it are made knife handles, and clasps for belts and many other things. For climate and for pleasantness, no township in all Farghāna equals Aūsh.
Again there is Marghīnān; seven yīghāch58 by road to the west of Andijān, – a fine township full of good things. Its apricots (aūrūk) and pomegranates are most excellent. One sort of pomegranate, they call the Great Seed (Dāna-i-kalān); its sweetness has a little of the pleasant flavour of the small apricot (zard-alū) and it may be thought better than the Semnān pomegranate. Another kind of apricot (aūrūk) they dry after stoning it and putting back the kernel;59 they then call it subḥānī; it is very palatable. The hunting and fowling of Marghīnān are good; āq kīyīk60 are had close by. Its people are Sārts,61 boxers, noisy and turbulent. Most of the noted bullies (jangralār) of Samarkand and Bukhārā are Marghīnānīs. The author of the Hidāyat62 was from Rashdān, one of the villages of Marghīnān.
Again there is Asfara, in the hill-country and nine yīghāch63 by road south-west of Marghīnān. It has running waters, beautiful little gardens (bāghcha) and many fruit-trees but almonds for the most part in its orchards. Its people are all Persian-speaking64 Sārts. In the hills some two miles (bīrshar‘ī) to the south of the town, is a piece of rock, known as the Mirror Stone.65 It is some 10 arm-lengths (qārī) long, as high as a man in parts, up to his waist in others. Everything is reflected by it as by a mirror. The Asfara district (wilāyat) is in four subdivisions (balūk) in the hill-country, one Asfara, one Warūkh, one Sūkh and one Hushyār. When Muḥammad Shaibānī Khān defeated Sl. Maḥmūd Khān and Alacha Khān and took Tāshkīnt and Shāhrukhiya,66 I went into the Sūkh and Hushyār hill-country and from there, after about a year spent in great misery, I set out (‘azīmat) for Kābul.67
Again there is Khujand,68 twenty-five yīghāch by road to the west of Andijān and twenty-five yīghāch east of Samarkand.69 Khujand is one of the ancient towns; of it were Shaikh Maṣlaḥat and Khwāja Kamāl.70 Fruit grows well there; its pomegranates are renowned for their excellence; people talk of a Khujand pomegranate as they do of a Samarkand apple; just now however, Marghīnān pomegranates are much met with.71 The walled town (qūrghān) of Khujand stands on high ground; the Saiḥūn River flows past it on the north at the distance, may be, of an arrow’s flight.72 To the north of both the town and the river lies a mountain range called Munūghul;73 people say there are turquoise and other mines in it and there are many snakes. The hunting and fowling-grounds of Khujand are first-rate; āq kīyīk,74būghū-marāl,75 pheasant and hare are all had in great plenty. The climate is very malarious; in autumn there is much fever;76 people rumour it about that the very sparrows get fever and say that the cause of the malaria is the mountain range on the north (i. e. Munūghul).
Kand-i-badām (Village of the Almond) is a dependency of Khujand; though it is not a township (qaṣba) it is rather a good approach to one (qaṣbacha). Its almonds are excellent, hence its name; they all go to Hormuz or to Hindūstān. It is five or six yīghāch77 east of Khujand.
Between Kand-i-badām and Khujand lies the waste known as Hā Darwesh. In this there is always (hamesha) wind; from it wind goes always (hameshā) to Marghīnān on its east; from it wind comes continually (dā’im) to Khujand on its west.78 It has violent, whirling winds. People say that some darweshes, encountering a whirlwind in this desert,79 lost one another and kept crying, “Hāy Darwesh! Hāy Darwesh!” till all had perished, and that the waste has been called Hā Darwesh ever since.
Of the townships on the north of the Saiḥūn River one is Akhsī. In books they write it Akhsīkīt80 and for this reason the poet As̤iru-d-dīn is known as Akhsīkītī. After Andijān no township in Farghāna is larger than Akhsī. It is nine yīghāch81 by road to the west of Andijān. ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā made it his capital.82 The Saiḥūn River flows below its walled town (qūrghān). This stands above a great ravine (buland jar) and it has deep ravines (‘uṃiq jarlār) in place of a moat. When ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā made it his capital, he once or twice cut other ravines from the outer ones. In all Farghāna no fort is so strong as Akhsī. *Its suburbs extend some two miles further than the walled town.* People seem to have made of Akhsī the saying (mis̤al), “Where is the village? Where are the trees?” (Dih kujā? Dirakhtān kujā?) Its melons are excellent; they call one kind Mīr Tīmūrī; whether in the world there is another to equal it is not known. The melons of Bukhārā are famous; when I took Samarkand, I had some brought from there and some from Akhsī; they were cut up at an entertainment and nothing from Bukhārā compared with those from Akhsī. The fowling and hunting of Akhsī are very good indeed; āq kīyīk abound in the waste on the Akhsī side of the Saihūn; in the jungle on the Andijān side būghū-marāl,83 pheasant and hare are had, all in very good condition.
Again there is Kāsān, rather a small township to the north of Akhsī. From Kāsān the Akhsī water comes in the same way as the Andijān water comes from Aūsh. Kāsān has excellent air and beautiful little gardens (bāghcha). As these gardens all lie along the bed of the torrent (sā’ī) people call them the “fine front of the coat.”84 Between Kāsānīs and Aūshīs there is rivalry about the beauty and climate of their townships.
In the mountains round Farghāna are excellent summer-pastures (yīlāq). There, and nowhere else, the tabalghū85grows, a tree (yīghāch) with red bark; they make staves of it; they make bird-cages of it; they scrape it into arrows;86 it is an excellent wood (yīghāch) and is carried as a rarity87 to distant places. Some books write that the mandrake88 is found in these mountains but for this long time past nothing has been heard of it. A plant called Āyīq aūtī89 and having the qualities of the mandrake (mihr-giyāh), is heard of in Yītī-kīnt;90 it seems to be the mandrake (mihr-giyāh) the people there call by this name (i. e.āyīq aūtī). There are turquoise and iron mines in these mountains.
If people do justly, three or four thousand men91 may be maintained by the revenues of Farghāna.
As ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā was a ruler of high ambition and great pretension, he was always bent on conquest. On several occasions he led an army against Samarkand; sometimes he was beaten, sometimes retired against his
<p>58</p>
Kostenko (ii, 30), 71-3/4 versts i. e. 47 m. 4-1/2 fur. by the Postal Road.
<p>59</p>
Instead of their own kernels, the Second W. – i-B. stuffs the apricots, in a fashion well known in India by khūbānī, with almonds (maghz-i badām). The Turkī wording however allows the return to the apricots of their own kernels and Mr. Rickmers tells me that apricots so stuffed were often seen by him in the Zar-afshān Valley. My husband has shewn me that Niz̤āmī in his Haft Paikar appears to refer to the other fashion, that of inserting almonds: —
“I gave thee fruits from the garden of my heart,Plump and sweet as honey in milk;Their substance gave the lusciousness of figs,In their hearts were the kernels of almonds.”<p>60</p>
What this name represents is one of a considerable number of points in the Bābur-nāma I am unable to decide. Kīyīk is a comprehensive name (cf. Shaw’s Vocabulary); āq kīyīk might mean white sheep or white deer. It is rendered in the Second W. – i-B., here, by ahū-i-wāriq and on f. 4, by ahū-i-safed. Both these names Mr. Erskine has translated by “white deer,” but he mentions that the first is said to mean argālīi. e.ovis poli, and refers to Voyages de Pallas iv, 325.
<p>61</p>
Concerning this much discussed word, Bābur’s testimony is of service. It seems to me that he uses it merely of those settled in towns (villages) and without any reference to tribe or nationality. I am not sure that he uses it always as a noun; he writes of a Sārt kīshī, a Sārt person. His Asfara Sārts may have been Turkī-speaking settled Turks and his Marghīnānī ones Persian-speaking Tājiks. Cf. Shaw’s Vocabulary; s. n. Sārt; Schuyler i, 104 and note; Nalivkine’s Histoire du Khanat de Khokand p. 45 n. Von Schwarz s. n.; Kostenko i, 287; Petzbold’s Turkistan p. 32.
<p>62</p>
Shaikh Burhānu’d-dīn ‘Alī Qīlīch: b. circa 530 AH. (1135 AD.) d. 593 AH. (1197 AD.). See Hamilton’s Hidāyat.
<p>63</p>
The direct distance, measured on the map, appears to be about 65 m. but the road makes détour round mountain spurs. Mr. Erskine appended here, to the “farsang” of his Persian source, a note concerning the reduction of Tatar and Indian measures to English ones. It is rendered the less applicable by the variability of the yīghāch, the equivalent for a farsang presumed by the Persian translator.
<p>64</p>
Ḥai. MS. Farsī-gū’ī. The Elph. MS. and all those examined of the W. – i-B. omit the word Farsī; some writing kohī (mountaineer) for gū’ī. I judge that Bābur at first omitted the word Farsī, since it is entered in the Ḥai. MS. above the word gū’ī. It would have been useful to Ritter (vii, 733) and to Ujfalvy (ii, 176). Cf. Kostenko i, 287 on the variety of languages spoken by Sārts.
<p>65</p>
Of the Mirror Stone neither Fedtschenko nor Ujfalvy could get news.
<p>66</p>
Bābur distinguishes here between Tāshkīnt and Shāhrukhiya. Cf. f. 2 and note to Fanākat.
<p>67</p>
He left the hill-country above Sūkh in Muḥarram 910 AH. (mid-June 1504 AD.).
<p>68</p>
For a good account of Khujand see Kostenko i, 346.
<p>69</p>
Khujand to Andijān 187 m. 2 fur. (Kostenko ii, 29-31) and, helped out by the time-table of the Transcaspian Railway, from Khujand to Samarkand appears to be some 154 m. 5-1/4 fur.
<p>70</p>
Both men are still honoured in Khujand (Kostenko i, 348). For Khwāja Kamāl’s Life and Dīwān, see Rieu ii, 632 and Ouseley’s Persian Poets p. 192. Cf. f. 83b and note.
<p>71</p>
kūb artūq dūr, perhaps brought to Hindūstān where Bābur wrote the statement.
<p>72</p>
Turkish arrow-flight, London, 1791, 482 yards.
<p>73</p>
I have found the following forms of this name, – Ḥai. MS., M: nūgh: l; Pers. trans. and Mems., Myoghil; Ilminsky, M: tugh: l; Méms. Mtoughuil; Réclus, Schuyler and Kostenko, Mogul Tau; Nalivkine, “d’apres Fedtschenko,” Mont Mogol; Fr. Map of 1904, M. Muzbek. It is the western end of the Kurāma Range (Kīndīr Tau), which comes out to the bed of the Sīr, is 26-2/3 miles long and rises to 4000 ft. (Kostenko, i, 101). Von Schwarz describes it as being quite bare; various writers ascribe climatic evil to it.
<p>74</p>
Pers. trans. ahū-i-safed. Cf. f. 3b note.
<p>75</p>
These words translate into Cervus marāl, the Asiatic Wapiti, and to this Bābur may apply them. Dictionaries explain marāl as meaning hind or doe but numerous books of travel and Natural History show that it has wider application as a generic name, i. e. deer. The two words būghū and marāl appear to me to be used as e. g. drake and duck are used. Marāl and duck can both imply the female sex, but also both are generic, perhaps primarily so. Cf. for further mention of būghū-marāl f. 219 and f. 276. For uses of the word marāl, see the writings e. g. of Atkinson, Kostenko (iii, 69), Lyddeker, Littledale, Selous, Ronaldshay, Church (Chinese Turkistan), Biddulph (Forsyth’s Mission).
This is a puzzling passage. It seems to say that wind always goes east and west from the steppe as from a generating centre. E. and de C. have given it alternative directions, east or west, but there is little point in saying this of wind in a valley hemmed in on the north and the south. Bābur limits his statement to the steppe lying in the contracted mouth of the Farghāna valley (pace Schuyler ii, 51) where special climatic conditions exist such as (a) difference in temperature on the two sides of the Khujand narrows and currents resulting from this difference, – (b) the heating of the narrows by sun-heat reflected from the Mogol-tau, – and (c) the inrush of westerly wind over Mīrzā Rabāt̤. Local knowledge only can guide a translator safely but Bābur’s directness of speech compels belief in the significance of his words and this particularly when what he says is unexpected. He calls the Hā Darwesh a whirling wind and this it still is. Thinkable at least it is that a strong westerly current (the prevailing wind of Farghāna) entering over Mīrzā Rabāt̤ and becoming, as it does become, the whirlwind of Hā Darwesh on the hemmed-in steppe, – becoming so perhaps by conflict with the hotter indraught through the Gates of Khujand – might force that indraught back into the Khujand Narrows (in the way e. g. that one Nile in flood forces back the other), and at Khujand create an easterly current. All the manuscripts agree in writing to (ghā) Marghīnān and to (ghā) Khujand. It may be observed that, looking at the map, it appears somewhat strange that Bābur should take, for his wind objective, a place so distant from his (defined) Hā Darwesh and seemingly so screened by its near hills as is Marghīnān. But that westerly winds are prevalent in Marghīnān is seen e. g. in Middendorff’s Einblikke in den Farghāna Thal (p. 112). Cf. Réclus vi, 547; Schuyler ii, 51; Cahun’s Histoire du Khanat de Khokand p. 28 and Sven Hedin’s Durch Asien’s Wüsten s.n. būrān.
<p>79</p>
bādiya; a word perhaps selected as punning on bād, wind.
<p>80</p>
i. e. Akhsī Village. This word is sometimes spelled Akhsīkīs̤ but as the old name of the place was Akhsī-kīnt, it may be conjectured at least that the s̤ā’ī mas̤allas̤a of Akhsīkīs̤ represents the three points due for the nūn and tā of kīnt. Of those writing Akhsīkīt may be mentioned the Ḥai. and Kehr’s MSS. (the Elph. MS. here has a lacuna) the Z̤afar-nāma (Bib. Ind. i, 44) and Ibn Haukal (Ouseley p. 270); and of those writing the word with the s̤ā’ī muṣallas̤a (i. e. as Akhsīkīs̤), Yāqūt’s Dict, i, 162, Reinaud’s Abū’l-feda I. ii, 225-6, Ilminsky (p. 5) departing from his source, and I.O. Cat. (Ethé) No. 1029. It may be observed that Ibn Haukal (Ouseley p. 280) writes Banākaṣ for Banākat. For As̤īru’d-dīn Akhsīkītī, see Rieu ii, 563; Daulat Shāh (Browne) p. 121 and Ethé I.O. Cat. No. 1029.
<p>81</p>
Measured on the French military map of 1904, this may be 80 kil. i. e. 50 miles.
<p>82</p>
Concerning several difficult passages in the rest of Bābur’s account of Akhsī, see Appendix A.
<p>83</p>
The W. – i-B. here translates būghū-marāl by gazawn and the same word is entered, under-line, in the Ḥai. MS. Cf. f. 3b and note and f. 4 and note.
<p>84</p>
postīn pesh b: r: h. This obscure Persian phrase has been taken in the following ways: —
(a) W. – i-B. I.O. 215 and 217 (i. e. both versions) reproduce the phrase.
(b) W. – i-B. MS., quoted by Erskine, p. 6 note, (postīn-i mīsh burra).
(c) Leyden’s MS. Trs., a sheepskin mantle of five lambskins.
(d) Mems., Erskine, p. 6, a mantle of five lambskins.
(e) The Persian annotator of the Elph. MS., underlining pesh, writes, panj, five.
(f) Klaproth (Archives, p. 109), pustini pisch breh, d.h. gieb den vorderen Pelz.
(g) Kehr, p. 12 (Ilminsky p. 6) postin bīsh b: r:h.
(h) De. C, i, 9, fourrure d’agneau de la première qualité.
The “lambskins” of L. and E. carry on a notion of comfort started by their having read sayāh, shelter, for Turkī sā’ī, torrent-bed; de C. also lays stress on fur and warmth, but would not the flowery border of a mountain stream prompt rather a phrase bespeaking ornament and beauty than one expressing warmth and textile softness? If the phrase might be read as postīn pesh perā, what adorns the front of a coat, or as postīn pesh bar rah, the fine front of the coat, the phrase would recall the gay embroidered front of some leathern postins.
<p>85</p>
Var. tabarkhūn. The explanation best suiting its uses, enumerated here, is Redhouse’s second, the Red Willow. My husband thinks it may be the Hyrcanian Willow.
<p>86</p>
Steingass describes this as “an arrow without wing or point” (barb?) and tapering at both ends; it may be the practising arrow, t‘alīm aūqī, often headless.
<p>87</p>
tabarraklūq. Cf. f. 48b foot, for the same use of the word.
<p>88</p>
yabrūju’ṣ-ṣannam. The books referred to by Bābur may well be the Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā and the Ḥabību’s-siyār, as both mention the plant.
<p>89</p>
The Turkī word āyīq is explained by Redhouse as awake and alert; and by Meninski and de Meynard as sobered and as a return to right senses. It may be used here as a equivalent of mihr in mihr-giyāh, the plant of love.
<p>90</p>
Mr. Ney Elias has discussed the position of this group of seven villages. (Cf. T. R. p. 180 n.) Arrowsmith’s map places it (as Iti-kint) approximately where Mr. Th. Radloff describes seeing it i. e. on the Farghāna slope of the Kurāma range. (Cf. Réceuil d’Itinéraires p. 188.) Mr. Th. Radloff came into Yītī-kīnt after crossing the Kīndīrlīk Pass from Tāshkīnt and he enumerates the seven villages as traversed by him before reaching the Sīr. It is hardly necessary to say that the actual villages he names may not be those of Bābur’s Yītī-kint. Wherever the word is used in the Bābur-nāma and the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, it appears from the context allowable to accept Mr. Radloff’s location but it should be borne in mind that the name Yītī-kīnt (Seven villages or towns) might be found as an occasional name of Altī-shahr (Six towns). See T.R. s. n. Altī-shahr.
<p>91</p>
kīshī, person, here manifestly fighting men.
<p>92</p>
Elph. MS. f. 2b; First W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 4b; Second W. – i-B. I.O. 217 f. 4; Mems. p. 6; Ilminsky p. 7; Méms. i. 10.
The rulers whose affairs are chronicled at length in the Farghāna Section of the B.N. are, (I) of Tīmūrid Turks, (always styled Mīrzā), (a) the three Mīrān-shāhī brothers, Aḥmad, Maḥmūd and ‘Umar Shaikh with their successors, Bāī-sunghar, ‘Alī and Bābur; (b) the Bāī-qarā, Ḥusain of Harāt: (II) of Chīngīz Khānīds, (always styled Khān,) (a) the two Chaghatāī Mughūl brothers, Maḥmūd and Aḥmad; (b) the Shaibānid Aūzbeg, Muḥammad Shaibānī (Shāh-i-bakht or Shaibāq or Shāhī Beg).
In electing to use the name Shaibānī, I follow not only the Ḥai. Codex but also Shaibānī’s Boswell, Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Mīrzā. The Elph. MS. frequently uses Shaibāq but its authority down to f. 198 (Ḥai. MS. f. 243b) is not so great as it is after that folio, because not till f. 198 is it a direct copy of Bābur’s own. It may be more correct to write “the Shaibānī Khān” and perhaps even “the Shaibānī.”
