The Memoirs of Bābur 927.1

927.1

927 AH.—DEC. 12TH 1520 TO DEC. 1ST 1521 AD. _a. The manuscript sources._ Two accounts of the sieges of Qandahār in this and next year are available, one in Khwānd-amīr's _Ḥabību's-siyar_, the other in Ma`ṣūm _Bhakkarī's Tārīkh-i-sind_. As they have important differences, it is necessary to consider the opportunities of their authors for information. Khwānd-amīr finished his history in 1524-29 AD. His account of these affairs of Qandahār is contemporary; he was in close touch with several of the actors in them and may have been in Harāt through their course; one of his patrons, Amīr Ghiyāṣu'd-dīn, was put to death in this year in Harāt because of suspicion that he was an ally of Bābur; his nephew, another Ghiyāṣu'd-dīn was in Qandahār, the bearer next year of its keys to Bābur; moreover he was with Bābur himself a few years later in Hindūstān. Mīr Ma`ṣūm wrote in 1600 AD. 70 to 75 years after Khwānd-amīr. Of these sieges he tells what may have been traditional and mentions no manuscript authorities. Blochmann's biography of him (_Āyīn-i-akbarī_ p. 514) shews his ample opportunity of learning orally what had happened in the Arghūn invasion of Sind, but does not mention the opportunity for hearing traditions about Qandahār which his term of office there allowed him. During that term it was that he added an inscription, commemorative of Akbar's dominion, to Bābur's own at Chihil-zīna, which records the date of the capture of Qandahār (928 AH.-1522 AD.).