xlvi
PREFACE
Teufel ones are time-wasters but they are comprehensible in the circumstances that Jahangir could not foresee the consequences of his doubtless good intentions.
If the question arise of how writings that had had place in Jahangir's library reached Bukhara, their open road is through the Padshah's correspondence (App. Q and teferences), with a descendant of Ahrari in whose hands they were close to Bukhara.1
It groups scattered information to recal that Salim (Jahangir) was 'Abdu'r-rahim's ward, that then, as now, Babur's Autobiography was the best example of classic Turki, and that it would appeal on grounds of piety as it did appeal on some sufficient ground to have its broken story made good. Also that for three of the four "portions" Abu'l-fazl's concise matter was to hand.
IX My information concerning Baburiana under Shah-i-jahan Padshah (1628-58) is very meagre. It consists of (1) his attestation of a signature of Babur (App. Q and photo), (2) his possession of Babur's autograph Codex {Padshah-nama, Bib. Ind. ed., ii, 4), and (3) his acceptance, and that by his literary entourage, of Mir Abu-talib Husaini's Persian translation of Timur's Annals, the Malfuzat whose preparation the Zafar-nama describes and whose link with Babur's writings is that of the exemplar to the emulator.2
X
The Haidarabad Codex may have been inscribed under Aurangzib Padshah (1655-1707). So many particulars about it have been given already that little needs saying here.3 It was the grande trouvaille of my search for Turki text wherewith to revive Babur's autobiography both in Turki and English. My husband in 1900 saw it in Haidarabad ; through the kind offices of the late Sayyid
1 Tuzuk-i-jahangiri, Rogers & Beveridge's trs. i, 110; JRAS. 1900, p. 756, for the Persian passage, 1908, p. 76 for the "Fragments", 1900, p. 476 for Ilminski's Preface (a second translation is accessible at the B.M. and I.O. Library and R.A.S.), Memoirs Preface, p. ix, Index s.nn. de Courteille, Teufel, Bukhara MSS. and Part iii eo cap.
2 For Shah-i-jahan's interest in Timur see sign given in a copy of his note published in my translation volume of Gul-badan-Begim's Humayun-nama, p. xiii.
3 JRAS. 1900 p. 466, 1902 p. 655, 1905 art. s.n., 1908 pp. 78, 98 ; Index in loco s.n.
