The Memoris Of Babur

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[edit] SECTION I. Fergana

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

In the month of Ramzan of the year 899 (June 1494) and in the twelfth year of my age, I became ruler in the country of Fergana.

Fergana is situated in the fifth climate and at the limit of settled habitation. On the east it has Kashghar; on the west, Samarkand; on the south, the mountains of the Badakhshan border; on the north, though in former times there must have been towns such as Almaligh, Almatu and Yangi which in books they write Taraz, at the present time all is desolate, no settled population whatever remaining, because of the Moghuls and the Uzbeks.

Fergana is a small country, abounding in grain and fruits. It is girt round by mountains except on the west, i.e. towards Khujand and Samarkand, and in winter an enemy can enter only on that side.

The Saihun River commonly known as the Water of Khujand, comes into the country from the northeast, flows westward through it and after passing along the north of Khujand and the south of Fanakat, now known as Shahrukhiya, turns directly north and goes to Turkistan. It does not join any sea but sinks into the sands, a considerable distance below [the town of] Turkistan.

Fergana has seven separate townships, five on the south and two on the north of the Saihun.

One of those on the south is Andijan, which has a central position and is the capital of the Fergana country. It produces much grain, fruits in abundance, excellent grapes and melons. In the melon season, it is not customary to sell them out at the fields. There are no pears better than those of Andijan. After Samarkand and Kesh, the fort of Andijan is the largest in Mawara'u'n-nahr (Transoxiana). It has three gates. Its citadel (ark) is on its south side. Water flows into it by nine channels, but, oddly, flows out by none. Round the outer edge of the ditch runs a gravelled highway; the width of this highway divides the fort from the suburbs surrounding it.

Andijan has good hunting and fowling; its pheasants grow so surprisingly fat that rumour has it four people could not finish one they were eating with its stew.

Andijanis are all Turks; everyone in town or bazar knows Turki. The speech of the people resembles the literary language; hence the writings of Mir 'Ali-sher Nawa'i, though he was bred and grew up in Hin (Herat), are one with their dialect. Good looks are common amongst them. The famous musician, Khwaja Yusuf, was an Andijani. The climate is malarious; in autumn people generally get fever.

Osh is southeast-by-east of Andijan and about 33 miles from it by road. It has a fine climate, an abundance of running waters and a most beautiful spring season. Many traditions have their rise in its excellencies. To the southeast of the walled town lies a symmetrical mountain, known as the Bara Koh. On the top of this, Sultan Mahmud Khan built a retreat and lower down on its shoulder, in 902 AH (1496), I built another with a porch. Though his lies the higher, mine is the better placed, the whole of the town and the suburbs being at its foot.

The Andijan torrent goes to Andijan after having traversed the suburbs of Osh. Orchards lie along both its banks; all the Osh gardens overlook it. Their violets are very fine; they have running waters and in spring are most beautiful with the blossoming of many tulips and roses.

On the flank of the Bara-koh is a mosque called the Jauza Masjid (Twin Mosque). Between this mosque and the town, a great main canal flows from the direction of the hill. Below the outer court of the mosque lies a shady and delightful clover-meadow where every passing traveller takes a rest. It is the joke of the ragamuffins of Osh to let out water from the canal on anyone happening to fall asleep in the meadow. A very beautiful stone, with wavy red and white patterns, was found in the Bara Koh in 'Umar Shaikh Mirza's latter days. Knife handles, clasps for belts and many other things are made from it. For climate and for pleasantness, no township in all Farghana equals Osh. [Osh and its region were open to invasion through the mountains from Kashgar.

Some 47 miles by road to the west of Andijan is Marghilan, a fine township full of good things. Its apricots and pomegranates are most excellent. One sort of pomegranate, they call the Great Seed; its sweetness has a little of the pleasant flavour of an overripe apricot and it may be thought better than the Semnan pomegranate. They dry another kind of apricot and after stoning, stuff it with almonds. They call it subhani, and it is very palatable. The hunting and fowling of Marghilan are good: white deer are had close by. Its people are Sarts, boxers who are noisy and turbulent. Most of the noted bullies of Samarkand and Bukhara are Marghilanis. The author of the Hidayat was from Rashdin, one of the villages of Marghilan.

Another town is Isfara, in the hill-country more than 65 miles by road southwest of Marghilan. It has running waters, beautiful little gardens and many fruit-trees although for the most part, its orchards produce almonds. Its people are all Persian-speaking Sarts. In the hills some two miles to the south of the town, is a piece of rock, known as the Mirror Stone. It is some 10 arm-lengths long, as high as a man in parts, up to his waist in others. Everything is reflected by it as by a mirror. The hill country of Isfara district has four subdivisions--one Isfara, one Vorukh, one Sokh and one Uchyar. When Muhammad Shaibani Khan defeated Sultan Mahmud Khan and Alacha Khan and took Tashkent and Shahrukhiya, I went into the Sokh and Uchyar hill-country and from there, after about a year spent in great misery, I set out for Kabul.

Another town is Khujand, 187 miles by road to the west of Andijan and 154 miles east of Samarkand. Khujand is one of the ancient towns among whose sons were Shaikh Maslahat and Khwaja Kamal. Fruit grows well there; its pomegranates are renowned for their excellence. People talk of a Khujand pomegranate as they do of a Samarkand apple; just now however, Marghilan pomegranates are the ones in much demand. The walled town of Khujand stands on high ground; the Syr Darya (Saihun) River flows past it on the north at the distance of about an arrow's flight. To the north of both the town and the river lies a mountain range called Manoghal. where it is said there are turquoise and other mines and many snakes. The hunting and fowling-grounds of Khujand are first-rate; white deer, buck and doe, pheasant and hare are all very plentiful. The climate is very malarious; in autumn there is much fever. People rumour it about that the very sparrows get fever and say that the cause of the malaria is the mountain range on the north (i.e. Manoghal).

Kand-i-badam (Village of the Almond) is a dependency of Khujand; though it is not a full-fledged township, it is close to one. Its almonds are excellent, hence its name; they all are exported to Hormuz or to Hindustan. It is 18 miles east of Khujand.

Between Kand-i-badam and Khujand lies the waste known as Ha Darwesh which is always very windy. Its violent, whirling winds continually strike Marghilan to the east and Khujand on its west. People say that some dervishes, encountering a whirlwind in this desert, lost one another and kept crying, "Hay Darwesh! Hay Darwesh!" till all had perished, and that the waste has been called Ha Darwesh ever since.

One of the townships on the north of the Syr-Darya is Akhsi. In books they write it Akhsikit, and for this reason the poet Asiruddin is known as Akhsikiti. After Andijan, no township in Fergana is larger than Akhsi, which is about 50 miles by road to the west of Andijan. 'Umar Shaikh Mirza made it his capital. The Syr-Darya flows below its walled town, which stands above a great ravine and uses the deep ravines in place of a moat. When 'Umar Shaikh Mirza made it his capital, he once or twice ordered other ravines be dug beyond the outer ones. In all Fergana no fort is so strong as Akhsi. Its suburbs extend some two miles further than the walled town. People say of Akhsi, "Where is the village? Where are the trees?" Its melons are excellent; one variety of them is known as Mir Timuri and may have no equal in the world. The melons of Bukhara are famous. When I took Samarkand, I had some brought from there and some from Akhsi. They were cut up at an entertainment and those from Bukhara could not compare with those from Akhsi. The fowling and hunting of Akhsi are very good indeed; white deer abound in the waste on the Akhsi side of the Syr-Darya; in the jungle on the Andijan side, abundant and well-fed bucks and does, pheasant and hare are had.

To the north of Akhsi is the rather small township of Kasan. Kasan's water comes from Akhsi in the same way that Andijan's water comes from Osh. Kasan has excellent air and beautiful little gardens. As these gardens all lie along the bed of the river people call them the "fine front of the coat." Kasanis and the people of Osh have a rivalry about whose town is more beautiful and has a better climate.

In the mountains round Fergana are excellent summer pastures. There and nowhere else grows the tabalghu [a variety of willow], a tree with red bark. They make staves and bird-cages of it; they scrape it into arrows. It is an excellent wood and because of its rarity is carried to distant places. Some books write that the mandrake [belladonna] is found in these mountains, but for this long time past nothing has been heard of it. A plant called Ayiq oti and having the qualities of the mandrake is known in Yeti-kent...There are turquoise and iron mines in these mountains.

With care, three or four thousand men may be maintained by the revenues of Fergana.

[edit] SECTION II. Samarkand

Few towns in the whole habitable world are so pleasant as Samarkand. It is of the Fifth Climate and situated in lat. 40° 6' and long. 99° . The name of the town is Samarkand; people used to call its country Mawara'u'n-nahr (Transoxania). They used to call it Baldat-i-mahfuza [Protected Town] because no foe had managed to storm and sack it. It must have become Muslim in the time of the Commander of the Faithful, his Highness Uthman. Kusam ibn 'Abbas, one of the Companions [of Muhammad] must have gone there; his burial-place, known as the Tomb Shah-i-zinda (The Living Shah) is outside the Iron Gate

Iskandar [Alexander the Great] must have founded Samarkand. The Turk and Moghul hordes call it Simiz-kint. Timur Beg made it his capital; no ruler so great ever made it a capital before. I ordered people to pace round the ramparts of the walled-town; the distance measured 10,000 steps. Samarkandis are all orthodox (Sunni), pure-in the Faith, law-abiding and religious. It is said that more leaders of Islam have arisen in Mawara'u'n-nahr, since the days of his Highness the Prophet, than in any other country. From the Matarid suburb of Samarkand came Shaikh Abu'l-mansur [d. 944 CE], one of the Expositors of the Word. Of the two sects of Expositors, the Mataridiyah and the Ash'ariyah, the first is named from this Shaikh Abu'l-mansur. Another native of Mawara'u'n-nahr was Khwaja Isma'il Khartank [810-870 CE], the author of the Shahih-i-bukhari. The author of the Hidayat, one of the most revered books on jurisprudence among the followers of Abu Hanifa, came from Marghilan in Ferghana, which, although at the limit of settled habitation, is part of Mawara'u'n-nahr.

On the east of Samarkand are Fergana and Kashghar; on the west, Bukhara and Khwarizm; on the north, Tashkent and Shahrukhiya (known in books as Shash and Banakat); and on the south, Balkh and Termez.

The Kohik River [i.e., Zerafshan] flows along the north of Samarkand, at the distance of some 4 miles; it is so-called because it comes out from under the upland of the Little Hill (Kohik) lying between it and the town. The Dar-i-gham canal flows along the south, at the distance of some two miles. This is a large and swift torrent, indeed it is like a large river, branching off from the Kohik River. All the gardens and suburbs and some of the subdistricts of Samarkand are irrigated by it. The Kohik River makes habitable and cultivated a stretch of from 150 to 200 miles by road, as far as Bukhara and Qara-kul. Large as the river is, it is not too large for its dwellings and its culture; during three or four months of the year, indeed, its waters do not reach Bukhara. Grapes, melons, apples and pomegranates--all fruits indeed--are good in Samarkand; two are famous, its apple and its sahibi (grapes). Its winter is mightily cold; snow falls but not so much as in Kabul; in the hot weather its climate is good but not so good as Kabul's.

In the town and suburbs of Samarkand are many fine buildings and gardens of Timur Beg and Ulugh Beg Mirza.

In the citadel, Timur Beg erected a very fine building, the great four-storeyed kiosk, known as the Kok Sarai. In the walled town, again, near the Iron Gate, he built a Friday Mosque of stone [the Bibi-hanim] using the labor of many stone-cutters brought from Hindustan. Round its frontal arch is inscribed in letters large enough to be read two miles away, the Qu'ran verse, Wa az yerfa' Ibrahim al Qawa'id al akhara ["And Abraham and Ismail raised the foundations of this house"]. This also is a very fine building. He also laid out two gardens, on the east of the town, one, the more distant, the Bagh-i-bulandi, the other and nearer, the Bagh-i-dilkusha. From Dilkusha to the Turquoise Gate, he planted an Avenue of white poplar, and in the garden itself erected a great kiosque, painted inside with pictures of his battles in Hindustan. He made another garden, known as the Naqsh-i-jahan (World's Picture), on the bank of the Kohik, above the Kara-su or, as people also call it, the Ab-i-rahmat (Water-of-mercy) of Kan-i-gil. It had gone to ruin when I saw it; nothing remaining of it except its name. His also are the Bagh-i-chanar, near the walls and below the town on the south, also the Bagh-i-shamal (North Garden) and the Bagh-i-bihisht (Garden of Paradise). His own tomb and those of his descendants who have ruled in Samarkand are in a college [madrasa], built at the exit from the walled town, by Muhammad Sultan Mirza, the son of Timur Beg's son, Jahangir Mirza.