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934 AH. SEP. 27th 1527 TO SEP. 15th 1528 AD. 593
to centre, right, and left. UstSd 'All-quli chose, for his stone -discharge, ground that had no fall' ; overseers and spadesmen were told off to raise a place (indjar) for the mortar to rest on, and the whole army was ordered to get ready appliances fo. taking a fort, mantelets, ladders2 and . . . -mantelets (Jura).3
Formerly Chandirl will have belonged to the Sultans of Mandau (Mandu). When SI. Nasiru'd-dln passed away,4 one of his sons SI- Mahmud who is now holding Mandu, took possession of it and its neighbouring parts, and another son called Muhammad Shah laid hands on Chandirl and "put it under SI- Sikandar {Ludtjs protection, who, in his turn, took Muhammad Shah's side and sent him large forces. Muhammad Shah survived SI. Sikandar and died in SI. Ibrahim's time, leaving a very young son called Ahmad Shah whom SI. Ibrahim drove out and replaced by a man of his own. At the time Rana Sanga led out an army against SI. Ibrahim and Ibrahim's begs turned against him at Dulpur, Chandirl fell into the Rana's hands and by him was given to MedinI [Mindnl] Rao s the greatly-trusted pagan who was now in it with 4 or 5000 other pagans.
As it was understood there was friendship between MedinI
1 yaghda ; Pers. trs. sar-ashib. Babur's remark seems to show that for effect his mortar needed to be higher than its object. Presumably it stood on the table-land north of the citadel.
' shatu. It may be noted that this word, common in accounts of Babur's sieges, may explain one our friend the late Mr. William Irvine left undecided (I.e. p.278), viz. shatur. On p. 281 he states that narduban is the name of a scaling-ladder and that Babur mentions scaling ladders more than once. Babur mentions them however always as shatu. Perhaps shatur which, as Mr. Irvine says, seems to be made of the trunks of trees and to be a siege appliance, is really shatu «... (ladder and ■ ) as in the passage under note and on {.216b, some other name of an appliance following.
3 The word here preceding tura has puzzled scribes and translators. I have seen the following variants in MSS. ; nukrior tukri, b: kri or y: An, bukri or yukri, bukrai or yukrai, in each of which the k may stand for g. Various suggestions might be made as to what the word is, but all involve reading the Persian enclitic i (forming the adjective) instead of Turk! lik. Two roots, tig and yug, afford plausible explanations of the unknown word ; appliances suiting the case and able to bear names formed from one qr other of these roots are wheeled mantelet, and head-strike (P. sar-kob). That the word is difficult is shewn not only by the variants I have quoted, but by Erskine's reading naukaritura, "to serve the turas," a requisite not specified earlier by Babur, and by de Courteille's paraphrase, tout ce qui est nictssaire aux touras.
4 SI. Nasiru'd-dln was the Khilji ruler of Malwa from 906 to 916 a.h. (1500>5'o ad.).
s He was a Rajput who had been prime-minister of SI. Mahmud II. Khilji (son of Nasiru'd-din) and had rebelled. Babur (like some other writers) spells his name Mindnl, perhaps as he heard it spoken.
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