The Memoirs of Bābur 1.6

1.6

People were always saying, that if ambassadors were to be sent in a friendly and peaceable way into the countries that had been occupied by the Turks, it could do no harm. I therefore despatched Mulla Murshid to Sultán Ibráhim, whose father Sultan Iskandar had died five or six months before, and who had succeeded his father in the empire of Hindustan; and giving him the name and style of ambassador, sent him to demand that the countries which from old times had belonged to the Turks should be given up to me. Besides these letters for Sultan Ibrahim, I gave Mulla Murshid letters to Daulat Khán, and having also delivered to him verbal instructions, dismissed him on his mission. The people of Hindustan, and particularly the Afghans, are a strangely foolish and senseless race, possessed of little reflection, and less foresight. They can neither persist in and manfully support a war, nor can they continue in a state of amity and friendship. This person, who was sent by me, Daulat Khán detained some time in Lahore, neither seeing him himself, nor suffering him to proceed to Sultan Ibrahim; so that my envoy, five months after, returned to Kabul without having received any answer.