The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[128] One of Bābur’s quatrains, quoted in the Abūshqa, is almost certainly addressed to Khān-zāda. Cf. A.Q. Review, Jan. 1911, p. 4; H. Beveridge’s Some verses of Bābur. For an account of her marriage see Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry) cap. xxxix.

[129] Kehr’s MS. has a passage here not found elsewhere and seeming to be an adaptation of what is at the top of Ḥai. MS. f. 88. (Ilminsky, p. 10, ba wujūd ... tāpīb.)

[130]tūshtī, which here seems to mean that she fell to his share on division of captives. Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ makes it a love-match and places the marriage before Bābur’s departure. Cf. f. 95 and notes.

[131]aūgāhlān. Khurram would be about five when given Balkh in circa 911 AH. (1505 AD.). He died when about 12. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 364.

[132] This fatrat (interregnum) was between Bābur’s loss of Farghāna and his gain of Kābul; the furṣatlār were his days of ease following success in Hindūstān and allowing his book to be written.

[133]qīlālīng, lit. do thou be (setting down), a verbal form recurring on f. 227b l. 2. With the same form (aīt)ālīng, lit. do thou be saying, the compiler of the Abūshqa introduces his quotations. Shaw’s paradigm, qīlīng only. Cf. A.Q.R. Jan. 1911, p. 2.

[134] Kehr’s MS. (Ilminsky p. 12) and its derivatives here interpolate the erroneous statement that the sons of Yūnas were Afāq and Bābā Khāns.

[135]i.e. broke up the horde. Cf. T.R. p. 74.

[136]See f. 50b for his descent.

[137] Descendants of these captives were in Kāshghar when Ḥaidar was writing the T.R. It was completed in 953 AH. (1547 AD.). Cf. T.R. pp. 81 and 149.

[138] An omission from his Persian source misled Mr. Erskine here into making Abū-sa‘īd celebrate the Khānīm’s marriage, not with himself but with his defeated foe, ‘Abdu’l-‘azīz who had married her 28 years earlier.

[139] Aīsān-būghā was at Āq Sū in Eastern Turkistān; Yūnas Khān’s head-quarters were in Yītī-kīnt. The Sāghārīchī tūmān was a subdivision of the Kūnchī Mughūls.

[140]Khān kūtārdīlār. The primitive custom was to lift the Khān-designate off the ground; the phrase became metaphorical and would seem to be so here, since there were two upon the felt. Cf., however, Th. Radloff’s Récueil d’Itinéraires p. 326.

[141]qūyūb īdī, probably in childhood.

[142] She was divorced by Shaibānī Khān in 907 AH. in order to allow him to make lawful marriage with her niece, Khān-zāda.

[143] This was a prudential retreat before Shaibānī Khān. Cf. f. 213.

[144] The “Khān” of his title bespeaks his Chaghatāī-Mughūl descent through his mother, the “Mīrzā,” his Tīmūrid-Turkī, through his father. The capture of the women was facilitated by the weakening of their travelling escort through his departure. Cf. T.R. p. 203.

[145] Qila‘-i-z̤afar. Its ruins are still to be seen on the left bank of the Kukcha. Cf. T.R. p. 220 and Kostenko i, 140. For Mubārak Shāh Muẓaffarī see f. 213 and T.R. s.n.

[146] Ḥabība, a child when captured, was reared by Shaibānī and by him given in marriage to his nephew. Cf. T.R. p. 207 for an account of this marriage as saving Ḥaidar’s life.

[147]i.e. she did not take to flight with her husband’s defeated force, but, relying on the victor, her cousin Bābur, remained in the town. Cf. T.R. p. 268. Her case receives light from Shahr-bānū’s (f. 169).

[148] Muḥammad Ḥaidar Mīrzā Kūrkān Dūghlāt Chaghatāī Mūghūl, the author of the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī; b. 905 AH. d. 958 AH. (b. 1499 d. 1551 AD.). Of his clan, the “Oghlāt” (Dūghlāt) Muḥ. ṣāliḥ says that it was called “Oghlāt” by Mughūls but Qūngūr-āt (Brown Horse) by Aūzbegs.

These lines are in Arabic in the introduction to the Anwār-i-suhailī. (H.B.) The first is quoted by Ḥaidar (T.R. p. 354) and in Field’s Dict. of Oriental Quotations (p. 160). I understand them to refer here to Ḥaidar’s return to his ancestral home and nearest kin as being a natural act.

[150]tā’ib and t̤arīqā suggest that Ḥaidar had become an orthodox Musalmān in or about 933 AH. (1527 AD.).

[151] Abū’l-faẓl adds music to Ḥaidar’s accomplishments and Ḥaidar’s own Prologue mentions yet others.

[152]Cf. T.R. s.n. and Gul-badan’s H.N. s.n. Ḥaram Begīm.

[153]i.e. Alexander of Macedon. For modern mention of Central Asian claims to Greek descent see i.a. Kostenko, Von Schwarz, Holdich and A. Durand. Cf. Burnes’ Kābul p. 203 for an illustration of a silver patera (now in the V. and A. Museum), once owned by ancestors of this Shāh Sult̤ān Muḥammad.

[154]Cf. f. 6b note.

[155]i.e. Khān’s child.

[156] The careful pointing of the Ḥai. MS. clears up earlier confusion by showing the narrowing of the vowels from ālāchī to alacha.

[157] The Elph. MS. (f. 7) writes Aūng, Khān’s son, Prester John’s title, where other MSS. have Adik. Bābur’s brevity has confused his account of Sult̤ān-nigār. Widowed of Maḥmūd in 900 AH. she married Adik; Adik, later, joined Shaibānī Khān but left him in 908 AH. perhaps secretly, to join his own Qāzāq horde. He was followed by his wife, apparently also making a private departure. As Adik died shortly after 908 AH. his daughters were born before that date and not after it as has been understood. Cf. T.R. and G.B.’s H.N. s.nn.; also Mems. p. 14 and Méms. i, 24.

[158] Presumably by tribal custom, yīnkālīk, marriage with a brother’s widow. Such marriages seem to have been made frequently for the protection of women left defenceless.

[159] Sa‘īd’s power to protect made him the refuge of several kinswomen mentioned in the B.N. and the T.R. This mother and child reached Kāshghar in 932 AH. (1526 AD.).

Here Bābur ends his [interpolated] account of his mother’s family and resumes that of his father’s.

[160] Bābur uses a variety of phrases to express Lordship in the Gate. Here he writes aīshīknī bāshlātīb; elsewhere, aīshīk ikhtiyārī qīlmāq and mīnīng aīshīkīmdā ṣāḥib ikhtiyārī qīlmāq. Von Schwarz (p. 159) throws light on the duties of the Lord of the Gate (Aīshīk Āghāsī). “Das Thür ... führt in eine grosse, vier-eckige, höhe Halle, deren Boden etwa 2 m. über den Weg erhoben ist. In dieser Halle, welche alle passieren muss, der durch das Thor eingeht, reitet oder fahrt, ist die Thorwache placiert. Tagsüber sind die Thore beständig öffen, nach Eintritt der Dunkelheit aber werden dieselben geschlossen und die Schlüssel dem zuständigen Polizeichef abgeliefert.... In den erwähnten Thorhallen nehmen in den hoch unabhängigen Gebieten an Bazar-tagen haufig die Richter Platz, um jedem der irgend ein Anliegen hat, so fort Recht zu sprechen. Die zudiktierten Strafen werden auch gleich in diesem selben locale vollzogen und eventuell die zum Hangen verurteilten Verbrecher an den Deckbalken aufgehängt, so dass die Besucher des Bazars unter den gehenkten durchpassieren müssen.”