The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
affair falling within the time,—Jahāngīr's occupation of Khujand, its
siege and its capture by Shaibānī. This capture will have occurred
considerably more than a month before the defeat of The Khāns (Sh. N. p.
230).
It is not easy to decide in what month of 908 AH. they went into
Farghāna or how long their campaign lasted. Bābur chronicles a series of
occurrences, previous to the march of the army, which must have filled
some time. The road over the Kīndīrlīk-pass was taken, one closed in
Bābur's time (f. 1b) though now open through the winter. Looking at the
rapidity of his own movements in Farghāna, it seems likely that the pass
was crossed after and not before its closed time. If so, the campaign
may have covered 4 or 5 months. Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ's account of Shaibāq's
operations strengthens this view. News that Aḥmad had joined Maḥmūd in
Tāshkīnt (f. 102) went to Shaibānī in Khusrau Shāh's territories; he saw
his interests in Samarkand threatened by this combination of the
Chaghatāī brothers to restore Bābur in Farghāna, came north therefore in
order to help Taṃbal. He then waited a month in Samarkand (Sh. N. p.
230), besieged Jahāngīr, went back and stayed in Samarkand long enough
to give his retainers time to equip for a year's campaigning (l. c. p.
244) then went to Akhsī and so to Archīān.
Bābur's statement (f. 110b) that The Khāns went from Andijān to the
Khujand-crossing over the Sīr attracts attention because this they might
have done if they had meant to leave Farghāna by Mīrzā-rabāṯ but they
are next heard of as at Akhsī. Why did they make that great détour? Why
not have crossed opposite Akhsī or at Sang? Or if they had thought of
retiring, what turned them east again? Did they place Jahāngīr in
Khujand? Bābur's missing pages would have answered these questions no
doubt. It was useful for them to encamp where they did, east of Akhsī,
because they there had near them a road by which reinforcement could
come from Kāshghar or retreat be made. The Akhsī people told Shaibānī
that he could easily overcome The Khāns if he went without warning, and
if they had not withdrawn by the Kulja road (Sh. N. p. 262). By that
road the few men who went with Aḥmad to Tāshkīnt (f. 103) may have been
augmented to the force, enumerated as his in the battle by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ
(Sh. N. cap. LIII.).
When The Khāns were captured, Bābur escaped and made 'for Mughūlistān,'
a vague direction seeming here to mean Tāshkīnt, but, finding his road
blocked, in obedience to orders from Shaibāq that he and Abū'l-makāram
were to be captured, he turned back and, by unfrequented ways, went into
the hill-country of Sūkh and Hushīār. There he spent about a year in
great misery (f. 14 and Ḥ. S. ii, 318). Of the wretchedness of the time
Ḥaidar also writes. If anything was attempted in Farghāna in the course
of those months, record of it has been lost with Bābur's missing pages.
He was not only homeless and poor, but shut in by enemies. Only the
loyalty or kindness of the hill-tribes can have saved him and his few
followers. His mother was with him; so also were the families of his
men. How Qūtlūq-nigār contrived to join him from Tāshkīnt, though
historically a small matter, is one he would chronicle. What had
happened there after the Mughūl defeat, was that the horde had marched
away for Kāshghar while Shāh Begīm remained in charge of her daughters
with whom the Aūzbeg chiefs intended to contract alliance. Shaibānī's
orders for her stay and for the general exodus were communicated to her
by her son, The Khān, in what Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, quoting its purport, describes
as a right beautiful letter (p. 296).
By some means Qūtlūq-nigār joined Bābur, perhaps helped by the
circumstance that her daughter, Khān-zāda was Shaibāq's wife. She spent
at least some part of those hard months with him, when his fortunes were
at their lowest ebb. A move becoming imperative, the ragged and
destitute company started in mid-June 1504 (Muḥ. 910 AH.) on that
perilous mountain journey to which Ḥaidar applies the Prophet's dictum,
'Travel is a foretaste of Hell,' but of which the end was the
establishment of a Tīmūrid dynasty in Hindūstān. To look down the years
from the destitute Bābur to Akbar, Shāh-jahān and Aurangzīb is to see a
great stream of human life flow from its source in his resolve to win
upward, his quenchless courage and his abounding vitality. Not yet 22,
the sport of older men's intrigues, he had been tempered by failure,
privation and dangers.
He left Sūkh intending to go to Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā in Khurāsān but he
changed this plan for one taking him to Kābul where a Tīmūrid might
claim to dispossess the Arghūns, then holding it since the death, in 907
AH. of his uncle, Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā _Kābulī_.
THE MEMOIRS OF BABUR
SECTION II. KĀBUL[666]
910 AH.-JUNE 14TH 1504 TO JUNE 4TH 1505 AD.[667]
(_a. Bābur leaves Farghāna._)
In the month of Muḥarram, after leaving the Farghāna country [Sidenote:
Ḥaidarābād MS. Fol. 120.] intending to go to Khurāsān, I dismounted at
Aīlāk-yīlāq,[668] one of the summer pastures of Ḥiṣār. In this camp I
entered my 23rd year, and applied the razor to my face.[669] Those who,
hoping in me, went with me into exile, were, small and great, between 2
and 300; they were almost all on foot, had walking-staves in their
hands, brogues[670] on their feet, and long coats[671] on their
shoulders. So destitute were we that we had but two tents (_chādar_)
amongst us; my own used to be pitched for my mother, and they set an
_ālāchūq_ at each stage for me to sit in.[672]
Though we had started with the intention of going into Khurāsān, yet
with things as they were[673] something was hoped for from the Ḥiṣār
country and Khusrau Shāh's retainers. Every few days some-one would come
in from the country or a tribe or the (Mughūl) horde, whose words made
it probable that we had growing ground for hope. Just then Mullā Bābā of
Pashāghar came back, who had been our envoy to Khusrau Shāh; from
Khusrau Shāh he brought nothing likely to please, but he did from the
tribes and the horde.
[Sidenote: Fol. 120b.] Three or four marches beyond Aīlāk, when halt was
made at a place near Ḥiṣār called Khwāja `Imād, Muḥibb-`alī, the
Armourer, came to me from Khusrau Shāh. Through Khusrau Shāh's
territories I have twice happened to pass;[674] renowned though he was
for kindness and liberality, he neither time showed me the humanity he
had shown to the meanest of men.
As we were hoping something from the country and the tribes, we made
delay at every stage. At this critical point Sherīm T̤aghāī, than whom
no man of mine was greater, thought of leaving me because he was not
keen to go into Khurāsān. He had sent all his family off and stayed
himself unencumbered, when after the defeat at Sar-i-pul (906 AH.) I
went back to defend Samarkand; he was a bit of a coward and he did this
sort of thing several times over.
(_b. Bābur joined by one of Khusrau Shāh's kinsmen._)
After we reached Qabādīān, a younger brother of Khusrau Shāh, Bāqī
_Chaghānīānī_, whose holdings were Chaghānīān,[675] Shahr-i-ṣafā and
Tīrmīẕ, sent the _khatīb_[676] of Qarshī to me to express his good
wishes and his desire for alliance, and, after we had crossed the Amū at
the Aūbāj-ferry, he came himself to wait on me. By his wish we moved
down the river to opposite Tīrmīẕ, where, without fear [or, without
going over himself],[677] he had their families[678] and their goods
brought across to join us. This done, we set out together for Kāhmard
and Bāmīān, then held by his son[679] Aḥmad-i-qāsim, the son of Khusrau
Shāh's sister. Our plan was to leave the households (_awī-aīl_) safe in
Fort Ajar of the Kāhmard-valley and to take action wherever [Sidenote:
Fol. 121.] action might seem well. At Aībak, Yār-`alī Balāl,[680] who
had fled from Khusrau Shāh, joined us with several braves; he had been
with me before, and had made good use of his sword several times in my
presence, but was parted from me in the recent throneless times[681] and
had gone to Khusrau Shāh. He represented to me that the Mughūls in
Khusrau Shāh's service wished me well. Moreover, Qaṃbar-`alī Beg, known
also as Qaṃbar-`alī _Silākh_ (Skinner), fled to me after we reached the
Zindān-valley.[682]
(_c. Occurrences in Kākmard._)
We reached Kāhmard with three or four marches and deposited our
households and families in Ajar. While we stayed there, Jahāngīr Mīrzā
married (Aī Begīm) the daughter of Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā and Khān-zāda Begīm,
who had been set aside for him during the lifetime of the Mīrzās.[683]
Meantime Bāqī Beg urged it upon me, again and again, that two rulers in
one country, or two chiefs in one army are a source of faction and
disorder—a foundation of dissension and ruin. "For they have said, 'Ten
darwīshes can sleep under one blanket, but two kings cannot find room in
one clime.'
If a man of God eat half a loaf,
He gives the other to a darwīsh;
Let a king grip the rule of a clime,
He dreams of another to grip."[684]
Bāqī Beg urged further that Khusrau Shāah's retainers and followers
would be coming in that day or the next to take service with the Pādshāh
(_i.e._ Bābur); that there were such [Sidenote: Fol. 121b.]
sedition-mongers with them as the sons of Ayūb _Begchīk_, besides other
who had been the stirrers and spurs to disloyalty amongst their
Mīrzās,[685] and that if, at this point, Jahāngīr Mīrzā were dismissed,
on good and friendly terms, for Khurāsān, it would remove a source of
later repentance. Urge it as he would, however, I did not accept his
suggestion, because it is against my nature to do an injury to my
brethren, older or younger,[686] or to any kinsman soever, even when
something untoward has happened. Though formerly between Jahāngīr Mīrzā
and me, resentments and recriminations had occurred about our rule and
retainers, yet there was nothing whatever then to arouse anger against
him; he had come out of that country (_i.e._ Farghāna) with me and was
behaving like a blood-relation and a servant. But in the end it was just
as Bāqī Beg predicted;—those tempters to disloyalty, that is to say,
Ayūb's Yūsuf and Ayūb's Bihlūl, left me for Jahāngīr Mīrzā, took up a
hostile and mutinous position, parted him from me, and conveyed him into
Khurāsān.
(_d. Co-operation invited against Shaibāq Khān._)
In those days came letters from Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, long and far-fetched
letters which are still in my possession and in that [Sidenote: Fol.
122.] of others, written to Badī`u'z-zamān Mīrzā, myself, Khusrau Shāh
and Ẕū'n-nūn Beg, all to the same purport, as follows:—"When the three
brothers, Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā, Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā, and Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā,
joined together and advanced against me, I defended the bank of the
Murgh-āb[687] in such a way that they retired without being able to
effect anything. Now if the Aūzbegs advance, I might myself guard the
bank of the Murgh-āb again; let Badī`u'z-zamān Mīrzā leave men to defend
the forts of Balkh, Shibarghān, and Andikhūd while he himself guards
Girzawān, the Zang-valley, and the hill-country thereabouts." As he had
heard of my being in those parts, he wrote to me also, "Do you make fast
Kāhmard, Ajar, and that hill-tract; let Khusrau Shāh place trusty men in
Ḥiṣār and Qūndūz; let his younger brother Walī make fast Badakhshān and
the Khutlān hills; then the Aūzbeg will retire, able to do nothing."
These letters threw us into despair;—for why? Because at that time there
was in Tīmūr Beg's territory (_yūrt_) no ruler so great as Sl. Ḥusain
Mīrzā, whether by his years, armed strength, or dominions; it was to be
expected, therefore, that envoys would go, treading on each other's
heels, with clear and sharp orders, such as, "Arrange for so many boats
at the Tīrmīz, [Sidenote: Fol. 122b.] Kilīf, and Kīrkī ferries," "Get