Babur - The Bābur-nāma

Mr. Erskine thought it probable that the first of these routes went through Kanigūram, and the second through the Ghwālirī-pass and along the Gūmāl. Birk , fastness, would seem an appropriate name for Kanigūram, but, if Bābur meant to go to Ghaznī, he would be off the ordinary Gūmāl-Ghaznī route in going through Farmūl (Aūrgūn). Raverty’s Notes give much useful detail about these routes, drawn from native sources. For Barak (Birk) see Notes pp. 88, 89; Vigne, p. 102.

From this it would seem that the alternative roads were approached by one in common.

tūmshūq , a bird’s bill, used here, as in Selsey-bill, for the naze (nose), or snout, the last spur, of a range.

Here these words may be common nouns.

Nū-roz, the feast of the old Persian New-year (Erskine); it is the day on which the Sun enters Aries.

In the [Turkī] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. and in some Persian ones, there is a space left here as though to indicate a known omission.

kamarī , sometimes a cattle-enclosure, which may serve as a sangur . The word may stand in one place of its Bābur-nāma uses for Gum-rāhī (R.’s Notes s. n. Gum-rāhān).

Index s. n.

Vigne, p. 241.

This name can be translated “He turns not back” or “He stops not”.

i. e. five from Bīlah.

Raverty gives the saint’s name as Pīr Kānūn (Ar. kānūn , listened to). It is the well-known Sakhī-sarwār, honoured hy Hindūs and Muḥammadans. (G. of I., xxi, 390; R.’s Notes p. 11 and p. 12 and JASB 1855; Calcutta Review 1875, Macauliffe’s art. On the fair at Sakhi-sarwar ; Leech’s Report VII, for the route; Khazīnatu ’l-asfiyā iv, 245.)

This seems to be the sub-district of Qandahār, Dūkī or Dūgī.

khar-gāh , a folding tent on lattice frame-work, perhaps a khibitka .

It may be more correct to write Kāh-mard, as the Ḥai. MS. does and to understand in the name a reference to the grass( kāh ) – yielding capacity of the place.

f. 121.

This may mean, what irrigation has not used.

Mr. Erskine notes that the description would lead us to imagine a flock of flamingoes. Masson found the lake filled with red-legged, white fowl (i, 262); these and also what Bābur saw, may have been the China-goose which has body and neck white, head and tail russet (Bellew’s Mission p. 402). Broadfoot seems to have visited the lake when migrants were few, and through this to have been led to adverse comment on Bābur’s accuracy (p. 350).

The usual dryness of the bed may have resulted from the irrigation of much land some 12 miles from Ghaznī.

This is the Luhūgur (Logar) water, knee-deep in winter at the ford but spreading in flood with the spring-rains. Bābur, not being able to cross it for the direct roads into Kābul, kept on along its left bank, crossing it eventually at the Kamarī of maps, s.e. of Kābul.

This disastrous expedition, full of privation and loss, had occupied some four months (T.R. p. 201).

f. 145b.

f. 133b and Appendix F.

They were located in Mandrāwar in 926 AH. (f. 251).

This was done, manifestly, with the design of drawing after the families their fighting men, then away with Bābur.

f. 163. Shaibāq Khān besieged Chīn Ṣufī, Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā’s man in Khwārizm (T. R. p. 204; Shaibānī-nāma , Vambéry, Table of Contents and note 89).

Survey Map 1889, Sadda. The Rāgh-water flows n.w. into the Oxus (Amū).

birk , a mountain stronghold; cf. f. 149b note to Birk (Barak).

They were thus driven on from the Bārān-water (f. 154b).

f. 126b.

Ḥiṣār, presumably.

Here “His Honour” translates Bābur’s clearly ironical honorific plural.

These two sult̤āns, almost always mentioned in alliance, may be Tīmūrids by maternal descent (Index s. nn. ). So far I have found no direct statement of their parentage. My husband has shewn me what may be one indication of it, viz. that two of the uncles of Shaibāq Khān (whose kinsmen the sult̤āns seem to be), Qūj-kūnjī and Sīūnjak, were sons of a daughter of the Tīmūrid Aūlūgh Beg Samarkandī (Ḥ.S. ii, 318). See Vambéry’s Bukhārā p. 248 note.

For the deaths of Taṃbal and Maḥmūd, mentioned in the above summary of Shaibāq Khān’s actions, see the Shaibānī-nāma , Vambéry, p. 323.

Ḥ.S. ii, 323, for Khusrau Shāh’s character and death.

f. 124.

Khwāja-of-the-rhubarb, presumably a shrine near rhubarb-grounds (f. 129b).

yakshī bārdīlār , lit. went well, a common expression in the Bābur-nāma , of which the reverse statement is yamānlīk bīla bārdī (f. 163). Some Persian MSS. make the Mughūls disloyal but this is not only in opposition to the Turkī text, it is a redundant statement since if disloyal, they are included in Bābur’s previous statement, as being Khusrau Shāh’s retainers. What might call for comment in Mughūls would be loyalty to Bābur.

Elph. MS. f. 121b: W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 126 and 217 f. 106b; Mems. p. 169.

tāgh-dāmanasī , presumably the Koh-dāman, and the garden will thus be the one of f. 136b.

If these heirs were descendants of Aūlūgh Beg M. one would be at hand in ‘Abdu’r-razzāq, then a boy, and another, a daughter, was the wife of Muqīm Arghūn . As Mr. Erskine notes, Musalmāns are most scrupulous not to bury their dead in ground gained by violence or wrong.

The news of Aḥmad’s death was belated; he died some 13 months earlier, in the end of 909 AH. and in Eastern Turkistān. Perhaps details now arrived.

i. e. the fortieth day of mourning, when alms are given.

Of those arriving, the first would find her step-daughter dead, the second her sister, the third, his late wife’s sister (T. R. p. 196).

This will be the earthquake felt in Agra on Ṣafar 3rd 911 AH. (July 5th 1505 AD. Erskine’s History of India i, 229 note). Cf. Elliot and Dowson, iv, 465 and v, 99.

Raverty’s Notes p. 690.