On the 12th of the same month, her Highness my mother, Dil-dār Begam, and Gul-chihra Begam, and this lowly person paid our duty to the Emperor. For five years we had been shut out and cut off from this pleasure, so now when we were freed from the moil and pain of separation, we were lifted up by our happiness in meeting this Lord of beneficence again. Merely to look at him eased the sorrow-stricken heart and purged the blear-eyed vision. (65b) Again and again we joyfully made the prostration of thanks. There were many festive gatherings, and people sat from evening to dawn, and players and singers made continuous music. Many amusing games, full of fun, were played. Amongst them was this: Twelve players had each twenty cards and twenty shāhrukhīs. Whoever lost, lost those twenty shāhrukhīs, which would make five miqāls.* Each player gave the winner his twenty shāhrukhīs to add to his own.*
To widows and orphans, and kinsfolk of men who had been wounded and killed at Chausa and Kanauj, or Bhakkar, or who were in the royal service during those intermissions,* he gave pension, and rations, and water, and land, and servants. In the days of his Majesty's good fortune, great tranquillity and happiness befell soldiers and peasants. They lived without care, and put up many an ardent prayer for his long life. (66a)
A few days later he sent persons to bring Ḥamīda-bānū Begam from Qandahār. When she arrived, they celebrated the feast of the circumcision of the Emperor Jalālu-d-dīn Muḥammad Akbar. Preparations were made, and after the New Year* they kept splendid festivity for seventeen days. People dressed in green,* and thirty or forty girls were ordered to wear green and come out to the hills. On the first day of the New Year they went out to the Hill of the Seven Brothers and there passed many days in ease and enjoyment and happiness. The Emperor Muḥammad Akbar was five years old when they made the circumcision feast in Kābul. They gave it in that same large Audience Hall Garden.* They decorated all the bāzārs. Mīrzā Hindāl and Mīrzā Yādgār-nāṣir, and the sulāns and amīrs, decorated their quarters beautifully, and in Bega Begam's garden the begams and ladies made theirs quite wonderful in a new fashion.
All the sulāns and amīrs brought gifts to the Audience
Hall Garden. (66b) There were many elegant festivities
and grand entertainments, and costly khi'lats and head-to-
Then the Emperor went to Fort Victory (Qila'-i-afar).* In it was Mīrzā Sulaimān, who came out to fight but could not stand face to face with his Majesty and so decided to run away. The Emperor then entered the fort safe and sound. Then he went to Kishm, where, after a little while, an illness attacked his blessed frame and he slept day and night.* When he came to his senses, he sent Mun'im Khān's brother, Faẓā'il Beg, to Kābul, and said: ‘Go! comfort and reassure the people of Kābul. Set them at ease in various ways.* Let them not quarrel. Say: “It began ill, but has ended well.”’ (67a)
When Faẓā'il Beg had gone, he (Humāyūn) went one day nearer Kābul.*
False news having been sent to Mīrzā Kāmrān in Bhakkar, he set out post-haste for Kābul. In Ghaznī he killed Zāhid Beg* and then came on. It was morning; the Kābulīs were off their guard; the gates had been opened in the old way, and water-carriers and grass-cuts were going in and out, and the mīrzā passed into the fort with all these common people. He at once killed Uncle Muḥammad Alī* who was in the hot bath. He alighted at the college of Mullā 'Abdu-l-khāliq.
When the Emperor was starting for Qila'-i-afar, he placed Naukār* at the door of the ḥaram. Mīrzā Kāmrān must have asked: ‘Who is in the Bālā-i-ḥiṣār?’ and someone must have said: ‘It is Naukār.’ Naukār heard of this and at once put on a woman's dress and went out. The mīrzā's people laid hands on the doorkeeper of the fort, and took him to Mīrzā Kāmrān, who ordered him to be imprisoned. (67b) The mīrzā's people went into the Bālā-i-ḥiṣār, and plundered and destroyed innumerable things belonging to the ḥaram, and they made settlement* for them in Mīrzā Kāmrān's court (sarkār). He put the great begams into Mīrzā 'Askarī's house and there he shut up a room with bricks and plaster and (?) dung-cakes, and they used to give the ladies water and food from over the four walls.*
In what was once Mīrzā Yādgār-nāṣir's house he put Khwāja Mu'aam* and ordered his own wives and family to stay in the palace where the royal ḥaram and the begams once lived. He behaved very ill indeed to the wives and families of the officers who had left him for the Emperor, ransacking and plundering all their houses and putting each family into somebody's custody.*
When the Emperor heard that Mīrzā Kāmrān had come from Bhakkar and was acting in this way, he returned from Qila'-i-afar and Andar-āb safe and sound to Kābul. Qila'-i-afar he gave to Mīrzā Sulaimān. (68a)
When he came near to Kābul, Mīrzā Kāmrān sent for her Highness my mother and for me from the house,* and gave my mother orders to reside in the armourer's house. To me he said: ‘This is your house as well as mine. You stay here.’ ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘should I stay here? I will stay with my mother.’ He then went on: ‘Moreover, write to Khiẓr Khwāja Khān and tell him to come and join me and to keep an easy mind, for just as Mīrzā 'Askarī and Mīrzā Hindāl are my brothers, so is he. Now is the time to help.’ I answered: ‘Khiẓr Khwāja Khān has no way of recognising a letter* from me. I have never written to him myself. He writes to me when he is away, by the tongue of his sons. Write yourself what is in your mind.’ At last he sent Mahdī Sulān* and Shīr 'Alī to fetch the khān. From the first I had said to the khān: ‘Your brothers may be with Mīrzā Kāmrān, (but) God forbid that you should have the thought of going to him and joining them. (68b) Beware, a thousand times beware of thinking of separating yourself from the Emperor.’ Praise be to God! the khān kept to what I said.
When the Emperor heard that Mīrzā Kāmrān had sent Mahdī Sulān* and Shīr 'Alī to fetch Khiẓr Khwāja Khān, he himself despatched Qambar Beg, the son of Mīrzā Ḥājī, to the khān, who was then in his own jāgīr, and said: ‘Beware, a thousand times beware! Let there be no joining Mīrzā Kāmrān. Come and wait on me.’ The result of this auspicious message was that the khān set out at once for court, and came to the 'Uqābain (Hill of the two eagles) and paid his respects.
When the Emperor passed Minār Hill, Mīrzā Kāmrān sent forward all his well-ordered soldiers under Shīr Afkan,* the father of Shīroya, so that they might go out and fight. We saw from above* how he went out with his drums beating, out beyond Bābā Dashtī, and we said, ‘God forbid you should fight,’ and we wept. (69a) When he reached the Afghāns' village (Dih-i-Afghānān), the two vanguards came face to face. The royal advance-guard at once drove off the mīrzā's* and, having taken many prisoners, brought them to the Emperor. He ordered the Mughals to be cut to pieces.* Many of the mīrzā's men who had gone out to fight were captured and some of them were killed and some were kept prisoners. Amongst them was Jūkī Khān, one of Mīrzā Kāmrān's amīrs.