READING HALL DOORS OF WISDOM

"THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY"

BABAR

CHAPTER VII

KABUL

“Then it came into my mind” writes Babar, “that it would be better to depart out of Farghana, any whither, rather than go on staying thus without a foothold”. The last attempt to recover his kingdom had begun well, but ended in utter failure. The Uzbegs were now masters of the country; they had followed up the defeat of the Khans by the execution of Tambal, and were about to drive Khusrau Shah out of Hisar and Kunduz. Mawarannahr was no longer the place for any son of Timur. Northern Persia was still in the hands of Sultan Husain, who had throughout treated Babar’s overtures with unnatural coldness. There remained one chance. Ulugh Beg, Babar’s uncle, the King of Kabul, had died in 1501; his young son, Abd-ar-Razzák, had been deposed by a revolution; anarchy had followed, and a usurper, Mukim Beg, an Arghún Mongol from Kandahar, had seized the throne. A strong man of the royal blood might perhaps be able to assert the rights of the family. After some hesitation, Babar resolved to try.

Little as he suspected it, this was the turning-point in his career. Henceforward, instead of forming one of a crowd of struggling princes contending for the fragments of Timur’s empire between the great rivers, he stands alone, without a rival or competitor, among the impregnable mountain passes of Afghanistan; until finally the youth who had twice taken and lost Samarkand, and had thrice wandered a penniless exile among the shepherds of the hills of his native land, came out of the Afghan passes by the immemorial road of conquest, and founded an empire in India which lasted, in the hands of his descendants, first in glory, and then in dishonor, down to our own days. From Samarkand to Kabul, and from Kabul to Delhi, has been the road of conquest time after time; until at last another road was ploughed upon the seas, and the Afghan gates were barred by a new race from the islands in the west.

He left his native land with intense regret, and for many years he cherished vague hopes of recovering it. Ill as it had served him, the love of his country was strong in his heart, and it is touching to find him reverting long afterwards to the favorite scenes of his boyhood. He was now leaving them for he knew not what. He had not yet definitely resolved upon going to Kabul. His first plan was to seek refuge with his kinsmen at Herat, but his views changed as he advanced.

“In the month of Muharram [June, 1504] I set out from the neighborhood of Farghana, intending to go into Khurasán, and halted at the summer-cots of Ilák, one of the summer pasturages of the province of Hisar. I here entered my twenty-third, and began to use the razor to my face. The followers who still clave to me, great and small, were more than two hundred and less than three. Most of them were on foot, with brogues on their feet, clubs in their hands, and tattered cloaks over their shoulders. So poor were we that we had only two tents. My own I gave to my mother; and they pitched for me at every halt a felt tent of cross poles, in which I took up my quarters. Though bound for Khurasán, I was not without hopes, in the present state of things, to manage something among the territories and followers of Khusrau Shah, where I now was. Hardly a day passed without someone joining me with hopeful news of the country and tribes”

Babar, in fact, was tampering with the subjects of his peculiar enemy. It has been suggested that he painted Khusrau Shah in the blackest colors in order to vindicate his own treatment of him; but he owed the treacherous governor no sort of obligation, and Khusrau’s conduct to Mahmud’s sons is enough to explain their cousin’s detestation. In justice to the great noble, the Memoirs frankly admit that he was “far famed for his liberal conduct and generosity, and for the humanity which he showed to the meanest of men, though never to me”. Khusrau at least allowed him to travel through his dominions at a time when any tampering with his army was of vital importance in view of Shaibáni’s advance. He seems even to have recognized Babar as the rightful king; and his brother Baki Beg, with all his family, joined the emigrants and voluntarily shared their fortunes. The probability is that Baki and many other followers of Khusrau saw that their old leader’s day was over; and that, if they had to fly, it was better to fly in company, and with the countenance of a distinguished prince of the blood. The young leader’s personality, no doubt, counted for much : his name was a synonym for valor—

Famous throughout the world for warlike praise.

Moreover, the Mongols especially had slight scruples about changing colors, and when Shaibáni’s horsemen were tramping the road to Kunduz, Khusrau Shah himself followed the deserters and offered his allegiance. Babar received him beneath a tree near the river of Andarab, and confesses to an ungenerous feeling of triumph when he saw the great man making a score of profound obeisances, “till he was so tired that he almost tumbled on his face”. The fallen noble had not lost all his spirit, however; for when Babar cruelly condoled with him on the desertion of his soldiers, Khusrau replied with fine contempt, “Oh, those scamps have left me four times already: they always come back”. He knew the worth of Mongol loyalty to a nicety, and events proved him right. Some agreement was come to at this meeting, and Khusrau departed for Khurasán with his valuables borne on three or four strings of mules and many camels, whilst Babar turned his face towards Kabul. He had finally decided that no help was to be found at Heart.

He had now, to his own great astonishment, a considerable army, though mixed and disorderly, and he had acquired eight hundred coats of mail from Khusrau. He was accompanied by his brothers, Jahángir and Nasir, in spite of the protests of Baki, who quoted the saying of Sadi:—

Ten dervishes may lie on one rug,

But no country is big enough for two kings.

Besides his brothers, he took with him his cousin Khan Mirza, otherwise Sultan Wais (the surviving son of Mahmud), whom he had some trouble in restraining when the young prince claimed the blood revenge from Khusrau for the murder of his kin. The ladies of the family, including Babar’s mother, joined him on the march; but of his old comrades in arms he seems to have had few left besides Kásim Kochín and Dost Beg. Kambar Ali indeed had rejoined him, but he could not keep him: “he was a thoughtless rude talker, and Baki Beg could not put up with his manners”. This is the last we hear of the friend with the '”muddy brain”. Babar entered upon his new campaign with new tools. His chief adviser (not excepting his brothers) was now Baki, the brother of Khusrau, and his army was made up chiefly of what he calls “the Ils and Ulúses”, or wandering tribes; the Mongols who had deserted Khusrau; the wild Hazára mountaineers from beyond Panjhir, and a number of Aimáks from Kunduz. Their adhesion was a compliment to his prestige, but a tax upon his provost marshal. The army was unused to discipline, but perfectly familiar with the art of plunder, and we read of a man flogged to death for outraging the country folk.

Ascending the Hindu Kush at Ghúrband, Babar took the pass of Húpiyán, marching all night, and there for the first time the man from the north saw a brilliant star shining in the southern constellations. “This cannot be Suhail (Canopus)?” he cried. “But it is Suhail” they answered; and Paki quoted—

O Suhail, how far do you shine, and where do you rise?

Your eye brings luck to him whom you regard.

The sun was a spear’s length above the horizon when they reached the foot of the valley, and there a council of war was held. Babar’s scouts had already had a successful skirmish with some of the Kabul troops, and had made an important capture. Baki, who took the lead in everything, strongly advised an instant attack on the city, and the whole army, in their mail coats, with armor on their horses, formed up for the assault; Babar commanded the center, and his brothers the two wings. There was practically no resistance. The invaders galloped up to the Curriers Gate, dispersed a feeble attempt to stop them, lost a few men in the staked pits, gave a few cuts and thrusts, and then Kabul surrendered. The usurper Mukím and his family, for whose safety Babar was concerned, were got away with difficulty; they were mobbed by the disorderly troopers, and the officers could do nothing till the King himself rode up and restored order by the simple method of shooting some of the rioters and cutting down a few others.

Thus, at the beginning of October, 1504, Babar entered upon his new kingdom at Kabul, “in the midst of the inhabited part of the world”. He describes it in minute detail, and soon grew to be very fond of his adopted country, and especially of the great garden, the Chár-bágh, which he laid out. Here, as afterwards at Agra, his first thought is for a garden, and no one more honestly believed that—

God made the garden,—and the city, Cain.

The Kabul kingdom of his day did not comprise what we now call Afghanistan, a term which he limits to the country occupied by Afghan tribes. Kabul itself, with the country round about, was inhabited chiefly by Persian Tajiks, and his sway did not at first extend much beyond Adinapur in the Khaibar, nor very far south: “it is a narrow country, but stretching some distance” he says. The climate and situation of the citadel delighted him, with its cool northern breezes, and the spacious view over meadows and lake: —

Drink wine in Kabul keep, and send the cup ceaselessly round;

For Kabul is mountain and sea, city and desert, in one.

“From Kabul you may go in a single day to a place where snow never falls; and in two hours you may find a place of perpetual snow”. There were fruits in abundance, almost to satisfy the taste of one who had been brought up on the melons of Akhsi; yet Babar imported still more, and added the sour cherry and sugar-cane to the number. But the country was far from rich, grain was raised with difficulty, and the whole revenue of Kabul was only about £35,000.

The new King’s description of the country is remarkable for its close observation and keen interest in nature. Babar knows every animal, bird, and flower; he counts thirty-three species of tulips in one place, and can tell where the rarest sort is found; he knows the habits of bird and beast, and when and how they are to be caught; he tells how the birds cannot fly over the Hindu Kush passes in stormy weather, and are thus taken in thousands; and he knows how to lasso herons with a horn at the end of a line, and how to make the fish intoxicated and catch them in shoals. He can tell where the best grass for horses grows, and which pastures are free from mosquitoes. One of his favorite spots was the “Garden of Fidelity” where orange trees and pomegranates clustered round a lake, and the whole earth was soft with clover—“the very eye of beauty”. Another was the “Fountain of the Three Friends” where three kinds of trees grew, planes, oaks, and the flowering arghwán: nowhere else in the country were the two last to be found. Babar walled the fountain round, and made a seat, for “when the arghwán flowers are in bloom, the yellow mingling with the red, I know no place on earth to compare with it”. In his ruder way, he too felt subtle influence of flowers that prompted

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

He can tell something, too, about the many races who inhabit his new kingdom, and the dozen tongues they spoke; the dwellers in the wastes, the Hazára, a relic of Chingiz Khan’s armies, still speaking the Mongol language; and the Mahmands, the most powerful of the Afghan tribes; the Orakzáis and Yusufzáis; or again the people of Káfiristán, “wine-bibbers, who never pray, fear not God or man, and have heathenish habits”. He is not above superstition, and records the legend of the sand-dune where the sound of ghostly drums and tomtoms is said to be heard; but when he is shown a saint’s tomb which rocks if one blesses the Prophet, he investigates the phenomenon, and finds it is caused by an ingenious priest on a scaffold overhead. He makes the attendants come down to the floor, and then they may pronounce as many benedictions as they please, but the tomb remains immovable. Imposture always disgusted him, and he often fell foul of astrologers.

A brief survey convinced him that his new possession was “to be governed by the sword, not the pen”—and this, although he had perfected a new style of calligraphy. He began by taxing the people. The result was a rebellion among the Hazára, who had already been plundering, and now refused to pay taxes; so “we beat them” says Babar, “to our heart’s content”. He now perceived that to feed his forces he must forage outside, and he already began to think of the riches of Hindustan. The stories of the soldier of Timur, told years before by the old woman among the Ailák shepherds, no doubt recurred to his memory, and the resolve to enter India grew more fixed and clear.

His first expedition, however, hardly touched the promised land of his dreams. He had intended, he says, to enter Hindustan, but was diverted from his project by the urgent advice of Baki. Instead, he fetched a circuit round the Afghan country, down the Khaibar, to Kohát, then past Bannu and the turbulent Bangash district to Isakhail; after which, skirting the foot-hills by Desht or Daman, he crossed the Gomal, and reached the Indus. Even in this slight view of the borders of India, he was impressed with the novelty of the scene. “I beheld” he says, “a new world. The grass was different, the trees different, the wild animals of a different sort, the birds of a different plumage, and the tribes of a different kind. I was struck with astonishment. For a couple of days he marched along the bank of the frontier river, and then turned inland, crossed the Sulaimán range to the great lake called Ab-i-Istáda or “Standing Water”, occupied Ghazni, and so returned to Kabul.

The expedition lasted about four months, from January to May, 1505, and besides furnishing grain, bullocks, —and occupation,—gave Babar a clearer knowledge of the people he had to deal with and the difficulties of the country. The whole route had been a perpetual skirmish with the Afghans, and Babar was obliged to be exceedingly careful to avoid surprises. He kept his men under arms at night, ready for an attack, and organized regular rounds of the pickets; if a man was not found on the alert at his post, his nose was slit. The result of his caution was that he was never surprised, and every time he encountered the Afghans, he beat them, on his own showing: they would then come to him as suppliants, “with grass between their teeth, as who should say, I am you ox”. After a victory, he cut off their heads, and made a minaret of them, like his ancestor Timur. His route was studded with these-human milestones. At other times he would spare their lives, when he thought it good policy.

The difficulties of the country exceeded his expectations. Toiling over the mountains, he had to abandon his state-pavilion for want of carriage; the horses died from exhaustion; the rains flooded the tents knee-deep, and it was a worn-out army that at last emerged at the Standing Water. Babar, who had cheerfully composed an ode on the way, was overpowered with delight as he surveyed the grand sheet of water, which stretched to the horizon:

 “The water seemed to touch the sky, and the further hills  and mountains appeared inverted, like those in a mirage, and the nearer hills and mountains seemed to hang between earth and heaven ... From time to time, between the water and the sky, something ruddy appeared, like the rosy dawn, and then vanished again, and so went on shifting till we came near; and then we discovered that it was due to immense flocks of wild geese [flamingoes, perhaps], not ten or twenty thousand, but simply innumerable and beyond counting. There were not wild geese alone, but endless flocks of every kind of bird settled on the shores of this lake, and the eggs of countless multitudes of fowl were laid in every cranny”.

On his return to Kabul, he found a budget of news. His brother Nasir, who ought to have followed him to the Indus, had been tempted, by a rising against the Uzbegs in Badakhshan, to desert his elder and to cross by the Shibertú pass to try his fortune in a kingdom of his own. Shaibáni was then absent in Khuwárizm, and Khusrau Shah had also seized the opportunity to make an attempt to recover his lost dominions. He had failed and been taken prisoner, and his head was struck off and sent to the Uzbeg chief. The incident touched Babar nearly, because as soon as Khusrau’s advance was known his old followers began to leave Kabul and rejoin their former master, as he had foretold that they would; but as soon as his death was announced, they came back—“the spirit of discontent was quenched, as when water is thrown on fire”. It was necessary, however, to keep the troops busy, and Babar found them occupation in the temporary conquest of Khilat-i-Ghilzai, the strong fortress between Ghazni and Kandahar. The garrison obediently came out “with their bows, quivers, and scimitars, hanging from their necks”; but the place was too far from Kabul to be effectively held at a time when every man might be needed any day to repel the threatened advance of the Uzbegs. No one could be found to undertake to defend it, and it was consequently abandoned.

Babar was now beginning to feel settled in the saddle. He could afford to assert his authority, and he began by dismissing Baki Beg. This brother of Khusrau had undoubtedly been useful at a critical moment, but, like Ah Dost in the Andiján days, he had presumed upon his services. He had become the most powerful Beg of the court, a pluralist who drew all the stamp taxes of Kabul, was captain of the guard, constable of Kabul and Penjhír, and even had drums beaten before his house as though he were actually king. In spite of all these favors and privileges, he was neither grateful nor respectful; “he was mean, sordid, malicious, narrow-minded, envious, and ill-tempered” Babar does not spare the epithets when his dislike is aroused. He determined to get rid of this officious person, and as Baki had several times threatened to resign, one day he took him at his word. The astonished minister reminded him that he had promised not to call him to account until he had been guilty of nine offences: Babar immediately sent him a list of eleven, Baki had to go, and was soon after murdered among the Yusufzái Afghans. Babar’s intriguing and dissipated brother Jahángir fled the country soon after : his absence sensibly relieved the court.

Freed from a presumptuous minister and treacherous kinsfolk, Babar next undertook the reduction of a turbulent tribe. The Hazára were “up” again, and were again suppressed, with the usual difficulty attending mountain warfare. As Erskine truly says, it would lead to needless and monotonous detail if one followed Babar in all his expeditions against the various tribes in the hills and wilds. The history of them all is nearly the same. He sets out secretly with a strong light force, marches without halting, comes upon the encampment of the tribe unawares, disperses or slays the men, and carries off the women, cattle, and valuables. Sometimes, however, the clans are on their guard, and he meets with a brave resistance; when, after considerable loss to both parties, victory in the end inclines to the side of disciplined valor. It is hardly possible for governments constituted like those of the East, and possessed of no regular standing army, to subdue, and still less thoroughly to settle, the erratic tribes of the mountains and deserts, who always govern themselves most easily and effectually. Babar in some instances forced them to acknowledge his supremacy, and to a certain degree restrained their inroads and subjected them to tribute; but in general, down to the time when he conquered Delhi, the Afghans maintained their independence, only sending tribute with more or less punctuality, according as the means of enforcing in were nearer or more  remote. The Hazára remained unsubdued, though often beaten. Indeed, the relations of Babar with the wild tribes of Afghanistan, and the nature of his guerilla fighting in that difficult country, may readily be understood by anyone who has followed the recent history and campaigns in the north-west frontier of India. Except that Babar had a few firearms, and the tribes had only bows, the conditions of warfare and the national characteristics were much the same then as in 1898.

It must be remembered that he was established in only a small part of Afghanistan, that his army was composed of mixed and far from trustworthy elements, that the tribes around were in frequent revolt, and that there could be no security so long as Shaibáni pursued his victorious career just the other side of the mountains, and might at any moment follow in Babar’s steps. For after his conquest of Kabul, the exiled king looked back upon his native land, now overrun by the hardy Uzbegs, with deep regret; and although he was already dreaming those grandiose visions of an Indian Empire, which were not to be realized till twenty years later, his chief preoccupation at first was to protect his rear, and if possible get the better of the victorious chief who had robbed him of his birthright. The only possibility of vanquishing Shaibáni lay in a vigorous combination of the surviving fragments of the family of Timur. In pursuit of such a union Babar now journeyed to Herat.

CHAPTER VIII

HERAT.

1500—1507 A.D.