The Memoirs of Bābur 913.4.9

913.4.9

Shaibāq Khān's arrival before Qandahār, within a few days [Sidenote: Fol. 215.] of our own departure, had taken the garrison by surprise, and they had not been able to make fast the outer-fort. He ran mines several times round about the citadel and made several assaults. The place was about to be lost. At that anxious time Khwāja Muḥ. Amīn, Khwāja Dost Khāwand, Muḥ. `Alī, a foot-soldier, and Shāmī (Syrian?) let themselves down from the walls and got away. Just as those in the citadel were about to surrender in despair, Shaibāq Khān interposed words of peace and uprose from before the place. Why he rose was this:—It appears that before he went there, he had sent his _ḥaram_ to Nīrah-tū,[1317] and that in Nīrah-tū some-one lifted up his head and got command in the fort; the Khān therefore made a sort of peace and retired from Qandahār. (_x. Bābur returns to Kābul._) Mid-winter though it was we went back to Kābul by the Bād-i-pīch road. I ordered the date of that transit and that crossing of the pass to be cut on a stone above Bād-i-pīch;[1318] Ḥāfiẓ Mīrak wrote the inscription, Ustād Shāh Muḥammad did the cutting, not well though, through haste. I bestowed Ghaznī on Nāṣir Mīrzā and gave `Abdu'r-razzāq Mīrzā the Nīngnahār _tūmān_ with Mandrāwar, Nūr-valley, Kūnār and Nūr-gal.[1319] (_y. Bābur styles himself Pādshāh._) Up to that date people had styled Tīmūr Beg's descendants _Mīrzā_, even when they were ruling; now I ordered that people should style me _Pādshāh_.[1320]