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The Bābur-nāma

The Bābur-nāma in English Memoirs of Bābur

PREFACE

O Spring of work! O Source of power to Be!
Each line, each thought I dedicate to Thee;
Each time I fail, the failure is my own,
But each success, a jewel in Thy Throne.

Jessie E. Cadell.

Introductory

This book is a translation of Babur Padshah’s Autobiography, made from the original Turki text. It was undertaken after a purely-Turki manuscript had become accessible in England, the Haidarabad Codex (1915) which, being in Babur’s ipsissima verba, left to him the control of his translator’s diction – a control that had been impracticable from the time when, under Akbar (1589), his book was translated into Persian. What has come down to us of pure text is, in its shrunken amount, what was translated in 1589. It is difficult, here and there, to interpret owing to its numerous and in some places extensive lacunæ, and presents more problems than one the solution of which has real importance because they have favoured suggestions of malfeasance by Babur.

My translation has been produced under considerable drawback, having been issued in four fasciculi, at long intervals, respectively in June 1912, May 1914, October 1917, and September 1921. I have put with it of supplementary matter what may be of service to those readers whom Babur’s personality attracts and to those who study Turki as a linguistic entertainment, but owing to delays in production am unable to include the desiderata of maps.

Chapter I.
BABUR’S EXEMPLARS IN THE ARTS OF PEACE

Babur’s civilian aptitudes, whether of the author and penman, the maker of gardens, the artist, craftsman or sportsman, were nourished in a fertile soil of family tradition and example. Little about his teaching and training is now with his mutilated book, little indeed of any kind about his præ-accession years, not the date of his birth even, having escaped destruction.¹ Happily Haidar Mirza (q. v.) possessed a more complete Codex than has come down to us through the Timurid libraries, and from it he translated many episodes of Baburiana that help to bridge gaps and are of special service here where the personalities of Bābur’s early environment are being named.

Babur’s home-milieu favoured excellence in the quiet Arts and set before its children high standard and example of proficiency. Moreover, by schooling him in obedience to the Law, it planted in him some of Art’s essentials, self-restraint and close attention. Amongst primal influences on him, his mother Qut-luq-nigar’s ranked high; she, well-born and a scholar’s daughter, would certainly be educated in Turki and Persian and in the home-accomplishments her governess possessed (ātūn q.v.). From her and her mother Aisan-daulat, the child would learn respect for the attainments of his wise old grandfather Yunas Khan. Aisan-daulat herself brought to her grandson much that goes to the making of a man; nomad-born and sternly-bred, she was brave to obey her opinion of right, and was practically the boy’s ruling counsellor through his early struggle to hold Farghana. With these two in fine influence must be counted Khan-zada, his five-years elder sister who from his birth to his death proved her devotion to him. Her life-story tempts, but is too long to tell; her girlish promise is seen fulfilled in Gul-badan’s pages. ‘Umar Shaikh’s own mother Shah Sultan Begim brought in a type of merit widely differing from that of Aisan-daulat Begim; as a town-lady of high Tarkhan birth, used to the amenities of life in a wealthy house of Samarkand, she was, doubtless, an accomplished and cultured woman.

‘Umar Shaikh’s environment was dominated for many years by two great men, the scholar and lover of town-life Yunas Khan and the saintly Ahrari (i. e. Khwaja ‘Ubaidu’l-lah) who were frequently with him in company, came at Babur’s birth and assisted at his naming. Ahrari died in 895-1491 when the child was about seven years old but his influence was life-long; in 935-1529 he was invoked as a spiritual helper by the fever-stricken Babur and his mediation believed efficacious for recovery (pp. 619, 648). For the babe or boy to be where the three friends held social session in high converse, would be thought to draw blessing on him; his hushed silence in the presence would sow the seed of reverence for wisdom and virtue, such, for example, as he felt for Jami (q. v.). It is worth while to tell some part at least of Yunas’ attainments in the gentler Arts, because the biography from which they are quoted may well have been written on the information of his wife Aisan-daulat, and it indicates the breadth of his exemplary influence. Yunas was many things – penman, painter, singer, instrumentalist, and a past master in the crafts. He was an expert in good companionship, having even temper and perfect manners, quick perception and conversational charm. His intellectual distinction was attributed to his twelve years of wardship under the learned and highly honoured Yazdi (Sharafu’d-din ’Ali), the author of the Zafar-nama [Timur’s Book of Victory]. That book was in hand during four years of Yunas’ education; he will thus have known it and its main basis Timur’s Turki Malfūzāt (annals). What he learned of either book he would carry with him into ‘Umar Shaikh’s environment, thus magnifying the family stock of Timuriya influence. He lived to be some 74 years old, a length of days which fairly bridged the gap between Timur’s death [807-1404] and Babur’s birth (888-1483). It is said that no previous Khan of his (Chaghatai) line had survived his 40th year; his exceptional age earned him great respect and would deepen his influence on his restless young son-in-law ‘Umar Shaikh. It appears to have been in ‘Umar’s 20th year (cir.) that Yunas Khan began the friendly association with him that lasted till Yunas’ death (892-1483), a friendship which, as disparate ages would dictate, was rather that of father and son than of equal companionship. One matter mentioned in the Khan’s biography would come to Babur’s remembrance in the future days when he, like Yunas, broke the Law against intoxicants and, like him, repented and returned.

That two men of the calibre and high repute of Ahrari and Yunas maintained friendly guidance so long over ‘Umar cannot but be held an accreditment and give fragrance of goodness to his name. Apart from the high justice and generosity his son ascribes to him, he could set other example, for he was a reader of great books, the Qoran and the Masnawi being amongst his favourites. This choice, it may be, led Abu’l-faẓl to say he had the darwesh-mind. Babur was old enough before ‘Umar’s death to profit by the sight of his father enjoying the perusal of such books. As with other parents and other children, there would follow the happy stilling to a quiet mood, the piquing of curiosity as to what was in the book, the sight of refuge taken as in a haven from self and care, and perhaps, Babur being intelligent and of inquiring mind and ‘Umar a skilled reciter, the boy would marvel at the perennial miracle that a lifeless page can become eloquent – gentle hints all, pointers of the way to literary creation.

Few who are at home in Baburiana but will take Timur as Babur’s great exemplar not only as a soldier but as a chronicler. Timur cannot have seemed remote from that group of people so well-informed about him and his civilian doings; his Shahrukhi grandchildren in Samarkand had carried on his author-tradition; the 74 years of Yunas Khan’s life had bridged the gap between Timur’s death in 807-1405 and Babur’s birth in 888-1483. To Babur Timur will have been exemplary through his grandson Aulugh Beg who has two productions to his credit, the Char-ulus (Four Hordes) and the Kurkani Astronomical Tables. His sons, again, Babur (qalandar) and Ibrahim carried on the family torch of letters, the first in verse and the second by initiating and fostering Yazdi’s labours on the Zafar-nama. Wide-radiating and potent influence for the Arts of Peace came forth from Herat during the reign of that Sultan Husain Mirza whose Court Babur describes in one of the best supplements to his autobiography. Husain was a Timurid of the elder branch of Bai-qara, an author himself but far more effective as a Macænas; one man of the shining galaxy of competence that gave him fame, set pertinent example for Babur the author, namely, the Andijani of noble Chaghatai family, ’Ali-sher Nawa’i who, in classic Turki verse was the master Babur was to become in its prose. That the standard of effort was high in Herat is clear from Babur’s dictum (p. 233) that whatever work a man took up, he aspired to bring it to perfection. Elphinstone varies the same theme to the tune of equality of excellence apart from social status, writing to Erskine (August, 1826), that “it gives a high notion of the time to find” (in Babur’s account of Husain’s Court) “artists, musicians and others, described along with the learned and great of the Age”.

My meagre summary of Babur’s exemplars would be noticeably incomplete if it omitted mention of two of his life-long helpers in the gentler Arts, his love of Nature and his admiration for great architectural creations. The first makes joyous accompaniment throughout his book; the second is specially called forth by Timur’s ennoblement of Samarkand. Timur had built magnificently and laid out stately gardens; Babur made many a fruitful pleasaunce and gladdened many an arid halting-place; he built a little, but had small chance to test his capacity for building greatly; never rich, he was poor in Kabul and several times destitute in his home-lands. But his sword won what gave wealth to his Indian Dynasty, and he passed on to it the builder’s unused dower, so that Samarkand was surpassed in Hindustan and the spiritual conception Timur’s creations embodied took perfect form at Sikandra where Akbar lies entombed.

Chapter II.
PROBLEMS OF THE MUTILATED BABUR-NAMA

Losses from the text of Babur’s book are the more disastrous because it truly embodies his career. For it has the rare distinction of being contemporary with the events it describes, is boyish in his boyhood, grows with his growth, matures as he matured. Undulled by retrospect, it is a fresh and spontaneous recital of things just seen, heard or done. It has the further rare distinction of shewing a boy who, setting a future task before him – in his case the revival of Timurid power, – began to chronicle his adventure in the book which through some 37 years was his twinned comrade, which by its special distinctions has attracted readers for nearly a half-millennium, still attracts and still is a thing apart from autobiographies which look back to recall dead years.

Much circumstance makes for the opinion that Babur left his life-record complete, perhaps repaired in places and recently supplemented, but continuous, orderly and lucid; this it is not now, nor has been since it was translated into Persian in 1589, for it is fissured by lacunæ, has neither Preface nor Epilogue,² opens in an oddly abrupt and incongruous fashion, and consists of a series of fragments so disconnected as to demand considerable preliminary explanation. Needless to say, its dwindled condition notwithstanding, it has place amongst great autobiographies, still revealing its author playing a man’s part in a drama of much historic and personal interest. Its revelation is however now like a portrait out of drawing, because it has not kept the record of certain years of his manhood in which he took momentous decisions,(1) those of 1511-12 [918] in which he accepted reinforcement – at a great price – from Isma‘il the Shi‘a Shah of Persia, and in which, if my reading be correct, he first (1512) broke the Law against the use of wine,³ (2) those of 1519-1525 [926-932], in which his literary occupations with orthodox Law (see Mubin) associated with cognate matters of 932 AH. indicate that his return to obedience had begun, in which too was taken the decision that worked out for his fifth expedition across the Indus with its sequel of the conquest of Hind. – The loss of matter so weighty cannot but destroy the balance of his record and falsify the drawing of his portrait.

a. Problem of Titles.

As nothing survives to decide what was Babur’s chosen title for his autobiography, a modern assignment of names to distinguish it from its various descendants is desirable, particularly so since the revival of interest in it towards which the Facsimile of its Haidarabad Codex has contributed.⁴

Babur-nama (History of Babur) is a well-warranted name by which to distinguish the original Turki text, because long associated with this and rarely if ever applied to its Persian translation.⁵ It is not comprehensive because not covering supplementary matter of biography and description but it has use for modern readers of classing Babur’s with other Timuriya and Timurid histories such as the Zafar-Humayun-Akbar-namas.

Waqi‘āt-i-baburi (Babur’s Acts), being descriptive of the book and in common use for naming both the Turki and Persian texts, might usefully be reserved as a title for the latter alone.

Amongst European versions of the book Memoirs of Baber is Erskine’s peculium for the Leyden and Erskine Perso-English translation —Mémoires de Baber is Pavet de Courteille’s title for his French version of the Bukhara [Persified-Turki] compilation —Babur-nama in English links the translation these volumes contain with its purely-Turki source.

b. Problems of the Constituents of the Books.

Intact or mutilated, Babur’s material falls naturally into three territorial divisions, those of the lands of his successive rule, Farghana (with Samarkand), Kabul and Hindustan. With these are distinct sub-sections of description of places and of obituaries of kinsmen.

The book might be described as consisting of annals and diary, which once met within what is now the gap of 1508-19 (914-925). Round this gap, amongst others, bristle problems of which this change of literary style is one; some are small and concern the mutilation alone, others are larger, but all are too intricate for terse statement and all might be resolved by the help of a second MS. e. g. one of the same strain as Haidar’s.