Babur - The Bābur-nāma

Cf. f. 67.

Bābur’s loss of rule in Farghāna and Samarkand.

about 7 miles south of Aībak, on the road to Sar-i-tāgh (mountain-head, Erskine).

viz. the respective fathers, Maḥmūd and ‘Umar Shaikh. The arrangement was made in 895 AH. (1490 AD.).

Gulistān cap. i, story 3. Part of this quotation is used again on f. 183.

Maḥmūd’s sons under whom Bāqī had served.

Uncles of all degrees are included as elder brethren, cousins of all degrees, as younger ones.

Presumably the ferries; perhaps the one on the main road from the north-east which crosses the river at Fort Murgh-āb.

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”.

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.

From Taṃbal, to put down whom he had quitted his army near Balkh (Sh. N. cap. lix).

This, one of the many Red-rivers, flows from near Kāhmard and joins the Andar-āb water near Dūshī.

A garī is twenty-four minutes.

Qorān, Surat iii, verse 25; Sale’s Qorān, ed. 1825, i, 56.

Cf. f. 82.

viz. Bāī-sanghar, bowstrung, and Mas‘ūd, blinded.

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).

Cf. T. R. p. 134 n. and 374 n.

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.

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).

var. Ūpīān, a few miles north of Chārikār.

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.

The lines are in the Preface to the Anwār-i-suhailī (Lights of Canopus).

“Die Kirghis-qazzāq drücken die Sonnen-höhe in Pikenaus” (von Schwarz, p. 124).

Presumably, dark with shade, as in qarā-yīghāch , the hard-wood elm (f. 47b and note to narwān ).

i. e. Sayyid Muḥammad ‘Alī, the door-ward. These būlāks seem likely to have been groups of 1,000 fighting-men (Turki Mīng ).

In-the-water and Water-head.

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.

i. e. where justice was administered, at this time, outside Bābur’s tent.

They would pass Ajar and make for the main road over the Dandān-shikan Pass.

The clansmen may have obeyed Aḥmad’s orders in thus holding up the families.

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.

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.

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).

Presumably that on which the Bālā-ḥiṣār stood, the glacis of a few lines further.

Cf. f. 130.

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).

Some 9 m. north of Kābul on the road to Āq-sarāī.

The Ḥai. MS. (only) writes First Rabī but the Second better suits the near approach of winter.

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.

f. 1b where Farghāna is said to be on the limit of cultivation.

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.