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899 AH. OCT. 12TH. 1493 TO OCT. 2nd. 1494
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join any sea1 but sinks into the sands, a considerable distance below [the town of] Turkistan.
Farghana has seven separate townships,2 five on the south and two on the north of the Saihun.
Of those on the south, one is Andijan. It has a central position and is the capital of the Farghana country. It produces much grain, fruits in abundance, excellent grapes and melons. In the melon season, it is not customary to sell them out at the beds.3 Better than the Andijan nashpati,* there is none. After Samarkand and Kesh, the fort5 of Andijan is the largest in Mawara'u'n-nahr (Transoxiana). It has three gates. Its citadel (ark) is on its south side. Into it water goes by nine channels ; out of it, it is strange that none comes at even a single place.6 Round the outer edge of the ditch7 runs a gravelled highway; the width of this highway divides the fort from the suburbs surrounding it.
Andijan has good hunting and fowling; its pheasants grow Fol. 2t.
1 hech daryd qdtllmas. A gloss of dlgar (other) in the Second W.-i-B. has Jed Mr. Erskine to understand " meeting with no other river in its course." I understand Babur to contrast the destination of the Saihun which he [erroneously] says sinks into the sands, with the outfall of e.g. the Amu into the Sea of Aral.
Cf. First W.-i-B. I.O. MS. 215 f. 2 ; Second W.-i-B. I.O. MS. 217 f. 16 and Ouseley's Ibn Haukal p. 232-244 ; also Schuyler and Kostenko I.e.
2 Babur's geographical unit in Central Asia is the township or, with more verbal accura r.y, the village i.e. the fortified, inhabited and cultivated oasis. Of frontiers ... ^ays nothing.
3 i.e. they are given away or taken. Babur's interest in fruits was not a matter of taste or amusement but of food. Melons, for instance, fresh or stored, form during some months the staple food of Turkistanis. Cf. T.R. p. 303 and (in Kashmir) 425 ; Timkowski's Travels of the Russian Mission i, 419 and Th. Radloff's RSceuils d'llintraires p. 343.
N.B. At this point two folios of the Elphinstone Codex are missing.
* Either a kind of melon or the pear. For local abundance of pears see Ayln-i-akbati, Blochmann p. 6 ; Kostenko and Von Schwarz.
B qurghan, i.e. the walled town within which was the citadel (ark).
8 Tuquz tarnau su hlrar, bu 'ajab tur him bit ylrdln ham chlqmas. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2, nuh ju'l db dar qild dar ml ayid u In 'ajab ast kah hama az yak jS. ham na ml bar ayid. (Cf. Mems. p. 2 and Mtms. i, 2.) I understand Babur to mean that all the water entering was consumed in the town. The supply of Andijan, in the present day, is taken both from the Aq Bura (i.e. the Afish Water) and, by canal, from the Qara. Darya.
7 hhandaqnlng tash yarn. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2 dar klndr sang bast khandaq. Here as in several other places, this Persian translation has rendered Turk! tash, outside, as if it Were Turki tash, stone. Babur's adjective stone is sangin (f. 456 1.8). .His point here is the unusual circumstance of a high-road running round the outer edge of the ditch. Moreover Andijan is built on and
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