direction of Taimur* himself. If the European public are not already satiated with works on Oriental history, they might easily be translated.

The period between the death of Tamerlane and that of Baber formed the golden age of Tûrki literature. From every page of the following Memoirs it will be seen that the spirit and enthusiasm with which Persian poetry and learning were then cultivated had extended itself to the Tûrki. I do not find that any works on law, theology, or metaphysics, were written in that tongue. But the number of poems of various measures, and on various subjects, the number of treatises on prosody and the art of poetry, on rhetoric, on music, and on other popular subjects, is very considerable. The palm of excellence in Tûrki verse has long been unanimously assigned to Ali Shîr Beg Nawâi, the most eminent nobleman in the court of Sultan Hussain Mirza Baikra, of Khorasân, and the most illustrious and enlightened patron of literature and the fine arts that perhaps ever flourished in the East. Many of the principal literary works of that age are dedicated to him. He is often praised by Baber in the following Memoirs, and his own productions in the Tûrki language were long much read and admired in Mâweralnaher and Khorasân, and are not yet forgotten. Many Tûrki princes were themselves poets; and although the incursions of barbarians, and the confusion and unsettled state of their country for the last three centuries, have broken the continuity of the literary exertions of the Tûrki nations, they still cling with uncommon affection to their native tongue, which they prefer extremely to the Persian for its powers of natural and picturesque expression; and they peruse the productions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with a delight that reminds us of the affection of the Welsh, or of the Highlanders of Scotland, for their native strains. Unfortunately, however, as the Mûllas, or schoolmasters, in the cities of the countries north of the Oxus, regard the Arabic as the language of science, and the Persian as the language of taste, and measure their own proficiency, as scholars and men of letters, chiefly by the extent of their acquaintance with the language and literature of Arabia and Persia, the earlier works written in the Tûrki language run some risk of being lost, unless speedily collected. From these causes, and from the air of literary superiority which a knowledge of Persian confers, few works are now written in Tûrki, even in Tûrki countries. In the great cities of Samarkand and Bokhâra, though chiefly inhabited by men of Tûrki extraction, Persian is the language of business. Though the present royal family of Persia are Tûrks, and though the

Sir William Jones's Works, vol. I, p. 69. Major Davy was quite wrong in confounding the Tûrki and Moghul tongues, (see Davy's letter, p. xxviii of White's Institutes of Timour.) A Jaghatâi Tûrk will not suffer his language to be called the Moghul. The Major's error partly originated in the looseness with which Tartars, Persians, and all emigrants or travellers from the north or northwest, are, in India, called by the natives Moghul. Sir William Jones, in his Discourse on the Tartars, did not quite escape the same error; but that great scholar did not possess the means which the investigations of Pallas, Klaproth, and others, have since furnished for correcting our notions. No one marks the distinction more clearly than Baber himself, in the first part of his Memoirs.

+ I understand that a life of this eminent man, and remarks on his writings, with translations from the Tûrki, are about to be published by M. Quatremère, from whose learning much may be expected on this novel and curious subject.

Tûrki is the ordinary language spoken in their families, and even at their* court, as well as by one-half of the population of Persia, particularly by the tribes around the capital, who compose the strength of the army, the Persian is the usual and almost only channel of written communication; nor am I aware that any work of note has, of late years, been written in the Tûrki tongue.

The Jaghatâi Tûrki, as contained in the Memoirs of Baber, is evidently not the same language which was brought from the wilds of Tartary by the Turkomans in the ninth century, or by the Tûrki tribes who accompanied Chengîz Khan in the thirteenth. It has received a very strong infusion of Arabic and Persian words, not merely in the terms of science and art, but in its ordinary tissue and familiar phrases. These words are all connected by the regular grammar of the Tûrki; but so extensive is the adoption of foreign terms, that perhaps two words in nine in the Jaghatâi dialect may be originally derived from a Persian or Arabic root. The language itself is, however, remarkable for clearness, simplicity, and force; the style far less adorned than that of the modern Persian, and as free from metaphor and hyperbole as that of a good English or French historian; and on the whole the Tûrki bears much more resemblance to the good sense of Europe than to the rhetorical parade of Asia. The style of all Tûrki productions that I have ever happened to meet with, is remarkable for its downright and picturesque naiveté of expression.

It is not difficult to discover how these Persian words flowed into the Tûrki language. The cities of Samarkand, Bokhâra, Ahsi, Andejân, and Tâshkend, as well as the other towns to the north of the Oxus and Jaxartes, were chiefly inhabited by Persians, the Tûrks long retaining their aversion to the life of a town, and refusing to submit to the drudgery of agriculture for the sake of supporting themselves on the top of a weed, as they call wheat in derision. The cities and market towns in Mâweralnaher were therefore chiefly peopled, and the grounds were cultivated solely by the old inhabitants, the Sarts or Tâjîks, who had used, and continued to retain the Persian tongue. The courts of the Kings and Princes were usually held in the great cities, which necessarily became the resort of the chieftains and head men of the tribes that still kept the open country. The Tûrks, some time after leaving their deserts, had exchanged their former superstition for the religion of Muhammed. All religious, moral, and literary instruction proceeded from their priests and Mûllas, men trained to Arabic literature, and whose native language was the Persian. It became necessary for every Tûrk to know something of Persian, to enable him either to conduct his purchases or sales in the public markets, or to comprehend the religion to which he belonged; and the course of five hundred years, from the days of the Samanian dynasty to the birth of Baber, gave ample space for that corruption or improvement of the language, which a daily and regular intercourse with a more refined people in the common business of life must necessarily produce.

The same was the case even under the Sufvi dynasty, as we learn from Kæmpfer. See Amænitat. Exotic. It may appear singular, that while all the neighbouring courts used the Persian as the language of polite intercourse and diplomacy, the Tûrki was the court language in Persia itself; but it arose from its being the mother tongue of the sovereign, who belonged to a Tûrki tribe.

Baber does not inform us, nor do we learn from any other quarter, at what period of his life he began to compose his Memoirs. Some considerations might lead us to suppose that he wrote them after his last invasion of India. That they must have been corrected after that period is certain, since in the first part of them he frequently refers to that event, and mentions some of his Begs as holding appointments in Hindustân. Perhaps, too, the idea of writing his Memoirs was more likely to have occurred to him after his success in India, than at any previous time, as he had then overcome all his difficulties, was raised to eminence and distinction, and had become not only an object of wonder and attention to others, but perhaps stood higher in his own estimation. His Memoirs may be divided into three parts, the first extending from his accession to the throne of Ferghâna, to the time when he was finally driven by Sheibâni Khan from his paternal kingdom, a period of about twelve years; the second reaching from his expulsion from Ferghâna to his last invasion of Hindustân, a period of about twenty-two years; and the third containing his transactions in Hindustân, a period of little more than five. The whole of the first part, and the three first years of the second, are evidently written chiefly from recollection; and the style and manner in which they are composed, appear to me far to excel that of the rest of the work; not only from the clearer connexion given to the various parts of the story, and the space given to incidents in proportion to their importance, but from the superior unity and rapidity of the narrative. This is, perhaps, in other respects also, the most agreeable portion of the Memoirs. During a great part of the period to which they relate, he was unfortunate, and often a wanderer; but always lively, active, and bold; and the reader follows him in his various adventures with that delight which inevitably springs from the minute and animated recital of the hazardous exploits of a youthful warrior. A. D. 1519. The narrative, when renewed in the year 925 of the Hejira, after an interval of twelve years, partakes too much of the tedium of a journal, in which important and unimportant events find an equal space, and seems to be in a great measure the copy of one kept at the time. The same remark applies perhaps even more strongly to the greater part of the concluding portion of the work. In the earlier portions of the Memoirs we have a continuous narrative of details, such as a lively memory might furnish at the distance of many years. In the latter parts, trifling incidents are often recorded, which, if not committed to writing at the time, would soon have met the oblivion they merited. We are informed of minute particulars which can interest even the writer only by recalling particular events or peculiar trains of association-how often he eat a maajûn, or electuary-how often he got drunk, and what nameless men were his boon companions. These incidents, however curious as illustrative of manners or character, are repeated even to satiety. Yet these parts also contain the valuable accounts of Kâbul and of Hindustân; he gives an occasional view of his aims and motives, of the management of some of his expeditions, and particularly of his conduct during the alarming mutiny of his troops; while the concluding portion of his Memoirs, where the form of a journal is resumed, appears to be hardly more than materials for his private use, intended to assist him in recalling to his memory such incidents as might have enabled

him to furnish a connected view of the transactions of that period. Still, however, all the three parts of his Memoirs, though the two last are evidently unfinished, present a very curious and valuable picture of the life and manners of a Tartar Prince, and convey an excellent idea of Baber's policy, and of his wars in Mâweralnaher, Afghânishtân, and India, as well as of his manners, genius, and habits of thinking; and perhaps no work ever composed introduces us so completely to the court and council, the public and private life of an Eastern Sultan.

A question may arise whether we have the Memoirs of Baber at the present day as perfect as he wrote them; and in spite of the various hiatus which they exhibit, one of which extends to a period of twelve years, I am inclined to believe that they never were much more perfect than we now possess them. This opinion I entertain first from the fact that all the copies and translations which I have seen or heard of, are deficient in the same important passages; and next, from the remarkable fact, that the narratives of the different authors who treat of Baber's reign, are more or less particular, exactly where the Memoirs, as we now possess them, are more or less minute. In many instances there are chasms in his history which no succeeding writer has supplied. This would not have been the case had he written and published the whole events of his reign in a continuous narrative. It is remarkable too, that, in commencing his fifth invasion of India, he makes a sort of recapitulation, which would have been unnecessary, had the events alluded to been explained immediately before, as they must have been, had he written an unbroken history of his reign.

Baber himself seems to have been satisfied with his labours, for, towards the close of his life, we find him sending a copy of his work from Hindustân to a friend in Kâbul. The Memoirs continued to be held in the greatest veneration at the Courts of Delhi and Agra after his death. From some marginal notes which appear on both copies of the translation, as well as on the Tûrki original, it appears that the Emperor Humâiûn, even after he had ascended the throne, and not long before his death, had transcribed the Memoirs with his own hand. In the reign of Akber, they were translated from the original Tûrki into Persian by the celebrated Mirza Abdal-Rahîm, the son of the Biram Khan, who acted so conspicuous a part in the reigns of the Emperors Humâiûn and Akber.*

* As his translation is so often referred to in the following pages, and may be regarded as in some degree a second original, a few anecdotes of the life of the author may not be here misplaced:-When Humâiûu, after his long misfortunes, was restored to the throne of Delhi, in order to attach to his interests the chief men of the various principalities of Hindustân, he encouraged intermarriages between their families and those of his chief Tartar officers. He himself married one daughter of Ismael Khan, the nephew of Hassan Khan of Mewât, so often spoken of in the third part of these Memoirs, and gave another daughter to Biram Khan, his minister and favourite. Of this last marriage, Mirza Abdal-Rahîm was born at Lahore on the 17th of December, 1556, in the first year of Akber's† reign. His father, who was thus connected with the imperial family, and who was unfortunately too powerful for a subject, after having been goaded into rebellion, was killed in Guzerat when on his way to perform the pilgrimage of Mekka. Abdal-Rahîm, his son, then only four years of age, was conveyed in safety to Ahmedâ

+14 Sefer, A. H. 964. See the Maaser al Omra, vol. I. folio. Art. Abdal-Rahim, MS.-This work, which is well known in India, is a curious and very correct Biographical Dictionary of all the eminent statesmen and warriors who have flourished in that country since the time of Baber. It is in two large folio volumes.

The translation which he executed of the Memoirs of Baber is extremely close and accurate, and has been much praised for its elegance. But, though simple and concise, a close adherence to the idioms and forms of expression of the Tûrki original, joined

bâd by his faithful attendants, who sustained repeated attacks of the assailants up to the very gates of that city. He was carried from thence to Lahore and Agra. When he came of age, Akber bestowed on him the title of Mirza Khan, and married him to Mahbânu, the sister of Khan Azim Goge, an officer of high distinction. At the age of twenty-one, he got the government of Guzerat, and in his twentyfifth year was promoted to the office of Mîr Arz, (or Master of Requests.) When twenty-eight years of age, he was made Atâlik, or Governor of Sultan Selîm, the Emperor's eldest son, who afterwards mounted the throne under the name of Jehângîr; and in the same year was sent into Guzerat against Mozeffer Shah, the King of that country, who, after being compelled to take refuge among the Katti with the Jâm at Jûnager,* had collected an army of forty thousand men, defeated the imperial generals, and seized Ahmedâbâd. The Mirza's army consisted of only ten thousand, and he had received instructions not to hazard the safety of the province by engaging in battle. But he did not decline an engagement, and the armies having come close upon each other, Doulet Khan Lodi, a very gallant officer, told him, that now was the moment either to make himself Khân-Khânân,† or to fall in battle. Abdal-Rahîm attacked the enemy at Sirkej, four or five miles from Ahmedâbâd. The conflict was bloody, and maintained with various success. At one period the battle seemed to be lost, and Abdal-Rahîm found himself obliged with three hundred men to face a firm body of six or seven thousand. Some of his friends seized the reins of his horse to carry him from the field; but he refused to retreat, and stood his ground with such bravery and conduct, that he changed the fortune of the day. Mozeffer in the end was defeated, and fled to Cambay, whence, after plundering the merchants of the place, he sought refuge among the mountains of Nadout. Mozeffer soon after again ventured into the field, but, being once more defeated, fled to the Rajpipli hills, on the south of the Nerbudda. Where disobedience is eminently successful, the disobedience is generally forgotten, and the success only remembered. Abdal-Rahîm, according to the prediction of Doulet Khan, was promoted to the rank of an Emir of five thousand horse, with the high title of Khân-Khânân. It is said, that on the day of battle, after he had distributed all his jewels and property among his troops, a soldier having come to him and complained that he had had no share in the division, the Mirza, to satisfy him, took out and gave to him his enamelled inkstand, richly adorned with jewels, being the only article which he had retained. In the thirty-fourth year of his own age, and of the reign of Akber, he translated the Memoirs of Baber, which he presented to the Emperor, by whom he was highly complimented. We are told by Abulfazel, that they were translated at the desire of Akber when he was on a progress to Kashmîr and Kâbul. The same year he was raised to the distinguished rank of Vakil-e-Sultanet, or Lord Lieutenant of the Empire, a title very rarely conferred. It would be tedious to follow him to the governments of Jonpûr, Multân, and Sind, which he successively held. He completely defeated the Hakim (or chief) of Sind, obliged him to cede Sehwân and some other districts, and married his son Mirza Irej to the Hakim's daughter. A revolt having ensued, Abdal-Rahîm obliged the Hakim and all his family to repair to Agra. The long wars that followed in the Dekhan, particularly that against Ahmednagger, gave him great opportunities to signalize his military talents. During the whole reign of Akber he was employed in the most important commands, and the relation in which he stood to the imperial family was drawn closer by the marriage of his daughter Jana Begum to Daniâl the Emperor's son. His influence continued under the Emperor Jehânger his former pupil, and he was selected for the chief direction of affairs wherever great talents were required, in the wide range of country from the Dekhan§ to Kandahar, to which last place he was sent with Sultan Khurram, afterwards the Emperor Shah Jehân, to repel the invasion of Shah Abbâs the Persian King. The history of his life would be a history of the public affairs of the empire of Delhi during half a century. He died at Delhi in the year 1626 or 1627, at the age of seventy-two, with the highest reputation for talents, valour, generosity, and learning.||

*In the western part of the Peninsula of Guzerat.

+ Khan of Khans, the title of one of the chief officers of the empire of Delhi.

Kambâit.

§ It was during one of his battles in the Dekhan when his troops were broken, that some of his officers came to ask what was to be their rallying place in case of defeat, and where they were to look for him. His answer was,. under the slain! He gained a bloody victory. Maasir-ul-Omra MS. as above. These details are chiefly taken from the Maaser-al-Omra, and from Ferishta.