The Memoirs of Bābur 903.2.2

903.2.2

(_Author's note._) Not more than seven or eight observatories seem to have been constructed in the world. Māmūm Khalīfa[380] (Caliph) made one with which the _Mamūmī_ Tables were written. Batalmūs (Ptolemy) constructed another. Another was made, in Hindūstān, in the time of Rājā Vikramāditya _Hīndū_, in Ujjain and Dhar, that is, the Mālwa country, now known as Māndū. The Hindūs of Hindūstān use the Tables of this Observatory. They were put together 1,584 years ago.[381] [Sidenote: Fol. 47.] Compared with others, they are somewhat defective. Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā again, made the garden known as the Bāgh-i-maidān (Garden of the Plain), on the skirt of the Kohik upland. In the middle of it he erected a fine building they call Chihil Sitūn (Forty Pillars). On both storeys are pillars, all of stone (_tāshdīn_).[382] Four turrets, like minarets, stand on its four corner-towers, the way up into them being through the towers. Everywhere there are stone pillars, some fluted, some twisted, some many-sided. On the four sides of the upper storey are open galleries enclosing a four-doored hall (_chār-dara_); their pillars also are all of stone. The raised floor of the building is all paved with stone.