Bāghdād; Bāghdād was first written in the Ḥai. MS. but is corrected by the scribe to
būghdā.
219
So pointed in the Ḥai. MS. I surmise it a clan-name.
220
i. e. to offer him the succession. The mountain road taken from Aūrā-tīpā would be by Āb-burdan, Sara-tāq and the Kām Rūd defile.
221
īrīldī. The departure can hardly have been open because Aḥmad’s begs favoured Maḥmūd; Malik-i-Muḥammad’s party would be likely to slip away in small companies.
222
This well-known Green, Grey or Blue palace or halting-place was within the citadel of Samarkand. Cf. f. 37. It served as a prison from which return was not expected.
223
Cf. f. 27. He married a full-sister of Bāī-sunghar.
224
Gulistān Part I. Story 27. For “steaming up,” see Tennyson’s Lotus-eaters Choric song, canto 8 (H.B.).
225
Elph. MS. f. 16b; First W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 19; Second W. – i-B. I.O. 217 f. 15b; Memoirs p. 27.
226
He was a Dūghlāt, uncle by marriage of Ḥaidar Mīrzā and now holding Khost for Maḥmūd. See T.R. s.n. for his claim on Aīsān-daulat’s gratitude.
227
tāsh qūrghān dā chīqār dā. Here (as e. g. f. 110b l. 9) the Second W. – i-B. translates tāsh as though it meant stone instead of outer. Cf. f. 47 for an adjectival use of tāsh, stone, with the preposition (tāsh) din. The places contrasted here are the citadel (ark) and the walled-town (qūrghān). The chīqār (exit) is the fortified Gate-house of the mud circumvallation. Cf. f. 46 for another example of chīqār.
228
Elph. Ḥai. Kehr’s MSS., ānīng bīla bār kīshi bār beglārnī tūtūrūldī. This idiom recurs on f. 76b l. 8. A palimpsest entry in the Elph. MS. produces the statement that when Ḥasan fled, his begs returned to Andijān.
229
Ḥai. MS. awī mūnkūzī, underlined by sāgh-i-gāū, cows’ thatched house. [T. mūnkūz, lit. horn, means also cattle.] Elph. MS., awī mūnkūsh, underlined by dar jā’ī khwāb alfakhta, sleeping place. [T. mūnkūsh, retired.]
230
The first qāchār of this pun has been explained as gurez-gāh, sharm-gāh, hinder parts, fuite and vertèbre inférieur. The Ḥ.S. (ii, 273 l. 3 fr. ft.) says the wound was in a vital (maqattal) part.
231
From Niz̤āmī’s Khusrau u Shirīn, Lahore lith. ed. p. 137 l. 8. It is quoted also in the A.N. Bib. Ind. ed. ii, 207 (H.B. ii, 321). (H.B.).
232
See Hughes Dictionary of Islām s.nn. Eating and Food.
233
Cf. f. 6b and note. If ‘Umar Shaikh were Maḥmūd’s full-brother, his name might well appear here.
234
i. e. “Not a farthing, not a half-penny.”
235
Here the Mems. enters a statement, not found in the Turkī text, that Maḥmūd’s dress was elegant and fashionable.
236
n: h: l: m. My husband has cleared up a mistake (Mems. p. 28 and Méms. i, 54) of supposing this to be the name of an animal. It is explained in the A.N. (i, 255. H.B. i, 496) as a Badakhshī equivalent of tasqāwal; tasqāwal var. tāshqāwal, is explained by the Farhang-i-az̤farī, a Turkī-Persian Dict. seen in the Mullā Fīroz Library of Bombay, to mean rāh band kunanda, the stopping of the road. Cf. J.R.A.S. 1900 p. 137.
237
i. e. “a collection of poems in the alphabetical order of the various end rhymes.” (Steingass.)
238
At this battle Daulat-shāh was present. Cf. Browne’s D.S. for Astarābād p. 523 and for Andikhūd p. 532. For this and all other references to D.S. and Ḥ.S. I am indebted to my husband.
239
The following dates will help out Bābur’s brief narrative. Maḥmūd æt. 7, was given Astarābād in 864 AH. (1459-60 AD.); it was lost to Ḥusain at Jauz-wilāyat and Maḥmūd went into Khurāsān in 865 AH.; he was restored by his father in 866 AH.; on his father’s death (873 AH. -1469 AD.) he fled to Harāt, thence to Samarkand and from there was taken to Ḥiṣār æt. 16. Cf. D’Herbélot s. n. Abū-sa‘ad; Ḥ.S. i, 209; Browne’s D.S. p. 522.
240
Presumably the “Hindūstān the Less” of Clavijo (Markham p. 3 and p. 113), approx. Qaṃbar-‘alī’s districts. Clavijo includes Tīrmīẕ under the name.
241
Perhaps a Ṣufī term, – longing for the absent friend. For particulars about this man see Ḥ.S. ii, 235 and Browne’s D.S. p. 533.
242
Here in the Ḥai. MS. is one of several blank spaces, waiting for information presumably not known to Bābur when writing. The space will have been in the archetype of the Ḥai. MS. and it makes for the opinion that the Ḥai. MS. is a direct copy of Bābur’s own. This space is not left in the Elph. MS. but that MS. is known from its scribe’s note (f. 198) down to f. 198 (Ḥai. MS. f. 243b) to have been copied from “other writings” and only subsequent to its f. 198 from Bābur’s own. Cf. JRAS 1906 p. 88 and 1907 p. 143.
243
The T.R. (p. 330) supplies this name.
244
Cf. f. 35b. This was a betrothal only, the marriage being made in 903 AH. Cf. Ḥ.S. ii, 260 and Gul-badan’s H.N. f. 24b.
245
Kehr’s MS. supplies Aī (Moon) as her name but it has no authority. The Elph. MS. has what may be lā nām, no name, on its margin and over tūrūtūnchī (4th.) its usual sign of what is problematical.
246
See Ḥ.S. ii, 250. Here Pīr-i-Muḥammad Aīlchī-būghā was drowned. Cf. f. 29.
247
Chaghānīān is marked in Erskine’s (Mems.) map as somewhere about the head of (Fr. map 1904) the Ilyak Water, a tributary of the Kāfir-nighān.
248
i. e. when Bābur was writing in Hindūstān.
249
For his family see f. 55b note to Yār-‘alī Balāl.
250
bā wujūd turklūk muhkam paidā kunanda īdī.
251
Roebuck’s Oriental Proverbs (p. 232) explains the five of this phrase where seven might be expected, by saying that of this Seven days’ world (qy. days of Creation) one is for birth, another for death, and that thus five only are left for man’s brief life.
252
The cognomen Aīlchī-būghā, taken with the bearer’s recorded strength of fist, may mean Strong man of Aīlchī (the capital of Khutan).
