LITMIR.BIZ

553

Kostenko, i, 344, would make the rounds 9 m.

554

bīr yūz ātliqnīng ātinī nāwak aūqī bīla yakhshī atīm. This has been read by Erskine as though būz āt, pale horse, and not yūz ātlīq, Centurion, were written. De. C. translates by Centurion and a marginal note of the Elph. Codex explains yūz ātlīq by ṣad aspagī.

555

The Sh. N. gives the reverse side of the picture, the plenty enjoyed by the besiegers.

556

He may have been attached to the tomb of Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh Anṣārī in Harāt.

557

The brusque entry here and elsewhere of e. g. Taṃbal’s affairs, allows the inference that Bābur was quoting from perhaps a news-writer’s, contemporary records. For a different view of Taṃbal, the Sh. N. cap. xxxiii should be read.

558

Five-villages, on the main Khujand-Tāshkīnt road.

559

turk, as on f. 28 of Khusrau Shāh.

560

Elph. MS. f. 68b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 78 and 217 f. 61b; Mems. p. 97.

The Kehr-Ilminsky text shews, in this year, a good example of its Persification and of Dr. Ilminsky’s dealings with his difficult archetype by the help of the Memoirs.

561

tāshlāb. The Sh. N. places these desertions as after four months of siege.

562

It strikes one as strange to find Long Ḥasan described, as here, in terms of his younger brother. The singularity may be due to the fact that Ḥusain was with Bābur and may have invited Ḥasan. It may be noted here that Ḥusain seems likely to be that father-in-law of ‘Umar Shaikh mentioned on f. 12b and 13b.

563

This laudatory comment I find nowhere but in the Ḥai. Codex.

564

There is some uncertainty about the names of those who left.

565

The Sh. N. is interesting here as giving an eye-witness’ account of the surrender of the town and of the part played in the surrender by Khān-zāda’s marriage (cap. xxxix).

566

The first seems likely to be a relation of Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī Khalīfa; the second was Mole-marked, a foster-sister. The party numbered some 100 persons of whom Abū’l-makāram was one (Ḥ.S. ii, 310).

567

Bābur’s brevity is misleading; his sister was not captured but married with her own and her mother’s consent before attempt to leave the town was made. Cf. Gul-badan’s H.N. f. 3b and Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 145.

568

The route taken avoided the main road for Dīzak; it can be traced by the physical features, mentioned by Bābur, on the Fr. map of 1904. The Sh. N. says the night was extraordinarily dark. Departure in blinding darkness and by unusual ways shews distrust of Shaibāq’s safe-conduct suggesting that Yaḥyā’s fate was in the minds of the fugitives.

569

The texts differ as to whether the last two lines are prose or verse. All four are in Turkī, but I surmise a clerical error in the refrain of the third, where būlūb is written for būldī.

570

The second was in 908 AH. (f. 18b); the third in 914 AH. (f. 216 b); the fourth is not described in the B.N.; it followed Bābur’s defeat at Ghaj-diwān in 918 AH. (Erskine’s History of India, i, 325). He had a fifth, but of a different kind, when he survived poison in 933 AH. (f. 305).

571

Ḥai. MS. qāqāsrāq; Elph. MS. yānasrāq.

572

ātūn, one who instructs in reading, writing and embroidery. Cf. Gulbadan’s H.N. f. 26. The distance walked may have been 70 or 80 m.

573

She was the wife of the then Governor of Aūrā-tīpā, Muḥ. Ḥusain Dūghlāt.

574

It may be noted here that in speaking of these elder women Bābur uses the honorific plural, a form of rare occurrence except for such women, for saintly persons and exceptionally for The supreme Khān. For his father he has never used it.

575

This name has several variants. The village lies, in a valley-bottom, on the Aq-sū and on a road. See Kostenko, i, 119.

576

She had been divorced from Shaibānī in order to allow him to make legal marriage with her niece, Khān-zāda.

577

Amongst the variants of this name, I select the modern one. Macha is the upper valley of the Zar-afshān.

578

Tīmūr took Dihlī in 801 AH. (Dec. 1398), i. e. 103 solar and 106 lunar years earlier. The ancient dame would then have been under 5 years old. It is not surprising therefore that in repeating her story Bābur should use a tense betokening hear-say matter (bārib īkān dūr).

579

The anecdote here following, has been analysed in JRAS 1908, p. 87, in order to show warrant for the opinion that parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky text are retranslations from the Persian W. – i-B.

580

Amongst those thus leaving seem to have been Qaṃbar-‘alī (f. 99b).

581

Cf. f. 107 foot.

582

The Sh. N. speaks of the cold in that winter (Vambéry, p. 160). It was unusual for the Sīr to freeze in this part of its course (Sh. N. p. 172) where it is extremely rapid (Kostenko, i, 213).

583

Cf. f. 4b.

584

Point to point, some 50 miles.

585

Āhangarān-julgasī, a name narrowed on maps to Angren (valley).

586

Faut shūd Nuyān. The numerical value of these words is 907. Bābur when writing, looks back 26 years to the death of this friend.

587

Āb-burdan village is on the Zar-afshān; the pass is 11,200 ft. above the sea. Bābur’s boundaries still hold good and the spring still flows. See Ujfalvy l. c. i. 14; Kostenko, i, 119 and 193; Rickmers, JRGS 1907, p. 358.

588

From the Bū-stān (Graf’s ed. Vienna 1858, p. 561). The last couplet is also in the Gulistān (Platts’ ed. p. 72). The Bombay lith. ed. of the Bū-stān explains (p. 39) that the “We” of the third couplet means Jamshīd and his predecessors who have rested by his fountain.

589

nīma. The First W. – i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 81 l. 8) writes tawārīkh, annals.

590

This may be the Khwāja Hijrī of the A.N. (index s. n.); and Badāyūnī’s Ḥasan Hijrī, Bib. Ind. iii, 385; and Ethé’s Pers. Cat. No. 793; and Bod. Cat. No. 189.

591

The Ḥai. MS. points in the last line as though punning on Khān and Jān, but appears to be wrong.

592

For an account of the waste of crops, the Sh. N. should be seen (p. 162 and 180).

593

I think this refers to last year’s move (f. 94 foot).

594

In other words, the T. preposition, meaning E. in, at, etc. may be written with t or d, as ta(tā) or as da(dā). Also the one meaning

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