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PREFACE
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xxxiii
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from its various descendants is desirable, particularly so since the revival oflnterest in it towards which the Facsimile of its Haidarabad Codex has contributed.1
Babur-nama (History of Babur) is a well-warranted name by which to distinguish the original Turki text, because long associated with this and rarely if ever applied to its Persian translation.8 It is not comprehensive because not covering supplementary matter ofbiography and description but it has use for modern readers of classing Babur's with other Timuriya and Timurid histories such as the Z'afar-Humayun-Akbar-namas.
Waqi'dt-i-baburi (Babur's Acts), being descriptive of the book and in common use for naming both the Turki.and Persian texts, might usefully be reserved as a title for the latter alone.
Amongst European versions of the book Memoirs of Baber is Erskine's peculium for the Leyden and Erskine Perso-English translation Memoires de. Baber is Pavet de Courteille's title for his French version of the Bukhara [Persified-Turki] compilation Baburnama in English links the translation these volumes contain with its purely-Turki source.
b. Problems of the Constituents of the Books.
Intact or mutilated, Babur's material falls naturally into three territorial divisions, those of the lands of his successive rule, Farghana (with Samarkand), Kabul and Hindustan. With these are distinct sub-sections of description of places and of obituaries of kinsmen.
The book might be described as consisting of annals and diary, which once met within what is now the gap of 1508-19 (914-925). Round this gap, amongst others, bristle problems of which this change of literary style is one; some are small and concern the mutilation alone, others" are larger, but all are too intricate for terse
1 Teufel held its title to be waq? (this I adopted in 1908), but it has no definite support *nd in numerous instances of its occurrence to describe the acts or doings of Babur, it could be read as a common noun
* It stands on the reverse of the frontal page of the Haidarabad Codex; it is TimurPulad's name for the Codex he purchased in Bukhara, and it is thence brought on by Kehr (with Ilminski), and Klaproth (Cap. Ill); it is used by Khwafi Khan (d. dr. 1732). "etc.
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