Memoirs of Zehir-ed-Din Muhammed Baber, Emperor of Hindustan,: written by himself, in the Jaghatai Turki, and translated… with Notes and a Geographical and Historical Introduction: together with a Map of the Countries Between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, with a Memoir Regarding its Construction by Charles Waddington,

London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green; and Cadell and Co.,, 1826. In the month of Ramzan, in the year eight hundred and ninety-nine, and in the twelfth year of my age, I became King of Ferghana First edition in English of the Baburnama, probably the first autobiography in Islamic literature. "By chronicling events and noting down his assessment of the potentates and artists and poets he encountered, [Babur] authored a unique document in history … his book remained unrivalled until the publication of the diary of … Queen Victoria" (Beveridge, p. xvii). Babur was born in 1483 in Andjian into the Chaghatai Turkic tribe, hereditary rulers of Ferghana; a descendent of Timur and, so he believed, on his mother's side, of Chingis Khan; founder of the Mughal Empire, and today recognized as a national hero in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. His first exercise of military and political power came with his claiming the throne of Samarkand, in modern-day Uzbekistan, and taking control of the region around the fertile Ferghana Valley. He was driven out seven years later, but his ambitions were always greater. He crossed the Alai Pamir and Hindu Kush to invade Afghanistan, took Kabul, and from this new powerbase crossed the Indus, conquering the Sultanate of Delhi to become sovereign of Hindustan - all of North-West India and the Gangetic Plain - fusing the artistic and architectural legacies of India and Central Asia to found the Moghul Dynasty. His capital at Agra was to become the cultural and intellectual focus of one of the greatest empires of the late-medieval world. His influence spread further still as his sons went on to rule Kandahar, Bengal and Badakshan. He sent this memoir, one of the great monuments of Chaghatai Turkic literature, to an associate in Kabul, where it was eventually translated into Persian during the reign of his grandson, Akbar (r. 1556-1605). It was from this translation, and from an original Turkic manuscript which Leyden found in Bengal, that Erskine, Leyden's old Edinburgh friend, prepared this first English translation. The introduction includes essays on the Tartar tribes, and on the geography of Uzbek Turkestan, together with an explanation of the preparation of the map of Ferghana and Bokhara. Provenance: armorial bookplate of the diplomat George Jacob Bosanquet of Broxbournbury, (1791-1866), eldest son of Jacob Bosanquet, a director of the East India Company. Quarto (265 x 206 mm). Contemporary calf by Henington, spine with four low raised bands, compartments with scrolling cornerpieces enclosing a central foliate lozenge, dark red twin labels, sides with pretty gilt roll border, gilt edge roll, blind milled turn-ins, Italian on Spanish pattern marbled edges and endpapers. Tissue-guarded folding map of Ferghana and Bokhara as frontispiece, engraved by Lizars. Rear joint cracked at head but sound, a little rubbed at extremities, couple of scuffs to labels, light foxing to map and title-page but overall very good. Annette Susannah Beveridge, trans., Babur Nama: Journal of the Emperor Babur, 2006.