The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[685] Maḥmūd's sons under whom Bāqī had served. [686] Uncles of all degrees are included as elder brethren, cousins of all degrees, as younger ones. [687] Presumably the ferries; perhaps the one on the main road from the north-east which crosses the river at Fort Murgh-āb. [688] Nine deaths, perhaps where the Amū is split into nine channels at the place where Mīrzā Khān's son Sulaimān later met his rebel grandson Shāh-rukh (_T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī_, Elliot & Dowson, v, 392, and A.N. Bib. Ind., 3rd ed., 441). Tūqūz-aūlūm is too far up the river to be Arnold's "shorn and parcelled Oxus". [689] Shaibāq himself had gone down from Samarkand in 908 AH. and in 909 AH. and so permanently located his troops as to have sent their families to them. In 909 AH. he drove Khusrau into the mountains of Badakhshān, but did not occupy Qūndūz; thither Khusrau returned and there stayed till now, when Shaibāq again came south (fol. 123). See Sh. N. cap. lviii _et seq._ [690] From Taṃbal, to put down whom he had quitted his army near Balkh (Sh. N. cap. lix). [691] This, one of the many Red-rivers, flows from near Kāhmard and joins the Andar-āb water near Dūshī. [692] A _garī_ is twenty-four minutes. [693] Qorān, _Surat_ iii, verse 25; Sale's Qorān, ed. 1825, i, 56. [694] Cf. f. 82. [695] _viz._ Bāī-sanghar, bowstrung, and Mas`ūd, blinded. [696] Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ is florid over the rubies of Badakhshān he says Bābur took from Khusrau, but Ḥaidar says Bābur not only had Khusrau's property, treasure, and horses returned to him, but refused all gifts Khusrau offered. "This is one trait out of a thousand in the Emperor's character." Ḥaidar mentions, too, the then lack of necessaries under which Bābur suffered (Sh. N., cap. lxiii, and T.R. p. 176). [697] Cf. T. R. p. 134 n. and 374 n. [698] _Jība_, so often used to describe the quilted corselet, seems to have here a wider meaning, since the _jība-khāna_ contained both _joshan_ and _kūhah_, _i.e._ coats-of-mail and horse-mail with accoutrements. It can have been only from this source that Bābur's men obtained the horse-mail of f. 127. [699] He succeeded his father, Aūlūgh Beg _Kābulī_, in 907 AH.; his youth led to the usurpation of his authority by Sherīm Ẕikr, one of his begs; but the other begs put Sherīm to death. During the subsequent confusions Muḥ. Muqīm _Arghūn_, in 908 AH., got possession of Kābul and married a sister of `Abdu'r-razzāq. Things were in this state when Bābur entered the country in 910 AH. (Erskine). [700] var. Ūpīān, a few miles north of Chārikār. [701] Suhail (Canopus) is a most conspicuous star in Afghānistān; it gives its name to the south, which is never called Janūb but Suhail; the rising of Suhail marks one of their seasons (Erskine). The honour attaching to this star is due to its seeming to rise out of Arabia Felix. [702] The lines are in the Preface to the _Anwār-i-suhailī_ (Lights of Canopus). [703] "Die Kirghis-qazzāq drücken die Sonnen-höhe in Pikenaus" (von Schwarz, p. 124). [704] Presumably, dark with shade, as in _qarā-yīghāch_, the hard-wood elm (f. 47b and note to _narwān_). [705] _i.e._ Sayyid Muḥammad `Alī, the door-ward. These _būlāks_ seem likely to have been groups of 1,000 fighting-men (Turki _Mīng_). [706] In-the-water and Water-head. [707] Walī went from his defeat to Khwāst; wrote to Maḥmūd _Aūzbeg_ in Qūndūz to ask protection; was fetched to Qūndūz by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, the author of the _Shaibānī-nāma_, and forwarded from Qūndūz to Samarkand (Sh. N. cap. lxiii). Cf. f. 29b. [708] _i.e._ where justice was administered, at this time, outside Bābur's tent. [709] They would pass Ajar and make for the main road over the Dandān-shikan Pass. [710] The clansmen may have obeyed Aḥmad's orders in thus holding up the families. [711] The name may be from Turkī _tāq_, a horse-shoe, but I.O. 215 f. 102 writes Persian _naqīb_, the servant who announces arriving guests. [712] Here, as immediately below, when mentioning the Chār-bāgh and the tomb of Qūtlūq-qadam, Bābur uses names acquired by the places at a subsequent date. In 910 AH. the Taster was alive; the Chār-bāgh was bought by Bābur in 911 AH., and Qūtlūq-qadam fought at Kānwāha in 933 AH. [713] The Kūcha-bāgh is still a garden about 4 miles from Kābul on the north-west and divided from it by a low hill-pass. There is still a bridge on the way (Erskine). [714] Presumably that on which the Bālā-ḥiṣār stood, the glacis of a few lines further. [715] Cf. f. 130. [716] One of Muqīm's wives was a Tīmūrid, Bābur's first-cousin, the daughter of Aūlūgh Beg _Kābulī_; another was Bībī Zarīf Khātūn, the mother of that Māh-chūchūq, whose anger at her marriage to Bābur's faithful Qāsim Kūkūldāsh has filled some pages of history (Gulbadan's H.N. _s.n._ Māh-chūchūq and Erskine's B. and H. i, 348). [717] Some 9 m. north of Kābul on the road to Āq-sarāī. [718] The Ḥai. MS. (only) writes First Rabī but the Second better suits the near approach of winter. [719] Elph. MS. fol. 97; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 102b and 217 f. 85; Mems. p. 136. Useful books of the early 19th century, many of them referring to the _Bābur-nāma_, are Conolly's _Travels_, Wood's _Journey_, Elphinstone's _Caubul_, Burnes' _Cabool_, Masson's _Narrative_, Lord's and Leech's articles in JASB 1838 and in Burnes' _Reports_ (India Office Library), Broadfoot's _Report_ in RGS Supp. Papers vol. I. [720] f. 1b where Farghāna is said to be on the limit of cultivation. [721] f. 131b. To find these _tūmāns_ here classed with what was not part of Kābul suggest a clerical omission of "beyond" or "east of" (Lamghānāt). It may be more correct to write Lāmghānāt, since the first syllable may be _lām_, fort. The modern form Laghmān is not used in the _Bābur-nāma_, nor, it may be added is Paghmān for Pamghān. [722] It will be observed that Bābur limits the name Afghānistān to the countries inhabited by Afghān tribesmen; they are chiefly those south of the road from Kābul to Pashāwar (Erskine). See Vigne, p. 102, for a boundary between the Afghāns and Khurāsān. [723] Al-birūnī's _Indika_ writes of both Turk and Hindū-shāhī Kings of Kābul. See Raverty's _Notes_ p. 62 and Stein's _Shāhī Kings of Kābul_. The mountain is 7592 ft. above the sea, some 1800 ft. therefore above the town. [724] The Kābul-river enters the Chār-dih plain by the Dih-i-yaq`ūb narrows, and leaves it by those of Dūrrīn. Cf. _S.A. War_, Plan p. 288 and Plan of action at Chār-āsiyā (Four-mills), the second shewing an off-take which may be Wais Ātāka's canal. See Vigne, p. 163 and Raverty's _Notes_ pp. 69 and 689. [725] This, the Bālā-jūī (upper-canal) was a four-mill stream and in Masson's time, as now, supplied water to the gardens round Bābur's tomb. Masson found in Kābul honoured descendants of Wais Ātāka (ii, 240). [726] But for a, perhaps negligible, shortening of its first vowel, this form of the name would describe the normal end of an irrigation canal, a little pool, but other forms with other meanings are open to choice, _e.g._ small hamlet (Pers. _kul_), or some compound containing Pers. _gul_, a rose, in its plain or metaphorical senses. Jarrett's _Āyīn-i-akbarī_ writes Gul-kīnah, little rose (?). Masson (ii, 236) mentions a similar pleasure-resort, Sanjī-tāq. [727] The original ode, with which the parody agrees in rhyme and refrain, is in the _Dīwān, s.l. Dāl_ (Brockhaus ed. 1854, i, 62 and lith. ed. p. 96). See Wilberforce Clarke's literal translation i, 286 (H. B.). A marginal note to the Ḥaidarābād Codex gives what appears to be a variant of one of the rhymes of the parody. [728] _aūlūgh kūl_; some 3 m. round in Erskine's time; mapped as a swamp in _S.A. War_ p. 288. [729] A marginal note to the Ḥai. Codex explains this name to be an abbreviation of Khwāja Shamsū'd-dīn _Jān-bāz_ (or _Jahān-bāz_; Masson, ii, 279 and iii, 93). [730] _i.e_. the place made holy by an impress of saintly foot-steps. [731] Two eagles or, Two poles, used for punishment. Vigne's illustration (p. 161) clearly shows the spur and the detached rock. Erskine (p. 137 n.) says that `Uqābain seems to be the hill, known in his day as `Āshiqān-i-`ārifān, which connects with Bābur Bādshāh. See Raverty's _Notes_ p. 68. [732] During most of the year this wind rushes through the Hindū-kush (Parwān)-pass; it checks the migration of the birds (f. 142), and it may be the cause of the deposit of the Running-sands (Burnes, p. 158). Cf. Wood, p. 124. [733] He was Badī`u'z-zamān's _Ṣadr_ before serving Bābur; he died in 918 AH. (1512 AD.), in the battle of Kūl-i-malik where `Ubaidu'l-lāh _Aūzbeg_ defeated Bābur. He may be identical with Mīr Ḥusain the Riddler of f. 181, but seems not to be Mullā Muḥ. _Badakhshī_, also a Riddler, because the _Ḥabību's-siyār_ (ii, 343 and 344) gives this man a separate notice. Those interested in enigmas can find one made by T̤ālib on the name Yaḥya (Ḥ.S. ii, 344). Sharafu'd-dīn `Alī _Yazdī_, the author of the _Z̤afar-nāma_, wrote a book about a novel kind of these puzzles (T.R. p. 84). [734] The original couplet is as follows:— _Bakhūr dar arg-i Kābul mai, bagardān kāsa pāy dar pāy, Kah ham koh ast, u ham daryā, u ham shahr ast, u ham ṣaḥrā'._ What T̤ālib's words may be inferred to conceal is the opinion that like Badī`u'z-zamān and like the meaning of his name, Kābul is the Wonder-of-the-world. (Cf. M. Garçin de Tassy's _Rhétorique_ [p. 165], for _ces combinaisons énigmatiques_.) [735] All MSS. do not mention Kāshghar. [736] Khīta (Cathay) is Northern China; Chīn (_infra_) is China; Rūm is Turkey and particularly the provinces near Trebizond (Erskine). [737] 300% to 400% (Erskine). [738] Persian _sinjid_, Brandis, _elæagnus hortensis_; Erskine (Mems. p. 138) jujube, presumably the _zizyphus jujuba_ of Speede, Supplement p. 86. Turkī _yāngāq_, walnut, has several variants, of which the most marked is _yānghkāq_. For a good account of Kābul fruits _see_ Masson, ii, 230. [739] a kind of plum (?). It seems unlikely to be a cherry since Bābur does not mention cherries as good in his old dominions, and Firminger (p. 244) makes against it as introduced from India. Steingass explains _alū-bālū_ by "sour-cherry, an armarylla"; if sour, is it the Morello cherry? [740] The sugar-cane was seen in abundance in Lan-po (Lamghān) by a Chinese pilgrim (Beale, p. 90); Bābur's introduction of it may have been into his own garden only in Nīngnahār (f. 132b). [741] _i.e._ the seeds of _pinus Gerardiana_. [742] _rawāshlār._ The green leaf-stalks (_chūkrī_) of _ribes rheum_ are taken into Kābul in mid-April from the Pamghān-hills; a week later they are followed by the blanched and tended _rawāsh_ (Masson, ii, 7). _See_ Gul-badan's H.N. trs. p. 188, Vigne, p. 100 and 107, Masson, ii, 230, Conolly, i, 213. [743] a large green fruit, shaped something like a citron; also a large sort of cucumber (Erskine). [744] The _ṣāḥibī_, a grape praised by Bābur amongst Samarkandī fruits, grows in Koh-dāman; another well-known grape of Kābul is the long stoneless _ḥusainī_, brought by Afghān traders into Hindūstān in round, flat boxes of poplar wood (Vigne, p. 172).