Section 1: Fergana and Transoxiana

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	899 AH. OCT. 12th. 1493 to OCT. 2nd. 1494 7 _n0isy and turbulent. Most of the noted bullies (jangralar) of Samarkand and Bukhara are Marghinanls. The author of the Hidayat¹ was from Rashdan, one of the villages of Marghlnan. Again there is Asfara, in the hill-country and nine ylghach* ; by road south-west of Marghlnan. It has running waters, I beautiful little gardens (baghcha) and many fruit-trees but almonds for the most part in its orchards. Its people are all 1 persian-speaking³ Sarts. In the hills some two miles (blrshar'i) to the south of the town, is a piece of rock, known as the Mirror Stone.⁴ It is some 10 arm-lengths (qari) long, as high as a man in parts, up to his waist in others. Everything is reflected by it as by a mirror. The Asfara district {wildyat) is in four subdivisions {baluk) in the hill-country, one Asfara, one Warukh, one Sukh and one Hushyar. When Muhammad ShaibdnT Khan defeated SI. Mahmud Khan and Alacha Khan and took Tashklnt and Shahrukhiya,⁵ I went into the Sukh and Hushyar Fol. 4. hill-country and from there, after about a year spent in great misery, I set out ('azimat) for Kabul.⁶ Again there is Khujand,⁷ twenty-five ylghach by road to the

	without any reference to tribe or nationality. I am not sure that he uses it always as a noun ; he writes of a Sart Kishi, a Sart person. His Asfara Sarts may have been Turki-speaking settled Turks and his Marghlnan! ones Persianspeaking Tajiks. Cf. Shaw's Vocabulary ; s.n. Sart ; Schuyler i, 104 and note; Nalivkine's Histoire du Khanat de Khokand p. 45 n. Von Schwarr s.n. ; Kostenko i, 287 ; Petzhold's Turkistan p. 32. ¹ Shaikh Burhanu'd-din 'All Qilich : b. circa 530 ah. (1135 ad.) d. 593 ah. (1197 ad.). See Hamilton's Hidayat ² The direct distance, measured on the map, appears to be about 65 m. but the road makes dHour round mountain spurs. Mr. Erskine appended here, to the " farsang " of his Persian source, a note concerning the reduction of Tatar and Indian measures to English ones. It is rendered the less applicable by the variability of the ylghach, the equivalent for a farsang presumed by the Persian translator. ³ 1.1 ai. MS. Farsl-gu'l. The Elph. MS. and all those examined of the "--i-B. omit the word Farsl; some writing kohl (mountaineer) for gu'l. I judge that Babur at first omitted the word Farsl, s^Jnce it is entered in the Hai. MS. above the word gu'l. It would have been useful to Ritter (vii, 733) and to Ujfalvy (Li, 176). Cf. Kostenko i, 287 on the variety of languages spoken by Sarts. ⁴ Of the Mirror Stone neither Fedtschenko nor Ujfalvy could get news. Babur aistinguishes here between Tashklnt and Shahrukhiya. Cf. i. 2 ^and note to Fanak?'. He left the hill-country above Sukh in Muharram 910 ah. (mid-June '504 AD.) For a good account of Khujand see Kostenko i, 346.

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