Directly he had possession of Herl, Shaibaq Khan married and took Muzaffar Mlrza's wife, Khan-zada Khanlm, without regard to the running-out of the legal term.1 His own illiteracy not forbidding, he instructed in the exposition of the Qoran, QazI Ikhtiyar and Muhammad Mir Yusuf, two of the celebrated and highly-skilled mullas of Herl; he took a pen and corrected the hand-writing of Mulla SI. 'All of Mashhad and the drawing of Bih-zad ; and every few days, when he had composed some tasteless couplet, he would have it read from the pulpit, hung in the Char-su [Square], and for it accept the offerings of the towns-people!2 Spite of his early-rising, his not neglecting the Five Prayers, and his fair knowledge of the art of reciting the Qoran, there issued from him many an act and deed as absurd, as impudent, and as heathenish as those just named.
(g. Death of two Mirzds.)
Ten or fifteen days after he had possession of Herl, Shaibaq Khan came from Kahd-stan 3 to Pul-i-salar. From that place he sent Tlmur SI. and 'Ubaid SI. with the army there present, against Abu'l-muhsin Mirza and Kupuk (Klpik) Mirza then seated carelessly in Mashhad. The two Mlrzas had thought at one time of making Qalat 4 fast; at another, this after they had had news of the approach of the Auzbeg, they were for moving on Shaibaq Khan himself, by forced marches and along a different
mention Bana'I as fleecing the poets but has much to say about one Maulana 'Abdu'rrahim a Turkistani favoured by Shaibani, whose victim Khwand-amir was, amongst many others. Not infrequently where Babur and Khwand-amir state the same fact, they accompany it by varied details, as here (H.S. iii, 358, 360).
1 'adat. Muhammadan Law fixes a term after widowhood or divorce within which remarriage is unlawful. Light is thrown upon this re-marriage by H.S. iii, 359. The passage, a somewhat rhetorical one, gives the following details: "On coming into Herl on Muharram nth, Shaibani at once set about gathering in the property of the Timurids. He had the wives and daughters of the former rulers brought before him. The great lady Khan-zada Begim (f. 163*) who was daughter of Ahmad Khan, niece of SI. Husain Mirza, and wife of Muzaffar Mirza, shewed herself pleased in his presence. Desiring to marry him, she said Muzaffar M. had divorced her two years before. Trustworthy persons gave evidence to the same effect, so she was united to Shaibani in accordance with the glorious Law. Mihr-angez Begim, Muzaffar M.'s daughter, was married to 'Ubaidu'llah SI. (Auzbeg); the rest of the chaste ladies having been sent back into the city, Shaibani resumed his search for propel ty." Manifestly Babur did not believe in the divorce Khwand-amir thus records.
* A sarcasm this on the acceptance of literary honour from the illiterate. 3 f. 191 and note ; Pul-i-salar may be an irrigation-dam.
* Qalat-i-nadiri, the birth-place of Nadir Shah, n. of Mashhad and standing on very strong ground (Erskine).
