The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[524] Macham and Awīghūr, presumably.

[525]gūzlār tūz tūtī, i.e. he was blinded for some treachery to his hosts.

[526] Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ’s well-informed account of this episode has much interest, filling out and, as by Shaibānī’s Boswell, balancing Bābur’s. Bābur is obscure about what country was to be given to ‘Alī. Pāyanda-ḥasan paraphrases his brief words;—Shaibānī was to be as a father to ‘Alī and when he had taken ‘Alī’s father’s wilāyāt, he was to give a country to ‘Alī. It has been thought that the gift to ‘Alī was to follow Shaibānī’s recovery of his own ancestral camping-ground (yūrt) but this is negatived, I think, by the word, wilāyāt, cultivated land.

[527] Elp. MS. f. 57b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 63b and I.O. 217 f. 52; Mems. p. 82.

Two contemporary works here supplement the B.N.; (1) the (Tawārikh-i-guzīda) Naṣrat-nāma, dated 908 AH. (B.M. Turkī Or. 3222) of which Berezin’s Shaibāni-nāma is an abridgment; (2) Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā’s Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry trs. cap. xix et seq.). The Ḥ.S. (Bomb. ed. p. 302, and Tehran ed. p. 384) is also useful.

[528]i.e. on his right. The Ḥ.S. ii, 302 represents that ‘Alī was well-received. After Shaibāq had had Zuhra’s overtures, he sent an envoy to ‘Alī and Yaḥya; the first was not won over but the second fell in with his mother’s scheme. This difference of view explains why ‘Alī slipped away while Yaḥya was engaged in the Friday Mosque. It seems likely that mother and son alike expected their Aūzbeg blood to stand them in good stead with Shaibāq.

[529] He tried vainly to get the town defended. “Would to God Bābur Mīrzā were here!” he is reported as saying, by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ.

[530] Perhaps it is for the play of words on ‘Alī and ‘Alī’s life (jān) that this man makes his sole appearance here.

[531]i.e. rich man or merchant, but Bī (infra) is an equivalent of Beg.

[532] Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, invoking curses on such a mother, mentions that Zuhra was given to a person of her own sort.

[533] The Sh. N. and Naṣrat-nāma attempt to lift the blame of ‘Alī’s death from Shaibāq; the second saying that he fell into the Kohik-water when drunk.

[534] Harāt might be his destination but the Ḥ.S. names Makka. Some dismissals towards Khurāsān may imply pilgrimage to Meshhed.

[535] Used also by Bābur’s daughter, Gul-badan (l.c. f. 31).

[536] Cut off by alien lands and weary travel.

[537] The Pers. annotator of the Elph. Codex has changed Alāī to wīlāyat, and dābān (pass) to yān, side. For the difficult route see Schuyler, i, 275, Kostenko, i, 129 and Rickmers, JRGS. 1907, art. Fan Valley.

[538] Amongst Turks and Mughūls, gifts were made by nines.

[539] Ḥiṣār was his earlier home.

[540] Many of these will have been climbed in order to get over places impassable at the river’s level.

[541] Schuyler quotes a legend of the lake. He and Kostenko make it larger.

[542] The second occasion was when he crossed from Sūkh for Kābul in 910 AH. (fol. 120).

[543] This name appears to indicate a Command of 10,000 (Bretschneider’s Mediæval Researches, i, 112).

[544] It seems likely that the cloth was soiled. Cf. f. 25 and Hughes Dict. of Islām s.n. Eating.

[545] As, of the quoted speech, one word only, of three, is Turkī, others may have been dreamed. Shaikh Maṣlaḥat’s tomb is in Khujand where Bābur had found refuge in 903 AH.; it had been circumambulated by Tīmūr in 790 AH. (1390 AD.) and is still honoured.

This account of a dream compares well for naturalness with that in the seemingly-spurious passage, entered with the Ḥai. MS. on f. 118. For examination of the passage see JRAS, Jan. 1911, and App. D.

[546] He was made a Tarkhān by diploma of Shaibānī (Ḥ.S. ii, 306, l. 2).

[547] Here the Ḥai. MS. begins to use the word Shaibāq in place of its previously uniform Shaibānī. As has been noted (f. 5b n. 2), the Elph. MS. writes Shaibāq. It may be therefore that a scribe has changed the earlier part of the Ḥai. MS. and that Bābur wrote Shaibāq. From this point my text will follow the double authority of the Elph. and Ḥai. MSS.

[548] In 875 AH. (1470 AD.). Ḥusain was then 32 years old. Bābur might have compared his taking of Samarkand with Tīmūr’s capture of Qarshī, also with 240 followers (Z̤.N. i, 127). Firishta (lith. ed. p. 196) ascribes his omission to do so to reluctance to rank himself with his great ancestor.

[549] This arrival shews that Shaibānī expected to stay in Samarkand. He had been occupying Turkistān under The Chaghatāī Khān.

[550] ‘Alī-sher died Jan. 3rd. 1501. It is not clear to what disturbances Bābur refers. He himself was at ease till after April 20th. 1502 and his defeat at Sar-i-pul. Possibly the reference is to the quarrels between Binā’ī and ‘Alī-sher. Cf. Sām Mīrzā’s Anthology, trs. S. de Saçy, Notices et Extraits iv, 287 et seq.

[551] I surmise a double play-of-words in this verse. One is on two rhyming words, ghala and mallah and is illustrated by rendering them as oat and coat. The other is on pointed and unpointed letters, i.e. ghala and ‘ala. We cannot find however a Persian word ‘ala, meaning garment.

[552] Bābur’s refrain is ghūsīdūr, his rhymes būl, (buyur)ūl and tūl. Binā’ī makes būlghūsīdūr his refrain but his rhymes are not true viz. yīr, (sa)mar and lār.

[553] Shawwāl 906 AH. began April 20th. 1501.

[554] From the Bū-stān, Graf ed. p. 55, l. 246.

[555] Sīkīz Yīldūz. See Chardin’s Voyages, v, 136 and Table; also Stanley Lane Poole’s Bābur, p. 56.

[556] In 1791 AD. Muḥ. Effendi shot 482 yards from a Turkish bow, before the R. Tox. S.; not a good shot, he declared. Longer ones are on record. See Payne-Gallwey’s Cross-bow and AQR. 1911, H. Beveridge’s Oriental Cross-bows.

[557] In the margin of the Elph. Codex, here, stands a Persian verse which appears more likely to be Humāyūn’s than Bābur’s. It is as follows:

Were the Mughūl race angels, they would be bad;

Written in gold, the name Mughūl would be bad;

Pluck not an ear from the Mughūl’s corn-land,

What is sown with Mughūl seed will be bad.