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PREFACE

THE Memoirs of the Emperor Baber, of which the following pages contain a translation, are well known, by reputation, to such as are conversant with the history of India. They were written by that prince in the Jaghatâi or Chaghatâi Tûrki, which was his native language, and which, even down to the present time, is supposed to be spoken with more purity in his paternal kingdom of Ferghâna than in any other country. It is the dialect of the Tûrki tongue which prevails in the extensive tract of country that formed the dominions of Jaghatâi or Chaghatâi Khan, the son of Chengîz Khan, the celebrated conqueror, which extended from the Ulugh-Tagh mountains on the north to the Hindu-Kush mountains on the south, and from the Caspian sea on the west to the deserts of Cobi, beyond Terfân, Kâshghar, and Yârkend, on the east. It was, however, chiefly the language of the deserts and plains, as the cities, especially along the Jaxartes, and to the south of that river, continued to be, in general, inhabited by persons speaking the Persian tongue, while the inhabitants of most of the hills to the south retained their original languages.

The Jaghatâi Tûrki was a dialect of the language of that extensive division of the Tartaric nations, which, in order to distinguish them from the Monguls, or Moghuls, have recently, though perhaps erroneously, been more peculiarly denominated Tartars or Tatars. The language really spoken by that great race is the Tûrki; and the language of Kâshghar, of the Crimea, of Samarkand and Bokhâra, of Constantinople, and the greater part of Turkey, of the principal wandering tribes of Persia, and, indeed, of one half of the population of that country, of the Turkomans of Asia Minor, as well as of those east of the Euxine, of the Uzbeks, the Kirghis, the Kaizâks, the Bâshkirs, and numerous other tribes of Tartary, is radically the same as that of the Jaghatâi Tûrks. The most mixed, and, if we may use the expression, the most corrupted of all the dialects of the Tûrki, is that of the Constantinopolitan Turks, which, however, for some centuries, has been the most cultivated and polished. The others all still very closely approximate, and the different tribes speaking them can easily understand and converse with each other.

*

The Tûrki language had been much cultivated before the age of Baber, and at that

* In order to discriminate the Constantinopolitan or Osmanli Turks from the Jaghatâi and other original Turks, I shall in the following pages denominate the former Turks, and their language Turkish ; the latter Tûrks and their language Turki, pronounced Toorks and Toorki.

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PREFACE.

period had every title to be ranked among the most perfect and refined in the East. The sovereigns of the different Turkoman and Târki dynasties to the south of the Caucasian range, the Caspian sea, and the river Sirr, (the ancient Jaxartes,) though many of them had been distinguished encouragers of Arabic literature in the kingdoms which they had conquered, and though several of the earliest and most eminent of the Persian writers flourished in their courts, had still continued to speak their native tongue in their families and with the men of their tribe. When Sir William Jones decided that the Memoirs ascribed to Taimur could not be "written by Taimur him"self, at least as Cæsar wrote his Commentaries, for one very plain reason, that no “Tartarian king of his age could write at all," he probably judged very correctly as to Taimur, who seems to have been unlettered, though, as to the other princes of Tartarian descent, his contemporaries, he perhaps did not sufficiently consider that two centuries had elapsed since the conquest of Chengiz Khan, and two more since the reign of Mahmûd of Ghazni, during all which time the territories to the east of the Caspian, as well as a great part of Persia, had been subject to Tûrki dynasties, and the country traversed by tribes of Tûrki race and speech; and that this period was far from being one of the darkest in the literary history of Persia. The want of a suitable alphabet, which he gives as a reason for doubting whether the language was a written one before the days of Chengiz Khan,† was soon remedied. The Arabic character is now used, as it was at least as early as the thirteenth century, the age of Haitho. The fact only proves that the Tûrki language was, as Sir William Jones justly concluded, very little cultivated before the Tûrki tribes entered those provinces which had formed part of the immense empire of the Arabian Khalifs, in which the Arabian literature still prevailed, and the Arabian character was still used..

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I may be permitted to add, that there seems to have been some mistake or confusion in the account given to Sir William Jones of the Tüzük, or Institutes of Taimur. “It is true,” says he, "that a very ingenious but indigent native, whom Davy supported, has given me a written memorial on the subject, in which he " mentions Taimur as the author of two works in Turkish; but the credit of his “information is overset by a strange apocryphal story of a King of Yemen, who in"vaded, he says, the Emir's dominions, and in whose library the manuscript was "afterwards found, and translated by order of Alishir, first minister of Taimur's "grandson." || He tells us in the same discourse, that he had "long searched "in vain for the original works ascribed to Taimur and Baber." It is much to be regretted that his search was unsuccessful, as, from his varied knowledge of Eastern languages, he would have given us more ample and correct views than we yet possess of the Tûrki class of languages, with the Constantinopolitan dialect of which he was well acquainted. The preface to the only copy of the complete Memoirs of Tai

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Haitho observes that the Joyour, literas habent proprias, (Hist. Orientalis, c. 2, ed 1671.) The inhabitants of Turquestan, he says, vocantur Turchae, literas non habent proprias, sed utuntur Arabicis in civitatibus, sive castris. Ib. c. 3. See also Hist. Orient. c. 3, ap. Bergeron, p. 7. § lb. p. 60.

Jones's Works, vol. I. p. 59

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mur which I have met with in Persian, and which is at present in my possession,* gives an account of the work, and of the translation from the original Tûrki into the Persian tongue; but does not describe the original as having been found in the library of a King of Yemen, but of Jaaffer, the Turkish Pasha of Yemen. Now, Sir Henry Middleton, in the year 1610, met with a Jaffer Basha, a Turk, in the government of Senna,† or Yemen. It is curious, too, that we are told by the author of the Tarikh Dilkusha, that a copy of the Memoirs, kept in Taimur's family with great care and reverence, fell into the hands of the Sultan of Constantinople, who suffered copies of it to be made. Some confused recollection of these facts seems to have been working in the mind of Sir William Jones's informant, and to have produced the mistatements of his memorial. The mistake of a copyist writing Padshah (king) for Pasha, might have produced part of the error.

The Tûzûk, or Memoirs themselves, contain the history of Tamerlane, in the form of annals, and conclude with the Institutes, which have been translated by Major Davy and Dr Joseph White. The Persian translation, in the manuscript to which I have alluded, differs considerably in style from the one published by the learned professor, which is an additional proof that there was a Tûrki original of some kind, from which both translations were made; a fact confirmed by the number of Tûrki words which are scattered over both translations; in which respect the Persian translation of Baber's Memoirs strongly resembles them. Whether these Memoirs of Taimur are the annals written by Tamerlane, or under his inspection in the manner described by Sherif-ed-din Ali Yezdi in his preface,‡ I have not examined the manuscript with sufficient care to venture to affirm or deny. They contain, in the earlier part of Taimur's life, several little anecdotes, which have much the air of autobiography; while throughout there are many passages in a more rhetorical style than we should expect from that rough and vigorous conqueror; but that they are a work translated from the Tûrki, the same that has long passed in the East as being the production of Tamerlane, which Dr White, in his preface, regrets could no longer be found, and for which Sir William Jones sought in vain, there seems no reason to doubt. I confess that the hypothesis of the Nawâb Mozaffer Jeng appears to me the most probable, that they were written, not by the Emperor, but by Hindu Shah, Taimur's favourite, under the

* It belongs to my respectable friend, Muhammed Ali Khan, Shusteri. + Astley's Collection of Voyages, vol. I, p. 362.

That author tells us that Taimur had always with him Tartar and Persian secretaries, whose business it was to describe all his remarkable words and actions, and whatever related to religion or the state; and as many officers and great lords of the Court had got accounts made of particular events of which they were eye-witnesses, or of which they had had the principal direction, he made all these be collected, "et eut la patience de les arranger lui-même, apres quoi il les fit verifier en sa presence de la maniere suivante. Un lecteur lisoit un de ces memoires : et lorsqu'il en etoit sur quelque fait important, ou quelque action remarquable, il s'arrêtoit, les temoins oculaires faisoient leur rapport, et verifioient les circonstances du fait, les rapportant telles qu'ils les avoient vues; alors l'Empereur examinoit lui-même la verité du fait, et ayant bien confronté ce que les temoins rapportoient avec le contenu des memoires, il dictoit aux secretaires la maniere dont ils devoient l'inserer dans le corps de l'ouvrage, et se le faisoit relire ensuite, pour voir s'il étoit tel qu'on ne pût y rien trouver, ni à ajouter, ni a diminuer."-Hist. de TimurBec, traduite par M. Petis de la Croix, preface de l'Auteur.

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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 Turki verse has long been unanimously assigned to Ali Shir Beg Nawai, 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 Turki language were long much read and admired in Mâweralnaher and Khorasan, 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 Turki 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 Bokhara, though chiefly inhabited by men of Tûrki extraction, Persian is the language of business. Though the present royal family of Persia are Turks, and though the

Sir William Jones's Works, vol. I, p. 69. Major Davy was quite wrong in confounding the Türki and Moghul tongues, (see Davy's letter, p. xxviii of White's Institutes of Timour.) A Jaghatai Turk 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 Turki, are about to be published by M. Quatremere, from whose learning much may be expected on this novel and curious subject.

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