The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

Some modern writers, amongst whom are Dr. Schuyler, General Nalivkine and Mr. Pumpelly, have inferred from the Bābur-nāma account of Akhsī, (in its translations?) that the landslip through which Bābur’s father died and the disappearance of old Akhsī were brought about by erosion. Seen by the light of modern information, this erosion theory does not seem to cover the whole ground and some other cause seems necessary in explanation of both events.

(b) Erskine (p. 5, translating from the Persian): ‘The river Saiḥūn flows under the walls of the castle. The castle is situated on a high precipice, and the steep ravines around serve instead of a moat. When U. Sh. M. made it his capital he, in one or two instances, scarped the ravines outside the fort.’

(c) De Courteille (i, 8, translating from Ilminsky’s imprint, p. 6): ‘Le Seihoun coule au pied de la fortresse qui se dresse sur le sommet d’un ravin, dont les profondeurs lui tiennent lieu d’un fossé. ‘U. Sh. M. à l'époque où il en avait fait son capitale, avait augmenté à une ou deux réprises, les escarpements qui la ceignent naturellement.’

Maẕkūr būlūb aīdī kīm Akhsī qūrghānī buland jar austīdā wāqi‘ būlūb tūr. ‘Imāratlār jar yāqāsīdā aīrdī.... Mīrzā jardīn kabūtar ukabūtar-khāna bīla aūchūb shunqār būldī;—'It has been mentioned that the walled-town of Akhsī is situated above ravine(s). The royal dwellings are along a ravine. The Mīrzā, having flown with his pigeons and their house from the ravine, became a falcon (i.e. died).’

The name Akhsī, as used by Ibn Haukal, Yāqūt and Bābur, describes an oasis township, i.e. a walled-town with its adjacent cultivated lands. In Yāqūt’s time Akhsī had a second circumvallation, presumably less for defence than for the protection of crops against wild animals. The oasis was created by the Kāsān-water,2750 upon the riverain loess of the right and higher bank of the Saiḥūn (Sīr), on level ground west of the junction of the Nārīn and the Qarā-daryā, west too of spurs from the northern hills which now abut upon the river. Yāqūt locates it in the 12th century, at one farsākh (circa 4 m.) north of the river.2751 Depending as it did solely on the Kāsān-water, nothing dictated its location close to the Sīr, along which there is now, and there seems to have been in the 12th century, a strip of waste land. Bābur says of Akhsī what Kostenko says (i, 321) of modern Tāshkīnt, that it stood above ravines (jarlār). These were natural or artificial channels of the Kāsān-water.2752

To turn now to the translations;—Mr. Erskine imaged Akhsī as a castle, high on a precipice in process of erosion by the Sīr. But Bābur’s word, qūrghān means the walled-town; his word for a castle is ark, citadel; and his jar, a cleft, is not rendered by ‘precipice.’ Again;—it is no more necessary to understand that the Sīr flowed close to the walls than it is to understand, when one says the Thames flows past below Richmond, that it washes the houses on the hill.

The key to the difficulties in the Turkī passage is provided by a special use of the word jar for not only natural ravines but artificial water-cuts for irrigation. This use of it makes clear that what ‘Umar Shaikh did at Akhsī was not to make escarpments but to cut new water-channels. Presumably he joined those ‘further out’ on the deltaic fan, on the east and west of the town, so as to secure a continuous defensive cleft round the town2753 or it may be, in order to bring it more water.

Concerning the historic pigeon-house (f. 6b), it can be said safely that it did not fall into the Sīr; it fell from a jar, and in this part of its course, the river flows in a broad bed, with a low left bank. Moreover the Mīrzā’s residence was in the walled-town (f. 110b) and there his son stayed 9 years after the accident. The slip did not affect the safety of the residence therefore; it may have been local to the birds’ house. It will have been due to some ordinary circumstance since no cause for it is mentioned by Bābur, Ḥaidar or Abū’l-faẓl. If it had marked the crisis of the Sīr’s approach, Akhsī could hardly have been described, 25 years later, as a strong fort.

Something is known of Akhsī, in the 10th, the 12th, the 15th and the 19th centuries, which testifies to sæcular decadence. Ibn Haukal and Yāqūt give the township an extent of 3 farsākh (12 miles), which may mean from one side to an opposite one. Yāqūt’s description of it mentions four gates, each opening into well-watered lands extending a whole farsākh, in other words it had a ring of garden-suburb four miles wide.

Two meanings have been given to Bābur’s words indicating the status of the oasis in the 15th century. They are, maḥallātī qūrghān-dīn bīr shar‘ī yurāqrāq tūshūb tūr. They have been understood as saying that the suburbs were two miles from their urbs. This may be right but I hesitate to accept it without pointing out that the words may mean, ‘Its suburbs extend two miles farther than the walled-town.’ Whichever verbal reading is correct, reveals a decayed oasis.

It is necessary to say something further about the position of the suburbs in the 15th century. Bābur quotes as especially suitable to Akhsī, the proverbial questions, ‘Where is the village?'2754 (qy. Akhsī-kīnt.) ‘Where are the trees?’ and these might be asked by some-one in the suburbs unable to see Akhsī or vice versâ. But granting that there were no suburbs within two miles of the town, why had the whole inner circle, two miles of Yāqūt’s four, gone out of cultivation? Erosion would have affected only land between the river and the town.

Various ingatherings of information create the impression that failure of Kāsān-water has been the dominant factor in the loss of the Akhsī township. Such failure might be due to the general desiccation of Central Asia and also to increase of cultivation in the Kāsān-valley itself. There may have been erosion, and social and military change may have had its part, but for the loss of the oasis lands and for, as a sequel, the decay of the town, desiccation seems a sufficient cause.