
Fee 
Vol. IV, No. 2. | The Babarnama Fragments. 41 
[N.8.] 
Another question remains, namely, where did Abi-1-Fazl get 
his a or about Babar’s last years and about his officers an 
the f his court? Some of it he got from the Tarikh 
Rashidi mae from Gulbadan Begam’s Memoirs, but there are other 
statements, the source of which does not appear. Abf-l-Fazl was 
writing nearly seventy years after Babar’s death, and it is not 
likely that he got such facts as the merits of Turki poets from 
oral tradition, or his own investigations, Like most other Orien- 
tal writers he borrows, whenever be can, and generally without 
acknowledgment. I am inclined to think that somebody —per- 
haps Babar’s secretary, Shaikh Zain—carried Babar’s memoirs 
down to his death, writing them in Persian, rh that Aba-l-Fazl, 
who probably did not know Tarki, copied therefrom, Some 
support to this view is given by Ab@-l-Fazi’s statement that Babar 
wrote his memoirs down to the time of his departure from this 
world, ‘This may be mere rhetoric, but if may also contain a 
real tact, and may refer to that part of the Fragments which is 
written in the first person. 
