The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1081]Tarkhān-nāma, E. & D.’s History of India i, 303; Ḥ.S. iii, 227.

[1082] f. 41 and note.

[1083] Both places are in the valley of the Herī-rūd.

[1084] Badī‘u’z-zamān married a daughter of Ẕū’n-nūn; she died in 911 AH. (E. & D. i, 305; Ḥ.S. iii, 324).

[1085] This indicates, both amongst Musalmāns and Hindūs, obedience and submission. Several instances occur in Macculloch’s Bengali Household Stories.

[1086] T.R. p. 205.

[1087] This is an idiom expressive of great keenness (Erskine).

[1088] Ḥ.S. iii, 250, kitābdār, librarian; so too Ḥai. MS. f. 174b.

[1089]mutaiyam (f. 7b and note). Mīr Mughūl Beg was put to death for treachery in ‘Irāq (Ḥ.S. iii, 227, 248).

[1090] Bābur speaks as an eye-witness (f. 187b). For a single combat of Sayyid Badr, Ḥ. S. iii, 233.

[1091] f. 157 and note to bātmān.

[1092] A level field in which a gourd (qabaq) is set on a pole for an archer’s mark to be hit in passing at the gallop (f. 18b and note).

[1093] Or possibly during the gallop the archer turned in the saddle and shot backwards.

[1094] Junaid was the father of Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī, Bābur’s Khalīfa (Vice-gerent). That Khalīfa was of a religious house on his mother’s side may be inferred from his being styled both Sayyid and Khwāja neither of which titles could have come from his Turkī father. His mother may have been a sayyida of one of the religious families of Marghīnān (f. 18 and note), since Khalīfa’s son Muḥibb-i-‘alī writes his father’s name “Niz̤āmu’d-din ‘Alī Marghīlānī” (Marghīnānī) in the Preface of his Book on Sport (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 485).

[1095] This northward migration would take the family into touch with Bābur’s in Samarkand and Farghāna.

[1096] He was left in charge of Jaunpūr in Rabī‘ I, 933 AH. (Jan. 1527 AD.) but exchanged for Chunār in Ramẓān 935 AH. (June 1529 AD.); so that for the writing of this part of the Bābur-nāma we have the major and minor limits of Jan. 1527 and June 1529.

[1097] Ḥ.S. iii, 227.

[1098]See Appendix H, On the counter-mark Bih-būd on coins.

[1099] Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Amīr Shaikh Aḥmadu’s-suhailī was surnamed Suhailī through a fāl (augury) taken by his spiritual guide, Kamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain Gāzur-gāhī; it was he induced Ḥusain Kashīfī to produce his Anwār-i-suhailī (Lights of Canopus) (f. 125 and note; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 756; and for a couplet of his, Ḥ.S. iii, 242 l. 10).

[1100] Index s.n.

[1101] Did the change complete an analogy between ‘Alī Jalāīr and his (perhaps) elder son with ‘Alī Khalīfa and his elder son Ḥasan?

[1102] The Qūsh-begī is, in Central Asia, a high official who acts for an absent ruler (Shaw); he does not appear to be the Falconer, for whom Bābur’s name is Qūshchī (f. 15 n.).

[1103] He received this sobriquet because when he returned from an embassy to the Persian Gulf, he brought, from Bahrein, to his Tīmūrid master a gift of royal pearls (Sām Mīrzā). For an account of Marwārīd see Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 1094 and (re portrait) p. 787.

[1104] Sām Mīrzā specifies this affliction as ābla-i-farang, thus making what may be one of the earliest Oriental references to morbus gallicus [as de Saçy here translates the name], the foreign or European pox, the “French disease of Shakespeare” (H.B.).

[1105] Index s.n. Yūsuf.

[1106] Ramẓān 3rd 918 AH.-Nov. 12th 1512.

[1107]i.e. of the White-sheep Turkmāns.

[1108] His paternal line was, ‘Abdu’l-bāqī, son of ‘Us̤mān, son of Sayyidī Aḥmad, son of Mīrān-shāh. His mother’s people were begs of the White-sheep (Ḥ.S. iii, 290).

[1109] Sult̤ānīm had married Wais (f. 157) not later than 895 or 896 AH. (Ḥ. S. iii, 253); she married ‘Abdu’l-bāqī in 908 AH. (1502-3 AD.).

[1110] Sayyid Shamsu’d-dīn Muḥammad, Mīr Sayyid Sar-i-barahna owed his sobriquet of Bare-head to love-sick wanderings of his youth (Ḥ.S. iii, 328). The Ḥ.S. it is clear, recognizes him as a sayyid.

[1111] Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 760; it is immensely long and “filled with tales that shock all probability” (Erskine).

[1112] f. 94 and note. Sl. Ḥusain M. made him curator of Anṣārī’s shrine, an officer represented, presumably, by Col. Yate’s “Mīr of Gāzur-gāh”, and he became Chief Justice in 904 AH. (1498-99 AD.). See Ḥ.S. iii, 330 and 340; JASB 1887, art. On the city of Harāt (C. E. Yate) p. 85.

[1113]mutasauwif, perhaps meaning not a professed Ṣūfī.

[1114] He was of high birth on both sides, of religious houses of T̤abas and Nishāpūr (D.S. pp. 161, 163).

[1115] In agreement with its preface, Dr. Rieu entered the book as written by Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā; in his Addenda, however, he quotes Bābur as the authority for its being by Gāzur-gāhī; Khwānd-amīr’s authority can be added to Bābur’s (Ḥ.S. 340; Pers. Cat. pp. 351, 1085).

[1116]Dīwān. The Wazīr is a sort of Minister of Finance; the Dīwān is the office of revenue receipts and issues (Erskine).

[1117] a secretary who writes out royal orders (Ḥ.S. iii, 244).

[1118] Count von Noer’s words about a cognate reform of later date suit this man’s work, it also was “a bar to the defraudment of the Crown, a stumbling-block in the path of avaricious chiefs” (Emperor Akbar trs. i, 11). The opposition made by ‘Alī-sher to reform so clearly to Ḥusain’s gain and to Ḥusain’s begs’ loss, stirs the question, “What was the source of his own income?” Up to 873 AH. he was for some years the dependant of Aḥmad Ḥājī Beg; he took nothing from the Mīrzā, but gave to him; he must have spent much in benefactions. The question may have presented itself to M. Belin for he observes, “‘Alī-sher qui sans doute, à son retour de l’exil, recouvra l’héritage de ses pères, et depuis occupa de hautes positions dans le gouvernement de son pays, avait acquis une grande fortune” (J. Asiatique xvii, 227). While not contradicting M. Belin’s view that vested property such as can be described as “paternal inheritance”, may have passed from father to son, even in those days of fugitive prosperity and changing appointments, one cannot but infer, from Nawā’i’s opposition to Majdu’d-dīn, that he, like the rest, took a partial view of the “rights” of the cultivator.

[1119] This was in 903 AH. after some 20 years of service (Ḥ.S. iii, 231; Ethé I.O. Cat. p. 252).

[1120] Amīr Jamālu’d-dīn ‘Atā’u’l-lāh, known also as Jamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain, wrote a History of Muhammad (Ḥ.S. iii, 345; Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 147 & (a correction) p. 1081).