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86 an air of magnanimity, 'With your help and assistance I have won my power: I took you captive, but I do not kill you; I let you go.' The younger Khán was completely broken by his defeat, and in the following year died in the steppes which he ought never to have left. Mahmúd Khán's fate was more melancholy. He could not be happy in the desert, and after five years was induced to return to Farghána: he was met at Khojend by Shaibáni's officers, who killed him and his five sons on the spot. Such was the gratitude of the Uzbeg.

After the fatal battle of Akhsi in 1503, Bábar 'fled to the hills on the south of Farghána,' near Asfará, and remained in hiding. He twice refers to this fresh exile in his Memoirs : 'When Muhammad Shaibáni Khán defeated Sultán Mahmúd Khán and Aláchá [Ahmad] Khán, and took Táshkend and Shahrukhíya, I spent nearly a year in Súkh and Húshiyár among the hills, in great distress; and it was thence that I set out for Kábul.'