SECTION I. FARGHĀNA. (continued 4)

The Khāns did not cross the Khujand-water (for the Kīndīrlīk-pass) but left the country by way of Marghīnān and Kand-i-badām and crossed it at Khujand, Taṃbal pursuing them as far as Marghīnān. We had had much uncertainty; we had not had much confidence in their making any stand, yet for us to go away, without clear reason, and leave them, would not have looked well.

(l. Bābur attempts to defend Akhsī.)

Early one morning, when I was in the Hot-bath, Jahāngīr Mīrzā came into Akhsī, from Marghīnān, a fugitive from Taṃbal. We saw one another, Shaikh Bāyazīd also being present, agitated and afraid. The Mīrzā and Ibrāhīm Beg said, ‘Shaikh Bāyazīd must be made prisoner and we must get the citadel into our hands.’ In good sooth, the proposal was wise. Said I, ‘Promise has been made; how can we break it?’ Shaikh Bāyazīd went into the citadel. Men ought to have been posted on the bridge; not even there did we post any-one! These blunders were the fruit of inexperience. At the top of the morning came Taṃbal himself with 2 or 3000 men in mail, crossed the bridge and went into the citadel. To begin with I had had rather few men; when I first went into Akhsī some had been sent to other forts and some had been made commandants and summoners all round. Left with me in Akhsī may have been something over 100 men. WeFol. 111b. had got to horse with these and were posting braves at the top of one lane after another and making ready for the fight, when Shaikh Bāyazīd and Qaṃbar-‘alī (the Skinner), and Muḥammad-dost655 came gallopping from Taṃbal with talk of peace.

After posting those told off for the fight, each in his appointed place, I dismounted at my father’s tomb for a conference, in which I invited Jahāngīr Mīrzā to join. Muḥammad-dost went back to Taṃbal but Qaṃbar-‘alī and Shaikh Bāyazīd were present. We sat in the south porch of the tomb and were in consultation when the Mīrzā, who must have settled beforehand with Ibrāhīm Chāpūk to lay hands on those other two, said in my ear, ‘They must be made prisoner.’ Said I, ‘Don’t hurry! matters are past making prisoners. See here! with terms made, the affair might be coaxed into something. For why? Not only are they many and we few, but they with their strength are in the citadel, we with our weakness, in the outer fort.’ Shaikh Bāyazīd and Qaṃbar-‘alī both being present, Jahāngīr Mīrzā looked at Ibrāhīm Beg and made him a sign to refrain. Whether he misunderstood to the contrary or whether he pretended to misunderstand, is not known; suddenly he did the ill-deed of seizing Shaikh Bāyazīd. Braves Fol. 112.closing in from all sides, flung those two to the ground. Through this the affair was taken past adjustment; we gave them into charge and got to horse for the coming fight.

One side of the town was put into Jahāngīr Mīrzā’s charge; as his men were few, I told off some of mine to reinforce him. I went first to his side and posted men for the fight, then to other parts of the town. There is a somewhat level, open space in the middle of Akhsī; I had posted a party of braves there and gone on when a large body of the enemy, mounted and on foot, bore down upon them, drove them from their post and forced them into a narrow lane. Just then I came up (the lane), gallopped my horse at them, and scattered them in flight. While I was thus driving them out from the lane into the flat, and had got my sword to work, they shot my horse in the leg; it stumbled and threw me there amongst them. I got up quickly and shot one arrow off. My squire, Kahil (lazy) had a weakly pony; he got off and led it to me. Mounting this, I started for another lane-head. Sl. Muḥ. Wais noticed the weakness of my mount, dismounted and led me his own. I mounted that horse. Just then, Qāsim Beg’s son, Qaṃbar-‘alī came, wounded, from Jahāngīr Mīrzā and said the Mīrzā had Fol. 112b.been attacked some time before, driven off in panic, and had gone right away. We were thunderstruck! At the same moment arrived Sayyid Qāsim, the commandant of Pāp! His was a most unseasonable visit, since at such a crisis it was well to have such a strong fort in our hands. Said I to Ibrāhīm Beg, ‘What’s to be done now?’ He was slightly wounded; whether because of this or because of stupefaction, he could give no useful answer. My idea was to get across the bridge, destroy it and make for Andijān. Bābā Sher-zād did very well here. ‘We will storm out at the gate and get away at once,’ he said. At his word, we set off for the Gate. Khwāja Mīr Mīrān also spoke boldly at that crisis. In one of the lanes, Sayyid Qāsim and Nāṣir’s Dost chopped away at Bāqī Khīz,656 I being in front with Ibrāhīm Beg and Mīrzā Qulī Kūkūldāsh.

As we came opposite the Gate, we saw Shaikh Bāyazīd, wearing his pull-over shirt657 above his vest, coming in with three or four horsemen. He must have been put into the charge of Jahāngīr’s men in the morning when, against my will, he was made prisoner, and they must have carried him off when they got away. They had thought it would be well to kill him; they set him free alive. He had been released just when I chanced upon him in the Gate. I drew and shot off the arrow on my thumb; it grazed his neck, a good shot! He came confusedly in at the Gate, turned to the right and fled down a lane. We followed him instantly. Mīrzā Qulī Kūkūldāsh got at one man with his rugged-mace and went on. Another man tookFol. 113. aim at Ibrāhīm Beg, but when the Beg shouted ‘Hāī! Hāī!’ let him pass and shot me in the arm-pit, from as near as a man on guard at a Gate. Two plates of my Qālmāq mail were cut; he took to flight and I shot after him. Next I shot at a man running away along the ramparts, adjusting for his cap against the battlements; he left his cap nailed on the wall and went off, gathering his turban-sash together in his hand. Then again,—a man was in flight alongside me in the lane down which Shaikh Bāyazīd had gone. I pricked the back of his head with my sword; he bent over from his horse till he leaned against the wall of the lane, but he kept his seat and with some trouble, made good his flight. When we had driven all the enemy’s men from the Gate, we took possession of it but the affair was past discussion because they, in the citadel, were 2000 or 3000, we, in the outer fort, 100 or 200. Moreover they had chased off Jahāngīr Mīrzā, as long before as it takes milk to boil, and with him had gone half my men. This notwithstanding, we sent a man, while we were in the Gate, to say to him, ‘If you are near at hand, come, let us attack again.’ But the matter had gone past that! Ibrāhīm Beg, either because his horse was really weak or because of his wound, said, ‘My horse is done.’ On this, Sulaimān, one of Muḥ. ‘Alī’s Mubashir’s servants, did a plucky thing, for with mattersFol. 113b. as they were and none constraining him, while we were waiting in the Gate, he dismounted and gave his horse to Ibrāhīm Beg. Kīchīk (little) ‘Alī, now the Governor of Koel,658 also shewed courage while we were in the Gate; he was a retainer of Sl. Muḥ. Wais and twice did well, here and in Aūsh. We delayed in the Gate till those sent to Jahāngīr Mīrzā came back and said he had gone off long before. It was too late to stay there; off we flung; it was ill-judged to have stayed as long as we did. Twenty or thirty men were with me. Just as we hustled out of the Gate, a number of armed men659 came right down upon us, reaching the town-side of the drawbridge just as we had crossed. Banda-‘alī, the maternal grandfather of Qāsim Beg’s son, Ḥamza, called out to Ibrāhīm Beg, ‘You are always boasting of your zeal! Let’s take to our swords!’ ‘What hinders? Come along!’ said Ibrāhīm Beg, from beside me. The senseless fellows were for displaying their zeal at a time of such disaster! Ill-timed zeal! That was no time to make stand or delay! We went off quickly, the enemy following and unhorsing our men.

(m. Bābur a fugitive before Taṃbal’s men.)

When we were passing Meadow-dome (Guṃbaz-i-chaman), two miles out of Akhsī, Ibrāhīm Beg called out to me. Looking Fol. 114.back, I saw a page of Shaikh Bāyazīd’s striking at him and turned rein, but Bayān-qulī’s Khān-qulī, said at my side, ‘This is a bad time for going back,’ seized my rein and pushed ahead. Many of our men had been unhorsed before we reached Sang, 4 miles (2 shar‘ī) out of Akhsī.660 Seeing no pursuers at Sang, we passed it by and turned straight up its water. In this position of our affairs there were eight men of us;—Nāṣir’s Dost, Qāsim Beg’s Qaṃbar-‘alī, Bayān-qulī’s Khān-qulī, Mīrzā Qulī Kūkūldāsh, Nāṣir’s Shāham, Sayyidī Qarā’s ‘Abdu’l-qadūs, Khwāja Ḥusainī and myself, the eighth. Turning up the stream, we found, in the broad valley, a good little road, far from the beaten track. We made straight up the valley, leaving the stream on the right, reached its waterless part and, near the Afternoon Prayer, got up out of it to level land. When we looked across the plain, we saw a blackness on it, far away. I made my party take cover and myself had gone to look out from higher ground, when a number of men came at a gallop up the hill behind us. Without waiting to know whether they were many or few, we mounted and rode off. There were 20 or 25; we, as has been said, were eight. If we had known their number at first, we should have made a good stand against them but we thought they would not be pursuing us, unless they had good support behind. AFol. 114b. fleeing foe, even if he be many, cannot face a few pursuers, for as the saying is, ‘Hāī is enough for the beaten ranks.’661

Khān-qulī said, ‘This will never do! They will take us all. From amongst the horses there are, you take two good ones and go quickly on with Mīrzā Qulī Kūkūldāsh, each with a led horse. May-be you will get away.’ He did not speak ill; as there was no fighting to hand, there was a chance of safety in doing as he said, but it really would not have looked well to leave any man alone, without a horse, amongst his foes. In the end they all dropped off, one by one, of themselves. My horse was a little tired; Khān-qulī dismounted and gave me his; I jumped off at once and mounted his, he mine. Just then they unhorsed Sayyidī Qarā’s ‘Abdu’l-qadūs and Nāṣir’s Shāham who had fallen behind. Khān-qulī also was left. It was no time to profer help or defence; on it was gone, at the full speed of our mounts. The horses began to flag; Dost Beg’s failed and stopped. Mine began to tire; Qaṃbar-‘alī got off and gave me his; I mounted his, he mine. He was left. Khwāja Ḥusainī was a lame man; he turned aside to the higher ground. I was left with Mīrzā Qulī Kūkūldāsh. Our Fol. 115.horses could not possibly gallop, they trotted. His began to flag. Said I, ‘What will become of me, if you fall behind? Come along! let’s live or die together.’ Several times I looked back at him; at last he said, ‘My horse is done! It can’t go on. Never mind me! You go on, perhaps you will get away.’ It was a miserable position for me; he remained behind, I was alone.

Two of the enemy were in sight, one Bābā of Sairām, the other Banda-‘alī. They gained on me; my horse was done; the mountains were still 2 miles (1 kuroh) off. A pile of rock was in my path. Thought I to myself, ‘My horse is worn out and the hills are still somewhat far away; which way should I go? In my quiver are at least 20 arrows; should I dismount and shoot them off from this pile of rock?’ Then again, I thought I might reach the hills and once there, stick a few arrows in my belt and scramble up. I had a good deal of confidence in my feet and went on, with this plan in mind. My horse could not possibly trot; the two men came within arrow’s reach. Fol. 115b.For my own sake sparing my arrows, I did not shoot; they, out of caution, came no nearer. By sunset I was near the hills. Suddenly they called out, ‘Where are you going in this fashion? Jahāngīr Mīrzā has been brought in a prisoner; Nāṣir Mīrzā also is in their hands.’ I made no reply and went on towards the hills. When a good distance further had been gone, they spoke again, this time more respectfully, dismounting to speak. I gave no ear to them but went on up a glen till, at the Bed-time prayer, I reached a rock as big as a house. Going behind it, I saw there were places to be jumped, where no horse could go. They dismounted again and began to speak like servants and courteously. Said they, ‘Where are you going in this fashion, without a road and in the dark? Sl. Aḥmad Taṃbal will make you pādshāh.’ They swore this. Said I, ‘My mind is not easy as to that. I cannot go to him. Fol. 116.If you think to do me timely service, years may pass before you have such another chance. Guide me to a road by which I can go to The Khān’s presence. If you will do this, I will shew you favour and kindness greater than your heart’s-desire. If you will not do it, go back the way you came; that also would be to serve me well.’ Said they, ‘Would to God we had never come! But since we are here, after following you in the way we have done, how can we go back from you? If you will not go with us, we are at your service, wherever you go.’ Said I, ‘Swear that you speak the truth.’ They, for their part, made solemn oath upon the Holy Book.

I at once confided in them and said, ‘People have shewn me a road through a broad valley, somewhere near this glen; take me to it.’ Spite of their oath, my trust in them was not so complete but that I gave them the lead and followed. After 2 to 4 miles (1-2 kuroh), we came to the bed of a torrent. ‘This will not be the road for the broad valley,’ I said. They drew back, saying, ‘That road is a long way ahead,’ but it really must have been the one we were on and they have been concealing the fact, in order to deceive me. About half through the night, we reached another stream. This time they said, ‘We have been negligent; it now seems to us that the road through the broad valley is behind.’ Said I, ‘What is to be done?’ Said they, ‘The Ghawā road is certainly in front; by it people cross for Far-kat.662 They guided me for that and we went on till inFol. 116b. the third watch of the night we reached the Karnān gully which comes down from Ghawā. Here Bābā Sairāmī said, ‘Stay here a little while I look along the Ghawā road.’ He came back after a time and said, ‘Some men have gone along that road, led by one wearing a Mughūl cap; there is no going that way.’ I took alarm at these words. There I was, at dawn, in the middle of the cultivated land, far from the road I wanted to take. Said I, ‘Guide me to where I can hide today, and tonight when you will have laid hands on something for the horses, lead me to cross the Khujand-water and along its further bank.’ Said they, ‘Over there, on the upland, there might be hiding.’

Banda-‘alī was Commandant in Karnān. ‘There is no doing without food for ourselves or our horses;’ he said, ‘let me go into Karnān and bring what I can find.’ We stopped 2 miles (1 kuroh) out of Karnān; he went on. He was a long time away; near dawn there was no sign of him. The day had shot when he hurried up, bringing three loaves of bread but no corn for the horses. Each of us putting a loaf into the breast of his tunic, we went quickly up the rise, tethered our horses there in the open valley and went to higher ground, each to keep watch.

Fol. 117.Near mid-day, Aḥmad the Falconer went along the Ghawā road for Akhsī. I thought of calling to him and of saying, with promise and fair word, ‘You take those horses,’ for they had had a day and a night’s strain and struggle, without corn, and were utterly done. But then again, we were a little uneasy as we did not entirely trust him. We decided that, as the men Bābā Sairāmī had seen on the road would be in Karnān that night, the two with me should fetch one of their horses for each of us, and that then we should go each his own way.

At mid-day, a something glittering was seen on a horse, as far away as eye can reach. We were not able to make out at all what it was. It must have been Muḥ. Bāqir Beg himself; he had been with us in Akhsī and when we got out and scattered, he must have come this way and have been moving then to a hiding-place.663

Banda-‘alī and Bābā Sairāmī said, ‘The horses have had no corn for two days and two nights; let us go down into the dale and put them there to graze.’ Accordingly we rode down and put them to the grass. At the Afternoon Prayer, a horseman passed along the rising-ground where we had been. We recognized him for Qādīr-bīrdī, the head-man of Ghawā. ‘Call him,’ I said. They called; he came. After questioning him, and speaking to him of favour and kindness, and giving him promise and fair word, I sent him to bring rope, and a grass-hook, and an axe, and material for crossing water,664 and corn Fol. 117b.for the horses, and food and, if it were possible, other horses. We made tryst with him for that same spot at the Bed-time Prayer.

Near the Evening Prayer, a horseman passed from the direction of Karnān for Ghawā. ‘Who are you?’ we asked. He made some reply. He must have been Muḥ. Bāqir Beg himself, on his way from where we had seen him earlier, going at night-fall to some other hiding-place, but he so changed his voice that, though he had been years with me, I did not know it. It would have been well if I had recognized him and he had joined me. His passing caused much anxiety and alarm; tryst could not be kept with Qādīr-bīrdī of Ghawā. Banda-‘alī said, ‘There are retired gardens in the suburbs of Karnān where no one will suspect us of being; let us go there and send to Qādīr-bīrdī and have him brought there.’ With this idea, we mounted and went to the Karnān suburbs. It was winter and very cold. They found a worn, coarse sheepskin coat and brought it to me; I put it on. They brought me a bowl of millet-porridge; I ate it and was wonderfully refreshed. ‘Have you sent off the man to Qādīr-bīrdī?’ said I to Banda-‘alī. ‘I have sent,’ he said. But those luckless, clownish mannikins seem to have agreed together to send the man to Taṃbal in Akhsī!

We went into a house and for awhile my eyes closed in sleep. Those mannikins artfully said to me, ‘You must not bestir yourself to leave Karnān till there is news of Qādīr-bīrdī but this house is right amongst the suburbs; on the outskirts the orchards are empty; no-one will suspect if we goFol. 118. there.’ Accordingly we mounted at mid-night and went to a distant orchard. Bābā Sairāmī kept watch from the roof of a house. Near mid-day he came down and said, ‘Commandant Yūsuf is coming.’ Great fear fell upon me! ‘Find out,’ I said, ‘whether he comes because he knows about me.’ He went and after some exchange of words, came back and said, ‘He says he met a foot-soldier in the Gate of Akhsī who said to him, “The pādshāh is in such a place,” that he told no-one, put the man with Walī the Treasurer whom he had made prisoner in the fight, and then gallopped off here.’ Said I, ‘How does it strike you?’ ‘They are all your servants,’ he said, ‘you must go. What else can you do? They will make you their ruler.’ Said I, ‘After such rebellion and fighting, with what confidence could I go?’ We were saying this, when Yūsuf knelt before me, saying, ‘Why should it be hidden? Sl. Aḥmad Taṃbal has no news of you, but Shaikh Bāyazīd has and he sent me here.’ On hearing this, my state of mind was miserable indeed, for well is it understood that nothing in the world is worse than fear for one’s life. ‘Tell the truth!’ I said, ‘if the affair is likely to go on to worse, I will make Fol. 118b.ablution.’ Yūsuf swore oaths, but who would trust them? I knew the helplessness of my position. I rose and went to a corner of the garden, saying to myself, ‘If a man live a hundred years or a thousand years, at the last nothing ...’665

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

Friends are likely to have rescued Bābur from his dangerous isolation. His presence in Karnān was known both in Ghawā and in Akhsī; Muḥ. Bāqir Beg was at hand (f. 117); some of those he had dropped in his flight would follow him when their horses had had rest; Jahāngīr was somewhere north of the river with the half of Bābur’s former force (f. 112); The Khāns, with their long-extended line of march, may have been on the main road through or near Karnān. If Yūsuf took Bābur as a prisoner along the Akhsī road, there were these various chances of his meeting friends.

His danger was evaded; he joined his uncles and was with them, leading 1000 men (Sh. N. p. 268), when they were defeated at Archīān just before or in the season of Cancer, i.e. circa June (T. R. p. 164). What he was doing between the winter cold of Karnān (f. 117b) and June might have been known from his lost pages. Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ writes at length of one affair falling within the time,—Jahāngīr’s occupation of Khujand, its siege and its capture by Shaibānī. This capture will have occurred considerably more than a month before the defeat of The Khāns (Sh. N. p. 230).

It is not easy to decide in what month of 908 AH. they went into Farghāna or how long their campaign lasted. Bābur chronicles a series of occurrences, previous to the march of the army, which must have filled some time. The road over the Kīndīrlīk-pass was taken, one closed in Bābur’s time (f. 1b) though now open through the winter. Looking at the rapidity of his own movements in Farghāna, it seems likely that the pass was crossed after and not before its closed time. If so, the campaign may have covered 4 or 5 months. Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ’s account of Shaibāq’s operations strengthens this view. News that Aḥmad had joined Maḥmūd in Tāshkīnt (f. 102) went to Shaibānī in Khusrau Shāh’s territories; he saw his interests in Samarkand threatened by this combination of the Chaghatāī brothers to restore Bābur in Farghāna, came north therefore in order to help Taṃbal. He then waited a month in Samarkand (Sh. N. p. 230), besieged Jahāngīr, went back and stayed in Samarkand long enough to give his retainers time to equip for a year’s campaigning (l. c. p. 244) then went to Akhsī and so to Archīān.

Bābur’s statement (f. 110b) that The Khāns went from Andijān to the Khujand-crossing over the Sīr attracts attention because this they might have done if they had meant to leave Farghāna by Mīrzā-rabāt̤ but they are next heard of as at Akhsī. Why did they make that great détour? Why not have crossed opposite Akhsī or at Sang? Or if they had thought of retiring, what turned them east again? Did they place Jahāngīr in Khujand? Bābur’s missing pages would have answered these questions no doubt. It was useful for them to encamp where they did, east of Akhsī, because they there had near them a road by which reinforcement could come from Kāshghar or retreat be made. The Akhsī people told Shaibānī that he could easily overcome The Khāns if he went without warning, and if they had not withdrawn by the Kulja road (Sh. N. p. 262). By that road the few men who went with Aḥmad to Tāshkīnt (f. 103) may have been augmented to the force, enumerated as his in the battle by Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ (Sh. N. cap. LIII.).

When The Khāns were captured, Bābur escaped and made ‘for Mughūlistān,’ a vague direction seeming here to mean Tāshkīnt, but, finding his road blocked, in obedience to orders from Shaibāq that he and Abū’l-makāram were to be captured, he turned back and, by unfrequented ways, went into the hill-country of Sūkh and Hushīār. There he spent about a year in great misery (f. 14 and Ḥ. S. ii, 318). Of the wretchedness of the time Ḥaidar also writes. If anything was attempted in Farghāna in the course of those months, record of it has been lost with Bābur’s missing pages. He was not only homeless and poor, but shut in by enemies. Only the loyalty or kindness of the hill-tribes can have saved him and his few followers. His mother was with him; so also were the families of his men. How Qūtlūq-nigār contrived to join him from Tāshkīnt, though historically a small matter, is one he would chronicle. What had happened there after the Mughūl defeat, was that the horde had marched away for Kāshghar while Shāh Begīm remained in charge of her daughters with whom the Aūzbeg chiefs intended to contract alliance. Shaibānī’s orders for her stay and for the general exodus were communicated to her by her son, The Khān, in what Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, quoting its purport, describes as a right beautiful letter (p. 296).

By some means Qūtlūq-nigār joined Bābur, perhaps helped by the circumstance that her daughter, Khān-zāda was Shaibāq’s wife. She spent at least some part of those hard months with him, when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. A move becoming imperative, the ragged and destitute company started in mid-June 1504 (Muḥ. 910 AH.) on that perilous mountain journey to which Ḥaidar applies the Prophet’s dictum, ‘Travel is a foretaste of Hell,’ but of which the end was the establishment of a Tīmūrid dynasty in Hindūstān. To look down the years from the destitute Bābur to Akbar, Shāh-jahān and Aurangzīb is to see a great stream of human life flow from its source in his resolve to win upward, his quenchless courage and his abounding vitality. Not yet 22, the sport of older men’s intrigues, he had been tempered by failure, privation and dangers.

He left Sūkh intending to go to Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā in Khurāsān but he changed this plan for one taking him to Kābul where a Tīmūrid might claim to dispossess the Arghūns, then holding it since the death, in 907 AH.of his uncle, Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā Kābulī.

THE MEMOIRS OF BABUR