(a. Babur borrows Pashaghar and leaves Khujand.)
Twice we had moved out of Khujand, once for Andijan, once for Samarkand, and twice we had gone back to it because our work was not opened out.2 Khujand is a poor place; a man with 2 or 300 followers would have a hard time there; with what outlook would an ambitious man set himself down in it ?
As it was our wish to return to Samarkand, we sent people to confer with Muhammad Husain Kurkan Dughlat in Aura-tlpa and to ask of him the loan for the winter of Pashaghar where we might sit till it was practicable to make a move on Samarkand. He consenting, I rode out from Khujand for Pashaghar.
{Author's note on Pashaghar.) Pashaghar is one of the villages of Yar-yilaq ; it had belonged to his Highness the Khwaja,3 but during recent interregna,4 it had become dependent on Muhammad Husain Mirza.
I had fever when we reached Zamin, but spite of my fever we hurried off by the mountain road till we came over against Rabat-i-khwaja, the head-quarters of the subgovernor of the Shavdar tuman, where we hoped to take the garrison at unawares, set our ladders up and so get into the
1 Elph. MS. f. 42 ; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 476 and 217 f. 38 ; Mems. p. 63. Babur here resumes bis own story, interrupted on f. 56.
2 alsh achllmadl, a phrase recurring on f. 596 foot. It appears to imply, of trust in Providence, what the English " The way was not opened," does. C/. f. 606 for another example of trust, there clinching discussion whether to go or not to go to Marghinan.
3 i.e. Ahrari. He had been dead some 10 years. The despoilment of his family is mentioned on f. 236.
* fatratlar, here those due to the deaths of Ahmad and Mahmud with their sequel of unstable government in Samarkand.
97
7
Flickr
Stumbleupon
Scribd
