approach to one (qasbacha). Its almonds are excellent, hence
its name; they all go to Hormuz or to Hindustan. It is five or Fol. 4*.
six ylghdchx east of Khujand.
Between Kand-i-badam and Khujand lies the waste known as Ha Darwesh. In this there is always (hamcsha) wind; from it wind goes always {hamcsha) to Marghinan on its east; from it wind comes continually {dd'im) to Khujand on its west.2 It has violent, whirling winds. People say that some darweshes, encountering a whirlwind in this desert,3 lost one another and kept crying, "Hay Darv, esh! Hay Darwesh!" till all had perished, and that the waste has been called Ha Darwesh ever since.
Of the townships on the north of the Saihun River one is Akhsl. In books they write it Akhslklt4 and for this reason the
1 Schuyler (ii, 3), iS m.
2 Ilai. MS. Hamcsha bu deshttd yil bar diir. Alarghinanghd kiln sharql dur, hamcsha mitndin yil bariir ; Khuj'andghd kiln gharibi diir, dd'im mitndin yil kilur.
This is a puzzling passage. It stems to say that wind always goes east and west from the steppe as from a generating centre. E. and de C. have given it alternative directions, east or west, but there is little point in saying this of wind in a valley hemmtd in on the north and the south. Babur limits his stement to the steppe lying in the contracted mouth of the Farghana valley (pace Schuyler ii, 51) where special climatio conditions exist such as {a) difference in temperature on the two sides of the Khujand narrows and currents resulting from this difference, (6) the heating of the narrows by sun-heat reflected from the Mogol-tau, and (c) the inrush of westerly wind over Mirza Rabat. Local knowledge only can guide a translator safely but Babur's directness of speech compels belief in the significance of his words and this particularly when what he says is unexpected. He calls the Ha Darwesh a whirling wind and this it still is. Thinkable at least it is that a strong westerly current (the prevailing wind of Farghana) entering over Mirza Rabat and becoming, as it does become, the whirlwind of Ha Darwesh on the hemmed-in steppe, becoming so perhaps by conflict with the hotter indraught through the Gates of Khujand might force that indraught back into the Khujand Narrows (in the way e.g. that one Nile in flood forces back the other), and at Khujand create an easterly current. All the manuscripts agree in writing to [ghd) Marghinan and to (ghd) Khujand. It may be observed that, looking at the map, it appears somewhat strange that Babur should take, for his wind objective, a place so distant from his (defined) Ha Darwesh and seem'ngly so screened by its near hills as is Marghinan. But that westerly winds are prevalent in Marghinan is seen e.g. in Middendorff's Einblikke in den Farghana Thai (p. 112). Cf. Reclus vi, 547; Schuyler ii, 51 ; Cahun's Histoire du h-hanat dc Khokandp. 28 and Sven Hcdin's Dutch Asien's Wusten s.n. buran.
bddiya ; a word peihaps selected as punning on bad, wind.
i.e. Akhsl Village. This word is sometimes spelled Akhsikis but as the °ld name of the place was Akhsi-kint, it may be conjectured at least that the fd'i maxallasa of Akhsikij represents the three points due for the nun and '« of hint. Of those writing Akhsikit may be mentioned the Ilai. and Kehr's
