The Memoirs of Bābur 903.1.5

903.1.5

[Sidenote: Fol. 44b.] When the news of his departure reached us, we got to horse and started from Khwāja Dīdār for Samarkand. To give us honourable meeting on the road, were nobles and braves, one after another. It was on one of the last ten days of the first Rabī` (end of November 1497 AD.), that we entered the citadel and dismounted at the Bū-stān Sarāī. Thus, by God's favour, were the town and the country of Samarkand taken and occupied. (_b. Description of Samarkand._)[345] Few towns in the whole habitable world are so pleasant as Samarkand. It is of the Fifth Climate and situated in lat. 40° 6' and long. 99°.[346] The name of the town is Samarkand; its country people used to call Mā warā'u'n-nahr (Transoxania). They used to call it _Baldat-i-maḥfūẓa_ because no foe laid hands on it with storm and sack.[347] It must have become[348] Musalmān in the time of the Commander of the Faithful, his Highness `Usmān. Qus̤am ibn `Abbās, one of the Companions[349] must have gone there; his burial-place, known as the Tomb of Shāh-i-zinda (The Living Shāh, _i.e._, Fāqīr) is outside the Iron Gate. Iskandar must have founded Samarkand. The Turk and Mughūl hordes call it Sīmīz-kīnt.[350] Tīmūr Beg made it his capital; no ruler so great will ever have made it a capital before (_qīlghān aīmās dūr_). I ordered people to pace round the ramparts of the walled-town; it came out at 10,000 steps.[351] Samarkandīs are all orthodox (_sunnī_), pure-in-the Faith, law-abiding and religious.