The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[2709] This appears a large amount.

[2710] The precision with which the Rāja’s gifts are stated, points to a closely-contemporary and written source. A second such indication occurs later where gifts made to Hind-āl are mentioned.

[2711] An account of the events in Multān after its occupation by Shāh Ḥasan Arghūn is found in the latter part of the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī and in Erskine’s H. of I. i, 393 et seq.—It may be noted here that several instances of confusion amongst Bābur’s sons occur in the extracts made by Sir H. Elliot and Professor Dowson in their History of India from the less authoritative sources [e.g. v, 35 Kāmrān for Humāyūn, ‘Askarī said to be in Kābul (pp. 36 and 37); Hind-āl for Humāyūn etc.] and that these errors have slipped into several of the District Gazetteers of the United Provinces.

[2712] As was said of the offering made by the Rāja of Kahlūr, the precision of statement as to what was given to Hind-āl, bespeaks a closely-contemporary written source. So too does the mention (text, infra) of the day on which Bābur began his return journey from Lāhor.

[2713] Cf. G. of I. xvi, 55; Ibbetson’s Report on Karnāl.

[2714] It is noticeable that no one of the three royal officers named as sent against Mohan Mundāhir, is recognizable as mentioned in the Bābur-nāma. They may all have had local commands, and not have served further east. Perhaps this, their first appearance, points to the origin of the information as independent of Bābur, but he might have been found to name them, if his diary were complete for 936 AH.

[2715] The E. and D. translation writes twice as though the inability to “pull” the bows were due to feebleness in the men, but an appropriate reading would refer the difficulty to the hardening of sinews in the composite Turkish bows, which prevented the archers from bending the bows for stringing.

[2716] One infers that fires were burned all night in the bivouac.

[2717] At this point the A.S.B. copy (No. 137) of the Tārīkh-i-salāt̤in-i-afāghana has a remark which may have been a marginal note originally, and which cannot be supposed made by Aḥmad-i-yādgār himself because this would allot him too long a spell of life. It may show however that the interpolations about the two Tīmūrids were not inserted in his book by him. Its purport is that the Mundāhir village destroyed by Bābur’s troops in 936 AH.-1530 AD. was still in ruins at the time it was written 160 (lunar) years later (i.e. in 1096 AH.-1684-85 AD.). The better Codex (No. 3887) of the Imperial Library of Calcutta has the same passage.—Both that remark and its context show acquaintance with Samāna and Kaithal.—The writings now grouped under the title Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afāghana present difficulties both as to date and contents (cf. Rieu’s Persian Catalogue s. n.).

[2718] Presumably in Tihrind.

[2719] Cf. G. B.’s H. N. trs. and the Akbar-nāma Bib. Ind. ed. and trs., Index s.nn.; Hughes’ Dictionary of Islām s.n. Intercession.

[2720] A closer translation would be, “I have taken up the burden.” The verb is bardāshtan (cf. f. 349, p. 626 n. 1).

[2721]See Erskine’s History of India ii, 9.

[2722] At this point attention is asked to the value of the Aḥmad-i-yādgār interpolation which allows Bābur a year of active life before Humāyūn’s illness and his own which followed. With no chronicle known of 936 AH. Bābur had been supposed ill all through the year, a supposition which destroys the worth of his self-sacrifice. Moreover several inferences have been drawn from the supposed year of illness which are disproved by the activities recorded in that interpolation.

[2723] E. and D.’s History of India v, 187; G. B.’s Humāyūn-nāma trs. p. 28.

[2724]dar khidmat-i-dīwānī-i-buyūtāt; perhaps he was a Barrack-officer. His appointment explains his attendance on Khalīfa.

[2725] Khalīfa prescribed for the sick Bābur.

[2726]khānwāda-i-bīgānah, perhaps, foreign dynasty.

[2727] From Saṃbhal; Gul-badan, by an anachronism made some 60 years later, writes Kālanjar, to which place Humāyūn moved 5 months after his accession.

[2728] I am indebted to my husband’s perusal of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān’s As̤ār-i-ṣanādīd (Dihlī ed. 1854 p. 37, and Lakhnau ed. 1895 pp. 40, 41) for information that, perhaps in 935 AH., Mahdī Khwāja set up a tall slab of white marble near Amīr Khusrau’s tomb in Dihlī, which bears an inscription in praise of the poet, composed by that Shihābu’d-dīn the Enigmatist who reached Āgra with Khwānd-amīr in Muḥarram 935 AH. (f. 339b). The inscription gives two chronograms of Khusrau’s death (725 AH.), mentions that Mahdī Khwāja was the creator of the memorial, and gives its date in the words, “The beautiful effort of Mahdī Khwāja.”—The Dihlī ed. of the As̤ār-i-ṣanādīd depicts the slab with its inscription; the Lakhnau ed. depicts the tomb, may show the slab in sitû, and contains interesting matter by Sayyid Aḥmad Khān. The slab is mentioned without particulars in Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal, p. 329.

[2729] Lee’s Ibn Batuta p. 133 and Hirāman’s Tārīkh-i-gūālīārī. Cf. G. B.’s Humāyūn-nāma trs. (1902 AD.), Appendix B.—Mahdī Khwāja.

[2730] In an anonymous Life of Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī, Mahdī Khwāja [who may be a son of the Mūsa Khwāja mentioned by Bābur on f. 216] is described as being, in what will be 916-7 AH., Bābur’s Dīwān-begī and as sent towards Bukhārā with 10,000 men. This was 29 years before the story calls him a young man. Even if the word jawān (young man) be read, as T. yīgīt is frequently to be read, in the sense of “efficient fighting man”, Mahdī was over-age. Other details of the story, besides the word jawān, bespeak a younger man.

[2731] G. B.’s H. N. trs. p. 126; Ḥabību’s-siyar, B. M. Add. 16,679 f. 370, l. 16, lith. ed. Sec. III. iii, 372 (where a clerical error makes Bābur give Māhdī two of his full-sisters in marriage).—Another yazna of Bābur was Khalīfā’s brother Junaid Barlās, the husband of Shahr-bānū, a half-sister of Bābur.

[2732] Bābur, shortly before his death, married Gul-rang to Aīsān-tīmūr and Gul-chihra to Tūkhta-būghā Chaghatāī. Cf. post, Section h, Bābur’s wives and children; and G. B.’s H. N. trs. Biographical Appendix s.nn. Dil-dār Begīm and Salīma Sult̤ān Begīm Mirān-shāhi.

[2733] Cf. G. B.’s H. N. trs. p. 147.

[2734] She is the only adult daughter of a Tīmūrid mother named as being such by Bābur or Gul-badan, but various considerations incline to the opinion that Dil-dār Begīm also was a Tīmūrid, hence her three daughters, all named from the Rose, were so too. Cf. references of penultimate note.

[2735] It attaches interest to the Mīrzā that he can be taken reasonably as once the owner of the Elphinstone Codex (cf. JRAS. 1907, pp. 136 and 137).

[2736] Death did not threaten when this gift was made; life in Kābul was planned for.—Here attention is asked again to the value of Aḥmad-i-yādgār’s Bāburiana for removing the impression set on many writers by the blank year 936 AH. that it was one of illness, instead of being one of travel, hunting and sight-seeing. The details of the activities of that year have the further value that they enhance the worth of Bābur’s sacrifice of life.—Ḥaidar Mīrzā also fixes the date of the beginning of illness as 937 AH.

[2737] The author, or embroiderer, of that anonymous story did not know the Bābur-nāma well, or he would not have described Bābur as a wine-drinker after 933 AH. The anecdote is parallel with Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad’s, the one explaining why the Mīrzā was selected, the other why the dāmād was dropped.

[2738]Bib. Ind. i, 341; Ranking’s trs. p. 448.

[2739] The night-guard; perhaps Māhīm Begīm’s brother (G. B.’s H. N. trs. pp. 27-8).

[2740] G. B.’s H. N. trs. f. 34b, p. 138; Jauhar’s Memoirs of Humāyūn, Stewart’s trs. p. 82.

[2741] Cf. G. B.’s H. N. trs. p. 216, Bio. App. s.n. Bega Begam.

[2742] f. 128, p. 200 n. 3. Cf. Appendix U.—Bābur’s Gardens in and near Kābul.

[2743] Cf. H. H. Hayden’s Notes on some monuments in Afghānistān, [Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal ii, 344]; and Journal asiatique 1888, M. J. Darmesteter’s art. Inscriptions de Caboul.

[2744]ān, a demonstrative suggesting that it refers to an original inscription on the second, but now absent, upright slab, which presumably would bear Bābur’s name.

[2745] Ruẓwān is the door-keeper of Paradise.

[2746] Particulars of the women mentioned by Bābur, Ḥaidar, Gul-badan and other writers of their time, can be seen in my Biographical Appendix to the Begīm’s Humāyūn-nāma. As the Appendix was published in 1902, variants from it occurring in this work are corrections superseding earlier and less-informed statements.

[2747]Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs. Ney Elias and Ross p. 308.

[2748] Bio. App. s.n. Gul-chihra.