935 AH. SEP. 15TH 1528 TO SEP. 5th 1529 AD. 623
himself there.1 Here-upon the Auzbegs, with entire disregard of their opponents,2 left their counsels at this : " Let all of us sultans and khans seat ourselves in Mashhad ; 3 let a few of us be told off with 20,000 men to go close to the Qlzil-bash camp* and not let them put head out; let us order magicians s to work their magic directly Scorpio appears ;6 by this stratagem the enemy will be enfeebled, and we shall overcome." So said, they march from Merv. Shah-zada gets out of Mashhad.7 He confronts them near Jam-and-Khirgird.8 There defeat befalls the Auzbeg side.9 A mass of sultans are overcome and slaughtered. In one letter it {khud) was written, " It is not known for certain that any sultan except Kuchum Khan has escaped ; not a man who went with the army has come back up to now." The
etc.). (Cf. Vullers Diet. s.n. rad; Reclus' L'Asie Antirieure p. 219; and O'Donovan's Merv Oasis.) Perhaps light on the distinguished people {radagan\ is given by the Dfibistaris notice of an ancient sect, the Radiyan, seeming to be fire-worshippers whose chief was Rad-giina, an eminently brave hero of the latter part of Jamshid's reign (800B.C. ?). Of the town Radagan Daulat Shah makes frequent mention. A second town so-called and having a lower lies north of Ispahan.
1 In these days of trench-warfare it would give a wrong impression to say that Tahmasp entrenched himself; he did what Babur did before his battles at Panipat and Kanwa [a.v.).
■ The Auzbegs will have omitted from their purview of affairs that Tahmasp's men were veterans.
5 The holy city had been captured by 'UbaidKhan in 933 AH. (1525 ad. ), but nothing in Bian Shaikh's narrative indicates that they were now there in force.
4 Presumably the one in the Radagan-meadow.
5 using the yada-tdsh to ensure victory (Index s. 11.).
6 If then, as now, Scorpio's appearance were expected in Oct.-Nov., the Auzbegs had greatly over-estimated their power to check Tahmasp's movements ; but it seems fairly clear that they expected Scorpio to follow Virgo in Sept.-Oct. according to the ancient view of the Zodiacal Signs which allotted two houses to the large Scorpio and, if it admitted Libra at all, placed it between Scorpio's claws (Virgil's Georgics i, 32 and Ovid's Metamorphoses, ii, 195. H.B.).
7 It would appear that the Auzbegs, after hearing that Tahmasp was encamped at Radagan, expected to interpose themselves in his way at Mashhad and to get their 20,000 to Radagan before he broke camp. Tahmasp's swiftness spoiled their plan ; he will have stayed at Radagan a short time only, perhaps till he had further news of the Auzbegs, perhaps also for commissariat purposes and to rest his force. He visited the shrine of Imam Reza, and had reached Jam in time to confront his adversaries as they came down to it from Zawarabad (Pilgrims'-town).
or,_Khirjard, as many MSS. have it. It seems to be a hamlet or suburb of Jam. The 'Alam-arai (lith. ed. p. 40) writes Khusrau-jard-i-Jam (the Khusrau-throne of Jam), perhaps rhetorically. The hamlet is Maulana 'Abdu'r-rahman /ami's birthplace (Daulat Shah's Tazkh-at, E. G. Browne's ed. p. 483). Jam now appears on maps as Turbat-i-Shaikh JamI, the tomb (turbat) being that of the saintly ancestor of Akbar's mother Hamida-banu.
9 The 'Alam-arai (lith. ed. p. 31) says, but in grandiose language, that 'Ubaid Khan placed at the foot of his standard 40 of the most eminent men of Transoxania who prayed for his success, but that as his cause was not good, their supplications were turned backwards, and that all were slain where they had prayed.
