Note 1024 — SECTION II. KĀBUL666 (continued 2)

He was the son of Mahdī Sl. (f. 320b) and the father of ‘Āqil Sl. Aūzbeg (A.N. index s.n.). Several matters suggest that these men were of the Shabān Aūzbegs who intermarried with Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s family and some of whom went to Bābur in Hindūstān. One such matter is that Kābul was the refuge of dispossessed Harātīs, after the Aūzbeg conquest; that there ‘Āqil married Shād Bāī-qarā and that ‘Ādil went on to Bābur. Moreover Khāfī Khān makes a statement which (if correct) would allow ‘Ādil’s father Mahdī to be a grandson of Ḥusain Bāī-qarā; this statement is that when Bābur defeated the Aūzbegs in 916 AH. (1510 AD.), he freed from their captivity two sons (descendants) of his paternal uncle, named Mahdī Sl. and Sult̤ān Mīrzā. [Leaving the authenticity of the statement aside for a moment, it will be observed that this incident is of the same date and place as another well-vouched for, namely that Bābur then and there killed Mahdī Sl. Aūzbeg and Ḥamza Sl. Aūzbeg after defeating them.] What makes in favour of Khāfī Khān’s correctness is, not only that Bābur’s foe Mahdī is not known to have had a son ‘Ādil, but also that his “Sulṯān Mīrzā” is not a style so certainly suiting Ḥamza as it does a Shabān sult̤ān, one whose father was a Shabān sult̤ān, and whose mother was a Mīrzā’s daughter. Moreover this point of identification is pressed by the correctness, according to oriental statement of relationship, of Khāfī Khān’s “paternal uncle” (of Bābur), because this precisely suits Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā with whose family these Shabān sult̤āns allied themselves. On the other hand it must be said that Khāfī Khān’s statement is not in the English text of the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, the book on which he mostly relies at this period, nor is it in my husband’s MS. [a copy from the Rampūr Codex]; and to this must be added the verbal objection that a modicum of rhetoric allows a death to be described both in Turkī and Persian, as a release from the captivity of a sinner’s own acts (f. 160). Still Khāfī Khān may be right; his statement may yet be found in some other MS. of the T. R. or some different source; it is one a scribe copying the T. R. might be led to omit by reason of its coincidences. The killing and the release may both be right; ‘Ādil’s Mahdī may be the Shabān sult̤ān inference makes him seem. This little crux presses home the need of much attention to the lacunæ in the Bābur-nāma, since in them are lost some exits and some entries of Bābur’s dramatis personæ, pertinently, mention of the death of Mahdī with Ḥamza in 916 AH., and possibly also that of ‘Ādil’s Mahdī’s release.