Bai-sunghar Mirza. wished, did not get a good reception. He therefore turned back for Turkistan a few days later, in disappointment, with nothing done.
Bal-sunghar Mirza, had sustained a seven months' siege; his one hope had been in Shaibani Khan; this he had lost and he now with 2 or 300 of his hungry suite, drew off from Samarkand, for Khusrau Shah in Qundiiz.
When he was near Tlrmiz, at the Amii ferry, the Governor of Tirmiz, Sayyid Husain Akbar, kinsman and confidant both of SI. Mas'iid Mirza, heard of him and went out against him. The Mirza himself got across the river but MIrIm Tarkhan was drowned and all the rest of his people were captured, together with his baggage and the camels loaded with his personal effects; even his page, Muhammad Tahir, falling into Sayyid Husain Akbar's hands. Khusrau Shah, for his part, looked kindly on the Mirza.
When the news of his departure reached us, we got to horse and started from Khwaja Didarv for Samarkand. To give us honourable meeting on the road, were nobles and braves, one after another. It was on one of the last ten days of the first Rabi' (end of November 1497 ad.), that we entered the citadel and dismounted at the Bu-stan Sarai. Thus, by God's favour, were the town and the country of Samarkand taken and occupied.
(b. Description of Samarkand.)1
Few towns in the whole habitable world are so pleasant as Samarkand. It is of the Fifth Climate and situated in lat. 400 6' and long. 990.2 The name of the town is Samarkand; its country people used to call Ma. wara'u'n-nahr (Transoxania).
1 Interesting reference may be made, amongst the many books on Samarkand, to Sharafu'd-dln 'AH Yazdi's Zafar-nama Bib. Ind. ed. i, 300, 781, 799, 800 and ii,6, 194, 596 etc.; to Ruy Gonzalves di Clavijo's Embassy to Timiir (Markham) cap. vi and vii ; to Ujfalvy's Turkistan ii, 79 and Madame Ujfalvy's De Paris a Samarcan.de p. 161, these two containing a plan of the town ; to Schuyler's Turkistan ; to Kostenko's Turkistan Gazetteer i, 345 ; to Reclus, vi, 270 and plan ; and to a beautiful work of the St. Petersburg Archaeological Society, Les Mosquies de Samarcande, of which the B.M. has a copy.
2 This statement is confused in the Elp. and Ilai. MSS. The second appears to give, by abjad, lat. 40' 6" and long. 99'. Mr. Erskine (p. 48) gives
