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903 AH. AUG. 30th. 1497 to AUG. 19TH. 1498 AD. 75
They used to call it Baldat-i-mahfuza because no foe laid hands 0n it with storm and sack.1 It must have become 2 Musalman in the time of the Commander of the ;Faithful, his Highness <rjsman. Qusam ibn 'Abbas, one of the Companions3 must have gone there; his burial-place, known as the Tomb of Shah-i-zinda (The Living Shah, i.e., Faqir) is'outside the Iron Gate. Iskandar must have founded Samarkand. The Turk and Mughul hordes call it Sltnlz-kint.4 TImur Beg made it his capital; no ruler so great will ever have made it a capital before (qiighan almas dur). I ordered people to pace round the ramparts of the walled-town; it came out at 10,000 steps.5 Samarkandis are all orthodox (swim), pure-in-thej Faith, law-abiding and religious. The number of Leaders of Islam said to have arisen in Ma wara'u'n-nahr, since the days of his Highness the Prophet, are not known to have arisen in any other country.0 From the Matarid suburb of Samarkand came Shaikh Abu'l-mansur, one of the Expositors of the Word.7 Of the two sects of Expositors, the Mataridiyah
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lat. 39' 57" and long. 99' 16", noting that this is according to Clugh Beg's Tables and that the long, is calculated from' Ferro. The Ency. Br. of 1910-11 gives lat. 39' 39" and long. 66' 45*.
1 The enigmatical cognomen, Protected Town, is of early date ; it is used i.a. by Ibn Batuta in the 14th. century. Babur's tense refers it to the past. The town had frequently changed hands in historic times before he wrote. The name may be due to immunity from damage to the buildings in the town. Even Chingiz Khan's capture (1222 ad.) left the place well-preserved and its lands cultivated, but it inflicted great loss of men. Cf. Schuyler i, 236 and his authorities, especially Bretschneider.
2 Here is a good example of Babur's caution in narrative. He does not affirm that Samarkand became Musalman, or [infra) that Qusam ibn 'Abbas went, or that Alexander founded but in each case uses the presumptive past tense, resp. bulghdn dur, bdrghdn dur, bind qiighan dur, thus showing that he repeats what may be inferred or presumed and not what he himself asserts.
3 i-e. of Muhammad. See Z.N. il, 193.
4 i.e. Fat Village. His text misleading him, Mr. Erskine makes here the useful irrelevant note that Persians and Arabs call the place Samar-qand and Turks, Samar-kand, the former using qaf (q), the latter kaf (k). Both the £1Ph. and the Ilai. MSS. write Samarqand.
for use of the name Fat Village, see Clavijo (Markham p. 170), Simesqumte, and Bretschneider's Medieval Geography pp. 61, 64, 66 and 163.
qadam. Kostenko (i, 344) gives 9 m. as the circumference of the old *alls and 1J m. as that of the citadel. See Mde. Ujfalvy p. 175 for a picture 01 the walls.
Ma'lum aimds him miincha paidd bulmish bulghdi ; an idiomatic phrase.
d- 333 ah. (944 ad.). See D'Hcrbelot art. Matridi p. 572.
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