Meantime Si. Qul-i-nachaq (?), reduced to extremity, had surrendered Balkh to the Auzbeg but that Auzbeg, hearing of our alliance against him, had hurried back to Samarkand. The Mirzas were good enough as company and in social matters, in conversation and parties, but they were strangers to war, strategy, equipment, bold fight and encounter.
(/. Winter plans.)
While we were on the Murgh-ab, news came that Haq-nazlr Chapa (var. Hian) was over-running the neighbourhood of Chlchlk-tu with 4 or 500 men. All the Mirzas there present, do what they would, could not manage to send a light troop against those raiders! It is 10 ylghdck (50-55 m.) from Murgh-ab to Chlchlk-tu. I asked the work; they, with a thought for their own reputation, would not give it to me.
The year being almost at an end when Shaibaq Khan retired, the Mirzas decided to winter where it was convenient and to reassemble next summer in order to repel their foe.
They pressed me to winter in Khurasan, but this not one of my well-wishers saw it good for me to do because, while Kabul and GhaznT were full of a turbulent and ill-conducted medley of people and hordes, Turks, Mughuls, clans and nomads {aimaq u ahshani), Afghans and Hazara, the roads between us and that not yet desirably subjected country of Kabul were, one, the mountain-road, a month's journey even without delay through snow or other cause, the other, the low-country road, a journey of 40 or 50 days.
Consequently we excused ourselves to the Mirzas, but they would accept no excuse and, for all our pleas, only urged the more. In the end Badl'u'z-zaman Mlrza, Abu'l-muhsin Mlrza and MuzafFar Mlrza themselves rode to my tent and urged me to stay the winter. It was impossible to refuse men of such ruling position, corrie in person to press us to stay on. Besides this, the whole habitable world has not such a town as Herl had become under SI. Husain Mlrza, whose orders and efforts had increased its splendour and beauty as ten to one, rather, as twenty to one. As I greatly wished to stay, I consented to do so.
