Something must now be set down about Bābar's third adult son, who was a younger full-brother of Kāmrān and is known in history by his sobriquet of 'Askarī, which indicates a camp as his birthplace. Neither his birth nor Kāmrān's is mentioned in the Memoirs, as we now have them,—an omission which other sources allow to be explained by their falling in one of the gaps of the book. 'Askarī was born in 1516 (922H.), and during a period of storm and of camp life. His name first occurs in the Memoirs as having presents sent to him after the battle of Pānīpat, when he is classed with Hindāl, as suited their ages of nine and seven, and they received various gifts, and not, like their two seniors, sums of money. In 1528 he was in Multān, but there is no entry of an appointment, perhaps because it would fall in the gap which extends from April 2nd to September 18th. On the latter day he was received, in home fashion, by his father in his private apartments at Āgra, and then, having spent till December 2nd with him, he was furnished with munitions of' war for a campaign in the eastern districts. Special injunctions were given to the officers to consult with him as to the conduct of affairs. The interest of these details is their relation to the boy of twelve. Few years were needed in those days to support military command. Humāyūn had gone to Badakhshān at eleven; Bābar had been a fighting king at twelve. Boy chiefs were common when fathers were so apt to die by violent means; so were baby figure-heads of armies such as that few-monthed Persian baby who (like an angel's semblance on an ancient battleship) led his father's army for Humāyūn's help in 1544.
On December 12th other signs of dignity were bestowed on the boy 'Askarī: not only a jewelled dagger, a belt, and royal dress of honour, but the insignia of high command, the standard, horse-tail, and kettle-drums; excellent horses, ten elephants, mules and camels, the equipage of a royal camp, and leave to hold a princely court and sit at the head of a hall of state. The small boy's mind is clear to us about the horses, for where is the child of twelve whom they would not delight? But what was in it about the elephants? and how did he look when he inspected their bulky line?
He bade farewell to his father on the 21st,—the Emperor being in his bath, a statement which exhales the East,—and after this, though there are many details of his campaigning, nothing of living interest is set down in the Memoirs about him. In the future he was Kāmrān's shadow, and displayed a loyalty to mother-blood which was natural under the difficulty of being loyal to Humāyūn, but which made him a Tīmūrid foe to his house, who initiated nothing and walked always in the bad path marked out for him by the ‘worthy and correct’ Kāmrān.
Coming back from this excursion into the future, to the simple topic of Bābar's presents to his children, there can be mentioned a set which is quite delightful in its careful choice and appropriateness. It was sent to Kābul in 1528 for Hindāl, and consisted of a jewelled inkstand, a stool inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a short robe of Bābar's own, and an alphabet. What could be better for the royal schoolboy of ten?
In 1528 an order was issued which brought about an event of extreme importance to the ladies in Kābul,— namely, that they should migrate to Hindūstān. There was delay in the execution of the royal command; and having regard to the number of ladies, the difference of opinion as to the advisability of going at all, discussion as to the details of the journey, and also remembering that (as the facts about the migration come out in the Memoirs,) there would be many who thought their family interest might be better served by remaining in Kābul, it is not remarkable that there was delay in starting the cavalcade.
The migration was amply dictated to many of the party by Bābar's wish to see his own people again; but it is clear that the enforced levée en masse of the ladies was a result of considerations of policy and peace. The city was full of women who, by birth or marriage, were attached to various branches of the Tīmūrids, and there was conflict of aims and palpable friction. It may well be that Kāmrān's government provoked unrest, because he was the son of a mother of less birth than were very many of the resident begams of Kābul.
The Emperor was put in full possession of the state of affairs by a letter from Khwāja Kilān which reached him in camp on February 6th, 1528, and which was brought by a servant who, in addition to the written words, gave him all the news of Kābul by word of mouth. Bābar replied to the khwāja on February 11th by that letter which those who know the time and writer rank amongst the truly interesting epistles of the world. The tenor of the khwāja's own is clear from it, and in part reply the Emperor writes:
You take notice of the unsettled state of Kābul. I have considered the matter very attentively and with the best of my judgment, and have made up my mind that in a country where there are seven or eight chiefs, nothing regular or settled is to be looked for. I have therefore sent for my sisters and the ladies of my family into Hindūstān, and, having resolved on making Kābul and all the neighbouring countries and districts part of the imperial domain, I have written fully on the subject to Humāvun and Kāmrān… Immediately on receiving this letter you will, without loss of time, attend my sisters and the ladies of my family as far as the Nīl-āb (Indus); so that, whatever impediments there may be to their leaving Kābul, they must, at all events, start out within a week after this arrives; for as a detachment has left Hindūstān and is waiting for them, any delay will expose it to difficulty, and the country, too, will suffer.’
Who were these seven or eight chiefs in Kābul? Not men! The fighting chiefs were almost all in India; even Mahdī had rejoined the army before the date of this letter. Bābar's word ‘sisters’ is a guiding light, and it does not altogether exclude the influence of the men who, though in Hindūstān, were in touch with Kābul and its friction and intrigues. First of sisters was Khānzāda, who had certainly a holding for her support; and who had influence of birth and personal, as having sacrificed herself in her earlier marriage to secure Bābar's safety. She was now the wife of a man, Mahdī Khwāja, who, if the story told of him by the author of the abaqāt is true even in gist, was such as to suggest him as a possible successor of Bābar to the powerful and sensible Khalīfa. There was, since her husband was with Bābar and all great ladies had been left in Kābul, Shahr-bānū, Khānzāda's half-sister, wife of Khalīfa's brother, Junaid Barlās, and mother of a son. There was also, it is probable, another of 'Umar Shaikh's daughters, Yādgār.*
Besides Bābar's sisters de facto, there were others of courtesy. Such was Sulaimān's mother, whose anxieties for his future were, however, about to find happy end by his reinstatement in 1530 in his hereditary government of Badakhshān. There were the families of three men of Tīmūrid birth, grandsons of Sulān Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāyqrā, all of whom were in India, and all of whom were men of high pretension. They were,—Muḥammad Sulān Mīrzā, the arch-rebel of the future; Qāsim Ḥusain Sulān Mīrzā, son of an Uzbeg father; and Muḥammad-zāman Mīrzā, son of Ḥusain's son, Badī'u-z-zāman. There were in Kābul the people of Yādgār-nāṣir also, Bābar's half-nephew. These instances will suffice to show the reality of the elements of unrest which conflicting family interests and jealousies might and did foment in Kābul; they do not include the many others furnished by Bābar's personal circle, and by his numerous and influential aunts.
Two Tīmūrid ladies, Fakhr-jahān and Khadīja, both paternal aunts of the Emperor, had gone to Hindūstān so early as November, 1527. With whom they went or why they went is not recorded. The first was the wife of a Tīrmīzī sayyid, member of a religious family with which royal alliance was frequent, and she would find relations of her husband in the army. The second, Khadīja, has no man mentioned as her husband, an omission by Bābar and Gul-badan which surprises, and which the chance word of another writer may easily fill up. Perhaps these aunts joined their nephew in response to his invitation of April, 1526, that kinsfolk and friends would come and see prosperity with him. They brought their children, and were met outside the city by Bābar on November 23rd, and by him conducted in a lucky hour to their assigned palace* in Āgra.