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Section 1: Fergana and Transoxiana

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903 AH. AUG. 30th. 1497 TO AUG. 19th. 1498 AD.            79
another bath is not known in Khurasan or in Samarkand.1 Again ; to the south of the College is his mosque, known as the Masjid-i-maqata' (Carved Mosque) because its ceiling and its walls are all covered with islwil2 and Chinese pictures formed of segments of wood.3 There is great discrepancy between the qibla of this mosque and that of the College; that of the mosque seems to have been fixed by astronomical observation. Another of Auliigh Beg Mirza's fine buildings is an observatory, that is, an instrument for writing Astronomical Tables.4 This stands three storeys high, on the skirt of the Kohik upland. By its means the Mirza worked out the Kurkani Tables, now used all over the world. Less work is done with any others. Before these were made, people used the AIlkhani Tables, put together at Maragha, by Khwaja Naslr Tiki* in the time of Hulaku Khan. Hulakij Khan it is, people call Atl-khanl.6
(Author's note.) Not more than seven or eight observatories seem to have been constructed in the world. Mamfim Khalifa7 (Caliph) made one with which the Mamumi Tables were written. Batalmfls (Ptolemy) constructed another. Another was made, in Hindustan, in the time of Raja Vikramaditya Hindu, in Ujjain and Dhar, that is, the Malwa country, now known as Mandu. The Hindus of Hindustan use the Tables of this Observatory. They were put together 1,584 years ago.8 Compared with others, they are somewhat defective.
1   Hindustan would make a better climax here than Samarkand does.
2  These appear to be pictures or ornamentations of carved wood. Redhouse describes isllml as a special kind of ornamentation in curved lines, similar to Chinese methods.
3  i.e. the Black Stone (ka'ba) at Makkah to which Musalmans turn in prayer.
* As ancient observatories were themselves the instruments of astronomical observation, Babur's wording is correct. Auliigh Beg's great quadrant was 180 ft. high ; Abu-muhammad Khujandl's sextant had a radius of 58 ft. Ja'I Singh made similar great instruments in Ja'ipur, Dihli has others. Cf. Greaves Misc. Works i, 50 ; Mems. p. 51 note ; A iyln-i-akbari (Jarrett) ii, 5 and note ; Murray's Hand-book to Bengal p. 331 ; Indian Gazetteer xiii, 400.
6  b. 597 ah. d. 672 ah. (1201-1274 ad.). See D'Herbelot's art. Nasir-i^lin p. 662 ; AbQ'1-fida (Reinaud, Introduction i, exxxviii) and Beale's Biographical Diet. s.n.
8 a grandson of Chingiz Khan, d. 663 ah. (1265 AD-)- The cognomen Ail-hhanl (Il-khanl) may mean Khan of the Tribe.
7   Ilarunu'r-rashid's second son ; d. 218 ah. (833 ad.).
8  Mr. Erskine notes that this remark would seem to fix the date at which Babur wrote it as 934 ah. (1527 ad.), that being the 1584th. year of the era of Vikramaditya, and therefore at three years before Babur's death. (The Vikramaditya era begun 57 bc.)
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