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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The information contained in the following notes on the MSS. of the Turkī text of Bābar's autobiography I have not seen put together elsewhere. It is offered as an ad interimcontribution towards a better knowledge of the Turkī text.
page 441 note 1 Memoirs of Bābar, Leyden and Erskine, p. 405.
page 444 note 1 Mr. Erskine worked from two Persian MSS., i.e. B.M. Add. 26,200 and B.M. Add. 26,201 (Mr. Metcalfe's), the latter being, he says, “defective and incorrect.” In these more facile days 
was easily able to consult a round dozen.
page 444 note 2 Dr. Leyden's manuscript translation from the Turkī gives no help, because it ends before the notes of Humāyūn are reached.
page 445 note 1 The Shirāzī passage (171, foot), confused and defective in several places, runs thus:—
(omission)
page 449 note 1 As illustrating the use of the Ar.
in this expression, Mr. William Irvine referred me to the inscription under the portrait of Jahāngīr which faces p. 115 of Mr. W. Foster's “Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe,” and where the parallel expression rāqama-hu is used. The would explain the abnormal mīm on which Mr. Wollaston comments (J.R.A.S., Jan., 1900, p. 71). Mr. Irvine has mentioned to me another instance of 
ḥarara-hu, which occurs in the colophon of a B.M. Persian MS., Mūnīsu-l-arwāḥ, by Jahān-ārā Begam, daughter of Shāh-jahān.
page 453 note 1 By a slip of memory Mr. Erskine (pref., xi) has indicated Pãnīpat (307) instead of Khānwa (355) as the last topic of Mr. Elphinstone's MS. In theintermediate pages (307–355) are eight notes réferring to the Turkī text, and these include Humāyūn's on the amratphul.
page 454 note 1 
page 454 note 2 The date of this transcript and its finished beauty testify to the continued interest felt at Akbar's Court in the Turkī text. Mr. William Irvine assures me that this interest persisted much later. “Turkī,” he writes to me, “was spoken, i.e. understood, at the Mughal Court well into the eighteenth century, and up to that time there were numbers of Qalmaq, Uzbak, aud Qirghiz women servants and slaves in the harems. Within 50 or 60 years of the Mughal arrival in India, how much more usual must such knowledge have been.”
By critics, Bābar's literary style is accounted one of the best amongst Turkī authors. His writings, like Mir 'Alī Shīr's, would be a textbook for all who read Turkī and who could get access to them. 'Abdu-r-raḥim presumably made acquaintance with them in early youth, since there must have been a strong Turkī element in his father's household. His mother was a Mewatī, and his father died when he was three; but Bairam Khān was a full-born Turkomān, and of a family so distinguished amongst the Black Sheep that tribal position would be a source of pride. Bairam was great-grandson, through a son, of 'Alī Shīr Bahārlū. His mother also was of good Turkī birth. One of his wives, Sālima, was of the same degree of descent from 'Alī Shīr, through a daughter, Pāshā. Sālima married Akbar later, and 'Abdu-r-raḥīm was brought up with Akbar's sons, of whom it is known that at least Sālim learned Turkī.
'Abdu-r-raḥiḥm's parentage and upbringing presuppose familiarity with the Turkī language; his bias to learning presupposes that he would early become familiar with one of the masterpieces of that tongue. These things would naturally suggest him to Akbar as a fit translator of the Tūzuk-i-bābarī.
The author of the last fragment of Kehr and Ilminski's text says, in the words of Pavet de Courteille, “Quant au livre appelé Bābariyah, 
Mīrzā Khān, fils de Bairam Khān, a été chargé de le traduire du turc en persan pour en faciliter la lecture à ceux qui ignoreraient la première de ces deux langues.”
It is somewhat strange that the earlier translation of this Tūzuk, by Mīrzā Pāyanda Hasan and Muḥ. Qulī, which was finished in 1586, four years before 'Abdu-r-raḥīm's, is passed over by contemporaries. It may be noted here that the B.M. copy of this translation does not contain Humāyūn's notes. They fall in a lacuna.
[Cf. Pers. Cat., Rieu, p. 799; I.O. Cat., s.v. Wāqi'at-i-bābarī; Bodl. Cat., s.v.]
page 455 note 1 A passage may be appropriately quoted from the Journal Asiatique (January, 1842) which shows that a bygone savant did not clearly distinguish between Tīpū's MS. and Bib. Leydeniana. “ Les Mémoires de Bābar, 
faisaient partie de la bibliothèque de Tippoo Sahib, tué 4 Mai, 1799”…. “la bibliothèque entière fut offert à l'East India Company, à l'exception de quelques manuscrits reservés pour la société asiatique.”…. “C'est maintenant dans cette bibliothèque, ainsi que nous lisons dans la grammaire turque de Davids que se trouve l'original des Mémoires.” The writer of the above has not, however, observed that Davids names Leyden's MS. and not the East India Company's. “Heureusement,” says Davids, “l'original de cet ouvrage intéressant existe encore, et le MS. se trouve dans la bibliothèque de la Oompagnie des Indes. Il appartenait autrefois au feu Dr. Leyden.” The Journal Asiatique leaps from the Mysore MS. to Bib. Leydeniana, No. 178. The former is not found in the Library; the latter is an ancient possession. It was at latest in 1832 that Davids saw it, and presumably, since Dr. Leyden died in 1811, it had passed much earlier into the hands of the East India Company.
page 456 note 1 Cf. Dr. Ethé's as yet unpublished Catalogue of the India Office Library.
page 456 note 2 The flyleaves of a volume of Dr. Leyden's own MSS. (B.M. Add. 26,253) are water-marked with the same names and dated 1809.
page 460 note 1 Specimens of Dr. Leyden's English and Arabic writing can be seen in his manuscript remains at the British Museum.
page 461 note 1 This I have been able to ascertain by the courtesy of the Council of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, who have sent it for me to the British Museum, through the kind intervention of Professor Robert K. Douglas.
page 464 note 1 In considering questions of A.S.B. MSS. regard must be had to the great losses of which Bābu Rajendra Lall Mitter speaks as occurring from 1835 to 1884, and which exceeded 167 in Persian MSS. only. It is to be feared that losses continue. At the risk of being thought ungrateful for the kindness of the Society which has lent me two MSS., I cannot, when on the topic of losses, omit to say that both these MSS. brought to the British Museum a goodly company of book-worms, plump if sluggish. Both the books have newly cut incisions, the work of the worms. So much they gain by their European trip: they have been dealt with as mummies and quarantined in naphthaline. They will exist at least until their return to Calcutta. Everyone who has lived in Bengal knows the uphill fight for books. Should MSS. be allowed to remain in a climate which favours the book-worm and disfavours its pursuit ?
page 467 note 1 A translation of Professor Ilminski's preface is appended to this article.
page 469 note 1 Since writing this, I have seen some words of Professor F. Teufel which may indicate an opinion that Pavet de Courteille did not read, or at least assimilate, Ilminski's preface, since he says of some parts of this that Pavet de Courteille “hat [sie] nicht beachtet oder nicht bekanut” (D.M.G., vol. xxxvii, 142).
page 470 note 1 This MS. is erroneously reputed to be complete, and is so catalogued. Cf. No. VI.
page 470 note 2 Supplementary fragments extend to p. 506.
page 471 note 1 Cf. Teufel, l.c., for philological criticism of the “fragments” and conjectural source.
page 472 note 1 For a curiously contracted and, as it seems on examination of facts, erroneous parallel passage, cf. Mems., 350.
page 472 note 2 Pavet de Courteille, II, 44–5. Bābar's mother is here spoken of in the French translation as alive and active in the episode of the adoption, i.e. in H. 925 (1519). Qutlūq-nigār Khānan died in 911 (1505–6). Ilminski's words which Pavet de Courteille transforms into “ma mère,” i.e. Bābar's, are ḥazraṭ wālida. This is, I think, the counterpart of suiṭān wālida, the mother of the heir-apparent, here Māham. To Māham the context applies.
page 473 note 1 ? The Akbarndāur. In the Biographie Universelle, Ancienne et Moderne, art. Bābar, M. Langlès writes: “Ces Commentaires, augmentés par Jahāngīr, out été traduits en persan par 'Abdu-r-raḥīm.” Mr. Erskine (pref., ix), who had no acquaintance with the St. Petersburg MSS., expresses doubt as to the statement that Jahāngīr added to the Wāqi'āl. It may be that M. Langlès' statement is based on the St. Petersburg MSS., and that both scholars are right as far as each knew the MSS.
It is not groundless to conjecture that Sālim (Jahāngīr) wrote the Kehr MS. fragment about his father's death, character, deeds, etc.; under counsel of eye-witnesses. Sālim studied Turkī; 'Abdu-r-raḥim was his atālīq; Gulbadan Begum, whose interest in Sālim is historic, was alive after the presentation of the Persian translation to Akbar by ' Abdu-r-raḥīm in 1586, and so too were other contemporaries of Bābar. Jahāngīr (Sālim) says that he made additions to his father's book. Mr. Erskine emphatically states his opinion that as we have them, i.e. as he knew them, excluding the St. Petersburg MSS., the Memoirs are as Bābar left them. This opinion does not touch the fragments which continue the narrative close down to Bābar's death.
The last fragment, which is by another hand (? Sālim's), (P. de C, II, 462), contains this passage: “Quand au livre appelé Bābariyah, Mīrzā Khān, fils de Bairām Khān, a été chargé de la traduire du turk en persan, pour en faciliter la lecture à. ceux qui ignoreraient la première de ces deux langues.” Why was this irrelevant information about the Persian translation inserted ? Is it a touch of local colour, as it well might be, if the fragment were Sālim's, and issued from the Turkī studies connected with his readings in Turkī and 'Abdu-r-raḥīm's translation of the Tūztik-i-bībarī?
page 477 note 1 Translation doubtful. I have brought it into agreement with the facts of Bābar's work.
page 477 note 2 Perhaps “transliteration” is better. I am not sure whether the action is from spoken Chaghatāī to inscribed Arabic character or from sounds written down in the Chaghatāī character and transliterated to the Arabic.
page 478 note 1 Cf. No. 12, Foreign Office MS., where it will be seen that the application of this date to the Bābarnāma is of uncertain accuracy.
page 479 note 1 This form of translation has been given to me by each of my several helpers. There is a mistake somewhere, since the statement is contradicted both by Ilminski'8 context and by Professor Smirnov's account of Kehr's MS. in the Catalogue of the Foreign Office Library. An appropriate reading would be “Kehr's transcript contains the last page of the Bābarnāma,” i.e. the Guālīār passage.
page 479 note 2 Bābariana would be more correct, since the fragments are also indicated.
page 480 note 1 Variant translation: “Such is the basis upon which I have tried,” etc.