Note 85 — SECTION I. FARGHĀNA.

Ḥai. MS. Hamesha bū deshttā yīl bār dūr. Marghīnānghā kīm sharqī dūr, hamesha mūndīn yīl bārūr; Khujandghā kīm gharībī dūr, dā’im mūndīn yīl kīlūr.

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.