The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[966] Three MSS. of the Turkī text write bīr sīmīzlūq tīwah; but the two Persian translations have yak shuturlūq farbīh, a shuturlūq being a baggage-camel with little hair (Erskine).

[967]brochettes, meat cut into large mouthfuls, spitted and roasted.

[968] Perhaps he was officially an announcer; the word means also bearer of good news.

[969]yīlāng, without mail, as in the common phrase yīgīt yīlāng, a bare brave.

[970]aūpchīn, of horse and man (f. 113b and note).

[971] Manifestly Bābur means that he twice actually helped to collect the booty.

[972] This is that part of a horse covered by the two side-pieces of a Turkī saddle, from which the side-arch springs on either side (Shaw).

[973]Bārān-nīng ayāghī. Except the river I have found nothing called Bārān; the village marked Baian on the French Map would suit the position; it is n.e. of Chār-yak-kār (f. 184b note).

[974]i.e. prepared to fight.

[975] For the Hazāra (Turkī, Mīng) on the Mīrzā’s road see Raverty’s routes from Ghaznī to the north. An account given by the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 196) of Jahāngīr’s doings is confused; its parenthetical “(at the same time)” can hardly be correct. Jahāngīr left Ghaznī now, (911 AH.), as Bābur left Kābul in 912 AH. without knowledge of Ḥusain’s death (911 AH.). Bābur had heard it (f. 183b) before Jahāngīr joined him (912 AH.); after their meeting they went on together to Herī. The petition of which the T. R. speaks as made by Jahāngīr to Bābur, that he might go into Khurāsān and help the Bāī-qarā Mīrzās must have been made after the meeting of the two at Ṣaf-hill (f. 184b).

[976] The plurals they and their of the preceding sentence stand no doubt for the Mīrzā, Yūsuf and Buhlūl who all had such punishment due as would lead them to hear threat in Qāsim’s words now when all were within Bābur’s pounce.

[977] These are the aīmāqs from which the fighting-men went east with Bābur in 910 AH. and the families in which Nāṣir shepherded across Hindu-kush (f. 154 and f. 155).

[978]yamānlīk bīla bārdī; cf. f. 156b and n. for its opposite, yakhshī bārdīlār; and T. R. p. 196.

[979] One might be of mail, the other of wadded cloth.

[980] Chīn Ṣūfī was Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s man (T.R. p. 204). His arduous defence, faithfulness and abandonment recall the instance of a later time when also a long road stretched between the man and the help that failed him. But the Mīrzā was old, his military strength was, admittedly, sapped by ease; hence his elder Khartum, his neglect of his Gordon.

It should be noted that no mention of the page’s fatal arrow is made by the Shaibānī-nāma (Vambéry, p. 442), or by the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī (p. 204). Chīn Ṣūfī’s death was on the 21st of the Second Rabī 911 AH. (Aug. 22nd 1505 AD.).

[981] This may be the “Baboulei” of the French Map of 1904, on the Herī-Kushk-Marūchāq road.

[982] Elph. MS. f. 127; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 132 and 217 f. 111b; Mems. p. 175; Méms. i, 364.

That Bābur should have given his laborious account of the Court of Herī seems due both to loyalty to a great Tīmūrid, seated in Tīmūr Beg’s place (f. 122b), and to his own interest, as a man-of-letters and connoisseur in excellence, in that ruler’s galaxy of talent. His account here opening is not complete; its sources are various; they include the Ḥabību’s-siyār and what he will have learned himself in Herī or from members of the Bāī-qarā family, knowledgeable women some of them, who were with him in Hindūstān. The narrow scope of my notes shews that they attempt no more than to indicate further sources of information and to clear up a few obscurities.

[983] Tīmūr’s youngest son, d. 850 AH. (1446 AD.). Cf. Ḥ.S. iii, 203. The use in this sentence of Amīr and not Beg as Tīmūr’s title is, up to this point, unique in the Bābur-nāma; it may be a scribe’s error.

[984] Fīrūza’s paternal line of descent was as follows:—Fīrūza, daughter of Sl. Ḥusain Qānjūt, son of Ākā Begīm, daughter of Tīmūr. Her maternal descent was:—Fīrūza, d. of Qūtlūq-sult̤ān Begīm, d. of Mīrān-shāh, s. of Tīmūr. She died Muḥ. 24th 874 AH. (July 25th 1489 AD. Ḥ.S. iii, 218).

[985] “No-one in the world had such parentage”, writes Khwānd-amīr, after detailing the Tīmūrid, Chīngīz-khānid, and other noted strains meeting in Ḥusain Bāī-qarā (Ḥ.S. iii, 204).

[986] The Elph. MS. gives the Begīm no name; Badī‘u’l-jamāl is correct (Ḥ.S. iii, 242). The curious “Badka” needs explanation. It seems probable that Bābur left one of his blanks for later filling-in; the natural run of his sentence here is “Ākā B. and Badī‘u’l-jamāl B.” and not the detail, which follows in its due place, about the marriage with Aḥmad.

[987]Dīwān bāshīdā ḥāṣir būlmās aīdī; the sense of which may be that Bāī-qarā did not sit where the premier retainer usually sat at the head of the Court (Pers. trs. sar-i-dīwān).

[988] From this Wais and Sl. Ḥusain M.’s daughter Sult̤ānīm (f. 167b) were descended the Bāī-qarā Mīrzās who gave Akbar so much trouble.

[989] As this man might be mistaken for Bābur’s uncle (q.v.) of the same name, it may be well to set down his parentage. He was a s. of Mīrzā Sayyidī Aḥmad, s. of Mīrān-shāh, s. of Tīmūr (Ḥ.S. iii, 217, 241). I have not found mention elsewhere of “Aḥmad s. of Mīrān-shāh”; the sayyidī in his style points to a sayyida mother. He was Governor of Herī for a time, for Sl. H.M.; ‘Alī-sher has notices of him and of his son, Kīchīk Mīrzā (Journal Asiatique xvii, 293, M. Belin’s art. where may be seen notices of many other men mentioned by Bābur).

[990] He collected and thus preserved ‘Alī-sher’s earlier poems (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 294). Mu’inu’d-dīn al Zamji writes respectfully of his being worthy of credence in some Egyptian matters with which he became acquainted in twice passing through that country on his Pilgrimage (Journal Asiatique xvi, 476, de Meynard’s article).

[991] Kīchīk M.’s quatrain is a mere plagiarism of Jāmī’s which I am indebted to my husband for locating as in the Dīwān I.O. MS. 47 p. 47; B.M. Add. 7774 p. 290; and Add. 7775 p. 285. M. Belin interprets the verse as an expression of the rise of the average good man to mystical rapture, not as his lapse from abstinence to indulgence (l.c. xvii, 296 and notes).

[992] Elph. MS. younger but Ḥai. MS. older in which it is supported by the “also” (ham) of the sentence.

[993] modern Astrakhan. Ḥusain’s guerilla wars were those through which he cut his way to the throne of Herī. This begīm was married first to Pīr Budāgh Sl. (Ḥ.S. iii, 242); he dying, she was married by Aḥmad, presumably by levirate custom (yīnkālīk; f. 12 and note). By Aḥmad she had a daughter, styled Khān-zāda Begīm whose affairs find comment on f. 206 and Ḥ.S. iii, 359. (The details of this note negative a suggestion of mine that Badka was the Rābī‘a-sult̤ān of f. 168 (Gul-badan, App. s. nn.).)

[994] This is a felt wide-awake worn by travellers in hot weather (Shaw); the Turkmān bonnet (Erskine).

[995] Ḥai. MS. yamānlīk, badly, but Elph. MS. namāyan, whence Erskine’s showy.

[996] This was a proof that he was then a Shī‘a (Erskine).

[997] The word perform may be excused in speaking of Musalmān prayers because they involve ceremonial bendings and prostrations (Erskine).

[998] If Bābur’s 40 include rule in Herī only, it over-states, since Yādgār died in 875 AH. and Ḥusain in 911 AH. while the intervening 36 years include the 5 or 6 temperate ones. If the 40 count from 861 AH. when Ḥusain began to rule in Merv, it under-states. It is a round number, apparently.

[999] Relying on the Ilminsky text, Dr. Rieu was led into the mistake of writing that Bābur gave Ḥusain the wrong pen-name, i.e. Ḥusain, and not Ḥusainī (Turk. Cat. p. 256).

[1000] Daulat-shāh says that as he is not able to enumerate all Ḥusain’s feats-of-arms, he, Turkmān fashion, offers a gift of Nine. The Nine differ from those of Bābur’s list in some dates; they are also records of victory only (Browne, p. 521; Not. et Extr. iv, 262, de Saçy’s article).

[1001] Wolves'-water, a river and its town at the s.e. corner of the Caspian, the ancient boundary between Russia and Persia. The name varies a good deal in MSS.

[1002] The battle was at Tarshīz; Abū-sa‘īd was ruling in Herī; Daulat-shāh (l.c. p. 523) gives 90 and 10,000 as the numbers of the opposed forces!

[1003] f. 26b and note; Ḥ.S. iii, 209; Daulat-shāh p. 523.