the Holy City of Medina. When they saw their Emperor and his followers going about in the garb of the 'red-heads' (Kizilbásh), with the symbolical twelve-pointed cap and its long puggaree of red cloth – the badge of schismatics; when they fingered coins bearing the heretical formulas of the Shiah, and setting Sháh Ismá'íl's name in the place of honour above Bábar's; when they heard the orthodox Caliphs cursed from the pulpit, and saw their holy teachers murdered for steadfast non-juring: – their enthusiasm died away, their loyalty cooled, they lampooned their sovereign's strange disguise, and they began almost to regret the cruel tyranny of Shaibáni, who might be a devil but was at least an orthodox fiend.
Bábar soon found that he had lost the support of his subjects, and a defeat at Kul Malik, where an Uzbeg leader with only 3,000 men repulsed the imperial army of 40,000, compelled him finally to abandon a throne which he dared not defend, and to fly, for the third and last time, from the city of his ambition. He left Samarkand in May, 1512, after a reign, or viceroyalty, of only eight months. In vain the Sháh sent him large reinforcements of 60,000 'red-heads' under a savage and relentless general, whose cruelty disgusted his humane ally. Nothing could save him. The Uzbegs were not to be denied. At the last fight (November, 1512) at Ghujduwán or Ghazdiván, taking advantage of every wall and cover, they began to pour forth their arrows from every corner, so that very soon the claws of
