Page:Babur-nama Vol 1.djvu/78

8 4 FARGHANA west of Andijān and twenty-five yighach east of Samarkand.' Khujand is one of the ancient towns; of it were Shaikh Maşlaḥat and Khwāja Kamāl.2 Fruit grows well there; its pomegranates are renowned for their excellence; people talk of a Khujand pomegranate as they do of a Samarkand apple; just now however, Marghīnān pomegranates are much met with.3 The walled town (qurghān) of Khujand stands on high ground; the Saiḥūn River flows past it on the north at the distance, may be, of an arrow's flight. To the north of both the town and the river lies a mountain range called Munūghul; people say there are turquoise and other mines in it and there are many snakes. The hunting and fowling-grounds of Khujand are first-rate; aq kiyik, bughu-maral, pheasant and hare are all had in great plenty. The climate is The climate is very malarious; in autumn there is much fever;38 people rumour it about that the very sparrows get fever and say that the cause of the malaria is the mountain range on the north (i.e. Munūghul). .8 Kand-i-badām (Village of the Almond) is a dependency of Khujand; though it is not a township (qaşba) it is rather a good 1 Khujand to Andijān 187 m. 2 fur. (Kostenko ii, 29-31) and, helped out by the time-table of the Transcaspian Railway, from Khujand to Samarkand appears to be some 154 m. 5 fur. 2 Both men are still honoured in Khujand (Kostenko i, 348). For Khwāja Kamāl's Life and Diwan, see Rieu ii, 632 and Ouseley's Persian Poets p. 192. Cf. f. 836 and note. 3 kūb artiq dür, perhaps brought to Hindūstān where Bābur wrote the statement. 4 Turkish arrow-flight, London, 1791, 482 yards. 5 I have found the following forms of this name,-Hai. MS., M:nūgh:l; Pers. trans. and Mems., Myoghil; Ilminsky, M:tugh:1; Méms. Mtoughuil; Réclus, Schuyler and Kostenko, Mogul Tau; Nalivkine, "d'apres Fedtschenko," Mont Mogol; Fr. Map of 1904, M. Muzbek. It is the western end of the Kurāma Range (Kindir Tau), which comes out to the bed of the Sir, is 26 miles long and rises to 4000 ft. (Kostenko, i, 101). Von Schwarz describes it as being quite bare; various writers ascribe climatic evil to it. 6 Pers. trans. ahu-i-safed. Cf. f. 36 note. 7 These words translate into Cervus maral, the Asiatic Wapiti, and to this Bābur may apply them. Dictionaries explain maral as meaning hind or doe but numerous books of travel and Natural History show that it has wider application as a generic name, i.e. deer. The two words būghū and marāl appear to me to be used as e.g. drake and duck are used. Maral and duck can both imply the female sex, but also both are generic, perhaps primarily so. Cf. for further mention of bughu-maral f. 219 and f. 276. For uses of the word maral, see the writings e.g. of Atkinson, Kostenko (iii, 69), Lyddeker, Littledale, Selous, Ronaldshay, Church (Chinese Turkistan), Biddulph (Forsyth's Mission). 8 Cf. f. 2 and note.