a good account and picture of the mosque. ‘Ubaid’s vow is referred to in my earlier mention of the Sūlūku’l-mulūk. It may be noted here that this MS. supports the spelling Bābur by making the second syllable rhyme to pūr, as against the form Bābar.

1333

aūrūq. Bābur refers to this exodus on f. 12b when writing of Daulat-sult̤ān Khānīm.

1334

It is one recorded with some variation, in Niyāz Muḥammad Khukandī’s Tārīkh-i-shāhrukhī (Kazan, 1885) and Nalivkine’s Khānate of Khokand (p. 63). It says that when Bābur in 918 AH. (1512 AD.) left Samarkand after defeat by the Aūzbegs, one of his wives, Sayyida Āfāq who accompanied him in his flight, gave birth to a son in the desert which lies between Khujand and Kand-i-badām; that Bābur, not daring to tarry and the infant being too young to make the impending journey, left it under some bushes with his own girdle round it in which were things of price; that the child was found by local people and in allusion to the valuables amongst which it lay, called Altūn bīshik (golden cradle); that it received other names and was best known in later life as Kḥudāyān Sult̤ān. He is said to have spent most of his life in Akhsī; to have had a son Tīngrī-yār; and to have died in 952 AH. (1545 AD.). His grandson Yār-i-muḥammad is said to have gone to India to relations who was descendants of Bābur (JASB 1905 p. 137 H. Beveridge’s art. The Emperor Bābur). What is against the truth of this tradition is that Gul-badan mentions no such wife as Sayyida Āfāq. Māhīm however seems to have belonged to a religious family, might therefore be styled Sayyida, and, as Bābur mentions (f. 220), had several children who did not live (a child left as this infant was, might if not heard of, be supposed dead). There is this opening allowed for considering the tradition.

1335

Bābur refers to this on f. 265.

1336

The Lubbu’t-tawārīkh would fix Ramẓān 7th.

1337

Mr. Erskine’s quotation of the Persian original of the couplet differs from that which I have translated (History of India ii, 326; Tārīkh-i-badāyūnī Bib. Ind. ed. f. 444). Perhaps in the latter a pun is made on Najm as the leader’s name and as meaning fortune; if so it points the more directly at the Shāh. The second line is quoted by Badāyūnī on his f. 362 also.

1338

Some translators make Bābur go “naked” into the fort but, on his own authority (f. 106b), it seems safer to understand what others say, that he went stripped of attendance, because it was always his habit even in times of peace to lie down in his tunic; much more would he have done so at such a crisis of his affairs as this of his flight to Ḥiṣār.

1339

Ḥaidar gives a graphic account of the misconduct of the horde and of their punishment (T.R. p. 261-3).

1340

One of the mutineers named as in this affair (T.R. p. 257) was Sl. Qulī chūnāq, a circumstance attracting attention by its bearing on the cause of the lacunæ in the Bābur-nāma, inasmuch as Bābur, writing at the end of his life, expresses (f. 65) his intention to tell of this man’s future misdeeds. These misdeeds may have been also at Ḥiṣār and in the attack there made on Bābur; they are known from Ḥaidar to have been done at Ghaznī; both times fall within this present gap. Hence it is clear that Bābur meant to write of the events falling in the gap of 914 AH. onwards.

1341

In 925 AH. (ff. 227 and 238) mention is made of courtesies exchanged between Bābur and Muḥammad-i-zamān in Balkh. The Mīrzā was with Bābur later on in Hindūstān.

1342

Mīr Ma‘ṣūm’s Tārīkh-i-sind is the chief authority for Bābur’s action after 913 AH. against Shāh Beg in Qandahār; its translation, made in 1846 by Major Malet, shews some manifestly wrong dates; they appear also in the B. M. MS. of the work.

1343

f. 216b and note to “Monday”.

1344

Elph. MS. f. 173b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 178 and 217 f. 149; Mems. p. 246. The whole of the Ḥijra year is included in 1519 AD. (Erskine). What follows here and completes the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma is a diary of a little over 13 months’ length, supplemented by matter of later entry. The product has the character of a draft, awaiting revision to harmonize it in style and, partly, in topic with the composed narrative that breaks off under 914 AH.; for the diary, written some 11 years earlier than that composed narrative, varies, as it would be expected à priori to vary, in style and topic from the terse, lucid and idiomatic output of Bābur’s literary maturity. A good many obscure words and phrases in it, several new from Bābur’s pen, have opposed difficulty to scribes and translators. Interesting as such minutiae are to a close observer of Turkī and of Bābur’s diction, comment on all would be tedious; a few will be found noted, as also will such details as fix the date of entry for supplementary matter.

1345

Here Mr. Erskine notes that Dr. Leyden’s translation begins again; it broke off on f. 180b, and finally ends on f. 223b.

1346

This name is often found transliterated as Chandul or [mod.] Jandul but the Ḥai. MS. supports Raverty’s opinion that Chandāwal is correct.

The year 925 AH. opens with Bābur far from Kābul and east of the Khahr (fort) he is about to attack. Afghān and other sources allow surmise of his route to that position; he may have come down into the Chandāwal-valley, first, from taking Chaghān-sarāī (f. 124, f. 134 and n.), and, secondly, from taking the Gibrī stronghold of Ḥaidar-i-‘alī Bajaurī which stood at the head of the Bābā Qarā-valley. The latter surmise is supported by the romantic tales of Afghān chroniclers which at this date bring into history Bābur’s Afghān wife, Bībī Mubāraka (f. 220b and note; Mems. p. 250 n.; and Appendix K, An Afghān legend). (It must be observed here that R.’s Notes (pp. 117, 128) confuse the two sieges, viz. of the Gibrī fort in 924 AH. and of the Khahr of Bajaur in 925 AH.)

1347

Raverty lays stress on the circumstance that the fort Bābur now attacks has never been known as Bajaur, but always simply as Khahr, the fort (the Arabic name for the place being, he says, plain Shahr); just as the main stream is called simply Rūd (the torrent). The name Khahr is still used, as modern maps shew. There are indeed two neighbouring places known simply as Khahr (Fort), i. e. one at the mouth of the “Mahmand-valley” of modern campaigns, the other near the Malakand (Fincastle’s map).

1348

This word the Ḥai. MS. writes, passim, Dilah-zāk.

1349

Either Ḥaidar-i-‘alī himself or his nephew, the latter more probably, since no name is mentioned.

1350

Looking at the position assigned by maps to Khahr, in the dū-āb of the Charmanga-water and the Rūd of Bajaur, it may be that Bābur’s left moved along the east bank of the first-named stream and crossed it into the dū-āb, while his centre went direct to its post, along the west side of the fort.

1351

sū-kīrīshī; to interpret which needs local knowledge; it might mean where water entered the fort, or where water disembogued from narrows, or, perhaps, where water is entered for a ford. (The verb kīrmāk occurs on f. 154b and f. 227 to describe water coming down in spate.)

1352

dīwānawār, perhaps a jest on a sobriquet earned before this exploit, perhaps the cause of the man’s later sobriquet dīwāna (f. 245b).

1353

Text, t: r: k, read by Erskine and de Courteille as Turk; it might however be a Turkī component in Jān-i-‘alī or Muḥibb-i-‘alī. (Cf. Zenker s. n. tirik.)

1354

aūshūl gūnī, which contrasts with the frequent aūshbū gūnī (this same day, today) of manifestly diary entries; it may indicate that the full account of the siege is a later supplement.

1355

This puzzling word might mean cow-horn (kau-sarū) and stand for the common horn trumpet. Erskine and de Courteille have read it as gau-sar, the first explaining it as cow-head, surmised to be a protection for matchlockmen when loading; the second, as justaucorps de cuir. That the word is baffling is shewn by its omission in I.O. 215 (f. 178b), in 217 (f. 149b) and in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. (p. 137).

1356

or farangī. Much has been written concerning the early use of gun-powder in the East. There is, however, no well-authenticated fact to prove the existence of anything like artillery there, till it was introduced from Europe. Bābur here, and in other places (f. 267) calls his larger ordnance Firingī, a proof that they were then regarded as owing their origin to Europe. The Turks, in consequence of their constant intercourse with the nations of the West, have always excelled all the other Orientals in the use of artillery; and, when heavy cannon were first used in India, Europeans or Turks were engaged to serve them (Erskine). It is owing no doubt to the preceding gap in his writings that we are deprived of Bābur’s account of his own introduction to fire-arms. See E. & D.’s History of India, vi, Appendix On the early use of gunpowder in India.

1357

var. qut̤bī, qūchīnī.

1358

This sobriquet might mean “ever a fighter”, or an “argle-bargler”, or a brass shilling (Zenker), or (if written jing-jing) that the man was visaged like the bearded reeding (Scully in Shaw’s Vocabulary). The T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī includes a Mīrak Khān Jang-jang in its list of Akbar’s Commanders.

1359

ghūl-dīn (awwal) aūl qūrghān-gha chīqtī. I suggest to supply awwal, first, on the warrant of Bābur’s later statement (f. 234b) that Dost was first in.

1360

He was a son of Maulānā Muḥ. Ṣadr, one of the chief men of ‘Umar-shaikh M.’s Court; he had six brothers, all of whom spent their lives in Bābur’s service, to whom, if we may believe Abū’l-faẓl, they were distantly related (Erskine).

1361

Bābur now returns towards the east, down the Rūd. The chashma by which he encamped, would seem to be near the mouth of the valley of Bābā Qarā, one 30 miles long; it may have been, anglicé, a spring [not that of the main stream of the long valley], but the word may be used as it seems to be of the water supplying the Bāgh-i-ṣafā (f. 224), i. e. to denote the first considerable gathering-place of small head-waters. It will be observed a few lines further on that this same valley seems to be meant by “Khwāja Khiẓr”.

1362

He will have joined Bābur previous to Muḥarram 925 AH.

1363

This statement, the first we have, that Bābur has broken Musalmān Law against stimulants (f. 49 and n.), is followed by many others more explicit, jotting down where and what and sometimes why he drank, in a way which arrests attention and asks some other explanation than that it is an unabashed record of conviviality such conceivably as a non-Musalmān might write. Bābur is now 37 years old; he had obeyed the Law till past early manhood; he wished to return to obedience at 40; he frequently mentions his lapses by a word which can be translated as “commitment of sin” (irtqāb); one gathers that he did not at any time disobey with easy conscience. Does it explain his singular record, – one made in what amongst ourselves would be regarded as a private diary, – that his sins were created by Law? Had he a balance of reparation in his thoughts?

Detaching into their separate class as excesses, all his instances of confessed drunkenness, there remains much in his record which, seen from a non-Musalmān point of view, is venial; e. g. his ṣubūhī appears to be the “morning” of the Scot, the Morgen-trank of the Teuton; his afternoon cup, in the open air usually, may have been no worse than the sober glass of beer or local wine of modern Continental Europe. Many of these legal sins of his record were interludes in the day’s long ride, stirrup-cups some of them, all in a period of strenuous physical activity. Many of his records are collective and are phrased impersonally; they mention that there was drinking, drunkenness even, but they give details sometimes such as only a sober observer could include.

Bābur names a few men as drunkards, a few as entirely obedient; most of his men seem not to have obeyed the Law and may have been “temperate drinkers”; they effected work, Bābur amongst them, which habitual drunkards could not have compassed. Spite of all he writes of his worst excesses, it must be just to remember his Musalmān conscience, and also the distorting power of a fictitious sin. Though he broke the law binding all men against excess, and this on several confessed occasions, his rule may have been no worse than that of the ordinarily temperate Western. It cannot but lighten judgment that his recorded lapses from Law were often prompted by the bounty and splendour of Nature; were committed amidst the falling petals of fruit-blossom, the flaming fire of autumn leaves, where the eye rested on the arghwān or the orange grove, the coloured harvest of corn or vine.

1364

As Mr. Erskine observes, there seems to be no valley except that of Bābā Qarā, between the Khahr and the Chandāwal-valley; “Khwāja Khiẓr” and “Bābā Qarā” may be one and the same valley.

1365

Time and ingenuity would be needed to bring over into English all the quips of this verse. The most obvious pun is, of course, that on Bajaur as the compelling cause (ba jaur) of the parting; others may be meant on guzīd and gazīd, on sazīd and chāra. The verse would provide the holiday amusement of extracting from it two justifiable translations.

1366

His possessions extended from the river of Sawād to Bāramūla; he was expelled from them by the Yūsuf-zāī (Erskine).

1367

This will be the naze of the n.e. rampart of the Bābā Qarā valley.

1368

f. 4 and note; f. 276. Bābur seems to use the name for several varieties of deer.

1369

There is here, perhaps, a jesting allusion to the darkening of complexion amongst the inhabitants of countries from west to east, from Highlands to Indian plains.

1370

In Dr. E. D. Ross’ Polyglot list of birds the sārigh(sārīq) – qūsh is said to frequent fields of ripening grain; this suggests to translate its name as Thief-bird.

1371

Aquila chrysaetus, the hunting eagle.

1372

This ārālīgh might be identified with the “Miankalai” of maps (since Soghd, lying between two arms of the Zar-afshān is known also as Mīānkal), but Raverty explains the Bajaur Miankalai to mean Village of the holy men (mīān).

1373

After 933 AH. presumably, when final work on the B.N. was in progress.

1374

Mr. Erskine notes that Pesh-grām lies north of Mahyar (on the Chandāwal-water), and that he has not found Kahrāj (or Kohrāj). Judging from Bābur’s next movements, the two valleys he names may be those in succession east of Chandāwal.

1375

There is hardly any level ground in the cleft of the Panj-kūra (R.’s Notes p. 193); the villages are perched high on the sides of the valley. The pass leading to them may be Katgola (Fincastle’s Map).

1376

This account of Hind-āl’s adoption is sufficiently confused to explain why a note, made apparently by Humāyūn, should have been appended to it (Appendix L, On Hind-āl’s adoption). The confusion reminds the reader that he has before him a sort of memorandum only, diary jottings, apt to be allusive and abbreviated. The expected child was Dil-dār’s; Māhīm, using her right as principal wife, asked for it to be given to her. That the babe in question is here called Hind-āl shews that at least part of this account of his adoption was added after the birth and naming (f. 227).

1377

One would be, no doubt, for Dil-dār’s own information. She then had no son but had two daughters, Gul-rang and Gul-chihra. News of Hind-āl’s birth reached Bābur in Bhīra, some six weeks later (f. 227).

1378

f. 218b.

1379

Bībī Mubāraka, the Afghānī Aghācha of Gul-badan. An attractive picture of her is drawn by the Tāwārikh-i-ḥāfi-i-raḥmat-khānī. As this gives not only one of Bābur’s romantic adventures but historical matter, I append it in my husband’s translation [(A.Q.R. April 1901)] as Appendix K, An Afghān Legend.

1380

Bī-sūt aīlī-nīng Bajaur-qūrghānī-dā manāsabatī-bār jīhatī; a characteristic phrase.

1381

Perhaps the end of the early spring-harvest and the spring harvesting-year. It is not the end of the campaigning year, manifestly; and it is at the beginning of both the solar and lunar years.

1382

Perhaps, more than half-way between the Mid-day and Afternoon Prayers. So too in the annals of Feb. 12th.

1383

tīl ālghālī (Pers. zabān-gīrī), a new phrase in the B.N.

1384

chāsht, which, being half-way between sunrise and the meridian, is a variable hour.

1385

See n. 2, f. 221.

1386

Perhaps Maqām is the Mardān of maps.

1387

Bhīra, on the Jehlam, is now in the Shāhpūr district of the Panj-āb.

1388