At first there were minor engagements, ending with varying success; provisions and provender became scarce; Najm S̤ānī's officers urged retirement, so too did Bābur. He would listen to none of them. At length `Ubaid Khān rode out from Bukhārā at the head of excellent troops; he joined the Ghaj-davān garrison and the united Aūzbegs posted themselves in the suburbs where walled lanes and gardens narrowed the field and lessened Najm S̤ānī's advantage in numbers. On Tuesday Ramẓān 3rd (Nov. 12th)[1343] a battle was fought in which his army was routed and he himself slain. _f. Bābur and Yār-i-aḥmad Najm Sānī._ Some writers say that Najm S̤ānī's men did not fight well; it must be remembered that they may have been weakened by privation and that they had wished to retire. Of Bābur it is said that he, who was the reserve, did not fight at all; it is difficult to see good cause why, under all the circumstances, he should risk the loss of his men. It seems likely that Ḥaidar's strong language about this defeat would suit Bābur's temper also. "The victorious breezes of Islām overturned the banners of the schismatics.... Most of them perished on the field; the rents made by the sword at Qarshī were sewn up at Ghaj-davān by the arrow-stitches of vengeance. Najm S̤ānī and all the Turkmān amīrs were sent to hell." The belief that Bābur had failed Najm S̤ānī persisted at the Persian Court, for his inaction was made a reproach to his son Humāyūn in 951 AH. (1544 AD.), when Humāyūn was a refugee with Ismā`īl's son T̤ahmāsp. Badāyūnī tells a story which, with great inaccuracy of name and place, represents the view taken at that time. The part of the anecdote pertinent here is that Bābur on the eve of the battle at Ghaj-davān, shot an arrow into the Aūzbeg camp which carried the following couplet, expressive of his ill-will to the Shāh and perhaps also of his rejection of the Shī`a guise he himself had worn. I made the Shāh's Najm road-stuff for the Aūzbegs; If fault has been mine, I have now cleansed the road.[1344] _g. The Mughūls attack Bābur._ On his second return to Ḥiṣār Bābur was subjected to great danger by a sudden attack made upon him by the Mughūls where he lay at night in his camp outside the town. Firishta says, but without particulars of their offence, that Bābur had reproached them for their misconduct; the absence of detail connecting the affair with the defeat just sustained, leads to the supposition that their misdeeds were a part of the tyranny over the country-people punished later by `Ubaidu'l-lāh Khān. Roused from his sleep by the noise of his guards' resistance to the Mughūl attack, Bābur escaped with difficulty and without a single attendant[1345] into the fort. The conspirators plundered his camp and withdrew to Qarā-tīgīn. He was in no position to oppose them, left a few men in Ḥiṣār and went to Mīrzā Khān in Qūndūz.