Yangi which in books they write Tarāz,[1] at the present time all is desolate, no settled population whatever remaining, because of the Mughūls and the Auzbegs.[2]
Farghāna is a small country,³ 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. Fol. 2. The Saiḥūn River (darya) commonly known as the Water of Khujand, comes into the country from the north-east, flows westward through it and after passing along the north of Khujand and the south of Fanākat, now known as Shāhrukhiya, turns directly north and goes to Turkistān. It does not
1 2 3 Schuyler (ii, 54) gives the extreme length of the valley as about 160 miles and its width, at its widest, as 65 miles. 4 Following a manifestly clerical error in the Second W.-i-B. the Akbarnāma and the Mems. are without the seasonal limitation, "in winter."
Babur here excludes from winter routes one he knew well, the Kindirlik Pass; on the other hand Kostenko says that this is open all the year round. Does this contradiction indicate climatic change? (Cf. f. 54b and note; A.N. Bib. Ind. ed. i, 85 (H. Beveridge i, 221) and, for an account of the passes round Farghāna, Kostenko's Turkistan Region, Tables of Contents.) 5 Var. Banākat, Banākas, Fiākat, Fanākand. Of this place Dr. Rieu writes (Pers. cat. i, 79) that it was also called Shash and, in modern times, Tāshkint. Bābur does not identify Fanākat with the Täshkint of his day but he identifies it with Shahrukhiya (cf. Index's.nn.) and distinguishes between Tāshkint-Shāsh and Fanākat-Shāhrukhiya. It may be therefore that Dr. Rieu's Tashkint-Fanākat was Old Tashkint,-(Does Fanā-kint mean Old Village?) some 14 miles nearer to the Saiḥūn than the Tashkint of Bābur's day or our own.
- ↑ The Hai. MS. and a good many of the W.-i-B. MSS. here write Aūtrār. [Aūtrār like Tarāz was at some time of its existence known as Yangi (New).] Tarāz seems to have stood near the modern Auliya-ātā; Ālmāligh,-a Metropolitan see of the Nestorian Church in the 14th. century,-to have been the old capital of Kuldja, and Almātū (var. Almātī) to have been where Vernoe (Vierny) now is. Almāligh and Almātū owed their names to the apple (almā). Cf. Bretschneider's Mediæval Geography p. 140 and T.R. (Elias and Ross) s.nn.
- ↑ Mughūl u Aūzbeg jihatdin. I take this, the first offered opportunity of mentioning (1) that in transliterating Turki words I follow Turki lettering because I am not competent to choose amongst systems which e.g. here, reproduce Aūzbeg as Üzbeg, Özbeg and Euzbeg; and (2) that style being part of an autobiography, I am compelled, in pressing back the Memoirs on Bābur's Turki mould, to retract from the wording of the western scholars, Erskine and de Courteille. Of this compulsion Bābur's bald phrase Mughul u Auzbeg jihatdin provides an illustration. Each earlier translator has expressed his meaning with more finish than he himself; 'Abdu'r-rahim, by az jihat 'ubur-i (Mughūl u) Auzbeg, improves on Bābur, since the three towns lay in the tideway of nomad passage ('ubur) east and west; Erskine writes "in consequence of the incursions" etc. and de C. grace aux ravages commis " etc.
