The Bābur-nāma. Babur

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СКАЧАТЬ Khān crossed the Khujand river on the ice and plundered near Shāhrukhiya and Bīsh-kīnt. On hearing news of this, we gallopped off, not regarding the smallness of our numbers, and made for the villages below Khujand, opposite Hasht-yak (One-eighth). The cold was mightily bitter,582 a wind not less than the Hā-darwesh583 raging violently the whole time. So cold it was that during the two or three days we were in those parts, several men died of it. When, needing to make ablution, I went into an irrigation-channel, frozen along both banks but because of its swift current, not ice-bound in the middle, and bathed, dipping under 16 times, the cold of the water went quite through me. Next day we crossed the river on the ice from opposite Khaṣlār and went on through the dark to Bīsh-kīnt.584 Shaibāq Khān, however, must have gone straight back after plundering the neighbourhood of Shāhrukhiya.

      (e. Death of Nuyān Kūkūldāsh.)

      Bīsh-kīnt, at that time, was held by Mullā Ḥaidar’s son, ‘Abdu’l-minān. A younger son, named Mūmin, a worthless and dissipated person, had come to my presence in Samarkand and had received all kindness from me. This sodomite, Mūmin, for what sort of quarrel between them is not known, cherished rancour against Nuyān Kūkūldāsh. At the time when we, having heard of the retirement of the Aūzbegs, sent a man to

      The Khān and marched from Bīsh-kīnt to spend two or three days amongst the villages in the Blacksmith’s-dale,585 Mullā Ḥaidar’s son, Mūmin invited Nuyān Kūkūldāsh and Aḥmad-i-qāsim and some others in order to return them hospitality received in Samarkand. When I left Bīsh-kīnt, therefore they stayed behind. Mūmin’s entertainment to this party was given on the edge of a ravine (jar). Next day news was brought to us in Sām-sīrak, a village in the Blacksmith’s-dale, that Nuyān was dead through falling when drunk into the ravine. We sent his own mother’s brother, Ḥaq-naz̤ar and others, who searched out where he had fallen. They committed Nuyān to the earth in Bīsh-kīnt, and came back to me. They had found the body at the bottom of the ravine an arrow’s flight from the place of the entertainment. Some suspected that Mūmin, nursing his trumpery rancour, had taken Nuyān’s life. None knew the truth. His death made me strangely sad; for few men have I felt such grief; I wept unceasingly for a week or ten days. The chronogram of his death was found in Nuyān is dead.586

      With the heats came the news that Shaibāq Khān was coming up into Aūrā-tīpā. Hereupon, as the land is level about Dikh-kat, we crossed the Āb-burdan pass into the Macha hill-country.587 Āb-burdan is the last village of Macha; just below it a spring sends its water down (to the Zar-afshān); above the stream is included in Macha, below it depends on Palghar. There is a tomb at the spring-head. I had a rock at the side of the spring-head shaped (qātīrīb) and these three couplets inscribed on it; —

      I have heard that Jamshīd, the magnificent,

      Inscribed on a rock at a fountain-head588

      ‘Many men like us have taken breath at this fountain,

      And have passed away in the twinkling of an eye;

      We took the world by courage and might,

      But we took it not with us to the tomb.’

      There is a custom in that hill-country of cutting verses and things589 on the rocks.

      While we were in Macha, Mullā Hijrī,590 the poet, came from Ḥiṣār and waited on me. At that time I composed the following opening lines; —

      Let your portrait flatter you never so much, than it you are more (āndīn artūqsīn);

      Men call you their Life (Jān), than Life, without doubt, you are more (jāndīn artūqsīn).591

      After plundering round about in Aūrā-tīpā, Shaibāq Khān retired.592 While he was up there, we, disregarding the fewness of our men and their lack of arms, left our impedimenta (aūrūq) in Macha, crossed the Āb-burdan pass and went to Dikh-kat so that, gathered together close at hand, we might miss no chance on one of the next nights. He, however, retired straightway; we went back to Macha.

      It passed through my mind that to wander from mountain to mountain, homeless and houseless, without country or abiding-place, had nothing to recommend it. ‘Go you right off to The Khān,’ I said to myself. Qāsim Beg was not willing for this move, apparently being uneasy because, as has been told, he had put Mughūls to death at Qarā-būlāq, by way of example. However much we urged it, it was not to be! He drew off for Ḥiṣār with all his brothers and his whole following. We for our part, crossed the Āb-burdan pass and set forward for The Khān’s presence in Tāshkīnt.

      (f. Bābur with The Khān.)

      In the days when Taṃbal had drawn his army out and gone into the Blacksmith’s-dale,593 men at the top of his army, such as Muḥ. Dūghlāt, known as Ḥiṣārī, and his younger brother Ḥusain, and also Qaṃbar-‘alī, the Skinner, conspired to attempt his life. When he discovered this weighty matter, they, unable to remain with him, had gone to The Khān.

      The Feast of Sacrifices (‘Īd-i-qurbān) fell for us in Shāh-rukhiya (Ẕū’l-ḥijja 10th. – June 16th. 1502).

      I had written a quatrain in an ordinary measure but was in some doubt about it, because at that time I had not studied poetic idiom so much as I have now done. The Khān was good-natured and also he wrote verses, though ones somewhat deficient in the requisites for odes. I presented my quatrain and I laid my doubts before him but got no reply so clear as to remove them. His study of poetic idiom appeared to have been somewhat scant. Here is the verse; —

      One hears no man recall another in trouble (miḥnat-ta kīshī);

      None speak of a man as glad in his exile (ghurbat-ta kīshī);

      My own heart has no joy in this exile;

      Called glad is no exile, man though he be (albatta kīshī).

      Later on I came to know that in Turkī verse, for the purpose of rhyme, ta and da are interchangeable and also ghain, qāf and kāf.594

      (g. The acclaiming of the standards.)

      When, a few days later, The Khān heard that Taṃbal had gone up into Aūrā-tīpā, he got his army to horse and rode out from Tāshkīnt. Between Bīsh-kīnt and Sām-sīrak he formed up into array of right and left and saw the count595 of his men. This done, the standards were acclaimed in Mughūl fashion.596 The Khān dismounted and nine standards were set up in front of him. A Mughūl tied a long strip of white cloth to the thigh-bone (aūrta aīlīk) of a cow and took the other end in his hand. Three other long strips of white cloth were tied to the staves of three of the (nine) standards, just below the yak-tails, and their other ends were brought for The Khān to stand on one and for me and Sl. Muḥ. Khānika to stand each on one of the two others. The Mughūl who had hold of the strip of cloth fastened to the cow’s leg, then said something in Mughūl while he looked at the standards and made signs towards them. The Khān and those present sprinkled qumīzСКАЧАТЬ