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98
FARGHANA
fort. We reached it at dawn, found its men on guard, turned back and rode without halt to Pashaghar. The pains and misery of fever notwithstanding, I had ridden 14 or 15 yighdch (70 to 8a miles).
After a few days in Pashaghar, we appointed Ibrahim Sdru,
■ Wais Ldghari, Sherim Taghai and some of the household and braves to make an expedition amongst the Yar-yllaq forts and get them into our hands. Yar-yllaq, at that time was Sayyid Yusuf Beg's,1 he having remained in Samarkand at the exodus and been much favoured by SI. 'AH Mirza. To manage the forts, Sayyid Yusuf had sent his younger brother's son, Ahmadi-yusuf, now2 Governor of Sialkot, and Ahmad-i-yusuf was then in occupation. In the course of that winter, our begs and braves made the round, got possession of some of the forts peacefully, fought and took others, gained some by ruse and craft. In the whole of that district there is perhaps not a single village without its defences because of the Mughuls and the Auzbegs. Meantime SI. 'All Mirza became suspicious of Sayyid Yusuf and his nephew on my account and dismissed both towards Khurasan.
The winter passed in this sort of tug-of-war; with the oncoming heats,8 they sent Khwaja Yahya to treat with me, while they, urged on by the (Samarkand) army, marched out to near Shlraz and Kabud. I may have had 200 or 300 soldiers (sipahi); powerful foes were on my every side; Fortune had not favoured me when I turned to Andijan; when I put a hand out for Samarkand, no work was opened out. Of necessity, some sort of terms were made and I went back from Pashaghar. Khujand is a poor place; one beg would have a hard time in
it; there we and our families and following had been for half a
1  Aughl&qchi, the player of the kid-game, the gray-wolfer. Yar-yllaq will have gone with the rest of Samarkand into 'All's hands in Rajab 903 ah. (March 1498). Contingent terms between' him and Babur will have been made ; Yusuf may have recognized some show of right under them, for allowing Babur to occupy Yar-yilaq.
2  i.e. after 933 ah. Cf. t. 46b and note concerning the Bikramaditya era. See index s.n. Ahmad-i-yusuf and H.S. ii, 293.
3  This plural, unless ironical, cannot be read as honouring 'All; Babur uses the honorific plural most rarely and specially, e.g. for saintly persons, for The Khan and for elder women-kinsfolk.