911 AH. JUNE 4th 1505 TO MAY 24TH 1506 AD. 247
Chaghaniani. At the start I vent to Qush-nadir (var. nawar) where on dismounting I got fever. It was a strange sort of illness for whenever with much trouble I had been awakened, my eyes closed again in sleep. In four or five days I got quite well.
(c. An earthquake^)
At that time there was a great earthquake1 such that most of the ramparts of forts and the walls of gardens fell down ; houses were levelled to the ground in towns and villages and many persons lay dead beneath them. Every house fell in Paghmanvillage, and 70 to 80 strong heads-of-houses lay dead under their walls. Between Pagh-man and Beg-tut2 a piece of ground, a good stone-throw 3 wide may-be, slid down as far as an arrow's-flight; where it had slid springs appeared. On the road between Istarghach and Maidan the ground was so broken up for 6 to 8 ylghdch (36-48 m.) that in some places it rose as high as an elephant, in others sank as deep; here and there people were sucked in. When the Earth quaked, dust rose from the tops of the mountains. Nuru'1-lah the tambourchi 4 had been playing before me ; he had two instruments with him and at the moment of the quake had both in his hands; so out of his own control was he that the two knocked against each other. Jahanglr Mlrza was in the porch of an upper-room at a house built by Aulugh Beg Mlrza in Tipa'; when the Earth quaked, he let himself down and was not hurt, but the roof fell on some-one with him in that upper-room, presumably one of his own circle ; that this person was not hurt in the least must have been solely through God's mercy. In lipa most of the houses were levelled to the ground. The Earth quaked 33 times on the first day, and for a month afterwards used to quake two or three times in the 24 hours. The begs and soldiers having been
1 This will be the earthquake felt in Agra on Safar 3rd 911 ah. (July 5th 1505 ad. Erskine's History of India i, 229 note). Cf. Elliot and Dowson, iv, 465 and v, 99.
2 Raverty's Notes p. 690.
3 bir kitta task attmi; var. bash atimt. If task be right, the reference will probably be to the throw of a catapult.
4 Here almost certainly, a drummer, because there were two tambours and because also Babur uses 'aiidt & ghachakl for the other meanings of tambourchi, lutanist and guitarist. The word has found its way, as tambourgi, into Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto ii, lxxii. H.B.).
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