join any sea[1] but sinks into the sands, a considerable distance below [the town of] Turkistan.
Farghana has seven separate townships,[2] five on the south and two on the north of the Saihun.
Of those on the south, one is Andijan. It has a central position and is the capital of the Farghana 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 beds.[3] Better than the Andijan nashpati,[4] there is none. After Samarkand and Kesh, the fort[5] of Andijan is the largest in Mawara'u'n-nahr (Transoxiana). It has three gates. Its citadel (ark) is on its south side. Into it water goes by nine channels; out of it, it is strange that none comes at even a single place.[6] Round the outer edge of the ditch[7] 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 Fol. 2.
- ↑ hech darya qatilmas. A gloss of digar (other) in the Second W.-i-B. has Jed Mr. Erskine to understand "meeting with no other river in its course."I understand Babur to contrast the destination of the Saihun which he [erroneously] says sinks into the sands, with the outfall of e.g. the Amu into the Sea of Aral. Cf. First W.-i-B. I.O. MS. 215 f. 2; Second W.-i-B. I.O. MS. 217 f. ib and Ouseley's Ibn Haukal p. 232-244; also Schuyler and Kostenko I.e.
- ↑ Babur's geographical unit in Central Asia is the township or, with more verbal accuracy, the village i.e. the fortified, inhabited and cultivated oasis. Of frontiers he says nothing.
- ↑ i.e. they are given away or taken. Babur's interest in fruits was not a matter of taste or amusement but of food. Melons, for instance, fresh or stored, form during some months the staple food of Turkistanis. Cf. T.R. p. 303 and (in Kashmir) 425; Timkowski's Tvavels of the Russian Mission i, 419 and Th. Radloff's Rdceuils d'ltineraires p. 343. N.B. At this point two folios of the Elphinstone Codex are missing.
- ↑ Either a kind of melon or the pear. For local abundance of pears see Ayin-i-akbarl, Blochmann p. 6; Kostenko and Von Schwarz.
- ↑ qurghan, i.e. the walled town within which was the citadel (ark).
- ↑ TUqllz tavnau sll kirdr, bll 'ajab tllr ktm biv ytrdin ham chlqmds. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2, nuh j'ii'l db dar qila dar ml dyid u In 'ajab ast kah hama az yak jd ham na mi bar dyid. {Cf. Mems. p. 2 and Mims. i, 2.) I understand Babur to mean that all the water entering was consumed in the town. The supply of Andijan, in the present day, is taken both from the Aq Bura {i.e. the Aush Water) and, by canal, from the Qara Darya.
- ↑ khandaqnlng tdsh ydnl. Second W.-i-B. I.O. 217 f. 2 dar klndr sang bast khandaq. Here as in several other places, this Persian translation has rendered Turki tdsh, outside, as if it were Turki tdsh, stone. Babur's adjective stone is sangln (f. 456 1.8). His point here is the unusual circumstance of a high-road running round the outer edge of the ditch. Moreover Andijan is built on and of loess. Here, obeying his Persian source, Mr. Erskine writes "stone-faced ditch"; M. de C. obeying his Turki one," bord extérieur."
