Islamic Empires by Marozzi Justin

Author:Marozzi, Justin [Marozzi, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780241199053
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

The lightning, almost bloodless conquest of Kabul, as related in his memoirs, was the spur for twenty-eight pages of what amounts to an extended eulogy to the city.11 The city was not large, broadly encircled by mountains and more narrowly confined within walls connected to another mountain whose lower slopes were covered with gardens watered by the Bala Jui Upper Canal, which still irrigates Babur’s Gardens today. Describing the topography in scrupulous detail, he concluded – in a line whose truth has echoed through the following centuries – ‘The country of Kabul is a fastness hard for a foreign foe to make his way into.’

The ancient citadel, the Bala Hissar, close to which Babur’s men had launched their attack on Kabul, stood defiantly on a detached spur of rock on Uqabain, the Hill of the Two Eagles, with the walled town at its northern end, overlooking three meadows and a large lake. The north wind brought refreshing cool, even in the fiercest heat of summer. While talking about the citadel Babur cannot resist quoting a couplet from the poet Mullah Mohammed ‘The Riddler’, which also reveals one of his own great loves, and sometime source of inner conflict:

Drink wine in the castle of Kabul and send the cup round without pause

For Kabul is mountain, river, city, lowland in one.

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