After stumbling upon this fully scanned book via Twitter, I could not help but believe that somehow it would be worthwhile to (attempt to) translate its foreword, which was written in mid-19th Century Russian, into English. Here follows the final version of my translation, which was done in a more visceral, less analytical fashion (that is to say, the translation is rather loose, but hopefully reasonably well done. Further below you may also find a rather good free resource to start learning the original language in which the Bāburnāme was authored, namely Chagatai.

The personality and feats of Ẓahīr-ud-dīn Muḥammad Bābur, the author of the book concerned, as well as the importance of this book, are vividly described in the scholarly article in the Ėncikopedičeskij Leksikon: (Lemma) Baberidy (Ėncikopedičeskij Leksikon, Volume 4)1 Bābur’s reminiscences themselves have been rendered in the English translation “Memoirs of Baber etc.” 1826. It only remains for me to discuss this very edition of the Chagatai text Bāburnāme.2

With this edition I intend to provide a means to study the Chagatai dialect and the Turkish language in general.

The Chagatai variety, which is related to the large family of the northern Turkic or Tatar dialiects, belongs to the countries where, during the reign of Timur and his enlightened descendants, the sciences and poetry flourished. Although Arabic was the exclusive vehicle of scholarship in Transoxania, as it was in other Muslim states, and the local poets had a strong liking for expressing themselves in the language of Saʿdī and Ḥāfeẓ, the local vernacular did not remain in oblivion. The most extensive and remarkable monuments in Chagatai remain the works of Rubghuzi, Mīr ʿAlī-Şīr and Bābur, which are all from the 9th to the 10th centuries AH. In these works the influence of the other languages is highly conspicuous; but it consists of several Arabic and Persian words and expressions, and is also shown rather often in the combination with sentences in between modelled after the Persian language, whereas the composition of the individual sentences altogether is in the Tatar language.3 One can furthermore believe that Arabic and Persian had already entered the colloquial language of the highly educated class of the Transoxanians to such a degree. One should certainly not suppose that there would be contaminations from other Turkic dialects in the aforementioned works. Bābur remarked that the vernacular in Andijan was similar to the written language, because the writings of Mīr ʿAlī-Şīr, even though they had seen the light in Herat, were written in the language of Andijan (Bāburnāme, 3.) Bābur, who wrote without any pretense of literary extravaganza and had the style of Mīr ʿAlī-Şīr’s works in mind, kept in his writings without doubt true to the language of his native Andijan in a pure form as much as possible. Hence, the works mentioned by us cannot but provide great ways to acquire knowledge on the Chagatai dialect in its heydays. The Bāburnāme, however, occupies the most honourable place of all of them: By expounding the own impressions of its author, which he himself had experienced fully and thoroughly,4 the Bāburnāme showcases the naturalness, accuracy, and complete flexibility of the language.

The Chagatai dialect can serve, if not as the fundament, then at least as an important means of researching other northern dialects and of drawing conclusions about the essence of the original Turkic language in its primordial form. It was used in localities near the cradle of the Turkic ethnos; the nomadic life, which had brought about the first movements of Turkic thought and the first sounds of Turkic speech, were not unfamiliar and incomprehensible for the townsmen of Transoxania, since they had continuous dealings with nomadic peoples. The previous religion was abandoned and scholarship brought with it new terms and words; there were more conditions present, however, to preserve the primordial Turkic language than in any other contemporary Tatar dialect. For this reason once can most certainly search in the works of Rubghuzi, Mīr ʿAlī-Şīr and Bābur for authentic traits of the primordial Turkic language, more so than in any currently used dialect that is accessible to us. Indeed, the sounds of the Chagatai language, as far as can be judged from their written renditions,5 preserved the gutturality6 and solidity of old; the words in Chagatai form an obvious connection with corresponding words in the contemporary Turkic dialects, which have diverged from their own original forms according to the various sound change laws; the forms of the verb in the Chagatai language is more copious, more diverse, and more comprehensive in meaning, and show the origins of forms in the contemporary Turkic dialects, where these forms have undergone changes and have not rarely remained only as particles.

In order for them to be used as an unobjectionable fundament for the study of the Chagatai dialect, the aforementioned literary monuments must be published accurately on the basis of good manuscripts which had been put on paper by experienced, autochthonous scribes very close chronologically to the lives of the respective authors. Unfortunately, the Chagatai text of Bāburnāme have now fallen into oblivion in the very area Bābur’s exploits had taken place: Partly because of the Persian translation of this work, and partly because of the overall cold indifference among Muslims towards secular historical works. The only Vorlage my edition is based on is a manuscript which belongs to the library of the Educational Department of Eastern languages of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was written by Professor Kehr7 in 1737. It is an enormous folio consisting of 837 sheets, which is including the white sheets glued into the book for the translation into Latin that make up more than half of the volume; the Chagatai text has been copied in a large, clear hand, and with infrequent, short, here and there strewn about lines. Kehr did not make any comments on the manuscript, from which he copied apart from the following: It encompassed 420 sheets; at the end of that writing there were words in Arabic: The writings on the original manuscript would indicate that it, in all probability, had been finished in the year 1126 AD. We can furthermore assume, based on the orthographical conventions and the little signs, which Kehr attempted to faithfully render in his copy, that the Vorlage had been written in Transoxania.

Kehr’s copy, as compared to the English translation of Bābur’s memoires, has very few shortcomings. We ought to consider regard the following as its defects:

On page 188 Kehr’s copy the Chagatai text is cut short, and instead of it a Persian translation, in which a few words have moreover been taken out, has been put on paper. I have placed it in this volume in the same position within the narration as it appears in Kehr’s manuscript, marked with rosette-signs (Bāburnāme 38 and 39). Here and there a few words and proper names have been found wanting, I have inserted them in accordance with the English translation, putting them within parentheses. On the sheets 586 – 587 of the copy there are lacunae marked by a dotted line; we may believe that the respective parts in Kehr’s Vorlage had been eaten away by a worm.8

Apparent omissions in Kehr’s copy on the sheets 642 b and 763 b can be found at the back of the same copy on the sheets 809 b and 813 b.

Kehr’s copy offers all the same important additions to the English translation (Cf. Memoirs 122 and Bāburnāme 144-146; Memoirs 334 and Bāburnāme 379 and 380). In the first text portion more events of the year 908, the description of which ends abruptly in the English just at the most interesting part, are added in Kehr’s copy; in the second fragment it provides a detailed enumeration of the revenues from the Indian region, whereas in the English translation merely the grand total of the revenues is mentioned.

The text of the Bāburnāme reaches its conclusion on the final sheet of Kehr’s copy, the sheets 764 b – 809 b, however, contain some additions: 1. A detailed description of Bābur’s battle against the Indian rulers, which includes a few pompous expressions, which might have been given by Bābur to the munshi9 Zainu-d-din, as some sketch for a dignified firman;10 this fragment is moreover written in the name of Bābur, and therefore it is not possible to positively rule out its authenticity. 2. After that fragment a curious postscript on the passing of Bābur, his merits, written works, children, scholarly friends, - by an unknown author, who apparently knew Bābur well and used to be in his entourage. It is probably borrowed from a foreword of ‘Ā'īn 'abū l-Faḍl. Both these additions have been placed at the end of my edition from page 494. 3. On the sheets 788 – 810 there is a separate written text, namely a short overview of the dynasty from Timūr to Humāyūn, about whom quite some details are given. The rendition of this text has been left unfinished in Kehr’s copy.

His determination to sacrifice several months to copy the Bāburnāme every single day bears witness to the importance Kehr attributed to this literary work. As can be inferred from his Latin translation, however, he did not entirely know the Chagatai dialect. Although it shows throughout Kehr’s edition that he has copied the text in a most conscientious and caring manner, Kehr had to copy here and there some lines that were hardly distinguishable, merely hoping to do so correctly, since he could not make out the words, nor could he even guess their meanings; his hand, being unfamiliar with the Chagatai writing, could not but make mistakes and omissions. The copy made by Kehr, for lack of any better manuscripts, can thus be a good source for an edition of Bāburnāme, but not to such a degree that one can rely on it as an authoritative text unconditionally. For this reason, I have attempted to cleanse the text of Bāburnāme from what to me, upon investigation, appeared erroneous in Kehr’s copy.  

First of all, the very copy enabled me to do this work; in the majority of cases I was convinced of the correct appearance of a word, form, or expression whenever I saw it used in Kehr’s copy. The English translation Memoirs of Baber etc. was furthermore an indispensable and constant resource, and finally I availed myself of copies of two dictionaries, a Chagatai-Persian one published in Calcutta and a Chagatai-Turkish based on the works of ʿAlī-Şīr.

These resources are obviously insufficient to bring the present edition to a state of perfect accuracy and flawlessness: In order to do so it would be necessary to carefully compare multiple good manuscripts of the Bāburnāme from the relevant region. But I do hope that my edition, even with all its deficiencies, will not be of no use for those engaged in the study of the Chagatai dialect and the philological research on the Turkic language.

N. Il’minskij.11

Printing allowed. The 12th of December 1856.12

Censor, Inspector of Kazan’ Theological Academy, Arximandrit Theodor .

As a final treat for some of you who may have gotten (or were already) seriously interested in Chagatai language and philology, I would like to present you with this link rendering access to the free PDF file of Eric T. Schluessel’s An Introduction to Chaghatay: A Graded Textbook for Reading Central Asian Sources. Enjoy!