Bokhara has always been the home of learning.  Herat was at that time the most magnificent and refined city of the world[4].  The court was splendid, polite, intelligent, and liberal.  Poetry, history, philosophy, science, and the arts of painting and music were cultivated by noblemen and scholars alike.  Baber himself was a poet of no mean rank.  The religion was that of Islam, and the sect the orthodox Sunni; but the practice was less precise than in Arabia.  Wine was drunk; poetry was prized; artists were encouraged.  The mother-language of Baber was Turki (of which the Turkish of Constantinople is a dialect).  Arabic was the language of science and of theology.  Persian was the accepted literary language, though Baber’s verses are in Turki as well.

[Footnote 4:  Baber spent twenty days in visiting its various palaces, towers, mosques, gardens, colleges—­and gives a list of more than fifty such sights.]

We possess Baber’s ‘Memoirs’ in the original Turki and in Persian translations also.  In what follows, the extracts will be taken from Erskine’s translation[5], which preserves their direct and manly charm.

[Footnote 5:  ’Memoirs of Baber, Emperor of Hindustan, written by himself, and translated by Leyden and Erskine,’ etc.  London, 1826, quarto.]

To understand them, the foregoing slight introduction is necessary.  A connected sketch of Baber’s life and a brief history of his conquests can be found in ‘The Mogul Emperors of Hindustan[6].’  We are here more especially concerned with his literary work.  To comprehend it, something of his history and surroundings must be known.

[Footnote 6:  By Edward S. Holden, New York, 1895, 8vo, illustrated.]

FROM BABER’S ‘MEMOIRS’

In the month, of Ramzan, in the year 899 [A.  D. 1494], and in the twelfth year of my age, I became King of Ferghana.

The country of Ferghana is situated in the fifth climate, on the extreme boundary of the habitable world.  On the east it has Kashgar; on the west, Samarkand; on the south, the hill country; on the north, in former times there were cities, yet at the present time, in consequence of the incursions of the Usbeks, no population remains.  Ferghana is a country of small extent, abounding in grain and fruits.  The revenues may suffice, without oppressing the country, to maintain three or four thousand troops.

My father, Omer Sheikh Mirza, was of low stature, had a short, bushy beard, brownish hair, and was very corpulent.  As for his opinions and habits, he was of the sect of Hanifah, and strict in his belief.  He never neglected the five regular and stated prayers.  He read elegantly, and he was particularly fond of reading the ‘Shahnameh[7].’  Though he had a turn for poetry, he did not cultivate it.  He was so strictly just, that when the caravan from [China] had once reached the hill country to the east of Ardejan, and the snow fell so deep as to bury it,