The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur). Emperor of Hindustan Babur
one was Muḥammad Bāqir Beg; Sl. Maḥmud Dūldāī, Sl. Muḥammad Dūldāī’s father, was another; there were several more; to some leave was given to go for Samarkand. The Andijān Government and control of my Gate were settled on (Sayyid) Qāsim Qūchīn.
A few days after Ḥasan-i-yaq‘ūb reached Kand-i-badām on the Samarkand road, he went to near the Khūqān sub-division (aūrchīn) with ill-intent on Akhsī. Hearing of it, we sent several begs and braves to oppose him; they, as they went, detached a scouting party ahead; he, hearing this, moved against the detachment, surrounded it in its night-quarters236 and poured flights of arrows (shība) in on it. In the darkness of the night an arrow (aūq), shot by one of his own men, hit him just (aūq) in the vent (qāchār) and before he could take vent (qāchār),237 he became the captive of his own act.
“If you have done ill, keep not an easy mind,
For retribution is Nature’s law.”238
This year I began to abstain from all doubtful food, my obedience extended even to the knife, the spoon and the table-cloth;239 also the after-midnight Prayer (taḥajjud) was Fol. 25b.less neglected.
(a. Death of Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā.)
In the month of the latter Rabī‘ (January 1495 AD.), Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā was confronted by violent illness and in six days, passed from the world. He was 43 (lunar) years old.
b. His birth and lineage.
He was born in 857 AH. (1453 AD.), was Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā’s third son and the full-brother of Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā.240
c. His appearance and characteristics.
He was a short, stout, sparse-bearded and somewhat ill-shaped person. His manners and his qualities were good, his rules and methods of business excellent; he was well-versed in accounts, not a dinār or a dirhām241 of revenue was spent without his knowledge. The pay of his servants was never disallowed. His assemblies, his gifts, his open table, were all good. Everything of his was orderly and well-arranged;242 no soldier or peasant could deviate in the slightest from any plan of his. Formerly he must have been hard set (qātīrār) on hawking but latterly he very frequently hunted driven game.243 He carried violence and vice to frantic excess, was a constant wine-bibber and kept many catamites. If anywhere in his territory, there was a handsome boy, he used, by whatever means, to have him brought for a catamite; of his begs’ sons and of his sons’ begs’ sons he made catamites; and laid command for this service onFol. 26. his very foster brothers and on their own brothers. So common in his day was that vile practice, that no person was without his catamite; to keep one was thought a merit, not to keep one, a defect. Through his infamous violence and vice, his sons died in the day of their strength (tamām juwān).
He had a taste for poetry and put a dīwān244 together but his verse is flat and insipid—not to compose is better than to compose verse such as his. He was not firm in the Faith and held his Highness Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh (Aḥrārī) in slight esteem. He had no heart (yūruk) and was somewhat scant in modesty—several of his impudent buffoons used to do their filthy and abominable acts in his full Court, in all men’s sight. He spoke badly, there was no understanding him at first.
d. His battles.
He fought two battles, both with Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā (Bāīqarā). The first was in Astarābād; here he was defeated. The second was at Chīkman (Sarāī),245 near Andikhūd; here also he was defeated. He went twice to Kāfiristān, on the Fol. 26b.south of Badakhshān, and made Holy War; for this reason they wrote him Sl. Maḥmūd Ghāzī in the headings of his public papers.
e. His countries.
Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā gave him Astarābād.246 After the ‘Irāq disaster (i.e., his father’s death,) he went into Khurāsān. At that time, Qaṃbar-‘alī Beg, the governor of Ḥiṣār, by Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā’s orders, had mobilized the Hindūstān247 army and was following him into ‘Irāq; he joined Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā in Khurāsān but the Khurāsānīs, hearing of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā’s approach, rose suddenly and drove them out of the country. On this Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā went to his elder brother, Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā in Samarkand. A few months later Sayyid Badr and Khusrau Shāh and some braves under Aḥmad
Mushtāq248 took him and fled to Qaṃbar-‘alī in Ḥiṣār. From that time forth, Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā possessed the countries lying south of Quhqa (Quhlugha) and the Kohtin Range as far as the Hindū-kush Mountains, such as Tīrmīẕ, Chaghānīān, Ḥiṣār, Khutlān, Qūndūz and Badakhshān. He also held Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā’s lands, after his brother’s death.
f. His children.
He had five sons and eleven daughters.
Sl. Mas‘ūd Mīrzā was his eldest son; his mother was Khān-zādaFol 27. Begīm, a daughter of the Great Mīr of Tīrmīẕ. Bāī-sunghar Mīrzā was another; his mother was Pasha (or Pāshā) Begīm. Sl. ‘Alī Mīrzā was another; his mother was an Aūzbeg, a concubine called Zuhra Begī Āghā. Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā was another; his mother was Khān-zāda Begīm, a grand-daughter of the Great Mīr of Tīrmīẕ; he went to God’s mercy in his father’s life-time, at the age of 13. Sl. Wais Mīrzā (Mīrzā Khān) was another; his mother, Sult̤ān-nigār Khānīm was a daughter of Yūnas Khān and was a younger (half-) sister of my mother. The affairs of these four Mīrzās will be written of in this history under the years of their occurrence.
Of Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā’s daughters, three were by the same mother as Bāī-sunghar Mīrzā. One of these, Bāī-sunghar Mīrzā’s senior, Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā made to go out to Malik-i-muḥammad Mīrzā, the son of his paternal uncle, Minūchihr Mīrzā.249
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Five other daughters were by Khān-zāda Begīm, the grand-daughter of the Great Mīr of Tīrmīẕ. The oldest of these, (Khān-zāda Begīm)250 was given, after her father’s death, to Abā-bikr Fol. 27b.(Dūghlāt) Kāshgharī. The second was Bega Begīm. When Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā besieged Ḥiṣār (901 AH.), he took her for Ḥaidar Mīrzā, his son by Pāyanda Begīm, Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā’s daughter, and having done so, rose from before the place.251 The third daughter was Āq (Fair) Begīm; the fourth252—,was betrothed to Jahāngīr Mīrzā (aet. 5, circa 895 AH.) at the time his father, ‘Umar Shaikh Mīrzā sent him to help Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā with the Andijān army, against Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, then attacking Qūndūz.253 In 910 AH. (1504 AD.) when Bāqī Chaghānīānī254 waited on me on the bank of the Amū (Oxus), these (last-named two) Begīms were with their mothers in Tīrmīẕ and joined me then with Bāqī’s family. When we reached Kahmard, Jahāngīr Mīrzā took—— Begīm; one little daughter was born; she now255 is in the Badakhshān country with her grandmother. The fifth daughter was Zainab-sult̤ān Begīm; under my mother’s insistence, I took her at the time of the capture of Kābul (910 AH.-Oct. 1504 AD.). She did not become very congenial; two or three years later, she left the world, through small-pox. Another daughter was Makhdūm-sult̤ān Begīm, Sl. ‘Alī Mīrzā’s full-sister; she is now in the Badakhshān country. Two others of his daughters, Rajab-sult̤ān and Muḥibb-sult̤ān, were by mistresses (ghūnchachī).
g. His ladies (khwātīnlār) and concubines (sarārī).
His chief wife, Khān-zāda Begīm, was a daughter of the Fol. 28.Great Mīr of Tirmīẕ; he had great affection for her and must have mourned her bitterly; she was the mother of Sl. Mas‘ūd Mīrzā. Later on, he took her brother’s daughter, also called Khān-zāda Begīm, a grand-daughter of the Great Mīr of Tīrmīẕ. She