910 AH. JUNE 14TH 1504 TO JUNE 4th 1505 AD. 209
are orange-trees and a few pomegranates, the whole encircled by a trefoil-meadow. This is the best part of the garden, a most beautiful sight when the oranges take colour. Truly that garden is admirably situated!
The Safed-koh runs along the south of Ningnahar, dividing it from Bangash ; no riding-road crosses it ; nine torrents {tuqiisrud) issue from it.1 It is called Safed-koh2 because its snow never lessens ; none falls in the lower parts of its valleys, a halfday's journey from the snow-line. Many places along it have an excellent climate ; its waters are cold and need no ice.
The Surkh-rud flows along the south of Adinapur. The fort stands on a height having a straight fall to the river of some 130 ft. (40-50 qart) and isolated from the mountain behind it on the north; it is very strongly placed. That mountain runs between Ningnahar and Lamghan 3 ; on its head snow falls when it snows in Kabul, so Lamghanis know when it has snowed in the town.
In going from Kabul into the Lamghanat,4 if people come by Quruq-sai, one road goes on through the Dlrl-pass, crosses the Baran-water at Buian, and so on into the Lamghanat, another goes through Qara-tu, below Quruq-sai, crosses the Baran-water at Aulugh-nur(Great-rock?),and goes into Lamghan by the pass of Bad-i-plch.5 If however people come by Nijr-au, they traverse Badr-au (Tag-au), and Qara-nakariq (?), and go on through the pass of Bad-i-plch.
1 Presumably those of the tuquz-rud, supra. Cf. Appendix E, On Nagarahara.
2 White-mountain; Pushtu, Spin-ghur (or ghar).
3 i.e. the Lamghanat proper. The range is variously named ; in (Persian) Siyahkoh (Black-mountain), which like Turk! Qara-tagh may mean non-snowy ; by Tajiks, Bagh-i-ataka (Foster-father's garden) ; by Afghans, Kanda-ghur, and by Lamghanis Koh-i-bulan, Kanda and Biilan both being ferry-stations below it (Masson, iii, 189 ; also the Times Nov. 20th 1912 for a cognate illustration of diverse naming).
4 A comment made here by Mr. Erskine on changes of name is still appropriate, but some seeming changes may well be due to varied selection of land-marks. Of the three routes next described in the text, one crosses as for Mandrawar ; the second, as for 'All-shang, a little below the outfall of the Tizin-water ; the third may take off fromthe route, between Kabul and Tag-au, marked in Col. Tanner's map (PRGS 1881 P- i8cf). Cf. R's Route II ; and for Aulugh-nur, Appendix F, On the name Niir.
5 The name of this pass has several variants. Its second component, whatever its form, is usually taken to mean pass, but to read it here as pass would be redundant, since Babur writes " pass (kiital) of Bad-i-pich ". Pich occurs as a place name both east (Pich) and west (Pichghan) of the/■/?/«/, but what would suit the bitter and even 'atal winds of the pass would be to read the name as Whirling-wind (bad-i-pich). Another explanation suggests itself from rinding a considerable number of pass-names ^Ucr> as Shibr-tu, Jal-tii, Qara-tu, in which til is a synonym oi pich, turn, twist; thus Had-i-pich may be the local form of Bad-tu, Windy-turn.
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