The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1004] The loser was the last Shāhrukhī ruler. Chanārān (variants) is near Abīward, Anwārī’s birth-place (Ḥ.S. iii, 218; D.S. p. 527).

[1005] f. 85. D.S. (p. 540) and the Ḥ.S. (iii, 223) dwell on Ḥusain’s speed through three continuous days and nights.

[1006] f. 26; Ḥ.S. iii, 227; D.S. p. 532.

[1007] Abū-sa‘īd’s son by a Badakhshī Begīm (T.R. p. 108); he became his father’s Governor in Badakhshān and married Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s daughter Begīm Sultān at a date after 873 AH. (f. 168 and note; Ḥ.S. iii, 196, 229, 234-37; D.S. p. 535).

[1008] f. 152.

[1009] Abā-bikr was defeated and put to death at the end of Rajah 884 AH.-Oct. 1479 AD. after flight before Ḥusain across the Gurgān-water (Ḥ.S. iii, 196 and 237 but D.S. p. 539, Ṣafar 885 AH.).

[1010] f. 41, Pul-i-chirāgh; for Halwā-spring, Ḥ.S. iii, 283 and Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 443.

[1011] f. 33 (p. 57) and f. 57b.

[1012] In commenting thus Bābur will have had in mind what he best knew, Ḥusain’s futile movements at Qūndūz and Ḥiṣār.

[1013]qālīb aīdī; if qālīb be taken as Turkī, survived or remained, it would not apply here since many of Ḥusain’s children predeceased him; Ar. qālab would suit, meaning begotten, born.

There are discrepancies between Bābur’s details here and Khwānd-amīr’s scattered through the Ḥabību’s-siyār, concerning Ḥusain’s family.

[1014]bī ḥuẓūrī, which may mean aversion due to Khadīja Begīm’s malevolence.

[1015] Some of the several goings into ‘Irāq chronicled by Bābur point to refuge taken with Tīmūrids, descendants of Khalīl and ‘Umar, sons of Mirān-shāh (Lane-Poole’s Muhammadan Dynasties, Table of the Tīmūrids).

[1016] He died before his father (Ḥ.S. iii, 327).

[1017] He will have been killed previous to Ramẓān 3rd 918 AH. (Nov. 12th, 1512 AD.), the date of the battle of Ghaj-dawān when Nijm S̱ānī died.

[1018] The bund here may not imply that both were in prison, but that they were bound in close company, allowing Ismā‘īl, a fervent Shī‘a, to convert the Mīrzā.

[1019] The bātmān is a Turkish weight of 13lbs (Meninsky) or 15lbs (Wollaston). The weight seems likely to refer to the strength demanded for rounding the bow (kamān guroha-sī) i.e. as much strength as to lift 40 bātmāns. Rounding or bending might stand for stringing or drawing. The meaning can hardly be one of the weight of the cross-bow itself. Erskine read gūrdehieh for guroha (p. 180) and translated by “double-stringed bow”; de Courteille (i, 373) read guirdhiyeh, arrondi, circulaire, in this following Ilminsky who may have followed Erskine. The Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. and the first W.-i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 113b) have kamān guroha-sī; the second W.-i-B. omits the passage, in the MSS. I have seen.

[1020]yakhshīlār bārīb tūr; lit. good things went (on); cf. f. 156b and note.

[1021] Badī‘u’z-zamān’s son, drowned at Chausa in 946 AH. (1539 AD.) A.N. (H. Beveridge, i, 344).

[1022] Qalāt-i-nādirī, in Khurāsān, the birth-place of Nādir Shāh (T.R. p. 209).

[1023]bīr gīna qīz, which on f. 86b can fitly be read to mean daughterling, Töchterchen, fillette, but here and i.a. f. 168, must have another meaning than diminutive and may be an equivalent of German Stück and mean one only. Gul-badan gives an account of Shād’s manly pursuits (H.N. f. 25b).

[1024] He was the son of Mahdī Sl. (f. 320b) and the father of ‘Āqil Sl. Aūzbeg (A.N. index s.n.). Several matters suggest that these men were of the Shabān Aūzbegs who intermarried with Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s family and some of whom went to Bābur in Hindūstān. One such matter is that Kābul was the refuge of dispossessed Harātīs, after the Aūzbeg conquest; that there ‘Āqil married Shād Bāī-qarā and that ‘Ādil went on to Bābur. Moreover Khāfī Khān makes a statement which (if correct) would allow ‘Ādil’s father Mahdī to be a grandson of Ḥusain Bāī-qarā; this statement is that when Bābur defeated the Aūzbegs in 916 AH. (1510 AD.), he freed from their captivity two sons (descendants) of his paternal uncle, named Mahdī Sl. and Sult̤ān Mīrzā. [Leaving the authenticity of the statement aside for a moment, it will be observed that this incident is of the same date and place as another well-vouched for, namely that Bābur then and there killed Mahdī Sl. Aūzbeg and Ḥamza Sl. Aūzbeg after defeating them.] What makes in favour of Khāfī Khān’s correctness is, not only that Bābur’s foe Mahdī is not known to have had a son ‘Ādil, but also that his “Sulṯān Mīrzā” is not a style so certainly suiting Ḥamza as it does a Shabān sult̤ān, one whose father was a Shabān sult̤ān, and whose mother was a Mīrzā’s daughter. Moreover this point of identification is pressed by the correctness, according to oriental statement of relationship, of Khāfī Khān’s “paternal uncle” (of Bābur), because this precisely suits Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā with whose family these Shabān sult̤āns allied themselves.

On the other hand it must be said that Khāfī Khān’s statement is not in the English text of the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, the book on which he mostly relies at this period, nor is it in my husband’s MS. [a copy from the Rampūr Codex]; and to this must be added the verbal objection that a modicum of rhetoric allows a death to be described both in Turkī and Persian, as a release from the captivity of a sinner’s own acts (f. 160). Still Khāfī Khān may be right; his statement may yet be found in some other MS. of the T. R. or some different source; it is one a scribe copying the T. R. might be led to omit by reason of its coincidences. The killing and the release may both be right; ‘Ādil’s Mahdī may be the Shabān sult̤ān inference makes him seem. This little crux presses home the need of much attention to the lacunæ in the Bābur-nāma, since in them are lost some exits and some entries of Bābur’s dramatis personæ, pertinently, mention of the death of Mahdī with Ḥamza in 916 AH., and possibly also that of ‘Ādil’s Mahdī’s release.

[1025] A chār-t̤āq may be a large tent rising into four domes or having four porches.

[1026] Ḥ.S. iii, 367.

[1027] This phrase, common but not always selected, suggests unwillingness to leave the paternal roof.

[1028] Abū’l-ghāzī’s History of the Mughūls, Désmaisons, p. 207.

[1029] The appointment was made in 933 AH. (1527 AD.) and seems to have been held still in 934 AH. (ff. 329, 332).

[1030] This grandson may have been a child travelling with his father’s household, perhaps Aūlūgh Mīrzā, the oldest son of Muḥammad Sult̤ān Mīrzā (A. A. Blochmann, p. 461). No mention is made here of Sult̤ānīm Begīm’s marriage with ‘Abdu’l-bāqī Mīrzā (f. 175).

[1031] Abū’l-qāsim Bābur Shāhrukhī presumably.

[1032] The time may have been 902 AH. when Mas‘ūd took his sister Bega Begīm to Herī for her marriage with Ḥaidar (Ḥ.S. iii, 260).

[1033] Khwāja Aḥmad Yāsawī, known as Khwāja Ātā, founder of the Yāsawī religious order.

[1034] Not finding mention of a daughter of Abū-sa‘id named Rābī‘a-sult̤ān, I think she may be the daughter styled Āq Begīm who is No. 3 in Gul-badan’s guest-list for the Mystic Feast.

[1035] This man I take to be Ḥusain’s grandfather and not brother, both because ‘Abdu’l-lāh was of Ḥusain’s and his brother’s generation, and also because of the absence here of Bābur’s usual defining words “elder brother” (of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā). In this I have to differ from Dr. Rieu (Pers. Cat. p. 152).

[1036] So-named after his ancestor Sayyid Barka whose body was exhumed from Andikhūd for reburial in Samarkand, by Tīmūr’s wish and there laid in such a position that Tīmūr’s body was at its feet (Z̤afar-nāma ii, 719; Ḥ.S. iii, 82). (For the above interesting detail I am indebted to my husband.)

[1037]Qīzīl-bāsh, Persians wearing red badges or caps to distinguish them as Persians.

[1038] Yādgār-i-farrukh Mīrān-shāhī (Ḥ.S. iii, 327). He may have been one of those Mīrān-shāhīs of ‘Irāq from whom came Ākā’s and Sult̤ānīm’s husbands, Aḥmad and ‘Abdu’l-bāqī (ff. 164, 175b).

[1039] This should be four (f. 169b). The Ḥ.S. (iii, 327) also names three only when giving Pāpā Āghācha’s daughters (the omission linking it with the B.N.), but elsewhere (iii, 229) it gives an account of a fourth girl’s marriage; this fourth is needed to make up the total of 11 daughters. Bābur’s and Khwānd-amīr’s details of Pāpā Āghācha’s quartette are defective; the following may be a more correct list:—(1) Begīm Sult̤ān (a frequent title), married to Abā-bikr Mīrān-shāhī (who died 884 AH.) and seeming too old to be the one [No. 3] who married Mas‘ūd (Ḥ.S. iii, 229); (2) Sult̤ān-nizhād, married to Iskandar Bāī-qarā; (3) Sa‘ādat-bakht also known as Begīm Sult̤ān, married to Mas’ūd Mīrān-shāhī (Ḥ.S. iii, 327); (4) Manauwar-sult̤ān, married to a son of Aūlūgh Beg Kābulī (Ḥ.S. iii, 327).

[1040] This “after” seems to contradict the statement (f. 58) that Mas‘ūd was made to kneel as a son-in-law (kūyādlīk-kā yūkūndūrūb) at a date previous to his blinding, but the seeming contradiction may be explained by considering the following details; he left Herī hastily (f. 58), went to Khusrau Shāh and was blinded by him,—all in the last two months of 903 AH. (1498 AD.), after the kneeling on Ẕū’l-qa‘da 3rd, (June 23rd) in the Ravens'-garden. Here what Bābur says is that the Begīm was given (bīrīb) after the blinding, the inference allowed being that though Mas‘ūd had kneeled before the blinding, she had remained in her father’s house till his return after the blinding.

[1041] The first W.-i-B. writes “Apāq Begīm” (I.O. 215 f. 136) which would allow Sayyid Mīrzā to be a kinsman of Apāq Begīm, wife of Ḥusain Bāī-qarā.