Yangi which in books they write faraz,1 at the present time all is desolate, no settled population whatever remaining, because of the Mughuls and the Auzbegs.8
Farghana is a small country,8 abounding in grain and fruits. It is girt round by mountains except on the west, i.e. towards Khujand and Samarkand, and in winter4 an enemy can enter only on that side.
The Saihun River (darya) commonly known as the Water of Khujand, comes into the country from the north-east, flows westward through it and after passing along the north of Khujand and the south of Fanakat,5 now known as Shahrukhiya, turns directly north and goes to Turkistan. It does not
1 The Hai. MS. and a good many of the W.-i-B. MSS. here write Autrar. [Autrar like Taraz was at some time of its existence known as Yangi (New).] Taraz seems to have stood near the modern Auliya-ata ; Almaligh, a Metropolitan see of the Nestorian Church in the 14th. century, to have been the old capital of Kuldja, and Almatu (var. Almati) to have been where Vernoe (Vierny) now is. Almaligh and Almatu owed their names to the apple (alma). Cf. Bretschneider's Mediaeval Geography p. 140 and T.R. (Elias and Ross) s.nn.
2 Mughul u Aiizbeg jihatdin. I take this, the first offered opportunity of mentioning (1) that in transliterating Turki words I follow Turki lettering because I am not competent to choose amongst systems which e.g. here, reproduce ACzbeg as Czbeg, Ozbeg and Euzbeg ; and (2) that style being part of an autobiography, I am compelled, in pressing back the Memoirs on Babur's Turki mould, to retract from the wording of the western scholars, Erskine and de Courteille. Of this compulsion Babur's bald phrase Mughul u Aiizbeg jihatdin provides an illustration. Each earlier translator has expressed his meaning with more finish than he himself; 'Abdu'r-rahim, by az jihat 'uoHr i (Mughill u) Aiizbeg, improves on Babur, since the three towns lay in the tideway of nomad passage ('ubur) east and west; Erskine writes " in consequence of the incursions " etc. and de C. " grace aux ravages commis " etc.
3 Schuyler (ii, 54) gives the extreme length of the valley as about 160 miles and its width, at its widest, as 65 miles.
* Following a manifestly clerical error in the Second W.-i-B. the Ahbarndma and the Mems. are without the seasonal limitation, " in winter." Babur here excludes from winter routes one he knew well, the Kindirlik Pass ; on the other hand Kostenko says that this is open all the year round. Does this contradiction indicate climatic change ? (Cf. i. 546 and note ; A.N. Bib. Ind. ed. i, 85 (H. Beveridge i, 221) and, for an account of the passes round Farghana, Kostenko's Turkistan Region, Tables of Contents.)
8 Var. Banakat, Banakas, Fiakat, Fan&kand. Of this place Dr. Rieu writes (Pers-. cat. i, 79) that it was also called Shash and, in modern times, Tashkint. Babur does not identify Fanakat with the Tashkint of his day but he identifies it with Shahrukhiya (cf. Index s.nn.) and distinguishes between Tashkint-Shash and Fanakat-Shahrukhiya. It may be therefore that Dr. Rieu's Tashkint-Fanakat was Old Tashkint, (Does Fana-kint mean Old Village ?) some 14 miles nearer to the Saihun than the Tashkint of Babur's day or our own.
