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Art. XIX.—Note on the Panjmana Inscription sent by Mr. Ney Elias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The inscription is an interesting one, and well deserves publication in our Journal. It records a march by Shaibānī to the Kirghiz Steppe, and a victory which he gained over the inhabitants at Kindilik in the Ulugh Tāgh country. He began his march from Merv-Shāhijān on 2 Shawwāl, 915 (13 January, 1510), and returned after four months and twenty days on 22 Safar, 916 (1 June, 1510). Mr. Elias considers that the inscription is false and that the so-called victory was a defeat, and he quotes in support of this view the Ḥabīb-as-Siyar and the Tārīkh-i-Rashīdī. But surely a contemporary inscription is better authority than two books—one by a compiler and the other by an enemy—and, moreover, the latter are not, I think, absolutely contradictory of the inscription. Shaibānī was apparently at first successful over the people of the Dasht-i-Kipchāk, though he, or at least his son, was eventually defeated by them, and I take the inscription to refer to the initial victory. That some such victory did occur, seems to be admitted by Haidar Mirza. At p. 230 (Ross's translation) we read: “In the middle of the winter, Shāhi Beg Khan was engaged in plundering on every side, but he soon returned, his object being not to remain too far from his own country.” I think this must be the expedition commemorated in the inscription. That began in the middle of winter (13 January, 1510), and was characterized by wondrous rapidity of movement, as the inscription tells us.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1896

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References

page 783 note 1 The passage may be seen in two MSS. in the British Museum, Add. 17,925, p. 463b, and Add. 1(5,679, p. 366b; also in the Teheran lithograph of 1271 A.H., vol. iii, p. 316, near top, and in lithograph of Rauẕat-as-Safa, vol. vii, p. 96.

page 783 note 2 Erskine gives 2 December as the date.—“History,” i, 306. See also Tārīkh-i-Rashīdī, p. 226.

page 784 note 1 While on the subject of readings, I may note that the number of Shaibāni's soldiers given at p. 230 of Ross's translation as 20,000 is 200,000 in all the MSS., and has been so stated by Erskine. The expedition, then, was on a very large scale.