The Memoirs of Bābur 912.2.3

912.2.3

While we were on the Murgh-āb, news came that Ḥaq-naẕīr _Chapā_ (var. Ḥiān) was over-running the neighbourhood of Chīchīk-tū with 4 or 500 men. All the Mīrzās there present, do what they would, could not manage to send a light troop against those raiders! It is 10 _yīghāch_ (50-55 m.) from Murgh-āb to Chīchīk-tū. I asked the work; they, with a thought for their own reputation, would not give it to me. The year being almost at an end when Shaibāq Khān retired, the Mīrzās decided to winter where it was convenient and to reassemble next summer in order to repel their foe. They pressed me to winter in Khurāsān, but this not one of my well-wishers saw it good for me to do because, while Kābul and Ghaznī were full of a turbulent and ill-conducted medley of [Sidenote: Fol. 188.] people and hordes, Turks, Mughūls, clans and nomads (_aīmāq u aḥsham_), Afghāns and Hazāra, the roads between us and that not yet desirably subjected country of Kābul were, one, the mountain-road, a month's journey even without delay through snow or other cause,—the other, the low-country road, a journey of 40 or 50 days.