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But in less than a hundred days, most of his shifty Mongol troops, disappointed in not finding as much booty as they expected, deserted and joined a party of his enemies, who straightway attacked Andijan, the capital of Farghana, where Babar had left his mother and grandmother.
'When all hopes from medicine were over, and whilst several men of skill were talking to the Emperor of the melancholy situation of his son, Abul Báká, a personage highly venerated for his knowledge and piety, remarked to Bábar that in such a case the Almighty had sometimes vouchsafed to receive the most valuable thing possessed by one friend, as an offering in exchange for the life of another.
During the spring of that year, 1507, Shaibání Khán, the Uzbek chief, who had formerly driven Bábar from Samarkand, had attacked and taken Balkh; then invaded Khorásán and occupied Herát.
Kandahár, which had been to a certain extent a dependency of the rulers of Herát, had been seized by the sons of Mír Zulnun Beg, who had been its Governor under Sultán Husen Mirzá, and these had invoked the assistance of Bábar against Shaibání. Bábar, accordingly, marched for Kandahár. On his way thither, he was joined by many of the flying adherents of the expelled House of Sultán Husen.
His grandfather, Bábar, had conquered a great portion of India, but during the five years which elapsed between the conquest and his death, Bábar enjoyed but few opportunities of donning the robe of the administrator. By the rivals whom he had overthrown and by the children of the soil, Bábar was alike regarded as a conqueror, and as nothing more.
Like Babar, he was fond of horticulture, and imported many kinds of fruit trees and flowers into India. Though he could neither read nor write, he had a great library of Hindi, Persian, Arabic, Greek, and other books, and Abul Fazl relates that every book was read through to him from beginning to end.
His son, Humáyún, was not qualified by nature to perform the task which Bábar had been obliged to neglect. His character, flighty and unstable, and his abilities, wanting in the constructive faculty, alike unfitted him for the duty. He ruled eight years in India without contributing a single stone to the foundation of an empire that was to remain.
Allah-u-dín Lodí, to whom the district of Dipálpúr had been consigned, fled in despair to Kábul, hoping that Bábar would himself undertake the invasion of India. At the moment Bábar could not comply, for the Uzbeks were laying siege to Balkh. However he supplied Allah-u-dín with troops and ordered his generals in the Punjab to support him.
Winter was now coming on, and Bábar was persuaded, against his better judgment, to visit his two hosts at Herát. His description of that royal city takes up pages of his autobiography. For twenty days he visited every day fresh places; nor was it till the 24th of December that he decided to march homewards.
The lack of light was, however, terrible until Old Faithful, whose experience with Babar the brave made him full of expedients, hit on the plan of setting Tumbu to work to dig out a hole through the drift, for they had nothing with them to use as a spade.
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