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899 AH.-OCT. 12TH. 1493 TO OCT. 2ND. 1494 7 noisy and turbulent. Most of the noted bullies (jangralar) of Samarkand and Bukhārā are Marghīnānīs. The author of the Hidayat¹ was from Rashdan, one of the villages of Marghīnān. Again there is Asfara, in the hill-country and nine yighach2 by road south-west of Marghīnān. It has running waters, beautiful little gardens (baghcha) and many fruit-trees but almonds for the most part in its orchards. Its people are all Persian-speaking³ Sārts. In the hills some two miles (bir shar') to the south of the town, is a piece of rock, known as the Mirror Stone. It is some 10 arm-lengths (qari) long, as high as a man in parts, up to his waist in others. Everything is reflected by it as by a mirror. The Asfara district (wilayat) is in four subdivisions (balūk) in the hill-country, one Asfara, one Warūkh, one Sukh and one Hushyār. When Muḥammad Shaibānī Khān defeated Sl. Mahmud Khān and Alacha Khān and took Tāshkint and Shāhrukhiya,5 I went into the Sukh and Hushyār Fol. 4hill-country and from there, after about a year spent in great misery, I set out ('azimat) for Kābul.6 Again there is Khujand, twenty-five yighach by road to the without any reference to tribe or nationality. I am not sure that he uses it always as a noun; he writes of a Sārt kishi, a Sārt person. His Asfara Sārts may have been Turki-speaking settled Turks and his Marghīnānī ones Persianspeaking Tājiks. Cf. Shaw's Vocabulary; s.n. Sārt; Schuyler i, 104 and note; Nalivkine's Histoire du Khanat de Khokand p. 45 n. Von Schwarz's.n.; Kostenko i, 287; Petzhold's Turkistan p. 32. 1 Shaikh Burhānu'd-din 'Ali Qilich: b. circa 530 AH. (1135 AD.) d. 593 AH. (1197 AD.). See Hamilton's Hidayat. 2 The direct distance, measured on the map, appears to be about 65 m. but the road makes détour round mountain spurs. Mr. Erskine appended here, to the "farsang" of his Persian source, a note concerning the reduction of Tatar and Indian measures to English ones. It is rendered the less applicable by the variability of the yighach, the equivalent for a farsang presumed by the Persian translator. 3 Hai. MS. Farsi-gu'i. The Elph. MS. and all those examined of the W.-i-B. omit the word Farsi; some writing kohi (mountaineer) for gu'i. I judge that Bābur at first omitted the word Farsi, since it is entered in the Hai. MS. above the word gu'i. It would have been useful to Ritter (vii, 733) and to Ujfalvy (ii, 176). Cf. Kostenko i, 287 on the variety of languages spoken by Sārts. 4 Of the Mirror Stone neither Fedtschenko nor Ujfalvy could get news. 5 Bābur distinguishes here between Tāshkint and Shāhrukhiya. Cf. f. 2 and note to Fanākat. 6 He left the hill-country above Sükh in Muharram 910 AH. (mid-June 1504 AD.). 7 For a good account of Khujand see Kostenko i, 346.