553
Kostenko, i, 344, would make the rounds 9 m.
554
555
The Sh. N. gives the reverse side of the picture, the plenty enjoyed by the besiegers.
556
He may have been attached to the tomb of Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh
557
The brusque entry here and elsewhere of
558
Five-villages, on the main Khujand-Tāshkīnt road.
559
560
Elph. MS. f. 68b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 78 and 217 f. 61b; Mems. p. 97.
The Kehr-Ilminsky text shews, in this year, a good example of its Persification and of Dr. Ilminsky’s dealings with his difficult archetype by the help of the Memoirs.
561
562
It strikes one as strange to find Long Ḥasan described, as here, in terms of his younger brother. The singularity may be due to the fact that Ḥusain was with Bābur and may have invited Ḥasan. It may be noted here that Ḥusain seems likely to be that father-in-law of ‘Umar Shaikh mentioned on f. 12b and 13b.
563
This laudatory comment I find nowhere but in the Ḥai. Codex.
564
There is some uncertainty about the names of those who left.
565
The Sh. N. is interesting here as giving an eye-witness’ account of the surrender of the town and of the part played in the surrender by Khān-zāda’s marriage (cap. xxxix).
566
The first seems likely to be a relation of Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī Khalīfa; the second was Mole-marked, a foster-sister. The party numbered some 100 persons of whom Abū’l-makāram was one (Ḥ.S. ii, 310).
567
Bābur’s brevity is misleading; his sister was not captured but married with her own and her mother’s consent before attempt to leave the town was made.
568
The route taken avoided the main road for Dīzak; it can be traced by the physical features, mentioned by Bābur, on the Fr. map of 1904. The Sh. N. says the night was extraordinarily dark. Departure in blinding darkness and by unusual ways shews distrust of Shaibāq’s safe-conduct suggesting that Yaḥyā’s fate was in the minds of the fugitives.
569
The texts differ as to whether the last two lines are prose or verse. All four are in Turkī, but I surmise a clerical error in the refrain of the third, where
570
The second was in 908 AH. (f. 18
571
Ḥai. MS.
572
573
She was the wife of the then Governor of Aūrā-tīpā, Muḥ. Ḥusain
574
It may be noted here that in speaking of these elder women Bābur uses the honorific plural, a form of rare occurrence except for such women, for saintly persons and exceptionally for The supreme Khān. For his father he has never used it.
575
This name has several variants. The village lies, in a valley-bottom, on the Aq-sū and on a road.
576
She had been divorced from Shaibānī in order to allow him to make legal marriage with her niece, Khān-zāda.
577
Amongst the variants of this name, I select the modern one. Macha is the upper valley of the Zar-afshān.
578
Tīmūr took Dihlī in 801 AH. (Dec. 1398),
579
The anecdote here following, has been analysed in JRAS 1908, p. 87, in order to show warrant for the opinion that parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky text are retranslations from the Persian W. – i-B.
580
Amongst those thus leaving seem to have been Qaṃbar-‘alī (f. 99b).
581
582
The Sh. N. speaks of the cold in that winter (Vambéry, p. 160). It was unusual for the Sīr to freeze in this part of its course (Sh. N. p. 172) where it is extremely rapid (Kostenko, i, 213).
583
584
Point to point, some 50 miles.
585
586
587
Āb-burdan village is on the Zar-afshān; the pass is 11,200 ft. above the sea. Bābur’s boundaries still hold good and the spring still flows.
588
From the
589
590
This may be the Khwāja Hijrī of the A.N. (index
591
The Ḥai. MS. points in the last line as though punning on Khān and Jān, but appears to be wrong.
592
For an account of the waste of crops, the Sh. N. should be seen (p. 162 and 180).
593
I think this refers to last year’s move (f. 94 foot).
594
In other words, the T. preposition, meaning E. in, at,