Events of the Unchronicled Years
926 AH.-DEC. 23rd 1519 to DEC. 12th 1520 AD.
The question of which were Bābur’s “Five expeditions” into Hindūstān has been often discussed; it is useful therefore to establish the dates of those known as made. I have entered one as made in this year for the following reasons;—it broke short because Shāh Beg made incursion into Bābur’s territories, and that incursion was followed by a siege of Qandahār which several matters mentioned below show to have taken place in 926 AH.
a. Expedition into Hindūstān.
The march out from Kābul may have been as soon as muster and equipment allowed after the return from Lamghān chronicled in the diary. It was made through Bajaur where refractory tribesmen were brought to order. The Indus will have been forded at the usual place where, until the last one of 932 AH. (1525 AD.), all expeditions crossed on the outward march. Bhīra was traversed in which were Bābur’s own Commanders, and advance was made, beyond lands yet occupied, to Sīālkot, 72 miles north of Lāhor and in the Rechna dū-āb. It was occupied without resistance; and a further move made to what the MSS. call Sayyidpūr; this attempted defence, was taken by assault and put to the sword. No place named Sayyidpūr is given in the Gazetteer of India, but the Āyīn-i-akbarī mentions a Sidhpūr which from its neighbourhood to Sīālkot may be what Bābur took.
Nothing indicates an intention in Bābur to join battle with Ibrāhīm at this time; Lāhor may have been his objective, after he had made a demonstration in force to strengthen his footing in Bhīra. Whatever he may have planned to do beyond Sidhpūr(?) was frustrated by the news which took him back to Kābul and thence to Qandahār, that an incursion into his territory had been made by Shāh Beg.
b. Shāh Shujā‘ Beg’s position.
Shāh Beg was now holding Qandahār, Shāl, Mustang and Sīwīstān.1550 He knew that he held Qandahār by uncertain tenure, in face of its desirability for Bābur and his own lesser power. His ground was further weakened by its usefulness for operations on Harāt and the presence with Bābur of Bāī-qarā refugees, ready to seize a chance, if offered by Ismā‘īl’s waning fortunes, for recovery of their former seat. Knowing his weakness, he for several years had been pushing his way out into Sind by way of the Bolān-pass.
His relations with Bābur were ostensibly good; he had sent him envoys twice last year, the first time to announce a success at Kāhān had in the end of 924 AH. (Nov. 1519 AD.). His son Ḥasan however, with whom he was unreconciled, had been for more than a year in Bābur’s company,—a matter not unlikely to stir under-currents of unfriendliness on either side.
His relations with Shāh Ismā‘īl were deferential, in appearance even vassal-like, as is shewn by Khwānd-amīr’s account of his appeal for intervention against Bābur to the Shāh’s officers in Harāt. Whether he read the khut̤ba for any suzerain is doubtful; his son Ḥasan, it may be said, read it later on for Bābur.
c. The impelling cause of this siege of Qandahār.
Precisely what Shāh Beg did to bring Bābur back from the Panj-āb and down upon Qandahār is not found mentioned by any source. It seems likely to have been an affair of subordinates instigated by or for him. Its immediate agents may have been the Nīkdīrī (Nūkdīrī) and Hazāra tribes Bābur punished on his way south. Their location was the western border-land; they may have descended on the Great North Road or have raided for food in that famine year. It seems certain that Shāh Beg made no serious attempt on Kābul; he was too much occupied in Sind to allow him to do so. Some unused source may throw light on the matter incidentally; the offence may have been small in itself and yet sufficient to determine Bābur to remove risk from his rear.1551
d. Qandahār.
The Qandahār of Bābur’s sieges was difficult of capture; he had not taken it in 913 AH. (f. 208b) by siege or assault, but by default after one day’s fight in the open. The strength of its position can be judged from the following account of its ruins as they were seen in 1879 AD., the military details of which supplement Bellew’s description quoted in Appendix J.
The fortifications are of great extent with a treble line of bastioned walls and a high citadel in the centre. The place is in complete ruin and its locality now useful only as a grazing ground.... “The town is in three parts, each on a separate eminence, and capable of mutual defence. The mountain had been covered with towers united by curtains, and the one on the culminating point may be called impregnable. It commanded the citadel which stood lower down on the second eminence, and this in turn commanded the town which was on a table-land elevated above the plain. The triple walls surrounding the city were at a considerable distance from it. After exploring the citadel and ruins, we mounted by the gorge to the summit of the hill with the impregnable fort. In this gorge are the ruins of two tanks, some 80 feet square, all destroyed, with the pillars fallen; the work is pukka in brick and chunām (cement) and each tank had been domed in; they would have held about 400,000 gallons each.” (Le Messurier’s Kandahar in 1879 AD. pp. 223, 245.)
e. Bābur’s sieges of Qandahār.
The term of five years is found associated with Bābur’s sieges of Qandahār, sometimes suggesting a single attempt of five years’ duration. This it is easy to show incorrect; its root may be Mīr Ma‘ṣūm’s erroneous chronology.
The day on which the keys of Qandahār were made over to Bābur is known, from the famous inscription which commemorates the event (Appendix J), as Shawwāl 13th 928 AH. Working backwards from this, it is known that in 927 AH. terms of surrender were made and that Bābur went back to Kābul; he is besieging it in 926 AH.—the year under description; his annals of 925 AH. are complete and contain no siege; the year 924 AH. appears to have had no siege, Shāh Beg was on the Indus and his son was for at least part of it with Bābur; 923 AH. was a year of intended siege, frustrated by Bābur’s own illness; of any siege in 922 AH. there is as yet no record known. So that it is certain there was no unremitted beleaguerment through five years.
f. The siege of 926 AH. (1520 AD.).
When Bābur sat down to lay regular siege to Qandahār, with mining and battering of the walls,1552 famine was desolating the country round. The garrison was reduced to great distress; “pestilence,” ever an ally of Qandahār, broke out within the walls, spread to Bābur’s camp, and in the month of Tīr (June) led him to return to Kābul.
In the succeeding months of respite, Shāh Beg pushed on in Sind and his former slave, now commander, Mehtar Saṃbhal revictualled the town.
927 AH.—DEC. 12th 1520 to DEC. 1st 1521 AD.
a. The manuscript sources.
Two accounts of the sieges of Qandahār in this and next year are available, one in Khwānd-amīr’s Ḥabību’s-siyar, the other in Ma‘ṣūm Bhakkarī’s Tārīkh-i-sind. As they have important differences, it is necessary to consider the opportunities of their authors for information.
Khwānd-amīr finished his history in 1524-29 AD. His account of these affairs of Qandahār is contemporary; he was in close touch with several of the actors in them and may have been in Harāt through their course; one of his patrons, Amīr Ghiyās̤u’d-dīn, was put to death in this year in Harāt because of suspicion that he was an ally of Bābur; his nephew, another Ghiyās̤u’d-dīn was in Qandahār, the bearer next year of its keys to Bābur; moreover he was with Bābur himself a few years later in Hindūstān.
Mīr Ma‘ṣūm wrote in 1600 AD. 70 to 75 years after Khwānd-amīr. Of these sieges he tells what may have been traditional and mentions no manuscript authorities. Blochmann’s biography of him (Āyīn-i-akbarī p. 514) shews his ample opportunity of learning orally what had happened in the Arghūn invasion of Sind, but does not mention the opportunity for hearing traditions about Qandahār which his term of office there allowed him. During that term it was that he added an inscription, commemorative of Akbar’s dominion, to Bābur’s own at Chihil-zīna, which records the date of the capture of Qandahār (928 AH.-1522 AD.).
b. The Ḥabību’s-siyar account (lith. ed. iii, part 4, p. 97).
Khwānd-amīr’s contemporary narrative allows Ma‘ṣūm’s to dovetail into it as to some matters, but contradicts it in the important ones of date, and mode of surrender by Shāh Beg to Bābur. It states that Bābur was resolved in 926 AH. (1520 AD.) to uproot Shāh Shujā‘ Beg from Qandahār, led an army against the place, and “opened the Gates of war”. It gives no account of the siege of 926 AH. but passes on to the occurrences of 927 AH. (1521 AD.) when Shāh Beg, unable to meet Bābur in the field, shut himself up in the town and strengthened the defences. Bābur put his utmost pressure on the besieged, “often riding his piebald horse close to the moat and urging his men to fiery onset.” The garrison resisted manfully, breaching the “life-fortresses” of the Kābulīs with sword, arrow, spear and death-dealing stone, but Bābur’s heroes were most often victorious, and drove their assailants back through the Gates.
c. Death of Khān Mīrzā reported to Bābur.
Meantime, continues Khwānd-amīr, Khān Mīrzā had died in Badakhshān; the news was brought to Bābur and caused him great grief; he appointed Humāyūn to succeed the Mīrzā while he himself prosecuted the siege of Qandahār and the conquest of the Garm-sīr.1553
d. Negociations with Bābur.
The Governor of Harāt at this time was Shāh Ismā‘īl’s son T̤ahmāsp, between six and seven years old. His guardian Amīr Khān took chief part in the diplomatic intervention with Bābur, but associated with him was Amīr Ghiyās̤u’d-dīn—the patron of Khwānd-amīr already mentioned—until put to death as an ally of Bābur. The discussion had with Bābur reveals a complexity of motives demanding attention. Nominally undertaken though intervention was on behalf of Shāh Beg, and certainly so at his request, the Persian officers seem to have been less anxious on his account than for their own position in Khurāsān, their master’s position at the time being weakened by ill-success against the Sult̤ān of Rūm. To Bābur, Shāh Beg is written of as though he were an insubordinate vassal whom Bābur was reducing to order for the Shāh, but when Amīr Khān heard that Shāh Beg was hard pressed, he was much distressed because he feared a victorious Bābur might move on Khurāsān. Nothing indicates however that Bābur had Khurāsān in his thoughts; Hindūstān was his objective, and Qandahār a help on the way; but as Amīr Khān had this fear about him, a probable ground for it is provided by the presence with Bābur of Bāī-qarā exiles whose ambition it must have been to recover their former seat. Whether for Harāt, Kābul, or Hindūstān, Qandahār was strength. Another matter not fitting the avowed purpose of the diplomatic intervention is the death of Ghiyās̤u’d-dīn because an ally of Bābur; this makes Amīr Khān seem to count Bābur as Ismā‘īl’s enemy.
Shāh Beg’s requests for intervention began in 926 AH. (1520 AD.), as also did the remonstrance of the Persian officers with Bābur; his couriers followed one another with entreaty that the Amīrs would contrive for Bābur to retire, with promise of obeisance and of yearly tribute. The Amīrs set forth to Bābur that though Shāh Shujā‘ Beg had offended and had been deserving of wrath and chastisement, yet, as he was penitent and had promised loyalty and tribute, it was now proper for Bābur to raise the siege (of 926 AH.) and go back to Kābul. To this Bābur answered that Shāh Beg’s promise was a vain thing, on which no reliance could be placed; please God!, said he, he himself would take Qandahār and send Shāh Beg a prisoner to Harāt; and that he should be ready then to give the keys of the town and the possession of the Garm-sīr to any-one appointed to receive them.
This correspondence suits an assumption that Bābur acted for Shāh Ismā‘īl, a diplomatic assumption merely, the verbal veil, on one side, for anxiety lest Bābur or those with him should attack Harāt,—on the other, for Bābur’s resolve to hold Qandahār himself.
Amīr Khān was not satisfied with Bābur’s answer, but had his attention distracted by another matter, presumably ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Khān’s attack on Harāt in the spring of the year (March-April 1521 AD.). Negociations appear to have been resumed later, since Khwānd-amīr claims it as their result that Bābur left Qandahār this year.
e. The Tārīkh-i-sind account.
Mīr Ma‘ṣūm is very brief; he says that in this year (his 922 AH.), Bābur went down to Qandahār before the year’s tribute in grain had been collected, destroyed the standing crops, encompassed the town, and reduced it to extremity; that Shāh Beg, wearied under reiterated attack and pre-occupied by operations in Sind, proposed terms, and that these were made with stipulation for the town to be his during one year more and then to be given over to Bābur. These terms settled, Bābur went to Kābul, Shāh Beg to Sīwī.
The Arghūn families were removed to Shāl and Sīwī, so that the year’s delay may have been an accommodation allowed for this purpose.
f. Concerning dates.
There is much discrepancy between the dates of the two historians. Khwānd-amīr’s agree with the few fixed ones of the period and with the course of events; several of Ma‘ṣūm’s, on the contrary, are seriatim five (lunar) years earlier. For instance, events Khwānd-amīr places under 927 AH. Ma‘ṣūm places under 922 AH. Again, while Ma‘ṣūm correctly gives 913 AH. (1507 AD.) as the year of Bābur’s first capture of Qandahār, he sets up a discrepant series later, from the success Shāh Beg had at Kāhān; this he allots to 921 AH. (1515 AD.) whereas Bābur received news of it (f. 233b) in the beginning of 925 AH. (1519 AD.). Again, Ma‘ṣūm makes Shāh Ḥasan go to Bābur in 921 AH. and stay two years; but Ḥasan spent the whole of 925 AH. with Bābur and is not mentioned as having left before the second month of 926 AH. Again, Ma‘ṣūm makes Shāh Beg surrender the keys of Qandahār in 923 AH. (1517 AD.), but 928 AH. (1522 AD.) is shewn by Khwānd-amīr’s dates and narrative, and is inscribed at Chihil-zīna.1554
928 AH.-DEC. 1st 1521 to NOV. 20th 1522 AD.
a. Bābur visits Badakhshān.
Either early in this year or late in the previous one, Bābur and Māhīm went to visit Humāyūn in his government, probably to Faizābād, and stayed with him what Gul-badan calls a few days.
b. Expedition to Qandahār.
This year saw the end of the duel for possession of Qandahār. Khwānd-amīr’s account of its surrender differs widely from Ma‘ṣūm’s. It claims that Bābur’s retirement in 927 AH. was due to the remonstrances from Harāt, and that Shāh Beg, worn out by the siege, relied on the arrangement the Amīrs had made with Bābur and went to Sīwī, leaving one ‘Abdu’l-bāqī in charge of the place. This man, says Khwānd-amīr, drew the line of obliteration over his duty to his master, sent to Bābur, brought him down to Qandahār, and gave him the keys of the town—by the hand of Khwānd-amīr’s nephew Ghiyās̤u’d-dīn, specifies the Tarkhān-nāma. In this year messengers had come and gone between Bābur and Harāt; two men employed by Amīr Khān are mentioned by name; of them the last had not returned to Harāt when a courier of Bābur’s, bringing a tributary gift, announced there that the town was in his master’s hands. Khwānd-amīr thus fixes the year 928 AH. as that in which the town passed into Bābur’s hands; this date is confirmed by the one inscribed in the monument of victory at Chihil-zīna which Bābur ordered excavated on the naze of the limestone ridge behind the town. The date there given is Shawwāl 13th 928 AH. (Sep. 6th 1522 AD.).
Ma‘ṣūm’s account, dated 923 AH. (1517 AD.), is of the briefest:—Shāh Beg fulfilled his promise, much to Bābur’s approval, by sending him the keys of the town and royal residence.
Although Khwānd-amīr’s account has good claim to be accepted, it must be admitted that several circumstances can be taken to show that Shāh Beg had abandoned Qandahār, e.g. the removal of the families after Bābur’s retirement last year, and his own absence in a remote part of Sind this year.
c. The year of Shāh Beg’s death.
Of several variant years assigned for the death of Shāh Beg in the sources, two only need consideration.1555 There is consensus of opinion about the month and close agreement about the day, Sha‘bān 22nd or 23rd. Ma‘ṣūm gives a chronogram, Shahr-Sha‘bān, (month of Sha‘bān) which yields 928, but he does not mention where he obtained it, nor does anything in his narrative shew what has fixed the day of the month.
Two objections to 928 are patent: (1) the doubt engendered by Ma‘ṣūm’s earlier ante-dating; (2) that if 928 be right, Shāh Beg was already dead over two months when Qandahār was surrendered. This he might have been according to Khwānd-amīr’s narrative, but if he died on Sha‘bān 22nd 928 (July 26th 1522), there was time for the news to have reached Qandahār, and to have gone on to Harāt before the surrender. Shāh Beg’s death at that time could not have failed to be associated in Khwānd-amīr’s narrative with the fate of Qandahār; it might have pleaded some excuse with him for ‘Abdu’l-bāqī, who might even have had orders from Shāh Ḥasan to make the town over to Bābur whose suzerainty he had acknowledged at once on succession by reading the khut̤ba in his name. Khwānd-amīr however does not mention what would have been a salient point in the events of the siege; his silence cannot but weigh against the 928 AH.
The year 930 AH. is given by Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad’s T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī (lith. ed. p. 637), and this year has been adopted by Erskine, Beale, and Ney Elias, perhaps by others. Some light on the matter may be obtained incidentally as the sources are examined for a complete history of India, perhaps coming from the affairs of Multān, which was attacked by Shāh Ḥasan after communication with Bābur.
d. Bābur’s literary work in 928 AH. and earlier.
1. The Mubīn. This year, as is known from a chronogram within the work, Bābur wrote the Turkī poem of 2000 lines to which Abū’l-faẓl and Badāyūnī give the name Mubīn (The Exposition), but of which the true title is said by the Nafā’isu’l-ma‘āsir to be Dar fiqa mubaiyan (The Law expounded). Sprenger found it called also Fiqa-i-bāburī (Bābur’s Law). It is a versified and highly orthodox treatise on Muḥammadan Law, written for the instruction of Kāmrān. A Commentary on it, called also Mubīn, was written by Shaikh Zain. Bābur quotes from it (f. 351b) when writing of linear measures. Berézine found and published a large portion of it as part of his Chrestomathie Turque (Kazan 1857); the same fragment may be what was published by Ilminsky. Teufel remarks that the MS. used by Berézine may have descended direct from one sent by Bābur to a distinguished legist of Transoxiana, because the last words of Berézine’s imprint are Bābur’s Begleitschreiben (envoi); he adds the expectation that the legist’s name might be learned. Perhaps this recipient was the Khwāja Kalān, son of Khwāja Yaḥya, a Samarkandī to whom Bābur sent a copy of his Memoirs on March 7th 1520 (935 AH. f. 363).1556
2. The Bābur-nāma diary of 925-6 AH. (1519-20 AD.). This is almost contemporary with the Mubīn and is the earliest part of the Bābur-nāma writings now known. It was written about a decade earlier than the narrative of 899 to 914 AH. (1494 to 1507 AD.), carries later annotations, and has now the character of a draft awaiting revision.
3. A Dīwān (Collection of poems). By dovetailing a few fragments of information, it becomes clear that by 925 AH. (1519 AD.) Bābur had made a Collection of poetical compositions distinct from the Rāmpūr Dīwān; it is what he sent to Pūlād Sult̤an in 925 AH. (f. 238). Its date excludes the greater part of the Rāmpūr one. It may have contained those verses to which my husband drew attention in the Asiatic Quarterly Review of 1911, as quoted in the Abūshqa; and it may have contained, in agreement with its earlier date, the verses Bābur quotes as written in his earlier years. None of the quatrains found in the Abūshqa and there attributed to “Bābur Mīrzā”, are in the Rāmpūr Dīwān; nor are several of those early ones of the Bābur-nāma. So that the Dīwān sent to Pūlād Sult̤ān may be the source from which the Abūshqa drew its examples.
On first examining these verses, doubt arose as to whether they were really by Bābur Mīrānshāhī; or whether they were by “Bābur Mīrzā” Shāhrukhī. Fortunately my husband lighted on one of them quoted in the Sanglakh and there attributed to Bābur Pādshāh. The Abūshqa quatrains are used as examples in de Courteille’s Dictionary, but without an author’s name; they can be traced there through my husband’s articles.1557
929 AH.—NOV. 20th 1522 to NOV. 10th 1523 AD.
a. Affairs of Hindūstān.
The centre of interest in Bābur’s affairs now moves from Qandahār to a Hindūstān torn by faction, of which faction one result was an appeal made at this time to Bābur by Daulat Khān Lūdī (Yūsuf-khail) and ‘Alāu’d-dīn ‘Ālam Khān Lūdī for help against Ibrāhīm.1558
The following details are taken mostly from Aḥmad Yādgār’s Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afāghana1559:—Daulat Khān had been summoned to Ibrāhīm’s presence; he had been afraid to go and had sent his son Dilāwar in his place; his disobedience angering Ibrāhīm, Dilāwar had a bad reception and was shewn a ghastly exhibit of disobedient commanders. Fearing a like fate for himself, he made escape and hastened to report matters to his father in Lāhor. His information strengthening Daulat Khān’s previous apprehensions, decided the latter to proffer allegiance to Bābur and to ask his help against Ibrāhīm. Apparently ‘Ālam Khān’s interests were a part of this request. Accordingly Dilāwar (or Apāq) Khān went to Kābul, charged with his father’s message, and with intent to make known to Bābur Ibrāhīm’s evil disposition, his cruelty and tyranny, with their fruit of discontent amongst his Commanders and soldiery.
b. Reception of Dilāwar Khān in Kābul.
Wedding festivities were in progress1560 when Dilāwar Khān reached Kābul. He presented himself, at the Chār-bāgh may be inferred, and had word taken to Bābur that an Afghān was at his Gate with a petition. When admitted, he demeaned himself as a suppliant and proceeded to set forth the distress of Hindūstān. Bābur asked why he, whose family had so long eaten the salt of the Lūdīs, had so suddenly deserted them for himself. Dilāwar answered that his family through 40 years had upheld the Lūdī throne, but that Ibrāhīm maltreated Sikandar’s amīrs, had killed 25 of them without cause, some by hanging some burned alive, and that there was no hope of safety in him. Therefore, he said, he had been sent by many amīrs to Bābur whom they were ready to obey and for whose coming they were on the anxious watch.
c. Bābur asks a sign.
At the dawn of the day following the feast, Bābur prayed in the garden for a sign of victory in Hindūstān, asking that it should be a gift to himself of mango or betel, fruits of that land. It so happened that Daulat Khān had sent him, as a present, half-ripened mangoes preserved in honey; when these were set before him, he accepted them as the sign, and from that time forth, says the chronicler, made preparation for a move on Hindūstān.
d. ‘Ālam Khān.
Although ‘Ālam Khān seems to have had some amount of support for his attempt against his nephew, events show he had none valid for his purpose. That he had not Daulat Khān’s, later occurrences make clear. Moreover he seems not to have been a man to win adherence or to be accepted as a trustworthy and sensible leader.1561 Dates are uncertain in the absence of Bābur’s narrative, but it may have been in this year that ‘Ālam Khān went in person to Kābul and there was promised help against Ibrāhīm.
e. Birth of Gul-badan.
Either in this year or the next was born Dil-dār’s third daughter Gul-badan, the later author of an Humāyūn-nāma written at her nephew Akbar’s command in order to provide information for the Akbar-nāma.
930 AH.—NOV. 10th 1523 to OCT. 29th 1524 AD.
a. Bābur’s fourth expedition to Hindūstān.
This expedition differs from all earlier ones by its co-operation with Afghān malcontents against Ibrāhīm Lūdī, and by having for its declared purpose direct attack on him through reinforcement of ‘Ālam Khān.
Exactly when the start from Kābul was made is not found stated; the route taken after fording the Indus, was by the sub-montane road through the Kakar country; the Jīhlam and Chīn-āb were crossed and a move was made to within 10 miles of Lāhor.
Lāhor was Daulat Khān’s head-quarters but he was not in it now; he had fled for refuge to a colony of Bilūchīs, perhaps towards Multān, on the approach against him of an army of Ibrāhīm’s under Bihār Khān Lūdī. A battle ensued between Bābur and Bihār Khān; the latter was defeated with great slaughter; Bābur’s troops followed his fugitive men into Lāhor, plundered the town and burned some of the bāzārs.
Four days were spent near Lāhor, then move south was made to Dībālpūr which was stormed, plundered and put to the sword. The date of this capture is known from an incidental remark of Bābur about chronograms (f. 325), to be mid-Rabī‘u’l-awwal 930 AH. (circa Jan. 22nd 1524 AD.).1562 From Dībālpūr a start was made for Sihrind but before this could be reached news arrived which dictated return to Lāhor.
b. The cause of return.
Daulat Khān’s action is the obvious cause of the retirement. He and his sons had not joined Bābur until the latter was at Dībālpūr; he was not restored to his former place in charge of the important Lāhor, but was given Jalandhar and Sult̤ānpūr, a town of his own foundation. This angered him extremely but he seems to have concealed his feelings for the time and to have given Bābur counsel as if he were content. His son Dilāwar, however, represented to Bābur that his father’s advice was treacherous; it concerned a move to Multān, from which place Daulat Khān may have come up to Dībālpūr and connected with which at this time, something is recorded of co-operation by Bābur and Shāh Ḥasan Arghūn. But the incident is not yet found clearly described by a source. Dilāwar Khān told Bābur that his father’s object was to divide and thus weaken the invading force, and as this would have been the result of taking Daulat Khān’s advice, Bābur arrested him and Apāq on suspicion of treacherous intent. They were soon released, and Sult̤ānpūr was given them, but they fled to the hills, there to await a chance to swoop on the Panj-āb. Daulat Khān’s hostility and his non-fulfilment of his engagement with Bābur placing danger in the rear of an eastward advance, the Panj-āb was garrisoned by Bābur’s own followers and he himself went back to Kābul.
It is evident from what followed that Daulat Khān commanded much strength in the Panj-āb; evident also that something counselled delay in the attack on Ibrāhīm, perhaps closer cohesion in favour of ‘Ālam Khān, certainly removal of the menace of Daulat Khān in the rear; there may have been news already of the approach of the Aūzbegs on Balkh which took Bābur next year across Hindū-kush.
c. The Panj-āb garrison.
The expedition had extended Bābur’s command considerably, notably by obtaining possession of Lāhor. He now posted in it Mīr ‘Abdu’l-‘azīz his Master of the Horse; in Dībālpūr he posted, with ‘Ālam Khān, Bābā Qashqa Mughūl; in Sīālkot, Khusrau Kūkūldāsh, in Kalanūr, Muḥammad ‘Alī Tājik.
d. Two deaths.
This year, on Rajab 19th (May 23rd) died Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī at the age of 38, broken by defeat from Sult̤ān Salīm of Rūm.1563 He was succeeded by his son T̤ahmāsp, a child of ten.
This year may be that of the death of Shāh Shujā‘ Arghūn,1564 on Sha‘bān 22nd (July 18th), the last grief of his burden being the death of his foster-brother Fāẓil concerning which, as well as Shāh Beg’s own death, Mīr Ma‘ṣūm’s account is worthy of full reproduction. Shāh Beg was succeeded in Sind by his son Ḥasan, who read the khut̤ba for Bābur and drew closer links with Bābur’s circle by marrying, either this year or the next, Khalīfa’s daughter Gul-barg, with whom betrothal had been made during Ḥasan’s visit to Bābur in Kābul. Moreover Khalīfa’s son Muḥibb-i-‘alī married Nāhīd the daughter of Qāsim Kūkūldāsh and Māh-chūchūk Arghūn (f. 214b). These alliances were made, says Ma‘ṣūm, to strengthen Ḥasan’s position at Bābur’s Court.
e. A garden detail.
In this year and presumably on his return from the Panj-āb, Bābur, as he himself chronicles (f. 132), had plantains (bananas) brought from Hindūstān for the Bāgh-i-wafā at Adīnapūr.
931 AH.—OCT. 29th 1524 to OCT. 18th 1525 AD.
a. Daulat Khān.
Daulat Khān’s power in the Panj-āb is shewn by what he effected after dispossessed of Lāhor. On Bābur’s return to Kābul, he came down from the hills with a small body of his immediate followers, seized his son Dilāwar, took Sult̤ānpūr, gathered a large force and defeated ‘Ālam Khān in Dībālpūr. He detached 5000 men against Sīālkot but Bābur’s begs of Lāhor attacked and overcame them. Ibrāhīm sent an army to reconquer the Panj-āb; Daulat Khān, profiting by its dissensions and discontents, won over a part to himself and saw the rest break up.
b. ‘Ālam Khān.
From his reverse at Dībālpūr, ‘Ālam Khān fled straight to Kābul. The further help he asked was promised under the condition that while he should take Ibrāhīm’s place on the throne of Dihlī, Bābur in full suzerainty should hold Lāhor and all to the west of it. This arranged, ‘Ālam Khān was furnished with a body of troops, given a royal letter to the Lāhor begs ordering them to assist him, and started off, Bābur promising to follow swiftly.
‘Ālam Khān’s subsequent proceedings are told by Bābur in the annals of 932 AH. (1525 AD.) at the time he received details about them (f. 255b).
c. Bābur called to Balkh.
All we have yet found about this affair is what Bābur says in explanation of his failure to follow ‘Ālam Khān as promised (f. 256), namely, that he had to go to Balkh because all the Aūzbeg Sult̤āns and Khāns had laid siege to it. Light on the affair may come from some Persian or Aūzbeg chronicle; Bābur’s arrival raised the siege; and risk must have been removed, for Bābur returned to Kābul in time to set out for his fifth and last expedition to Hindūstān on the first day of the second month of next year (932 AH. 1525). A considerable body of troops was in Badakhshān with Humāyūn; their non-arrival next year delaying his father’s progress, brought blame on himself.
THE MEMOIRS OF BĀBUR