The Bābur-nāma

2301

Cf. f. 344b and n.5 concerning the surmised movements of this set of envoys.

2302

This promise was first proffered in Gūālīār (f.343).

2303

These may be Bāī-qarā kinsfolk or Mīrān-shāhīs married to them. No record of Shāh Qāsim’s earlier mission is preserved; presumably he was sent in 934 AH. and the record will have been lost with much more of that year’s. Khwānd-amīr may well have had to do with this second mission, since he could inform Bābur of the discomfort caused in Herī by the near leaguer of ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aūzbeg.

2304

Albatta aūzūmīznī har nu‘ qīlīb tīgūrkūmīz dūr. The following versions of this sentence attest its difficulty: —Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī, 1st trs. I.O. 215 f. 212, albatta khūdrā ba har nū‘ī ka bāshad dar ān khūb khẉāhīm rasānad; and 2nd trs. I.O. 217 f. 238b, albatta dar har nu‘ karda khūdrā mī rasānīm; Memoirs p. 388, “I would make an effort and return in person to Kābul”; Mémoires ii, 356, je ferais tous mes efforts pour pousser en avant. I surmise, as Pāyanda-i-ḥasan seems to have done (1st Pers. trs. supra), that the passage alludes to Bābur’s aims in Hindūstān which he expects to touch in the coming spring. What seems likely to be implied is what Erskine says and more, viz. return to Kābul, renewal of conflict with the Aūzbeg and release of Khurāsān kin through success. As is said by Bābur immediately after this, T̤ahmāsp of Persia had defeated ‘Ubaidu’l-lah Aūzbeg before Bābur’s letter was written.

2305

Sīmāb yīmāknī bunyād qīldīm, a statement which would be less abrupt if it followed a record of illness. Such a record may have been made and lost.

2306

The preliminaries to this now somewhat obscure section will have been lost in the gap of 934 AH. They will have given Bābur’s instructions to Khwāja Dost-i-khāwand and have thrown light on the unsatisfactory state of Kābul, concerning which a good deal comes out later, particularly in Bābur’s letter to its Governor Khwāja Kalān. It may be right to suppose that Kāmrān wanted Kābul and that he expected the Khwāja to bring him an answer to his request for it, whether made by himself or for him, through some-one, his mother perhaps, whom Bābur now sent for to Hindūstān.

2307

934 AH. – August 26th 1528 AD.

2308

The useful verb tībrāmāk which connotes agitation of mind with physical movement, will here indicate anxiety on the Khwāja’s part to fulfil his mission to Humāyūn.

2309

Kāmrān’s messenger seems to repeat his master’s words, using the courteous imperative of the 3rd person plural.

2310

Though Bābur not infrequently writes of e. g. Bengalīs and Aūzbegs and Turks in the singular, the Bengalī, the Aūzbeg, the Turk, he seems here to mean ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh, the then dominant Aūzbeg, although Kūchūm was Khāqān.

2311

This muster preceded defeat near Jām of which Bābur heard some 19 days later.

2312

Humāyūn’s wife was Bega Begīm, the later Ḥājī Begīm; Kāmrān’s bride was her cousin perhaps named Māh-afrūz (Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma f. 64b). The hear-say tense used by the messenger allows the inference that he was not accredited to give the news but merely repeated the rumour of Kābul. The accredited bearer-of-good-tidings came later (f. 346b).

2313

There are three enigmatic words in this section. The first is the Sayyid’s cognomen; was he daknī, rather dark of hue, or zaknī, one who knows, or ruknī, one who props, erects scaffolding, etc.? The second mentions his occupation; was he a ghaiba-gar, diviner (Erskine, water-finder), a jība-gar, cuirass-maker, or a jibā-gar, cistern-maker, which last suits with well-making? The third describes the kind of well he had in hand, perhaps the stone one of f. 353b; had it scaffolding, or was it for drinking-water only (khwāralīq); had it an arch, or was it chambered (khwāzalīq)? If Bābur’s orders for the work had been preserved, – they may be lost from f. 344b, trouble would have been saved to scribes and translators, as an example of whose uncertainty it may be mentioned that from the third word (khwāralīq?) Erskine extracted “jets d’eau and artificial water-works”, and de Courteille “taillé dans le roc vif”.

2314

All Bābur’s datings in Ṣafar are inconsistent with his of Muḥarram, if a Muḥarram of 30 days [as given by Gladwin and others].

2315

ḥarārat. This Erskine renders by “so violent an illness” (p. 388), de Courteille by “une inflammation d’entrailles” (ii, 357), both swayed perhaps by the earlier mention, on Muḥ. 10th, of Bābur’s medicinal quick-silver, a drug long in use in India for internal affections (Erskine). Some such ailment may have been recorded and the record lost (f. 345b and n. 8), but the heat, fever, and trembling in the illness of Ṣafar 23rd, taken with the reference to last’s year’s attack of fever, all point to climatic fever.

2316

aīndīnī (or, āndīnī). Consistently with the readings quoted in the preceding note, E. and de C. date the onset of the fever as Sunday and translate aīndīnī to mean “two days after”. It cannot be necessary however to specify the interval between Friday and Sunday; the text is not explicit; it seems safe to surmise only that the cold fit was less severe on Sunday; the fever had ceased on the following Thursday.

2317

Anglicé, Monday after 6 p.m.

2318

The Rashaḥāt-i-´aīnu’l-ḥayāt (Tricklings from the fountain of life) contains an interesting and almost contemporary account of the Khwāja and of his Wālidiyyah-risāla. A summary of what in it concerns the Khwāja can be read in the JRAS. Jan. 1916, H. Beveridge’s art. The tract, so far as we have searched, is now known in European literature only through Bābur’s metrical translation of it; and this, again, is known only through the Rāmpūr Dīwān. [It may be noted here, though the topic belongs to the beginning of the Bābur-nāma (f. 2), that the Rashaḥāt contains particulars about Aḥrārī’s interventions for peace between Bābur’s father ´Umar Shaikh and those with whom he quarrelled.]

2319

“Here unfortunately, mr. Elphinstone’s Turki copy finally ends” (Erskine), that is to say, the Elphinstone Codex belonging to the Faculty of Advocates of Edinburgh.

2320

This work, Al-buṣīrī’s famous poem in praise of the Prophet, has its most recent notice in M. René Basset’s article of the Encyclopædia of Islām (Leyden and London).

2321

Bābur’s technical terms to describe the metre he used are, ramal musaddas makhbūn ´arūẓ and ẓarb gāh abtar gāh makhbūn muhz̤ūf wazn.

2322

aūtkān yīl (u) har maḥal mūndāq ´āriẓat kīm būldī, from which it seems correct to omit the u (and), thus allowing the reference to be to last year’s illnesses only; because no record, of any date, survives of illness lasting even one full month, and no other year has a lacuna of sufficient length unless one goes improbably far back: for these attacks seem to be of Indian climatic fever. One in last year (934 AH.) lasting 25-26 days (f. 331) might be called a month’s illness; another or others may have happened in the second half of the year and their record be lost, as several have been lost, to the detriment of connected narrative.

2323

Mr. Erskine’s rendering (Memoirs p. 388) of the above section shows something of what is gained by acquaintance which he had not, with the Rashaḥāt-i-´āinu’l-ḥayāt and with Bābur’s versified Wālidiyyah-risāla.

2324

This gap, like some others in the diary of 935 AH. can be attributed safely to loss of pages, because preliminaries are now wanting to several matters which Bābur records shortly after it. Such are (1) the specification of the three articles sent to Naṣrat Shāh, (2) the motive for the feast of f. 351b, (3) the announcement of the approach of the surprising group of envoys, who appear without introduction at that entertainment, in a manner opposed to Bābur’s custom of writing, (4) an account of their arrival and reception.

2325

Land-holder (see Hobson-Jobson s. n. talookdar).

2326

The long detention of this messenger is mentioned in Bābur’s letter to Humāyūn (f. 349).

2327

These words, if short a be read in Shăh, make 934 by abjad. The child died in infancy; no son of Humāyūn’s had survived childhood before Akbar was born, some 14 years later. Concerning Abū’l-wajd Fārighī, see Ḥabību’s-siyar, lith. ed. ii, 347; Muntakhabu’t-tawārikh, Bib. Ind. ed. i, 3; and Index s. n.

2328

I am indebted to Mr. A. E. Hinks, Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, for the following approximate estimate of the distances travelled by Bīān Shaikh: – (a) From Kishm to Kābul 240m. – from Kābul to Peshāwar 175m. – from Peshāwar to Āgra (railroad distance) 759 m. – total 1174 m.; daily average cir. 38 miles; (b) Qila‘-i-z̤afar to Kābul 264m. – Kābul to Qandahār 316m. – total 580m.; daily average cir. 53 miles. The second journey was made probably in 913 AH. and to inform Bābur of the death of the Shāh of Badakhshān (f. 213b).

2329

On Muḥ. 10th 934 AH. – Sep. 26th 1528 AD. For accounts of the campaign see Rieu’s Suppl. Persian Cat. under Histories of T̤ahmāsp (Churchill Collection); the Ḥabību’s-siyar and the ‘Ālam-ārāī-‘abbāsī, the last a highly rhetorical work, Bābur’s accounts (Index s. n. Jām) are merely repetitions of news given to him; he is not responsible for mistakes he records, such as those of f. 354. It must be mentioned that Mr. Erskine has gone wrong in his description of the battle, the starting-point of error being his reversal of two events, the encampment of T̤ahmāsp at Rādagān and his passage through Mashhad. A century ago less help, through maps and travel, was available than now.

2330

tufak u arāba, the method of array Bābur adopted from the Rūmī-Persian model.

2331

T̤ahmāsp’s main objective, aimed at earlier than the Aūzbeg muster in Merv, was Herāt, near which ‘Ubaid Khān had been for 7 months. He did not take the shortest route for Mashhad, viz. the Dāmghān-Sabzawār-Nīshāpūr road, but went from Dāmghān for Mashhad by way of Kālpūsh (‘Ālam-ārāī lith. ed. p. 45) and Rādagān. Two military advantages are obvious on this route; (1) it approaches Mashhad by the descending road of the Kechef-valley, thus avoiding the climb into that valley by a pass beyond Nīshāpūr on the alternative route; and (2) it passes through the fertile lands of Rādagān. [For Kālpūsh and the route see Fr. military map, Sheets Astarābād and Merv, n.e. of Bast̤ām.]

2332

7 m. from Kushan and 86 m. from Mashhad. As Lord Curzon reports (Persia, ii, 120) that his interlocutors on the spot were not able to explain the word “Radkan,” it may be useful to note here that the town seems to borrow its name from the ancient tower standing near it, the Mīl-i-rādagān, or, as Réclus gives it, Tour de méimandan, both names meaning, Tower of the bounteous (or, beneficent, highly-distinguished, etc.). (Cf. Vullers Dict. s. n. rād; Réclus’ L’Asie Antérieure p. 219; and O’Donovan’s Merv Oasis.) Perhaps light on the distinguished people (rādagān) is given by the Dābistān’s notice of an ancient sect, the Rādīyān, seeming to be fire-worshippers whose chief was Rād-gūna, an eminently brave hero of the latter part of Jāmshīd’s reign (800 B.C.?). Of the town Rādagān Daulat Shāh makes frequent mention. A second town so-called and having a tower lies north of Ispahān.

2333

In these days of trench-warfare it would give a wrong impression to say that T̤ahmāsp entrenched himself; he did what Bābur did before his battles at Panīpat and Kānwa (q. v.).

2334

The Aūzbegs will have omitted from their purview of affairs that T̤ahmāsp’s men were veterans.

2335

The holy city had been captured by ‘Ubaid Khān in 933 AH. (1525 AD.), but nothing in Bīān Shaikh’s narrative indicates that they were now there in force.

2336

Presumably the one in the Rādagān-meadow.

2337

using the yada-tāsh to ensure victory (Index s. n.).

2338

If then, as now, Scorpio’s appearance were expected in Oct. – Nov., the Aūzbegs had greatly over-estimated their power to check T̤ahmāsp’s movements; but it seems fairly clear that they expected Scorpio to follow Virgo in Sept. – Oct. according to the ancient view of the Zodiacal Signs which allotted two houses to the large Scorpio and, if it admitted Libra at all, placed it between Scorpio’s claws (Virgil’s Georgics i, 32 and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ii, 195. – H. B.).

2339

It would appear that the Aūzbegs, after hearing that T̤ahmāsp was encamped at Rādagān, expected to interpose themselves in his way at Mashhad and to get their 20,000 to Rādagān before he broke camp. T̤āhmāsp’s swiftness spoiled their plan; he will have stayed at Rādagān a short time only, perhaps till he had further news of the Aūzbegs, perhaps also for commissariat purposes and to rest his force. He visited the shrine of Imām Reza, and had reached Jām in time to confront his adversaries as they came down to it from Zawarābād (Pilgrims'-town).

2340

or, Khirjard, as many MSS. have it. It seems to be a hamlet or suburb of Jām. The ‘Ālam-ārāī (lith. ed. p. 40) writes Khusrau-jard-i-Jām (the Khusrau-throne of Jām), perhaps rhetorically. The hamlet is Maulānā ‘Abdu’r-raḥmān Jāmī’s birthplace (Daulat Shāh’s Taẕkirat, E. G. Browne’s ed. p. 483). Jām now appears on maps as Turbat-i-Shaikh Jāmī, the tomb (turbat) being that of the saintly ancestor of Akbar’s mother Ḥamīda-bānū.

2341

The ‘Ālam-ārāī (lith. ed. p. 31) says, but in grandiose language, that ‘Ubaid Khān placed at the foot of his standard 40 of the most eminent men of Transoxania who prayed for his success, but that as his cause was not good, their supplications were turned backwards, and that all were slain where they had prayed.

2342

Here the 1st Pers. trs. (I.O. 215 f. 214) mentions that it was Chalma who wrote and despatched the exact particulars of the defeat of the Aūzbegs. This information explains the presumption Bābur expresses. It shows that Chalma was in Ḥiṣār where he may have written his letter to give news to Humāyūn. At the time Bīān Shaikh left, the Mīrzā was near Kishm; if he had been the enterprising man he was not, one would surmise that he had moved to seize the chance of the sult̤āns’ abandonment of Ḥiṣār, without waiting for his father’s urgency (f. 348b). Whether he had done so and was the cause of the sult̤āns’ flight, is not known from any chronicle yet come to our hands. Chalma’s father Ibrāhīm Jānī died fighting for Bābur against Shaibāq Khān in 906 AH. (f. 90b).

As the sense of the name-of-office Chalma is still in doubt, I suggest that it may be an equivalent of aftābachī, bearer of the water-bottle on journeys. T. chalma can mean a water-vessel carried on the saddle-bow; one Chalma on record was a safarchī; if, in this word, safar be read to mean journey, an approach is made to aftābachī (fol. 15b and note; Blochmann’s A. – i-A. p. 378 and n. 3).

2343

The copies of Bābur’s Turkī letter to Humāyūn and the later one to Khwāja Kalān (f. 359) are in some MSS. of the Persian text translated only (I.O. 215 f. 214); in others appear in Turkī only (I.O. 217 f. 240); in others appear in Turkī and Persian (B. M. Add. 26,000 and I.O. 2989); while in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. they are omitted altogether (p. 228).

2344

Trans- and Cis-Hindukush. Pāyanda-ḥasan (in one of his useful glosses to the 1st Pers. trs.) amplifies here by “Khurāsān, Mā warā’u’n-nahr and Kābul”.

2345

The words Bābur gives as mispronunciations are somewhat uncertain in sense; manifestly both are of ill-omen: – Al-amān itself [of which the alāmā of the Ḥai. MS. and Ilminsky maybe an abbreviation,] is the cry of the vanquished, “Quarter! mercy!”; Aīlāmān and also ālāman can represent a Turkmān raider.

2346

Presumably amongst Tīmūrids.

2347

Perhaps Bābur here makes a placatory little joke.

2348

i. e. that offered by T̤ahmāsp’s rout of the Aūzbegs at Jām.

2349

He was an adherent of Bābur. Cf. f. 353.

2350

The plural “your” will include Humāyūn and Kāmrān. Neither had yet shewn himself the heritor of his father’s personal dash and valour; they had lacked the stress which shaped his heroism.

2351

My husband has traced these lines to Niz̤āmī’s Khusrau and Shīrīn. [They occur on f. 256b in his MS. of 317 folios.] Bābur may have quoted from memory, since his version varies. The lines need their context to be understood; they are part of Shīrīn’s address to Khusrau when she refuses to marry him because at the time he is fighting for his sovereign position; and they say, in effect, that while all other work stops for marriage (kadkhudāī), kingly rule does not.

2352

Aūlūghlār kūtārīmlīk kīrāk; 2nd Pers. trs. buzurgān bardāsht mī bāīd kardand. This dictum may be a quotation. I have translated it to agree with Bābur’s reference to the ages of the brothers, but aūlūghlār expresses greatness of position as well as seniority in age, and the dictum may be taken as a Turkī version of “Noblesse oblige”, and may also mean “The great must be magnanimous”. (Cf. de C.’s Dict. s. n. kūtārīmlīk.) [It may be said of the verb bardāshlan used in the Pers. trs., that Abū’l-faẕl, perhaps translating kūtārīmlīk reported to him, puts it into Bābur’s mouth when, after praying to take Humāyūn’s illness upon himself, he cried with conviction, “I have borne it away” (A.N. trs. H.B. i, 276).]

2353

If Bābur had foreseen that his hard-won rule in Hindūstān was to be given to the winds of one son’s frivolities and the other’s disloyalty, his words of scant content with what the Hindūstān of his desires had brought him, would have expressed a yet keener pain (Rāmpūr Dīwān E.D.R.’s ed. p. 15 l. 5 fr. ft.).

2354

Bostān, cap. Advice of Noshirwān to Hurmuz (H.B.).

2355

A little joke at the expense of the mystifying letter.

2356

For yā, Mr. Erskine writes be. What the mistake was is an open question; I have guessed an exchange of ī for ū, because such an exchange is not infrequent amongst Turkī long vowels.

2357

That of reconquering Tīmūrid lands.

2358

of Kūlāb; he was the father of Ḥaram Begīm, one of Gul-badan’s personages.

2359

aūn altī gūnlūk m: ljār bīla, as on f. 354b, and with exchange of T. m: ljār for P. mī‘ād, f. 355b.

2360

Probably into Rājpūt lands, notably into those of Ṣalāḥu’d-dīn.

2361

tukhmalīq chakmānlār; as tukhma means both button and gold-embroidery, it may be right, especially of Hindūstān articles, to translate sometimes in the second sense.

2362

These statements of date are consistent with Bābur’s earlier explicit entries and with Erskine’s equivalents of the Christian Era, but at variance with Gladwin’s and with Wüstenfeldt’s calculation that Rabī‘ II. 1st was Dec. 13th. Yet Gladwin (Revenue Accounts, ed. 1790 AD. p. 22) gives Rabī‘ I. 30 days. Without in the smallest degree questioning the two European calculations, I follow Bābur, because in his day there may have been allowed variation which finds no entry in methodical calendars. Erskine followed Bābur’s statements; he is likely nevertheless to have seen Gladwin’s book.

2363

Erskine estimated this at £500, but later cast doubts on such estimates as being too low (History of India, vol. i, App. D.).

2364

The bearer of the stamp (t̤amghā) who by impressing it gave quittance for the payment of tolls and other dues.

2365

Either 24ft. or 36ft. according to whether the short or long qārī be meant (infra). These towers would provide resting-place, and some protection against ill-doers. They recall the two mīl-i-rādagān of Persia (f. 347 n. 9), the purpose of which is uncertain. Bābur’s towers were not “kos mīnārs”, nor is it said that he ordered each kuroh to be marked on the road. Some of the kos mīnārs on the “old Mughal roads” were over 30ft. high; a considerable number are entered and depicted in the Annual Progress Report of the Archæological Survey for 1914 (Northern Circle, p. 45 and Plates 44, 45). Some at least have a lower chamber.

2366

Four-doored, open-on-all-sides. We have not found the word with this meaning in Dictionaries. It may translate H. chaukandī.

2367

Erskine makes 9 kos (kurohs) to be 13-14 miles, perhaps on the basis of the smaller gaz of 24 inches.

2368

altī yām-ātī bāghlāghāīlār which, says one of Erskine’s manuscripts, is called a dāk-choki.

2369

Neither Erskine (Mems. p. 394), nor de Courteille (Méms. ii, 370) recognized the word Mubīn here, although each mentions the poem later (p. 431 and ii, 461), deriving his information about it from the Akbar-nāma, Erskine direct, de Courteille by way of the Turkī translation of the same Akbar-nāma passage, which Ilminsky found in Kehr’s volume and which is one of the much discussed “Fragments”, at first taken to be extra writings of Bābur’s (cf. Index in loco s. n. Fragments). Ilminsky (p. 455) prints the word clearly, as one who knows it; he may have seen that part of the poem itself which is included in Berésine’s Chrestomathie Turque (p. 226 to p. 272), under the title Fragment d’un poème inconnu de Bābour, and have observed that Bābur himself shews his title to be Mubīn, in the lines of his colophon (p. 271),