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Machine transcription
109
sent an envoy to Shah Murad of Bukhara, protest-
ing against his giving asylum to Mahmud and asking
him to deliver him up to the Afghan King. Shah
Murad, unwilling to offend Shah Zaman, ordered
the fugitive to leave his country. The Prince took
shelter in Gurganj in Khwarizm. He did not
stay there for long and entered Persia a second
time. It was here that he was joined by Fateh
Khan Barakzai, the eldest son of Sardar Payanda
Khan. The arrival of this Sardar inspired
Mahmud with fresh courage. Supported by the
strong arm of the King-maker, he determined to
try his luck once more.
He entered Afghanistan with no more than
fifty horsemen. With the exception of the
Barakzai Sardars, no other chief of influence
espoused his cause. But fortune favoured him
this time and about two to three thousand men
came to his help. With the small force he
advanced on Kandahar and besieged the town.
On the forty-second day of the siege, Fateh Khan
was able to win over Abdullah Khan, a powerful
chief of the garrison, to his side. Mir Akhor,
the chief of the defenders, fled for his life,
Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting. How this was measured.