1919. ] Letter from the Emperor Babur. 331 
1526. Kamran was set to work by his father on the cave of 
Qandahar in 928 A.H., and I think he stayed there several 
years. But Babur’s letter shows that Kamran was not always 
there. He had just returned to Qandahar from some expedition 
when Babur wrote to him. It may have been on one of these 
expeditions that he was defeated by the Rajputs, if their 
chronicles are correct. He was in Balkh, or was going there in 
935 A.H. See Haid. MS., pp. 348 and 350, and the translation 
thereof, pp. 625-626. Tt was, , perhaps, in 953 A.H. that he 
made over Qandahar to ‘Askari 
Apparently, the construction of the vault in cave, at 
Qandahar, occupied five years, namely, from 928 to 933 A.H. 
Note. 
s I have stated, only one, volume of Klaproth’s Archiv 
ars. There is a copy of the Archiv in our Society’s Library, 
it having been presented in 1815 by the Emperor of Russia, 
in the original Turki or Chaghatai is due to an Englishman, 
viz. the brilliant Jewish scholar Arthur Lumley Davids. He 
was born in Hampshire in 1811, and died of cholera in 1832. 
A few weeks before his death, he published a Turkish Grammar 
accompanied with extracts in Turkish and ve tsaame tai, and 
among the latter was Babur’s description of the city of Samar- 
kand which occurs under the year 903 (1497-98) of his Memoirs. 
Four years after her son’s death, his mother published a 
French translation of his wor rk, and this is the only edition 
that I have seen. The extract occurs at p. 188 and is taken 
from an MS. then belonging to the East India Goarplats but 
which had rhea belonged to the poet Leyden, and so is 
catalogued as part of the Bibliotheca Leydeniana. It is not 
‘ ) 
not Leyden’s has anything to do with the Elphinstone copy of 
the Memoirs which there is good reason to believe that Leyden 
never saw. Elphinstone thought he had lent his copy to Ley- 
den and that it had gone to Java, but apparently it had never 
left his own shelves at Poonah. 
TRANSLATION, FROM THE TURKI, OF THE ms LETTER 
SENT vice Inpra BY Kine BABour THE GuHAzi, R.I.P., 
O HIS SON MIrzA KAMRAN AT sfionrea 
vay dear, honoured and auspicious son Mirza Kamran 
Bahadur. After sending you my love, I desire in the first 
