style of Mirza Haidar, and as he himself uses it, the words may safely be placed in that order.
In recording his own descent, Mirza Haidar describes himself as the son of Muhammad Husain Kurkán, son of Muhammad Haidar Kurkán, son of Amir-i-Kabir Said Ali, son of Amir Ahmad, son of Khudaidad, son of Amir Bulaji. He was born in the year of the Hajra 905 (1499–1500 A.D.)[1] at Tashkand, the capital of the province then known as Shásh, where his father, Husain, had been made governor some six years before, by Mahmud, the titular Khan of Moghulistan and Kashghar. The others named in the pedigree were all Amirs of Kashghar, while the earliest of them, Bulaji of the Dughlát tribe, is remembered as being the first of the line to become a Musulman. It was on the side of his mother, Khub Nigár Khánim, that our author was related to the Emperor Baber. She was a daughter of Yunus, Khan of the Moghuls, and a younger sister of Kutlugh Nigár Khánim, the mother of Baber.[2]
Mirza Haidar began his life in the midst of strife and adventures. His father—a treacherous and intriguing man—had been convicted of a mischievous plot against Baber at Kabul, but had been pardoned on account of his blood relationship. Shortly afterwards he had fallen into the hands of Shahi Beg Khan (otherwise Shaibani Khan), the Uzbeg leader, and had incurred that chief's suspicion also; but once more he was permitted to escape, and repaired to Herat, then the capital of Khorasán. His intriguing nature, however, being thought by Shahi Beg to be dangerous even at a distance, he caused him to be put to death there, after a short time, by emissaries whom he sent for the purpose from Transoxiana. Muhammad Husain had taken with him into exile some members of his family, among whom was our author, then quite a child; and it appears that after his father's murder, some of the retainers of the family, believing the son to be doomed to a similar fate, had carried him off to Bokhara, and had placed him in concealment there. In 1508, when about nine years of age, he was taken in charge by one of these faithful friends, called Maulána Muhammad (formerly his father's khálifa, or religious guide) who determined to save the child from the death that awaited him at the hands of the relentless Uzbegs, and contrived to escape with him from the city. After a difficult and exciting
