SECTION II. KABUL 910 AH. JUNE 14th 1504 to JUNE 4th 1505 AD.2
(a. Babur leaves Farglidna.)
In the month of Muharram, after leaving the Farghana country intending to go to Khurasan, I dismounted at Allak-yllaq,3 one of the summer pastures of Hisar. In this camp I entered my 23rd year, and applied the razor to my face.4 Those who, hoping in me, went with me into exile, were, small and great, between 2 and 300; they were almost all on foot, had walkingstaves in their hands, brogues 5 on their feet, and long coats 6 on
1 As in the Farghana Section, so here, reliance is on the Elphinstone and Haidarabad MSS. The Kehr-Ilminsky text still appears to be a retranslation from the Waqi'at-i-baburi and verbally departs much from the true text; moreover, in this Section it has been helped out, where its archetype was illegible or has lost fragmentary passages, from the Leyden and Erslcine Memoirs. It may be mentioned, as between the First and the Second Waqi'at-i-babiiri, that several obscure passages in this Section are more explicit in the First (Payanda-hasan's) than in its successor ('Abdu-r-rahim's).
2 Elph. MS. f. 906; W.-i-B. I.O. 215, f. 966 and 217, f. 79; Mems. p. 127. "In 1504 ad. Ferdinand the Catholic drove the French out of Naples" (Erskine). In England, Henry VII was pushing for ward a commercial treaty, the Intercursus malus, with the Flemings and growing in wealth by the exactions of Empson and Dudley.
3 presumably the pastures of the " Ilak " Valley. The route.from SCtkh would be over the 'Ala'u'd-din-pass, into the Qizil-su valley, down to Ab-i-garm and on to the Ailaq-valley, Khwaja 'Imad, the Kafirnigan, Qabadian, and Aitbaj on the Amu. See T.R. p. 175 and Farghana Section, p. 184, as to the character of the journey.
* Amongst the TurkI tribes, the time of first applying the razor to the face is celebrated by a great entertainment. Babur's miserable circumstances would not admit of this (Erskine).
The text is ambiguous here, reading either that Sukh was left or that Ailaq-yilaq was reached in Muharram. As the birthday was on the 8th, the journey very arduous and, for a party mostly on foot, slow, it seems safest to suppose that the start was made from Sukh at the end of 909 ah. and not in Muharram, 910 ah.
5 ckaruq, rough boots of untanned leather, formed like a moccasin with the lower leather drawn up round the foot; they are worn by Khlrghiz mountaineers and caravan-men on journeys (Shaw).
chapSn, the ordinary garment of Central Asia (Shaw).
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