Auzbeg has taken Khurasan ; come ! let us settle, in concert and amity, what will be for the general good," they returned a rude and ill-mannered answer, going back from the dutiful letters they had written and from the invitations they had given. One of their incivilities was that Shah Beg stamped his letter to me in the middle of its reverse, where begs seal if writing to begs, where indeed a great beg seals if writing to one of the lower circle.1 But for such ill-manners and his rude answers, his affair would never have gone so far as it did, for, as they say,
A strife-stirring word will accomplish the downfall of an ancient line.
By these their headstrong acts they gave to the winds house, family, and the hoards of 30 to 40 years.
One day while we were near Shahr-i-safa 2 a false alarm being given in the very heart of the camp, the whole army was made to arm and mount. At the time I was occupied with a bath and purification; the begs were much flurried; I mounted when I was ready; as the alarm was false, it died away after a time.
March by march we moved on to Guzar.3 There we tried again to discuss with the Arghuns but, paying no attention to us, they maintained the same obstinate and perverse attitude. Certain well-wishers who knew the local land and water, represented to me, that the head of the torrents {rudlar) which come down to Qandahar, being towards Baba Hasan Abdal and Khalishak,-* a move ought to be made in vthat direction, in order
1 Persians pay great attention in their correspondence not only to the style but to the kind of paper on which a letter is written, the place of signature, the place of the seal, and the situation of the address. Chardin gives some curious information on the subject (Erskine). Babur marks the distinction of rank he drew between the Arghun chiefs and himself when he calls their letter to him, 'arz-ddskt, his to them khatl. His claim to suzerainty over those chiefs is shewn by Haidar Mirza to be based on his accession to Timurid headship through the downfall of the Bai-qaras, who had been the acknowledged suzerains of the Arghuns now repudiating Babur's claim. Cf. Erskine's History of India i, cap. 3.
* on the main road, some 40 miles east of Qandahar.
3 var. Kur or Kawar. If the word mean ford, this might well be the one across the Tarnak carrying the road to Qara (maps). Here Babur seems to have left the main road along the Tarnak, by which the British approach was made in 1880 ad., fur one crossing west into the valley of the Argand-ab.
* Baba Hasan Abdal is the Baba Wall of maps. The same saint has given his name here, and also to his shrine east of Atak where he is known as Baba Wall of Qandahar. The torrents mentioned are irrigation off-takes from the Argand-ab, which river flows between Baba Wall and Khalishak. Shah Beg's force was south of the torrents (cf. Murghan-koh on S.A.W. map).
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