Four roads leads into Kabul from the Hindustan side; one by rather a low pass through the Khaibar mountains, another by way of Bangash, another by way of Naghr (var. Naghz),1 and another through Farmul ;2 the passes being low also in the three last-named. These roads are all reached from three ferries over the Sind. Those who take the Nil-ab3 ferry, come on through the Lamghanat.4 In winter, however, people ford the Sindwater (at Haru) above its junction with the Kabul-water,? and ford this also. In most of my expeditions into Hindustan, I crossed those fords, but this last time (932 AH. 1525 AD.), when I came, defeated SI. Ibrahim and conquered the country, I crossed by boat at Nil-ab. Except at the one place mentioned above, the Sind-water can be crossed only by boat. Those again, who cross at Din-kot6 go on through Bangash. Those crossing at Chaupara, if they take the Farmul road, go on to Ghaznl, or, if they go by the Dasht, go on to Qandahar.7
1 It was unknown in Mr. Erskine's day (Mems. p. 140). _ Several of the routes in Raverty's Notes (p. 92 etc.) allow it to be located as on the Iri-ab, near to or identical with Baghzan, 35 kurohs (70 m.) s.s.e. of Kabul.
* Farmul, about the situation of which Mr. Erskine was in doubt, is now marked in maps, Urghun being its principal village.
3 IS miles below Atak (Erskine). Mr. Erskine notes that he found no warrant, previous to Abu'l-fazl's, for calling the Indus the Nil-ab, and that to find one would solve an ancient geographical difficulty. This difficulty, rny husband suggests, was Alexander's supposition that the Indus was the Nile. In books grouping round the Babur-nama, the name Nil-ab is not applied to the Indus, but to the ferry-station on that river, said to owe its name to a spring of azure water on its eastern side. (C(. Afzal Khan Khattak, R.'s Notes p. 447-)
I find the name Nil-ab applied to the Kabul-river : I. to its Arghandi affluent (Cunningham, p. 17, Map); 2. through its boatman class, the Nil-abis of Lalpura, Jalalabad and Kunar (G. of I. 1907, art. Kabul) ; 3. inferentially to it as a tributary of the Indus (D'Herbelot); 4. to it near its confluence with the grey, silt-laden Indus, as blue by contrast (Sayyid Ghulam-i-muhammad, R.'s Notes p. 34). (For Nil-ab (Naulibis ?) in Ghur-bund see Cunningham, p. 32 and Masson, iii, 169.)
4 By one of two routes perhaps, either by the Khaibar-Ningnahar-Jagdalik road, or along the north bank of the Kabul-river, through Goshta to the crossing where, in 1879, the 10th Hussars met with disaster.- See S.A. War, Map 2 and p. 63; Leech's Reports II and IV (Fords of the Indus); and R.'s Notes p. 44.
5 Haru, Leech's Harroon, apparently, 10 m. above Atak. The text might be read to mean that both rivers were forded near their confluence, but, finding no warrant for supposing the Kabul-river fordable below Jalalabad, I have guided the translation accordingly ; this may be wrong and may conceal a change in the river.
6 known also as Dhan-kot and as Mu'azz.am-nagar {Afa'dsiru'l-'umrd i, 249 and A.N. trs. H.B. index s.n. Dhan-kot). It was on the east bank of the indus, probably near modern Kala-bagh, and was washed away not before 956 ah. (1549 ad. H. Beveridge).
1 Chaupara seems, from f. 148^, to be the Chapari of Survey Map 1889. Babur's Dasht is modern Daman.
