巴布尔回忆录 (16 世纪)

《巴布尔回忆录》（察合台语/波斯语：بابر نامہ‬，直译为“巴布尔的历史”或“巴布尔的文字”）是帖木儿后裔、莫卧儿帝国建立者巴布尔(1483-1530)的回忆录，以丰富的内容和精美的插图闻名。该书原由帖木儿王朝的惯用语言察合台语写成，巴布尔将其称为“突厥语”；阿克巴时期，朝臣阿卜杜勒·拉希姆·汗-汗纳于伊斯兰历998年(1589-1590)将其翻译为莫卧儿帝国惯用的波斯语。

巴布尔是一位受过教育的帖木儿王子。他在回忆录中反映出对自然，社会，政治和经济学的兴趣；生动的描述不止于自己的私生活，还涵盖所处时空的历史、人文和地理。该书包含各种主题，包括天文学、地理、治国方略、军事问题、武器和战斗、动植物、传记和家庭纪事、朝臣和艺术家、诗歌、音乐和绘画、酒会、历史古迹、自我省思及对人性的探讨。

巴布尔本人没有委托画家为该书制作插图，而是由其孙阿克巴于波斯语翻译版完成后进行插图绘制，期间花费十年有余。阿克巴最早制作的4本插画版《巴布尔回忆录》于1913年开始印刷销售，现存70多份微缩资料分散于维多利亚与艾伯特博物馆、新德里国立博物馆、大英图书馆、大英博物馆、莫斯科东方文化国家博物馆、巴尔的摩沃尔特斯美术馆等地。

即便没有留下生前的肖像画，但为《巴布尔回忆录》插画的艺术家们一致将其描绘为圆脸、长胡、缠头、身穿长袖上衣与短袖外褂的形象。

The Bāburnāma or Tuzuk-i-Baburi (Chagatay: وقائع, romanized: Wäqāʾiʿ, lit. 'The Events'; Persian: بابر‌نامه, تزک بابری, romanized: Bāburnāma, Tūzak-i Bāburī, lit. 'Book of Babur') or is the memoirs of Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn Muhammad Bābur (1483–1530), founder of the Mughal Empire and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur. It is written in the Chagatai language, known to Babur as Türki "Turkic", the spoken language of the Timurids.

During the reign of his grandson, the emperor Akbar, the work was translated into Classical Persian, the literary language of the Mughal court, by a courtier, Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, in 1589–90 CE (AH 998).

Background

Babur was an educated Timurid prince, and his observations and comments in his memoirs reflect an interest in nature, society, politics and economics. His vivid account of events covers not just his own life, but the history and geography of the areas he lived in as well as the people with whom he came into contact. The book covers topics as diverse as astronomy, geography, statecraft, military matters, weapons and battles, plants and animals, biographies and family chronicles, courtiers and artists, poetry, music and paintings, wine parties, historical monument tours, as well as contemplations on human nature.

Though Babur himself does not seem to have commissioned any illustrated versions, his grandson ordered their production as soon as he was presented with the finished Persian translation in November 1589. The first of four illustrated copies made under Akbar over the following decade or so was broken up for sale in 1913. Some 70 miniatures are dispersed among various collections, with 20 in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The three other versions, partly copied from the first, are in the National Museum, New Delhi (almost complete, dated 1597–98), the British Library (143 out of an original 183 miniatures, probably early 1590s) with a miniature over two pages in the British Museum, and a copy, mostly lacking the text, with the largest portions in the State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow (57 folios) and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (30 miniatures). Various other collections have isolated miniatures from these versions. Later illustrated manuscripts were also made, though not on as a grand a scale.

Babur is at the centre of most scenes shown. As far as is known, no contemporary images of him survive, but from whatever sources they had Akbar's artists devised a fairly consistent representation of him, "with a roundish face and droopy moustache", wearing a Central Asian style of turban and a short-sleeved coat over a robe with long sleeves. Coming from a period after Akbar's workshop had developed their new style of Mughal painting, the illustrated Baburnamas show developments such as landscape views with a recession, influenced by Western art seen at court. Generally the scenes are less crowded than in earlier miniatures of "historical" scenes.

Akbar's manuscripts

Most images trimmed of borders

Content

According to historian Stephen Frederic Dale, Babur's Chagatai prose is highly Persianized in its sentence structure, morphology, and vocabulary, and also contains many phrases and smaller poems in Persian.

The Bāburnāma begins abruptly with these plain words:

In the month of Ramadan of the year 899 [1494] and in the twelfth year of my age, I became ruler in the country of Farghana.

Babur describes his fluctuating fortunes as a minor ruler in Central Asia—he took and lost Samarkand twice—and his move to Kabul in 1504. There is a break in all known manuscripts between 1508 and 1519. Annette Beveridge and other scholars believe that the missing part in the middle, and perhaps an account of Babur's earlier childhood, a preface and perhaps an epilogue, were written, but the manuscript of those parts was lost by the time of Akbar. There are various points in his highly active career, and that of his son Humayun, where parts of the original manuscript might plausibly have been lost.