READING HALL DOORS OF WISDOM

"THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY"

BABAR

CHAPTER IV.

SECOND CONQUEST OF SAMARKAND

1500-1501

When the two brothers made their treaty in the spring of 1500, there had been a talk of Samarkand, and they had agreed to join in conquering it; after which Babar consented to make over the whole of Farghana to Jahángir. In his worst straits the memory of the hundred days he had ruled in the capital of his ancestors never faded; the grande idée was always in his thoughts; he would be King of Samarkand. There was little attraction for him in his present sovereignty at Andiján, with successful rebels in power just across the river, and with Ali Dost presuming upon his recent services and playing the king in the very palace. The governor of Andiján, who had once surrendered it to his enemies, thought he had more than atoned for his cowardice by giving the king his own again; and he now acted the master, dismissed Babar’s few trusty followers, and stripped him of all but the name of king. To resist was dangerous, with Tambal over the river ready to step in at the smallest encouragement. “My case was singularly delicate, and I had to be silent. Many were the humiliations I suffered at that time”, and he was not one to suffer indignities patiently. 

An invitation from Samarkand came as a veritable godsend. The great family of the Tarkháns, who had enjoyed special privileges and held high offices for generations, had fallen out with Sultán Ali, and had been expelled from Samarkand. They had not forgotten the cheery lad who had been their king for a hundred days, and they offered to help him to recover the throne of Timur. The chance of escape from his present humiliations was too good to be even discussed. Babar set out forthwith (June, 1500) in the absence of his keeper, Ali Dost, who, however, caught him up on the way, “by mere chance and most opportunely” according to the Memoirs, but one suspects that the Dost was anxious to keep an eye on his protégé. When they reached Uratipa, Kambar Ali turned up unexpectedly, “barefoot and barehead” having been chased out of his governments by Tambal, in flat violation of the treaty. Babar cannot suppress a Turki proverb at the expense of his “muddy-brained” follower. At Yúrat-Khán, a little way outside Samarkand, the chief Begs of the city, headed by the Tarkháns, met the king, and did homage. They brought word that Khwája Yahy was on Babar’s side, and if he cooperated, Samarkand was as good as taken : such was the holy man reputed influence.

For once, however, it was overrated: Samarkand was not to be surprised this time, and Babar was forced to retire on Kish, while he saw the great Khan of the Uzbegs enter the coveted city in his stead. Shaibáni had been admitted as an ally, by the influence of its king’s mother; but he threw off the disguise as soon as he was inside, insulted the diplomatic dowager, murdered Sultán Ali, and thus put an end to the dynasty of Timur in the Oxus country. Babar’s comments on his cousin’s temporizing policy and punishment are characteristic: “From over-anxiety to keep this mortal and transitory life, he left a name of infamy behind him; by following the counsels of a woman, he struck himself out of the roll-call of the renowned. Words need not be wasted on such a creature or on such dastardly doings”. The gravamen of the offence, however, lay in Sultan Ali’s preferring Shaibáni to Babar.

Once more the young adventurer found himself deserted. Ali Dost and his people were the first to leave.  “I had taken a rooted dislike to the man” says the autobiographer, “and partly from shame, partly for fear, he could not stay with me. He asked leave to go, and I granted it gladly”. A second time they joined the rebel Tambal, and came to an untimely end : the Dost’s son verified the proverb about the fate of traitors to their salt; “the salt caught his eyes” literally, for he was blinded by the Uzbegs, After the entry of Shaibáni the Samarkand worthies, who had pressed Babar to come, discarded him, and betook themselves to his bitter enemy Khusrau Shah at Hisar. The Khwája who had plotted for his success was driven away and murdered by the Uzbegs. The young king was again a wanderer. He could not go back to his own land, where Tambal was now supreme; Hisar and Samarkand were more hostile than ever; and he resolved to seek a refuge once more among the friendly hills of Yár-Ailák. It was no easy journey. First he led his small army up the Kamrúd valley, by dangerous tracks among the rocks, and in the steep and narrow ways and gorges which we had to climb, many a horse and camel dropped and fell out. After four or five days we came to the col of fear-i-Ták. This is a pass—and such a pass! Never did I see one so narrow and steep, or follow paths so toilsome and strait. We pressed on, nevertheless, with incredible labor, through fearful gorges and by tremendous precipices, till, after a hundred agonies and losses, at last we topped those murderous steep defiles, and came down on the borders of Kán, with its lovely expanse of lake” all the more lovely and peaceful to Babar’s appreciative eyes after the horrid gloom of the mountain passes. Thence the banks of the Kohik led him to the Ailáks.

Even now, he was not discouraged. He was a born soldier of fortune, and so long as he had a few hundred men at his back he was ready for any adventure. A short rest, a consultation with his Begs, and he was again on the march for Samarkand. Mad as the project seemed, he had good reasons for the attack. If ever the imperial city was to be his, it must be before Shaibáni had time to establish his power. At present he was newly arrived; he had murdered the king, disgraced and banished the holy man, and must be detested by the inhabitants. He must not be given time to overcome their dislike; he must not be allowed to take root. Fortunately he was encamped outside the city. If only Babar could get into Samarkand by a surprise, he was confident that the citizens would rally to his cause—to any cause but the Uzbegs. “At all events” he said, in his happy-go-lucky way, “when once the city is taken, God’s will be done”. The first attempt failed : they rode all day and reached Yúrat-Khán at midnight, only to find the garrison of Samarkand on the alert. Then, about November, acting on an auspicious dream, Babar tried again. This time the saintly Khwája Abd-al-Makárim rode beside him, and they made a rapid dash for Samarkand. Fourscore of his best men scaled the wall opposite “the Lover’s Cave” and seizing the Firúza Gate threw it open just as Babar galloped up with the main force. “The city was asleep : only some shop-keepers, peeping out, discovered what had happened, and gave thanks to God. Soon the news spread, and the citizens with great joy and congratulations fraternized with my men. They chased the Uzbegs in every street and corner, hunting them down and killing them like mad dogs.

The city was won—won by a handful of two hundred and forty men. Babar took his seat under the great arch, and the people came to acclaim him, and (what he needed even more) brought him food. Then he mounted and rode pell-mell to the Iron Gate, where the Uzbegs were reported to be making a stand. The rabble, however, had done the business, and the enemy were flying for their lives. Just at this moment Shaibáni himself rode up from his camp outside the city, with an escort of a hundred horse. “It was a splendid opportunity” says Babar, “but I had only a handful of men with me”; and so Shaibáni got safely away, to work much mischief against him in years to come. But it was no time for forebodings, and Babar gave himself up to the intoxication of success. He was welcomed to his heart’s content : never was triumph more popular; the city was en fête, and the great men, nobles, and dignitaries came out and waited on his Majesty as he sat enthroned in the beautiful Garden Palace. “For almost one hundred and forty years Samarkand had been the capital of my family. A foreign robber, coming the Lord knows whence, had seized the scepter that dropped from our hands. God most High now restored it, and gave me back my plundered desolated land”.

They made a chronogram for the event, in the approved Oriental style:—

Tell me, my soul, what is the year”

Babar Bahádur is conqueror here.

The letters in Fátih Babar Bahádur, taken as numbers, spell 906, the year of the Hijra in which Babar conquered Samarkand, or 1500 AD. To add to his happiness, his mother and other women relations joined him. They had followed him from Andiján, and suffered great privations; but now all was well. The little Aisha, to whom he was betrothed when a child, had become his wife at Khojend “during the troubles, and at Samarkand she gave birth, to his first child : they called the baby Fakhr-an-Nisá, the “glory of her sex” but in a month or forty days she went to partake of the mercy of God”. Babar was then just nineteen, and he makes the odd confession, especially curious in an Eastern, that so far he had “never conceived a passion for any woman, and indeed had never been so placed as even to hear or witness words of love or amorous discourse”. He admits that he did not love Aisha, and she had therefore a fair excuse when she afterwards left him. Later on he fell really in love with her youngest sister; but, so far as the records go, Babar seems to have been singularly insusceptible to the tender passion; though—or because—no one was more attached to the women of his own blood, or more deferential to women in general. He had, however, a dread of a shrew, which may have been rooted in some marital experience. “May Almighty God” he fervently exclaims, “preserve all good Muslims from such a visitation, and may no such thing as an ill-tempered cross-grained wife be left in the world!”

The first step of the new King of Samarkand was to cultivate, as we should say, “foreign relations”. He sent embassies to the neighboring rulers, inviting their friendship and support against the growing power of the Uzbegs. The missions were a failure; some refused all co-operation, others put him off with cold answers; his brother Jahángir, now King of Farghana, sent a paltry hundred men; the Khan, his uncle, furnished a few hundred more; Sultan Husain Mirzá of Herat, the most powerful representative of Timur’s line, sent never a sword. Babar consoled himself now and then by composing a couplet or two, but did not venture on a complete ode. In more practical moods he looked to the efficiency of his army, which was rapidly increasing. Most of the towns and villages of the province of Samarkand had fallen into his hands, and fresh levies came trooping in. Some of the Tarkháns nobles, too, returned to him, and by May, 1501, he was in a condition to take the field against Shaibáni.

The Uzbeg leader had retired to Bukhara after Babar’s unexpected arrival at Samarkand, but he was now at Dabúsi, within striking distance, and Babar marched out to the Bridge Head (Sar-i-púl) to meet him. As before, he formed an entrenched zariba, and so long as he kept behind his defenses Shaibáni could not touch him. In an evil moment, however, the stars in their courses hurried on an engagement. It happened that the Eight Stars [of the Great Bear?] were exactly between the two armies, whereas for the next fortnight they would be on the enemy’s side. In his after wisdom Babar confesses that these observations were idle, and there was no excuse for my haste; but at the moment the Eight Stars persuaded him, and without waiting for the reinforcements which the Tarkháns and Dughlát Amirs were bringing to his support, the superstitious prince gave battle.

Early on the May morning the troops of Samarkand, man and horse armed in mail, marched out of their entrenchments. The enemy was drawn up ready for them. Shaibáni had the longer line, for he quickly turned Babar’s left, and wheeled upon his rear. This was the usual Uzbeg tactic or tulughma : first turning the enemy’s flank, then charging simultaneously on front and rear, letting fly their arrows at a breakneck gallop, and if repulsed retiring at top speed. Babar was evidently unprepared for it at the battle of Sar-i-púl, though he learnt to use it with deadly effect in later years in India. His rear indeed changed front, under fire, but so clumsily that the right became separated in the movement; and, although the enemy’s front attack was driven back on his center, Babar was out of touch with his right, his left was already routed, and his rear hotly engaged. To add to the confusion, his Mongol troopers, instead of fighting, fell to unhorsing and looting their own side. “Such is the way of those Mongol rascals: if they win, they seize the booty; if they are beaten, they unhorse and plunder their own allies, and, carry off the spoil all the same”. Surrounded and attacked on all sides, by friends and foes alike, with the arrows dropping in from all points of the compass, Babar’s followers broke and fled, and he found himself on the river bank with only ten or fifteen men. The Kohik had to be crossed, and it was out of their depth, but they plunged in, horse and all, heavily armed at all points as they were, and swam across; then, cutting away their horses heavy trappings and mail, they rode for their lives. As they went they could see their Mongols stripping and murdering their dismounted comrades: Babar’s scorn breaks out in verse :—

W ere the Mongols a race of angels, it would still be a vile nation;

Were their name written in gold, it would be abomination.

Beware you pluck not a single ear from a Mongol field,

For whatever is sown with Mongol seed has an odious yield.

He reached Samarkand, but without an army. Six valiant Begs had fallen, the rest had vanished. He had to defend the city with the help of a loyal but untrained mob, led by a remnant of his dejected followers. In those days, however, strong walls counted for much against even an overpowering superiority in numbers and discipline, and for seven months Babar held out against Shaibáni’s host. The rabble stood by him pluckily, and even ventured out to skirmish with the enemy, covered by a brisk discharge from the crossbows over the gates. Once, under cover of a feigned assault, the Uzbegs got a footing on the wall by the Needlemakers Gate: but the sturdy townsmen discovered them, and cut them down as they climbed up on their tall ladders. The nights were made horrible by the din of Shaibáni’s big drums, which were beaten loudly before the gate, accompanied by shouts and alarums. Matters could not go on for ever like this. There was no sign of relief.

“Though I had sent ambassadors and messengers to all the princes and chiefs round about, no help came from any. Indeed, when I was at the height of my power, and had suffered as yet neither defeat nor loss, I had received no help, and could hardly expect it now that I was reduced to such distress. To draw out the siege in hopes of any succor from them was clearly useless. The ancients have said that to hold a fortress, a head, two hands, and two feet are needed. The head is a captain, the two hands are two friendly forces advancing from different sides, the two feet are water and food in the fort”

In this case the head had to act by itself ; the friendly hands were not stretched out, and the feet were all but exhausted. There was no corn in Samarkand; the poor were eating dogs and donkeys; the horses were browsing on the branches, of trees; people were secretly escaping over the walls. There was nothing for it but surrender, and Babar capitulated—so he puts it—one can hardly expect him to confess the bald fact, but it is more truthful to say that he fled. His mother and two other ladies escaped with him, but his eldest sister fell into the hands of Shaibáni and entered his harem; evidently she was part of the capitulation.

One would think that nothing could be much more depressing than this midnight exodus from the city of his ambition, which he had twice held and twice lost again, but Babar’s spirits were extraordinarily elastic; and after a night spent in losing himself and his unfortunate companions in the tangle of the canals, when at the time of morning prayers they at last found their road, we find the desolate exile and his “muddy-brained” follower indulging in a breakneck gallop. Babar relates it as if it were the sort of amusement that dethroned monarchs usually pursued:—

“On the road I had a race with Kambar Ali and Kásim Beg. My horse got the lead. As I turned round on my seat to see how far I had left them behind, my saddle turned, the girth being slack, and I fell right on my head. Though I sprang up at once and mounted, I did not recover the full possession of my senses till the evening, and the world and all that happened then passed before my eyes like a dream or phantasy and disappeared. The time of afternoon prayers was past before we reached Ilán-Utí, where we dismounted, and killing a horse, butchered him and cooked slices of his flesh. We stayed a little time to rest our horses, wen remounted and reached the village of Khalíla before day­break; thence to Dizak.... Here we found nice fat flesh, bread of fine flour well baked, sweet melons, and excellent grapes in great abundance: thus passing from the extreme of famine to plenty, and from a state of danger and calamity to peace and ease.

From famine and distress we have escaped to repose;

We have gained fresh life and a fresh world.

The fear of death was removed from the heart;

The torments of hunger were taken away .

In all my life I never enjoyed myself so much or felt at any time so keenly the pleasures of peace and plenty. Enjoyment after suffering, abundance after want, come with increased relish and afford more exquisite delight. I have four or five times in the course of my life passed thus from distress to ease and from suffering to enjoyment; but this was the first time I had ever been delivered from the assaults of my enemy and the pressure of hunger, and thence passed to the ease of safety and the joy of plenty”

CHAPTER V

EXILE

1502 A.D.