As Nizamu'd-dln Ahmad was not born till 20 years after Babur died, the story will have been old before he could appreciate it, and it was some 60 years old when it found way into the Tabaqat-i-akbari and, with less detail, into the Akbar-nama
Taken as it stands, it is incredible, because it represents Khalifa, and him alone, planning to subject the four sons of Babur to the suzerainty of Mahdl Khwaja who was not a Timurid, who, so far as well-known sources show, was not of a ruling dynasty or personally illustrious,1 and who had been associated, so lately as the autumn of 1529 AD., with his nephew Rahlm-dad in seditious action which had so angered Babur that, whatever the punishment actually ordered, rumour had it both men were to die.2 In two particulars the only Mahdl Khwaja then of Babur's following, does not suit the story ; he was not "a young man in 1530 AD.,3 and was not a damad of Babur, if that word be taken in its usual sense of son-in-law, but he was a yazna, husband of a Padshah's sister, in his case, of Khan-zada Begim.4 Some writers style him Sayyid Mahdl Khwaja, a double title which may indicate descent on both sides from religious houses ; one is suggested to be that of Tirmiz by the circumstance that in his and Khan-zada Beglm's mausoleum was buried a Tirmiz sayyid
1 I am indebted to my husband's perusal of Sayyid Ahmad Khan's Asar-i-sanadid (Dihli ed. 1854 p. 37, and Lakhnau ed. 1895 pp.40, 41) for information that, perhaps in 935 AH., Mahdl Khwaja set up a tall slab of white marble near Amir Khusrau's tomb in Dihli, which bears an inscription in praise of the poet, composed by that Shihabu'd-din the Enigmatist who reached Agra with Khwand-amir in Muharram 935 AH. (f. 339*). The inscription gives two chronograms of Khusrau's death (725 AH.), mentions that Mahdl Khwaja was the creator of the memorial, and gives its date in the words, "The beautiful effort of Mahdi Khwaja." -The Dihli ed. of the Ardri-sanddid depicts the slab with its inscription ; the Lakhnau ed. depicts the tomb, may show the slab in sittl, and contains interesting matter by Sayyid Ahmad Khan. The slab is mentioned without particulars in Murray's Hand-book to Bengal, p. 329.
" Lee's Ibn Batuta p. 133 and Hiraman's Tarikh-i-gualiari. Cf. G. B.'s Humayunnama trs. (1902AD.), Appendix B. Mahdl Khwaja.
3 In an anonymous Life of Shah Ismail Safawi, Mahdl Khwaja [who may be a son of the Musa Khwaja mentioned by Babur on f. 216] is described as being, in what will be 9l6-7 AH., Babur's Diwan-begiand assent towards Bukhara with 10,000 men. This was 29years before the story calls him a young man. Even if the word jawan (young man) be read, as T. yigit is frequently to be read, in the sense of " efficient fighting man", Mahdl was over-age. Other details of the story, besides the word jawan, bespeak a younger man.
* G. B.'s H. N. trs. p, 126; ffabibu's-siyar, B.M. Add. 16,679 f- 37°, 1-16, lith. ed. Sec. III. iii, 372 (where a clerical error makes Babur give Mahdl two of his fullsisters in marriage). Another yazna of Babur was Khalifa's brother Junaid Barlis, the husband of Shahr-banu, a half-sister of Babur.
