Bábar

Front matter

flute of Initria

EDITED BY

SIR WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER, K.C.S.I., CLE.

Introduction

1 In the month of Ramazan of the year eight hundred and ninety-nine [June, 1494], I became King of Farghana.' Such are the opening words of the celebrated Memoirs of Babar, first of the 'Moghul' Emperors of Hindustan.

Babar is the link between Central Asia and India, between predatory hordes and imperial government, between Tamerlane and Akbar. The blood of the two great Scourges of Asia, Chingiz and Timur, mixed in his veins, and to the daring and restlessness of the nomad Tatar he joined the culture and urbanity of the Persian. He brought the energy of the Mongol, the courage and capacity of the Turk, to the listless Hindu ; and, himself a soldier of fortune and no architect of empire, he yet laid the first stone of the splendid fabric which his grandson Akbar achieved.

His connexion with India began only in the last io THE EMPEROR BABAR

twelve years of his life. His youth was spent in ineffectual struggles to preserve his sovereignty in his native land. His early manhood, passed in his new kingdom of Kabul, was full of an unsatisfied yearning for the recovery of his mother country. It was not till the age of thirty- six that he abandoned his hope of a restored empire on the Oxus and Iaxartes, and turned his eyes resolutely towards the cities and spoils of Hindustan. Five times he invaded the northern plains, and the fifth invasion was a conquest. Five years he dwelt in the India he had now made his own, and in his forty-eighth year he died.

His permanent place in history rests upon his Indian conquests, which opened the way for an imperial line ; but his place in biography and in literature is determined rather by his daring adventures and persevering efforts in his earlier days, and by the delightful Memoirs in which he related them. Soldier of fortune as he was, Babar was not the less a man of fine literary taste and fastidious critical perception. In Persian, the language of culture, the Latin of Central Asia, as it is of India, he was an accomplished poet, and in his native Turki he was master of a pure and unaffected style alike in prose and verse1. The Turkish princes of his time prided

1 His cousin, Mirza Haidar, himself the author of a famous history, wrote of him that he was ' adorned with various virtues and clad with numberless excellences, above all which towered bravery and humanity. In the composition of Turki poetry he was

INTRODUCTION n

themselves upon their literary polish, and to turn an elegant ghazal, or even to write a beautiful manuscript, was their peculiar ambition, no less worthy or stimulating than to be master of sword or mace. In some of the boldly sketched portraits of his contemporaries which enliven the Memoirs, Babar often passes abruptly from warlike or administrative qualities to literary gifts; he will tell how many battles a king fought, and then, as if to clinch the tale of his merits, he will add that he was a competent judge of poetry and was fond of reading the Shdh Ndma, yet had such a fist that 'he never struck a man but he felled him.' Of another dignitary he notes regretfully that ' he never read, and though a townsman he was illiterate and unrefined ' ; on the other hand ' a brave man ' is commended the more because he ' wrote the nastdlik hand,' though, truly, • after a fashion.' Wit and learning, the art of turning a quatrain on the spot, quoting the Persian classics, writing a good hand, or singing a good song, were highly appreciated in Babar' s world, as much perhaps

second only to Amir'Ali Shir. He has written a divan in the purest and most lucid Turki. He invented a style of verse called mubaiyan, and was the author of a most useful treatise on jurisprudence which has been generally adopted. He also wrote an essay on Turki prosody, more elegant than any other, and versified the Rasala-i-Validiya of his Reverence. Then there is his Wakdi, or Turki ' Memoirs,' written in a simple, unaffected, yet very pure style. He excelled in music and other arts. Indeed, no one of his family before him ever possessed such talents, nor did any of his race perform such amazing exploits or experience such strange adventures.' (Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Ross and Elias.)

as valour, and infinitely more than virtue. Babar himself will break off in the middle of a tragic story to quote a verse, and he found leisure in the thick of his difficulties and dangers to compose an ode on his misfortunes. His battles as well as his orgies were humanized by a breath of poetry.

Hence his Memoirs are no rough soldier's chronicle of marches and countermarches, 'saps, mines, blinds, gabions, palisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery ' ; they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man of the world, well read in Eastern literature,* a close and curious observer, quick in perception, a discerning judge of persons, and a devoted lover of nature ; one, moreover, who was well able to express his thoughts and observations in clear and vigorous language. 'His autobiography,' says a sound authority1, 'is one of those priceless records which are for all time, and is fit to rank with the confessions of St. Augustine and Rousseau, and the memoirs of Gibbon and Newton. In Asia it stands almost alone.' There is no doubt a vast deal of dreary chronicle in the Memoirs, much desultory trifling, some repetition, and needlessly minute descriptions of secondary characters and incidents ; the first part is infinitely better than the end; but with all this, the shrewd comments and lively impressions which break in upon the narrative give Babar' s reminiscences a unique and penetrating flavour. The man's own

1 Mr. H. Beveridge, Calcutta Rev., 1897.

INTRODUCTION 13

character is so fresh and buoyant, so free from convention and cant, so rich in hope, courage, resolve, and at the same time so warm and friendly, so very human, that it conquers one's admiring sympathy. The utter frankness of self-revelation, the unconscious portraiture of all his virtues and follies, his obvious truthfulness and fine sense of honour, give the Memoirs an authority which is equal to their charm. If ever there were a case when the testimony of a single historical document, unsupported by other evidence, should be accepted as sufficient proof, it is the case with Babar's Memoirs. No reader of this prince of autobiographers can doubt his honesty or his competence as witness and chronicler.

Very little is known about the mode in which they were composed. That they were written at different dates, begun at one time and taken up again after long intervals, as leisure or inclination suggested, is to be inferred from the sudden way in which they break off, generally at a peculiarly critical moment, to be resumed without a word of explanation at a point several years later. The style, moreover, of the later portions is markedly different from that of the earlier, whilst the earlier portions bear internal evidence of revision at a later date. The natural (though conjectural) inference is that the Memoirs were written at various dates ; that the earlier part was revised and enlarged after Babar's invasion of India, though memory failed or time was wanting to fill the gaps ; and that the later part remains in its original form of a rough diary because its author died before he had leisure or energy to revise it. The Memoirs were written in Turki, Babar's native tongue. A copy of the work was in his cousin Haidar's hands, who probably obtained it during his visit to India within ten years of its author's death. Another copy, which appears to be the original of all the existing manuscripts, was transcribed from an original in Babar's own handwriting by his eldest son, the Emperor Humayun, in 1553, as is stated in an interpolation by Humayun in the body of the work1. That the son was a faithful copyist is evident, for he has not suppressed several passages in which his own conduct is censured by his father.

The Memoirs were more than once translated from Turki into Persian ; notably, with scrupulous accuracy, by the illustrious Mirza Abdu-r-Rahim, son of Bairam Khan, in 1590, by the desire of the Emperor Akbar. The close agreement, even in trifling details, of the various Turki and Persian manuscripts preserved in several collections, shows that the original text has been faithfully respected, and such variations as exist do not affect the essential accuracy of the document. Even the gaps in the narrative unfortunately occur at the same places and for the same intervals in all the manuscripts, Turki and Persian, with the exception of two or three short but interesting passages which one Turki text alone presents.

1 Memoirs, Erskine and Leyden, 303 ; Pavet de Courteille, ii. 159.

INTRODUCTION 15

This text was printed at Kazan by M. Ilminski in 1857, and was translated into French by M. Pa vet de Courteille in 187 1. Long before this, a translation into vigorous English, by John Leyden and William Erskine, based upon a collation of Persian and Turki manuscripts, and enriched with a valuable introduction and copious notes, appeared in 1826, and has ever since held its place as the standard version1. It represents the Persian more than the Turki text, but how little the two differ, and how trifling are the emendations (save in Turki words and names) to be gained from the Turki version, may be seen by a comparison of the French and English translations.

This comparison of two versions founded upon several manuscripts written in two languages brings us to the remarkable conclusion that Babar's Memoirs have come through the ordeals of translation and transcription practically unchanged. We possess, in effect, the ipsissima verba of an autobiography written early in the sixteenth century by one of the most interesting and famous men of all Asia. It is a literary fact of no little importance. The line of Emperors who proceeded from Babar's loins is no more. The very name of Mongol has lost its influence on the banks of Iaxartes ; the Turk is the servant of the Russian he once despised. The last Indian sovereign of Timiir's race ended his inglorious

1 It was abridged by Mr. K. M. Caldecott, 1844, in a readable Life of Bdbar.

career an exile at Rangoon; a few years later, the degenerate descendants of Chingiz Kaan submitted to the officers of the Tsar. The power and pomp of Babar's dynasty are gone ; the record of his life — the littera scripta that mocks at time — remains unaltered and imperishable.

Chapter II

In 1494 Babar inherited the kingdom of Farghana from his father, 'Omar Shaikh, a son of Abti-Sa'id, the great-grandson of the Amir Timur or Tamerlane.

A hundred years had passed since the Barlas Turk, in a series of triumphant campaigns, had made himself master of the western half of Asia, from Kashghar on the edge of the terrible mid- Asian desert, to the cliffs of the Aegean sea. He had driven the Knights of Rhodes out of their castle at Smyrna, and had even marched into India and sacked Delhi. In 1405 he was on his way to subdue China and set all the continent of Asia beneath his feet, when death intervened. Timur's conquests were too recent, too hasty and imperfect, to permit the organization of a settled empire. They were like a vast conflagration driven before the wind, which destroys the herbage for a while ; but when the flame has passed away, the earth grows green again. Many of the princes, who had fled before the blast of Timur's hurricane, came back to their old seats when the destroyer was departed ; and it was only over part of Persia and

B over the country beyond the Oxus that his descendants maintained their hold when that iron hand was stiff. Even there, a single century witnessed their universal downfall ; the fire had only left some embers, which smouldered awhile, but, lacking the kindling and stirring of the great incendiary, finally died out. After that, the sole relic of Timur's vast dominion was the little kingdom which an exiled prince of his own brave blood set up among the crags and passes of the Afghan hills, whence came the ' Great Moghuls ' and the glories of Delhi and Agra.

Babar in exile founded a grandiose empire, but Babar in the home of his forefathers was but a little prince among many rivals. Every one of the numerous progeny of Timur was a claimant to some throne. Mawarannahr or Transoxiana — the land of the two great rivers, Oxus and Iaxartes, the Amu and Sir Darya of to-day — was a cockpit for the jealousy and strife of a multitude of petty princes, who, whether they called themselves Mirzas in Persian, or Khans in Turki, or plain Amirs in Arabic, resembled one another closely in character and ambition. The character was ' earthly, sensual, devilish ' ; the ambition was to grasp power and wealth, quocunque modo rem, at the sacrifice of kindred, faith, and honour.

Over this crew of scheming adventurers, the King of Samarkand endeavoured to maintain some show of authority. This was Sultan Ahmad Mirza1, Babar 's

1 Sultan was a common title among Turkish and Persian princes and nobles, and did not imply the supreme sovereignty of an uncle, a weak easy-going toper, managed by his Begs or nobles. He represented the central power of Timur's empire, but he represented a shadow. Further east, from his citadel of Hisar, Ahmad's brother Mahmud ruled the country of the Upper Oxus, Kunduz, and Badakhshan, up to the icy barrier of the Hindu Kush. A third brother, Ulugh Beg, held Kabul and Ghazni ; and a fourth, Babar's father, 'Omar Shaikh, was King of Farghana, or as it was afterwards called Khokand. His capital was Andijan, but he was staying at the second city, Akhsi, when happening to visit his pigeons in their house overhanging the cliff, on June 9, 1494, by a singular accident the whole building slid down the precipice, and he fell ingloriously to the bottom 'with his pigeons and dovecote, and winged his flight to the other world.' Besides these four brothers, Sultan Husain Baikara, a cousin four times removed, ruled at Herat, with much state and magnificence, what was left of the Timurid empire in Khurasan, from Balkh near the Oxus to Astarabad beside the Caspian sea.

These were the leading princes of Timur's race at the time of Babar's accession ; but they do not exhaust the chief sources of political disturbance. Further east and north the Mongol tribes, still led by descendants of Chingiz Kaan, mustered in multitudes in their

Osmanli Sultan. Mirza after a name connotes royal blood. In general the full style, such as Sultan Mahmud Mirza, &c, will here be curtailed to the essential name Mahmud, &c, or Mahmud Mirz£ when a distinction is needed from Mahmud Khan.

B % favourite grazing steppes. Yiinus Khan, their chief, who owed his position to Babar's paternal grandfather, had given three of his daughters in marriage to three of the brothers we have named, and one of them was the mother of Babar. The connexion in no degree hampered the Mongols' natural love of war, and Mahmiid Khan \ who had succeeded his father Yunus on the white pelt or coronation seat of the tribes, played a conspicuous part in the contests which distracted Babar's youth. Yet Mahmud Khan, for a Mongol, was a man of sedate and civilized habits, who abhorred the rough life of the tents, and held his court in the populous city of Tashkend, a little north of his nephew's dominions. His defection sorely galled the Mongol patriots, but fortunately his younger brother Ahmad Khan had his full share of the national passion for the wastes, and to him was drawn the fealty of the clans who retained their primitive customs in the plains to the east of Farghana. He, too, mixed in the struggles of the time, and like his brother Mahmud fixed his eyes on Samarkand, the stately capital of Timur, whilst both felt the Mongol's fierce delight in mere fighting.

Besides these chiefs who were entitled, by descent from Chingiz or Timur, to wrangle over their inheritance, there were many minor nobles who had no such

1 The Turkish title Khan distinguishes these Mongol chiefs from their Persianated relations in Transoxiana. Thus Mahmud Khan was Babar's maternal uncle, of Tashkend; Mahmud Mirzd was Babar's paternal uncle, of Hisar.

title, but, like the Dughlat Amirs of Kashghar and Uratipa — Mongols of blue blood — or the Tarkhans of Samarkand, came of a privileged family, and, if not the rose, were so near it that they often plucked its petals. And beyond these, like a cloud on the horizon, gathered the Uzbeg tribes of Turkistan and Otrar, on the lower Iaxartesr — soon to overshadow the heritage of Timur, and under their great leader, Shaibani Khan, to become the most formidable power on the Oxus, — the one power before which even Babar turned and fled.

In the midst of the confusion and strife of so many jarring interests, the child of eleven suddenly found himself called upon to play the part of king. Of his earlier years hardly anything is known. He was born on the 6th of Muharram, 888, St. Valentine's day, 1483 1. A courier was at once sent to bear the good news to his mothers father, Yiinus, the Khan of the Mongols, and the grand old chief of seventy years came to Farghana and joined heartily in the rejoicings and feasts with which they celebrated the

1 'Omar Shaikh had three sons and five daughters by five of his wives and concubines :

'Omar Shaikh = = Kutluk Nigar Kha- =Fatima = Umaid Aghaoha = Agha — Sultan

mini (Mongol, dan. of Sultan (concubine, of Andijan) Sultan Makhdum

Yiinus Kh4n), d. 1505 (Mongol)

I . I

Begum, Muhammad Mirza, Begum, Mirza, Begum, Sultan Sultan b. Feb. 14, 1483. b. posth. b.posth.

1494. 1494.

shaving of his grandson's head. As the ill-educated Mongols could not pronounce his Arabic name — Zahir-ad-din Muhammad — they dubbed him 'Babar.' At the age of five, the child was taken on a visit to Samarkand, where he was betrothed to his cousin 'Aisha, the infant daughter of Sultan Ahmad ; and during this visit, on the occasion of a great wedding, Babar was sent to pluck the veil from the bride, for good luck. The next six years must have been spent in education, and well spent, for he had little leisure in after years to improve himself, and his remarkable attainments in the two languages he wrote imply steady application. Of this early training we hear nothing, but it is reasonable to suppose that an important part of it was due to the women of his family. The Mongol women«retained the virtues of the desert, unspoiled by luxury or by Muhammadanism. They were brave, devoted, and simple ; and among the constant references in Babars Memoirs to the almost universal habit of drunkenness among the men, we find but one solitary allusion — evidently a reproach — to a woman ' who drank wine.' The women of Babar's Mongol blood clung to him through all his troubles with devoted fortitude, though his Turkish wives deserted him ; and their sympathy in later life must have been the result of tender association in childhood. Above them all, his grandmother, Isan-daulat Begum, the widow of Yiinus, stood pre-eminent. ' Few equalled her in sense and sagacity,' her grandson says ; 6 she was wonderfully far-sighted and judicious ; many important matters and enterprises were undertaken at her instance.' The story told of her when her husband fell into the hands of his enemy reveals a Spartan character. The conqueror had allotted her to one of his officers, though Yunus was living. The Begum, however, offered no objection, but received her new bridegroom affably. The moment he was in her room, she had the doors locked, and made her women servants stab him to death, and throw his body into the street. To the messenger who came from the conqueror to learn the meaning of this, she said : 'I am the wife of Yunus Khan. Shaikh Jamal gave me to another man, contrary to law ; so I slew him ; and the Shaikh may slay me too if he pleases.' Struck by her constancy, Jamal restored her in all honour to her husband, whose prison she shared for a year, till both were freed.

This great lady was a rock of strength to her grandson in the years of his premature kingship. He was at the Pavilion of the Four Gardens at Andijan when the news of his father's sudden death reached him, in June, 1494. His first thought was to make himself sure of the capital before a brother, an uncle, or some disloyal Beg should take the chance and seize it. He instantly mounted his horse, called a handful of his followers, and rode to the citadel — the vital point to secure. As he drew near, one of his officers caught his rein, and bade him beware of falling into a trap. How could he tell whether the garrison were loyal? He was turning aside to the terrace, to await overtures, when the Begs who held the citadel sent a message of welcome by one of those Khwajas or holy men whose word was as sacred as their influence was profound in the politics of the day. Babar entered the citadel as king, and they all set to work without delay to put the fortress into a state of defence.

It was not a moment too soon. The little kingdom was menaced on three sides by invasions bequeathed by his hasty-tempered father. Two uncles were already on the march to seize the throne : they had agreed that their quarrelsome brother, 'Omar Shaikh, had become unbearable, and though he had meanwhile made his singular exit from life through the dovecote, they did not change their plans. Ahmad Mirza advanced from Samarkand ; his brother-in-law Mahmiid Khan from Tashkend. Uratipa, Khojend, and Marghinan, in rapid succession opened their gates to Ahmad, and he was close to Andijan at the very time when Babar got into the castle. Resistance seemed hopeless, and the boy sent an embassy of submission, protesting that he was his invader's c servant and son,' and begging to be allowed the rank of viceroy over the land where by right he was king. The overture was harshly repelled, and the advance continued. Fortunately for Babar, a river lay between, a black and turbid stream with a slimy bottom. On the narrow bridge the enemy pressed too eagerly, and many fell over and were drowned. The croakers recalled a disaster that had happened once before to an army on that very bridge in just the same way. Panic seized the superstitious troopers, and they could not be induced to move forward. The horses, too, were done up, and sickness broke out in the camp. Ahmad was no man to face an emergency. He made terms with Babar, retaining the cities he had taken, and ingloriously made his way homewards, only to die on the road.

Mahmud Khan, meanwhile, had annexed the northern town of Kasan and was laying siege to Akhsi, the second city of the kingdom. Here he met with an unexpected resistance : the fort was stoutly defended by the Begs of Babar 's father, and Mahmud, after several assaults, retired to his own country. He was more celebrated for beginning than for achieving a campaign. A third invader, the Dughlat Amir of Kashghar and Khotan, seized Uzkend, and built a fortress to secure it ; but Babar's men had little trouble in dislodging him.

The danger was over, but not the loss. Babar was now indeed king of Farghana, but his kingdom was shrunk to the eighty miles of rivage between Andijan and Akhsi. The rest had to be won back from his powerful neighbours. For many years he never lost sight of this object. His dearest ambition was, not only to recover his father's realm, but to seat himself at Samarkand on the throne of his great ancestor Timur. This was the grande idee to which he devoted his youth and early manhood.

To those who imagine the country beyond the Ox us to be a desert dotted with ruins buried in sand, it may seem an idle dream. They forget that the great provinces, known to the Greeks and Romans as Sogdiana, Margiana, and Bactriana, were a favoured part of Alexander's empire, where more than one Alexandria marked the conqueror's path. Samarkand, Bukhara, and Balkh were famous cities of antiquity, and throughout the middle ages they were renowned for wealth and commerce, and not less for learning and the arts. The Persian Samanids had held their splendid court there ; Timur had enriched Samarkand with the spoils of his universal conquests ; he had brought skilled craftsmen and artists from the uttermost parts of Asia to build him ' stately pleasure domes ' and splendid mosques ; and his capital became one of the most beautiful as it had long been one of the most cultivated cities of the East. Science had found a home in the Oxus province since Farabi the philosopher and Farghani the astronomer pursued their researches there in the ninth century ; and Timtir's grandson, Ulugh Beg, carried on the tradition by building the observatory at Samarkand where his famous star tables were drawn up for the perpetual information of astronomers. The incomparable Avicenna himself was a Bukhariote.

Centres of learning are usually centres of plenty. Men of science do not burrow like conies in the desert rocks : they live where the toils of learning may be alleviated by the comforts that attend wealth. The country about the two great rivers and their tributary streams was one of the most fertile in Asia. Farghana itself was prodigal of fruit and laden with heavy harvests. Abundantly watered by the Sir, and sheltered on all sides from the outer world by fostering hills — save where a gap to the south-west opened out towards Samarkand — the little province, smaller than Ireland, was a garden, an orchard, a vineyard. Grapes and melons ripened to perfection at Andijan, innumerable mills plashed in the watercourses and ground the grain yielded by the generous earth. The beautiful gardens of Ush, a day's march to the south, were gay with violets, tulips, and roses in their seasons, and between the brooks the cattle browsed on the rich clover meadows. At Marghinan, a little to the west, the third city of Farghana, grew such apricots and pomegranates that a man would journey from afar to taste them : many years after he was banished from his land, Babar recalled with a sigh the flavour of the dried apricots stuffed with almonds which were so good at Marghinan. The luscious pomegranates of Khojend were not to be despised, but the melons of Akhsi — who could resist the melons of Akhsi, which had not their equal in the world, not even in the spreading melon fields of Bukhara ? If he thought of the apricots of Marghinan in the days of his exile, Babar suffered the dreams of a Tantalus when he remembered the lost joys of the melons of Akhsi. But there was more sustaining food than melon-pulp among the hills and woods of his native land. The pastures nourished herds of cattle, sheep and goats cut their devious tracks on the mountain sides, pheasants, white deer, hares, wild goats, gave sport to the hunter and his hawk. Farghana indeed was a land of milk and honey, an oasis of plenty between the deserts of Khiva and the Takla Makau. The snowcapped hills that clipped it tempered its climate, and during the heats of summer welcomed its inhabitants to their cool retreats.

The people with whom the child-king was to dwell were of mixed race and varied character. The old Persian sons of the soil still formed the mass of the population, and tilled the earth for their masters ; but they were of so little political account that they were known as 'strangers,' tdjiks, much as the Saxons miscalled the ancient Britons ' Welsh.' The Tajiks were the hewers of wood and drawers of water for their Mongol and Turkish conquerors. In the towns the same Persian race, under the name of Sarts, formed the trading class, and performed the part of general utility. The ruling race was a mixture of those tribes which from time immemorial have migrated from the central steppes and swept over the lands which other folk had made ready for them. They comprised people of the Turkish nations, Uighurs, Naimans, Karluks, with Mongols proper and Kalmaks. When a Khan conquered another Khan he usually took his daughter or widow to wife, and the result of this constant crossing was the gradual obliteration of the distinctive characteristics of race among the upper classes. Yiinus Khan, for example, a Mongol by paternal descent, who ought to have been smoothcheeked with Mongolian features, was described as having ' a full beard and a Tajik face,' and doubtless he was one of many similar cross-breeds.

Babar himself was through his mother a grandson of Yunus, and a descendant of the great Mongol Chingiz Kaan, but on his father's side he came down from Timur, the Barlas Turk. The Mongols called him and his kindred ' Chaghatais,' but he always called himself a Turk, and spoke of the Mongols with superb contempt. The Indian empire of the ' Great Moghuls ' had not then restored honour to the name, and the Mongols of the pastoral steppes east and north of Farghana must certainly have appeared an uncouth race to the comparatively polished gentlemen of the towns, who wrote charming Persian odes, and had a horror of the discomforts of the deserts. These town 'Turks' (as we must call them, despite their mixed breed) occupied themselves with the pleasures and profits of a governing class. They were intelligent, often cultivated, brave, and energetic ; they were also cruel, vicious, and treacherous. As liars they had few equals. They could rarely be trusted if anything was to be gained by betrayal.