Kitabı oku: «The Bābur-nāma», sayfa 11

One day when Shaibāq Khān had directed his attack towards the Iron Gate, the mob, grown bold, went out, as usual, daringly and far. To cover their retreat, we sent several braves towards the Camel’s-neck,⁵⁵¹ foster-brethren and some of the close household-circle, such as Nuyān Kūkūldāsh, Qul-naz̤ar (son of Sherīm?) T̤aghāī Beg, and Mazīd. An Aūzbeg or two put their horses at them and with Qul-naz̤ar swords were crossed. The rest of the Aūzbegs dismounted and brought their strength to bear on the rabble, hustled them off and rammed them in through the Iron Gate. Qūch Beg and Mīr Shāh Qūchīn had dismounted at the side of Khwāja Khiẓr’s Mosque and were making a stand there. While the townsmen were being moved off by those on foot, a party of mounted Aūzbegs rode towards the Mosque. Qūch Beg came out when they drew near and exchanged good blows with them. He did distinguished work; all stood to watch. Our fugitives below were occupied only with their own escape; for them the time to shoot arrows and make a stand had gone by. I was shooting with a slur-bow⁵⁵² from above the Gate and some of my circle were shooting arrows (aūq). Our attack from above kept the enemy from advancing beyond the Mosque; from there he retired.

During the siege, the round of the ramparts was made each night; sometimes I went, sometimes Qāsim Beg, sometimes one of the household Begs. Though from the Turquoise to the Shaikh-zāda’s Gate may be ridden, the rest of the way must be walked. When some men went the whole round on foot, it was dawn before they had finished.⁵⁵³

One day Shaibāq Khān attacked between the Iron Gate and the Shaikh-zāda’s. I, as the reserve, went to the spot, without anxiety about the Bleaching-ground and Needle-makers’ Gates. That day, (?) in a shooting wager (aūq aūchīdā), I made a good shot with a slur-bow, at a Centurion’s horse.⁵⁵⁴ It died at once (aūq bārdī) with the arrow (aūq bīla). They made such a vigorous attack this time that they got close under the ramparts. Busy with the fighting and the stress near the Iron Gate, we were entirely off our guard about the other side of the town. There, opposite the space between the Needle-makers’ and Bleaching-ground Gates, the enemy had posted 7 or 800 good men in ambush, having with them 24 or 25 ladders so wide that two or three could mount abreast. These men came from their ambush when the attack near the Iron Gate, by occupying all our men, had left those other posts empty, and quickly set up their ladders between the two Gates, just where a road leads from the ramparts to Muḥ. Mazīd Tarkhān’s houses. That post was Qūch Beg’s and Muḥammad-qulī Qūchīn’s, with their detachment of braves, and they had their quarters in Muḥ. Mazīd’s houses. In the Needle-makers’ Gate was posted Qarā (Black) Barlās, in the Bleaching-ground Gate, Qūtlūq Khwāja Kūkūldāsh with Sherīm T̤aghāī and his brethren, older and younger. As attack was being made on the other side of the town, the men attached to these posts were not on guard but had scattered to their quarters or to the bazar for necessary matters of service and servants’ work. Only the begs were at their posts, with one or two of the populace. Qūch Beg and Mūhammad-qulī and Shāh Ṣufī and one other brave did very well and boldly. Some Aūzbegs were on the ramparts, some were coming up, when these four men arrived at a run, dealt them blow upon blow, and, by energetic drubbing, forced them all down and put them to flight. Qūch Beg did best; this was his out-standing and approved good deed; twice during this siege he got his hand into the work. Qarā Barlās had been left alone in the Needle-makers’ Gate; he also held out well to the end. Qūtlūq Khwāja and Qul-naz̤ar Mīrzā were also at their posts in the Bleaching-ground Gate; they held out well too, and charged the foe in his rear.

Another time Qāsim Beg led his braves out through the Needle-makers’ Gate, pursued the Aūzbegs as far as Khwāja Kafsher, unhorsed some and returned with a few heads.

It was now the time of ripening rain but no-one brought new corn into the town. The long siege caused great privation to the towns-people;⁵⁵⁵ it went so far that the poor and destitute began to eat the flesh of dogs and asses and, as there was little grain for the horses, people fed them on leaves. Experience shewed that the leaves best suiting were those of the mulberry and elm (qarā-yīghāch). Some people scraped dry wood and gave the shavings, damped, to their horses.

For three or four months Shaibāq Khān did not come near the fort but had it invested at some distance and himself moved round it from post to post. Once when our men were off their guard, at mid-night, the enemy came near to the Turquoise Gate, beat his drums and flung his war-cry out. I was in the College, undressed. There was great trepidation and anxiety. After that they came night after night, disturbing us by drumming and shouting their war-cry.

Although envoys and messengers had been sent repeatedly to all sides and quarters, no help and reinforcement arrived from any-one. No-one had helped or reinforced me when I was in strength and power and had suffered no sort of defeat or loss; on what score would any-one help me now? No hope in any-one whatever recommended us to prolong the siege. The old saying was that to hold a fort there must be a head, two hands and two legs, that is to say, the Commandant is the head; help and reinforcement coming from two quarters are the two arms and the food and water in the fort are the two legs. While we looked for help from those round about, their thoughts were elsewhere. That brave and experienced ruler, Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā, gave us not even the help of an encouraging message, but none-the-less he sent Kamālu’d-dīn Ḥusain Gāzur-gāhī⁵⁵⁶ as an envoy to Shaibāq Khān.

(i. Taṃbal’s proceedings in Farghāna.)⁵⁵⁷

(This year) Taṃbal marched from Andijān to near Bīsh-kīnt.⁵⁵⁸ Aḥmad Beg and his party, thereupon, made The Khān move out against him. The two armies came face to face near Lak-lakān and the Tūrāk Four-gardens but separated without engaging. Sl. Maḥmūd was not a fighting man; now when opposed to Taṃbal, he shewed want of courage in word and deed. Aḥmad Beg was unpolished⁵⁵⁹ but brave and well-meaning. In his very rough way, he said, ‘What’s the measure of this person, Taṃbal? that you are so tormented with fear and fright about him. If you are afraid to look at him, bandage your eyes before you go out to face him.’

907 AH. – JULY 17th. 1501 to JULY 7th. 1502 AD.⁵⁶⁰

(a. Surrender of Samarkand to Shaibānī.)

The siege drew on to great length; no provisions and supplies came in from any quarter, no succour and reinforcement from any side. The soldiers and peasantry became hopeless and, by ones and twos, began to let themselves down outside⁵⁶¹ the walls and flee. On Shaibāq Khān’s hearing of the distress in the town, he came and dismounted near the Lovers’-cave. I, in turn, went to Malik-muḥammad Mīrzā’s dwellings in Low-lane, over against him. On one of those days, Khwāja Ḥusain’s brother, Aūzūn Ḥasan⁵⁶² came into the town with 10 or 15 of his men, – he who, as has been told, had been the cause of Jahāngīr Mīrzā’s rebellion, of my exodus from Samarkand (903 AH. – March 1498 AD.) and, again! of what an amount of sedition and disloyalty! That entry of his was a very bold act.⁵⁶³

The soldiery and townspeople became more and more distressed. Trusted men of my close circle began to let themselves down from the ramparts and get away; begs of known name and old family servants were amongst them, such as Pīr Wais, Shaikh Wais and Wais Lāgharī.⁵⁶⁴ Of help from any side we utterly despaired; no hope was left in any quarter; our supplies and provisions were wretched, what there was was coming to an end; no more came in. Meantime Shaibāq Khān interjected talk of peace.⁵⁶⁵ Little ear would have been given to his talk of peace, if there had been hope or food from any side. It had to be! a sort of peace was made and we took our departure from the town, by the Shaikh-zāda’s Gate, somewhere about midnight.

(b. Bābur leaves Samarkand.)

I took my mother Khānīm out with me; two other women-folk went too, one was Bīshka (var. Peshka) – i-Khalīfa, the other, Mīnglīk Kūkūldāsh.⁵⁶⁶ At this exodus, my elder sister, Khān-zāda Begīm fell into Shaibāq Khān’s hands.⁵⁶⁷ In the darkness of that night we lost our way⁵⁶⁸ and wandered about amongst the main irrigation channels of Soghd. At shoot of dawn, after a hundred difficulties, we got past Khwāja Dīdār. At the Sunnat Prayer we scrambled up the rising-ground of Qarā-būgh. From the north slope of Qarā-būgh we hurried on past the foot of Judūk village and dropped down into Yīlān-aūtī. On the road I raced with Qāsim Beg and Qaṃbar-‘alī (the Skinner); my horse was leading when I, thinking to look at theirs behind, twisted myself round; the girth may have slackened, for my saddle turned and I was thrown on my head to the ground. Although I at once got up and remounted, my brain did not steady till the evening; till then this world and what went on appeared to me like things felt and seen in a dream or fancy. Towards afternoon we dismounted in Yīlān-aūtī, there killed a horse, spitted and roasted its flesh, rested our horses awhile and rode on. Very weary, we reached Khalīla-village before the dawn and dismounted. From there it was gone on to Dīzak.

In Dīzak just then was Ḥāfiẓ Muḥ. Dūldāī’s son, T̤āhir. There, in Dīzak, were fat meats, loaves of fine flour, plenty of sweet melons and abundance of excellent grapes. From what privation we came to such plenty! From what stress to what repose!

 
From fear and hunger rest we won (amānī tāptūq);
A fresh world’s new-born life we won (jahānī tāptūq).
From out our minds, death’s dread was chased (rafa‘ būldī);
From our men the hunger-pang kept back (dafa‘ būldī).⁵⁶⁹
 

Never in all our lives had we felt such relief! never in the whole course of them have we appreciated security and plenty so highly. Joy is best and more delightful when it follows sorrow, ease after toil. I have been transported four or five times from toil to rest and from hardship to ease.⁵⁷⁰ This was the first. We were set free from the affliction of such a foe and from the pangs of hunger and had reached the repose of security and the relief of abundance.

(c. Bābur in Dikh-kat.)

After three or four days of rest in Dīzak, we set out for Aūrā-tīpā. Pashāghar is a little⁵⁷¹ off the road but, as we had occupied it for some time (904 AH.), we made an excursion to it in passing by. In Pashāghar we chanced on one of Khānīm’s old servants, a teacher⁵⁷² who had been left behind in Samarkand from want of a mount. We saw one another and on questioning her, I found she had come there on foot.

Khūb-nigār Khānīm, my mother Khānīm’s younger sister⁵⁷³ already must have bidden this transitory world farewell; for they let Khānīm and me know of it in Aūrā-tīpā. My father’s mother also must have died in Andijān; this too they let us know in Aūrā-tīpā.⁵⁷⁴ Since the death of my grandfather, Yūnas Khān (892 AH.), Khānīm had not seen her (step-)mother or her younger brother and sisters, that is to say, Shāh Begīm, Sl. Maḥmūd Khān, Sult̤ān-nīgār Khānīm and Daulat-sult̤ān Khānīm. The separation had lasted 13 or 14 years. To see these relations she now started for Tāshkīnt.

After consulting with Muḥ. Ḥusain Mīrzā, it was settled for us to winter in a place called Dikh-kat⁵⁷⁵ one of the Aūrā-tīpā villages. There I deposited my impedimenta (aūrūq); then set out myself in order to visit Shāh Begīm and my Khān dādā and various relatives. I spent a few days in Tāshkīnt and waited on Shāh Begīm and my Khān dādā. My mother’s elder full-sister, Mihr-nigār Khānīm⁵⁷⁶ had come from Samarkand and was in Tāshkīnt. There my mother Khānīm fell very ill; it was a very bad illness; she passed through mighty risks.

His Highness Khwājaka Khwāja, having managed to get out of Samarkand, had settled down in Far-kat; there I visited him. I had hoped my Khān dādā would shew me affection and kindness and would give me a country or a district (pargana). He did promise me Aūrā-tīpā but Muḥ. Ḥusain Mīrzā. did not make it over, whether acting on his own account or whether upon a hint from above, is not known. After spending a few days with him (in Aūrā-tīpā), I went on to Dikh-kat.

Dikh-kat is in the Aūrā-tīpā hill-tracts, below the range on the other side of which is the Macha⁵⁷⁷ country. Its people, though Sārt, settled in a village, are, like Turks, herdsmen and shepherds. Their sheep are reckoned at 40,000. We dismounted at the houses of the peasants in the village; I stayed in a head-man’s house. He was old, 70 or 80, but his mother was still alive. She was a woman on whom much life had been bestowed for she was 111 years old. Some relation of hers may have gone, (as was said), with Tīmūr Beg’s army to Hindūstān;⁵⁷⁸ she had this in her mind and used to tell the tale. In Dikh-kat alone were 96 of her descendants, hers and her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and grandchildren’s grandchildren. Counting in the dead, 200 of her descendants were reckoned up. Her grandchild’s grandson was a strong young man of 25 or 26, with full black beard. While in Dikh-kat, I constantly made excursions amongst the mountains round about. Generally I went bare-foot and, from doing this so much, my feet became so that rock and stone made no difference to them.⁵⁷⁹ Once in one of these wanderings, a cow was seen, between the Afternoon and Evening prayers, going down by a narrow, ill-defined road. Said I, ‘I wonder which way that road will be going; keep your eye on that cow; don’t lose the cow till you know where the road comes out.’ Khwāja Asadu’l-lāh made his joke, ‘If the cow loses her way,’ he said, ‘what becomes of us?’

In the winter several of our soldiers asked for leave to Andijān because they could make no raids with us.⁵⁸⁰ Qāsim Beg said, with much insistance, ‘As these men are going, send something special of your own wear by them to Jahāngīr Mīrzā.’ I sent my ermine cap. Again he urged, ‘What harm would there be if you sent something for Taṃbal also?’ Though I was very unwilling, yet as he urged it, I sent Taṃbal a large broad-sword which Nuyān Kūkūldāsh had had made for himself in Samarkand. This very sword it was which, as will be told with the events of next year, came down on my own head!⁵⁸¹

A few days later, my grandmother, Aīsān-daulat Begīm, who, when I left Samarkand, had stayed behind, arrived in Dikh-kat with our families and baggage (aūrūq) and a few lean and hungry followers.

(d. Shaibāq Khān raids in The Khān’s country.)

That winter Shaibāq Khān crossed the Khujand river on the ice and plundered near Shāhrukhiya and Bīsh-kīnt. On hearing news of this, we gallopped off, not regarding the smallness of our numbers, and made for the villages below Khujand, opposite Hasht-yak (One-eighth). The cold was mightily bitter,⁵⁸² a wind not less than the Hā-darwesh⁵⁸³ raging violently the whole time. So cold it was that during the two or three days we were in those parts, several men died of it. When, needing to make ablution, I went into an irrigation-channel, frozen along both banks but because of its swift current, not ice-bound in the middle, and bathed, dipping under 16 times, the cold of the water went quite through me. Next day we crossed the river on the ice from opposite Khaṣlār and went on through the dark to Bīsh-kīnt.⁵⁸⁴ Shaibāq Khān, however, must have gone straight back after plundering the neighbourhood of Shāhrukhiya.

(e. Death of Nuyān Kūkūldāsh.)

Bīsh-kīnt, at that time, was held by Mullā Ḥaidar’s son, ‘Abdu’l-minān. A younger son, named Mūmin, a worthless and dissipated person, had come to my presence in Samarkand and had received all kindness from me. This sodomite, Mūmin, for what sort of quarrel between them is not known, cherished rancour against Nuyān Kūkūldāsh. At the time when we, having heard of the retirement of the Aūzbegs, sent a man to

The Khān and marched from Bīsh-kīnt to spend two or three days amongst the villages in the Blacksmith’s-dale,⁵⁸⁵ Mullā Ḥaidar’s son, Mūmin invited Nuyān Kūkūldāsh and Aḥmad-i-qāsim and some others in order to return them hospitality received in Samarkand. When I left Bīsh-kīnt, therefore they stayed behind. Mūmin’s entertainment to this party was given on the edge of a ravine (jar). Next day news was brought to us in Sām-sīrak, a village in the Blacksmith’s-dale, that Nuyān was dead through falling when drunk into the ravine. We sent his own mother’s brother, Ḥaq-naz̤ar and others, who searched out where he had fallen. They committed Nuyān to the earth in Bīsh-kīnt, and came back to me. They had found the body at the bottom of the ravine an arrow’s flight from the place of the entertainment. Some suspected that Mūmin, nursing his trumpery rancour, had taken Nuyān’s life. None knew the truth. His death made me strangely sad; for few men have I felt such grief; I wept unceasingly for a week or ten days. The chronogram of his death was found in Nuyān is dead.⁵⁸⁶

With the heats came the news that Shaibāq Khān was coming up into Aūrā-tīpā. Hereupon, as the land is level about Dikh-kat, we crossed the Āb-burdan pass into the Macha hill-country.⁵⁸⁷ Āb-burdan is the last village of Macha; just below it a spring sends its water down (to the Zar-afshān); above the stream is included in Macha, below it depends on Palghar. There is a tomb at the spring-head. I had a rock at the side of the spring-head shaped (qātīrīb) and these three couplets inscribed on it; —

 
I have heard that Jamshīd, the magnificent,
Inscribed on a rock at a fountain-head⁵⁸⁸
‘Many men like us have taken breath at this fountain,
And have passed away in the twinkling of an eye;
We took the world by courage and might,
But we took it not with us to the tomb.’
 

There is a custom in that hill-country of cutting verses and things⁵⁸⁹ on the rocks.

While we were in Macha, Mullā Hijrī,⁵⁹⁰ the poet, came from Ḥiṣār and waited on me. At that time I composed the following opening lines; —

 
Let your portrait flatter you never so much, than it you are more (āndīn artūqsīn);
Men call you their Life (Jān), than Life, without doubt, you are more (jāndīn artūqsīn).⁵⁹¹
 

After plundering round about in Aūrā-tīpā, Shaibāq Khān retired.⁵⁹² While he was up there, we, disregarding the fewness of our men and their lack of arms, left our impedimenta (aūrūq) in Macha, crossed the Āb-burdan pass and went to Dikh-kat so that, gathered together close at hand, we might miss no chance on one of the next nights. He, however, retired straightway; we went back to Macha.

It passed through my mind that to wander from mountain to mountain, homeless and houseless, without country or abiding-place, had nothing to recommend it. ‘Go you right off to The Khān,’ I said to myself. Qāsim Beg was not willing for this move, apparently being uneasy because, as has been told, he had put Mughūls to death at Qarā-būlāq, by way of example. However much we urged it, it was not to be! He drew off for Ḥiṣār with all his brothers and his whole following. We for our part, crossed the Āb-burdan pass and set forward for The Khān’s presence in Tāshkīnt.

(f. Bābur with The Khān.)

In the days when Taṃbal had drawn his army out and gone into the Blacksmith’s-dale,⁵⁹³ men at the top of his army, such as Muḥ. Dūghlāt, known as Ḥiṣārī, and his younger brother Ḥusain, and also Qaṃbar-‘alī, the Skinner, conspired to attempt his life. When he discovered this weighty matter, they, unable to remain with him, had gone to The Khān.

The Feast of Sacrifices (‘Īd-i-qurbān) fell for us in Shāh-rukhiya (Ẕū’l-ḥijja 10th. – June 16th. 1502).

I had written a quatrain in an ordinary measure but was in some doubt about it, because at that time I had not studied poetic idiom so much as I have now done. The Khān was good-natured and also he wrote verses, though ones somewhat deficient in the requisites for odes. I presented my quatrain and I laid my doubts before him but got no reply so clear as to remove them. His study of poetic idiom appeared to have been somewhat scant. Here is the verse; —

 
One hears no man recall another in trouble (miḥnat-ta kīshī);
None speak of a man as glad in his exile (ghurbat-ta kīshī);
My own heart has no joy in this exile;
Called glad is no exile, man though he be (albatta kīshī).
 

Later on I came to know that in Turkī verse, for the purpose of rhyme, ta and da are interchangeable and also ghain, qāf and kāf.⁵⁹⁴

(g. The acclaiming of the standards.)

When, a few days later, The Khān heard that Taṃbal had gone up into Aūrā-tīpā, he got his army to horse and rode out from Tāshkīnt. Between Bīsh-kīnt and Sām-sīrak he formed up into array of right and left and saw the count⁵⁹⁵ of his men. This done, the standards were acclaimed in Mughūl fashion.⁵⁹⁶ The Khān dismounted and nine standards were set up in front of him. A Mughūl tied a long strip of white cloth to the thigh-bone (aūrta aīlīk) of a cow and took the other end in his hand. Three other long strips of white cloth were tied to the staves of three of the (nine) standards, just below the yak-tails, and their other ends were brought for The Khān to stand on one and for me and Sl. Muḥ. Khānika to stand each on one of the two others. The Mughūl who had hold of the strip of cloth fastened to the cow’s leg, then said something in Mughūl while he looked at the standards and made signs towards them. The Khān and those present sprinkled qumīz⁵⁹⁷ in the direction of the standards; hautbois and drums were sounded towards them;⁵⁹⁸ the army flung the war-cry out three times towards them, mounted, cried it again and rode at the gallop round them.

Precisely as Chīngīz Khān laid down his rules, so the Mughūls still observe them. Each man has his place, just where his ancestors had it; right, right, – left, left, – centre, centre. The most reliable men go to the extreme points of the right and left. The Chīrās and Begchīk clans always demand to go to the point in the right.⁵⁹⁹ At that time the Beg of the Chīrās tūmān was a very bold brave, Qāshka (Mole-marked) Maḥmud and the beg of the renowned Begchīk tūmān was Ayūb Begchīk. These two, disputing which should go out to the point, drew swords on one another. At last it seems to have been settled that one should take the highest place in the hunting-circle, the other, in the battle-array.

Next day after making the circle, it was hunted near Sāmsīrak; thence move was made to the Tūrāk Four-gardens. On that day and in that camp, I finished the first ode I ever finished. Its opening couplet is as follows; —

 
Except my soul, no friend worth trust found I (wafādār tāpmādīm);
Except my heart, no confidant found I (asrār tāpmādīm).
 

There were six couplets; every ode I finished later was written just on this plan.

The Khān moved, march by march, from Sām-sīrak to the bank of the Khujand-river. One day we crossed the water by way of an excursion, cooked food and made merry with the braves and pages. That day some-one stole the gold clasp of my girdle. Next day Bayān-qulī’s Khān-qulī and Sl. Muḥ. Wais fled to Taṃbal. Every-one suspected them of that bad deed. Though this was not ascertained, Aḥmad-i-qāsim Kohbur asked leave and went away to Aūrā-tīpā. From that leave he did not return; he too went to Taṃbal.