citadel of Samarkand stands high; from it the ground slopes west and south; on these sides therefore gardens outside the walls would lie markedly below the outer-fort (tāsh-qūrghān). Here as elsewhere the second W. – i-B. reads stone for outer (Cf. index s. n.tāsh). For the making of the North garden see Z̤.N. i, 799.
366
Tīmūr’s eldest son, d. 805 AH. (1402 AD.), before his father, therefore. Bābur’s wording suggests that in his day, the Gūr-i-amīr was known as the Madrāsa. See as to the buildings Z̤.N. i, 713 and ii, 492, 595, 597, 705; Clavijo (Markham p. 164 and p. 166); and Les Mosquées de Samarcande.
367
Hindūstān would make a better climax here than Samarkand does.
368
These appear to be pictures or ornamentations of carved wood. Redhouse describes islīmī as a special kind of ornamentation in curved lines, similar to Chinese methods.
369
i. e. the Black Stone (ka’ba) at Makkah to which Musalmāns turn in prayer.
370
As ancient observatories were themselves the instruments of astronomical observation, Bābur’s wording is correct. Aūlūgh Beg’s great quadrant was 180 ft. high; Abū-muḥammad Khujandī’s sextant had a radius of 58 ft. Jā’ī Singh made similar great instruments in Jā’īpūr, Dihlī has others. Cf. Greaves Misc. Works i, 50; Mems. p. 51 note; Āiyīn-i-akbarī (Jarrett) ii, 5 and note; Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal p. 331; Indian Gazetteer xiii, 400.
371
b. 597 AH. d. 672 AH. (1201-1274 AD.). See D’Herbélot’s art. Naṣīr-i-dīn p. 662; Abū’l-fidā (Reinaud, Introduction i, cxxxviii) and Beale’s Biographical Dict. s. n.
372
a grandson of Chīngīz Khān, d. 663 AH. (1265 AD.). The cognomen Aīl-khānī (Īl-khānī) may mean Khān of the Tribe.
373
Ḥarūnu’r-rashīd’s second son; d. 218 AH. (833 AD.).
374
Mr. Erskine notes that this remark would seem to fix the date at which Bābur wrote it as 934 AH. (1527 AD.), that being the 1584th. year of the era of Vikramāditya, and therefore at three years before Bābur’s death. (The Vikramāditya era began 57 BC.)
375
Cf. index s. n.tāsh.
376
This remark may refer to the 34 miles between the town and the quarries of its building stone. See f. 49 and note to Aītmāk Pass.
377
Steingass, any support for the back in sitting, a low wall in front of a house. See Vullers p. 148 and Burhān-i-qāt̤i‘; p. 119. Perhaps a dado.
378
beg u begāt, bāgh u bāghcha.
379
Four Gardens, a quadrilateral garden, laid out in four plots. The use of the name has now been extended for any well-arranged, large garden, especially one belonging to a ruler (Erskine).
380
As two of the trees mentioned here are large, it may be right to translate nārwān, not by pomegranate, but as the hard-wood elm, Madame Ujfalvy’s ‘karagatche’ (p. 168 and p. 222). The name qarā-yīghāch (karagatch), dark tree, is given to trees other than this elm on account of their deep shadow.
381
Now a common plan indeed! See Schuyler i, 173.
382
juwāz-i-kaghazlār (nīng) sū’ī, i. e. the water of the paper-(pulping) – mortars. Owing to the omission from some MSS. of the word sū, water, juwāz has been mistaken for a kind of paper. See Mems. p. 52 and Méms. i, 102; A.Q.R. July 1910, p. 2, art. Paper-mills of Samarkand (H.B.); and Madame Ujfalvy p. 188. Kostenko, it is to be noted, does not include paper in his list (i, 346) of modern manufactures of Samarkand.
383
Mine of mud or clay. My husband has given me support for reading gil, and not gul, rose; – (1) In two good MSS. of the W. – i-B. the word is pointed with kasra, i. e. as for gil, clay; and (2) when describing a feast held in the garden by Tīmūr, the Z̤.N. says the mud-mine became a rose-mine, shuda Kān-i-gil Kān-i-gul. [Mr. Erskine refers here to Pétis de la Croix’s Histoire de Tīmūr Beg (i. e. Z̤.N.) i, 96 and ii, 133 and 421.]
384
qūrūgh. Vullers, classing the word as Arabic, Zenker, classing it as Eastern Turkī, and Erskine (p. 42 n.) explain this as land reserved for the summer encampment of princes. Shaw (Voc. p. 155), deriving it from qūrūmāq, to frighten, explains it as a fenced field of growing grain.
385
Cf. f. 40. There it is located at one yīghāch and here at 3 kurohs from the town.
386
t̤aur.Cf. Zenker s. n. I understand it to lie, as Khān Yūrtī did, in a curve of the river.
387
162 m. by rail.
388
Cf. f. 3.
389
tīrīsīnī sūīūb. The verb sūīmāk, to despoil, seems to exclude the common plan of stoning the fruit. Cf. f. 3b, dānasīnī alīp, taking out the stones.
390
Mīn Samarkandtā aūl (or auwal) aīchkāndā Bukhārā chāghīrlār nī aīchār aīdīm. These words have been understood to refer to Bābur’s initial drinking of wine but this reading is negatived by his statement (f. 189) that he first drank wine in Harāt in 912 AH. I understand his meaning to be that the wine he drank in Samarkand was Bukhārā wine. The time cannot have been earlier than 917 AH. The two words aūl aīchkāndā, I read as parallel to aūl (bāghrī qarā) (f. 280) ‘that drinking,’ ‘that bird,’ i. e. of those other countries, not of Hindūstān where he wrote.
It may be noted that Bābur’s word for wine, chāghīr, may not always represent wine of the grape but may include wine of the apple and pear (cider and perry), and other fruits. Cider, its name seeming to be a descendant of chāghīr, was introduced into England by Crusaders, its manufacture having been learned from Turks in Palestine.
391
48 m. 3 fur. by way of the Aītmāk Pass (mod. Takhta Qarachi), and, Réclus (vi, 256) Buz-gala-khāna, Goat-house.
392
The name Aītmāk, to build, appears to be due to the stone quarries on the range. The pass-head is 34 m. from Samarkand and 3000 ft. above it. See Kostenko ii, 115 and Schuyler ii, 61 for details of the route.
393
The description of this hall is difficult to translate. Clavijo (Markham 124) throws light on the small recesses. Cf. Z̤.N. i, 781 and 300 and Schuyler ii, 68.
394
The Tāq-i-kisrī, below Bāghdād, is 105 ft. high, 84 ft. span and 150 ft. in depth (Erskine).
