The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[2322]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.

[2323]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.

[2324] Anglicé, Monday after 6 p.m.

[2325] 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.]

[2326] “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.

[2327] 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).

[2328] Bābur’s technical terms to describe the metre he used are, ramal musaddas makhbūn ´arūẓ and ẓarb gāh abtar gāh makhbūn muhz̤ūf wazn.

[2329]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.

[2330] 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.

[2331] 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.

[2332] Land-holder (see Hobson-Jobson s.n. talookdar).

[2333] The long detention of this messenger is mentioned in Bābur’s letter to Humāyūn (f. 349).

[2334] 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.

[2335] 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).

[2336] 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.

[2337]tufak u arāba, the method of array Bābur adopted from the Rūmī-Persian model.

[2338] 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.]

[2339] 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.

[2340] 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.).

[2341] The Aūzbegs will have omitted from their purview of affairs that T̤ahmāsp’s men were veterans.

[2342] 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.

[2343] Presumably the one in the Rādagān-meadow.

[2344] using the yada-tāsh to ensure victory (Index s.n.).

[2345] 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.).

[2346] 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).

[2347] 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.

[2348] 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.

[2349] 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).

[2350] 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).

[2351] 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”.

[2352] 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.

[2353] Presumably amongst Tīmūrids.

[2354] Perhaps Bābur here makes a placatory little joke.

[2355]i.e. that offered by T̤ahmāsp’s rout of the Aūzbegs at Jām.

[2356] He was an adherent of Bābur. Cf. f. 353.

[2357] 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.

[2358] 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.

[2359]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).]

[2360] 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.).