The Bābur-nāma. Babur
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Bābur-nāma - Babur страница 10

Название: The Bābur-nāma

Автор: Babur

Издательство: Public Domain

Жанр: Зарубежная классика

Серия:

isbn:

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      (b. Historical narrative resumed.)92

      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 will.93 More than once he asked his father-in-law into the country, that is to say, my grandfather, Yūnas Khān, the then Khān of the Mughūls in the camping ground (yūrt) of his ancestor, Chaghatāī Khān, the second son of Chīngīz Khān. Each time the Mīrzā brought The Khān into the Farghāna country he gave him lands, but, partly owing to his misconduct, partly to the thwarting of the Mughūls,94 things did not go as he wished and Yūnas Khān, not being able to remain, went out again into Mughūlistān. When the Mīrzā last brought The Khān in, he was in possession of

      Tāshkīnt, which in books they write Shash, and sometimes Chāch, whence the term, a Chāchī, bow.95 He gave it to The Khān, and from that date (890AH. -1485AD.) down to 908AH. (1503AD.) it and the Shāhrukhiya country were held by the Chaghatāī Khāns.

      At this date (i. e., 899AH. -1494AD.) the Mughūl Khānship was in Sl. Maḥ=mūd Khān, Yūnas Khān’s younger son and a half-brother of my mother. As he and ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā’s elder brother, the then ruler of Samarkand, Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā were offended by the Mīrzā’s behaviour, they came to an agreement together; Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā had already given a daughter to Sl. Maḥmūd Khān;96 both now led their armies against ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā, the first advancing along the south of the Khujand Water, the second along its north.

      Meantime a strange event occurred. It has been mentioned that the fort of Akhsī is situated above a deep ravine;97 along this ravine stand the palace buildings, and from it, on Monday, Ramẓān 4, (June 8th.) ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā flew, with his pigeons and their house, and became a falcon.98

      He was 39 (lunar) years old, having been born in Samarkand, in 860AH. (1456AD.) He was Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā’s fourth son,99 being younger than Sl. Aḥmad M. and Sl. Muḥammad M. and Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā. His father, Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā, was the son of Sl. Muḥammad Mīrzā, son of Tīmūr Beg’s third son, Mīrān-shāh M. and was younger than ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā, (the elder) and Jahāngīr M. but older than Shāhrukh Mīrzā.

      c. ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā’s country.

      His father first gave him Kābul and, with Bābā-i-Kābulī100 for his guardian, had allowed him to set out, but recalled him from the Tamarisk Valley101 to Samarkand, on account of the Mīrzās’ Circumcision Feast. When the Feast was over, he gave him Andijān with the appropriateness that Tīmūr Beg had given Farghāna (Andijān) to his son, the elder ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā. This done, he sent him off with Khudāī-bīrdī Tūghchī Tīmūr-tāsh102 for his guardian.

      d. His appearance and characteristics.

      He was a short and stout, round-bearded and fleshy-faced person.103 He used to wear his tunic so very tight that to fasten the strings he had to draw his belly in and, if he let himself out after tying them, they often tore away. He was not choice in dress or food. He wound his turban in a fold (dastar-pech); all turbans were in four folds (chār-pech) in those days; people wore them without twisting and let the ends hang down.104 In the heats and except in his Court, he generally wore the Mughūl cap.

      e. His qualities and habits.

      He was a true believer (Ḥanafī maẕhablīk) and pure in the Faith, not neglecting the Five Prayers and, his life through, making up his Omissions.105 He read the Qur’ān very frequently and was a disciple of his Highness Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh (Aḥrārī) who honoured him by visits and even called him son. His current readings106 were the two Quintets and the Mas̤nawī;107 of histories he read chiefly the Shāh-nāma. He had a poetic nature, but no taste for composing verses. He was so just that when he heard of a caravan returning from Khitāī as overwhelmed by snow in the mountains of Eastern Andijān,108 and that of its thousand heads of houses (awīlūq) two only had escaped, he sent his overseers to take charge of all goods and, though no heirs were near and though he was in want himself, summoned the heirs from Khurāsān and Samarkand, and in the course of a year or two had made over to them all their property safe and sound.

      He was very generous; in truth, his character rose altogether СКАЧАТЬ

<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.”

<p>93</p>

bī murād, so translated because retirement was caused once by the overruling of Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aḥrārī. (T.R. p. 113.)

<p>94</p>

Once the Mīrzā did not wish Yūnas to winter in Akhsī; once did not expect him to yield to the demand of his Mughūls to be led out of the cultivated country (wilāyat). His own misconduct included his attack in Yūnas on account of Akhsī and much falling-out with kinsmen. (T.R. s. nn.)

<p>95</p>

i. e. one made of non-warping wood (Steingass), perhaps that of the White Poplar. The Shāh-nāma (Turner, Maçon ed. i, 71) writes of a Chāchī bow and arrows of khadang, i. e. white poplar. (H.B.)

<p>96</p>

i. e. Rābī‘a-sult̤ān, married circa 893 AH. -1488 AD. For particulars about her and all women mentioned in the B.N. and the T.R. see Gulbadan Begīm’s Humāyūn-nāma, Or. Trs. Series.

<p>97</p>

jar, either that of the Kāsān Water or of a deeply-excavated canal. The palace buildings are mentioned again on f. 110b. Cf. Appendix A.

<p>98</p>

i. e. soared from earth, died. For some details of the accident see A.N. (H. Beveridge, i, 220.)

<p>99</p>

Ḥ.S. ii, -192, Firishta, lith. ed. p. 191 and D’Herbélot, sixth.

It would have accorded with Bābur’s custom if here he had mentioned the parentage of his father’s mother. Three times (fs. 17b, 70b, 96b) he writes of “Shāh Sulṯan Begīm” in a way allowing her to be taken as ‘Umar Shaikh’s own mother. Nowhere, however, does he mention her parentage. One even cognate statement only have we discovered, viz. Khwānd-amīr’s (Ḥ.S. ii, 192) that ‘Umar Shaikh was the own younger brother (barādar khurdtar khūd) of Aḥmad and Maḥmūd. If his words mean that the three were full-brothers, ‘Umar Shaikh’s own mother was Ābū-sa‘īd’s Tarkhān wife. Bābur’s omission (f. 21b) to mention his father with A. and M. as a nephew of Darwesh Muḥammad Tarkhān would be negative testimony against taking Khwānd-amīr’s statement to mean “full-brother,” if clerical slips were not easy and if Khwānd-amir’s means of information were less good. He however both was the son of Maḥmūd’s wāzir (Ḥ.S. ii, 194) and supplemented his book in Bābur’s presence.

To a statement made by the writer of the biographies included in Kehr’s B.N. volume, that ‘U.S.’s family (aūmāgh) is not known, no weight can be attached, spite of the co-incidence that the Mongol form of aūmāgh, i. e. aūmāk means Mutter-leib. The biographies contain too many known mistakes for their compiler to outweigh Khwānd-amīr in authority.

<p>100</p>

Cf. Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā vi, 266. (H.B.)

<p>101</p>

Dara-i-gaz, south of Balkh. This historic feast took place at Merv in 870 AH. (1465 AD.). As ‘Umar Shaikh was then under ten, he may have been one of the Mīrzās concerned.

<p>102</p>

Khudāī-bīrdī is a Pers. – Turkī hybrid equivalent of Theodore; tūghchī implies the right to use or (as hereditary standard-bearer,) to guard the tūgh; Tīmūr-tāsh may mean i. a. Friend of Tīmūr (a title not excluded here as borne by inheritance. Cf. f. 12b and note), Sword-friend (i. e. Companion-in-arms), and Iron-friend (i. e. stanch). Cf. Dict. s. n. Tīmūr-bāsh, a sobriquet of Charles XII.

<p>103</p>

Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. qūbā yūzlūq; this is under-lined in the Elph. MS. by ya‘nī pur ghosht. Cf. f. 68b for the same phrase. The four earlier trss. viz. the two W. – i-B., the English and the French, have variants in this passage.

<p>104</p>

The apposition may be between placing the turban-sash round the turban-cap in a single flat fold and winding it four times round after twisting it on itself. Cf. f. 18 and Hughes Dict. of Islām s.n. turban.

<p>105</p>

qaẓālār, the prayers and fasts omitted when due, through war, travel sickness, etc.

<p>106</p>

rawān sawādī bār īdī; perhaps, wrote a running hand. De C. i, 13, ses lectures courantes étaient…

<p>107</p>

The dates of ‘Umar Shaikh’s limits of perusal allow the Quintets (Khamsatīn) here referred to to be those of Niz̤āmī and Amīr Khusrau of Dihlī. The Maṣnawī must be that of Jalālu’d-dīn Rūmī. (H.B.)

<p>108</p>

Probably below the Tīrāk (Poplar) Pass, the caravan route much exposed to avalanches.

Mr. Erskine notes that this anecdote is erroneously told as of Bābur by Firishta and others. Perhaps it has been confused with the episode on f. 207b. Firishta makes another mistaken attribution to Bābur, that of Ḥasan of Yaq‘ūb’s couplet. (H.B.) Cf. f. 13b and Dow’s Hindustan ii, 218.