CH. VI]            DEFEAT OF SHAYBANf KHAN               419

Isma'fl and later to the Ottoman court at Constantinople,
where he died. In 1510, however. Shah Isma'il marched
^, „ ,    ,„.      into Khurasan against the Uzbeks and utterly

Shah Isma'il's                                                     =»                                                        ^               ,     ,

victory over the dcfcatcd them at the battle of Merv. Shaybani
Uzbeks at Merv   j^j^^j^ ^^g amougst the slain.    His body was

dismembered and his limbs distributed amongst different
cities ; his skull, set in gold, was made into a drinking-cup
for Shah Isma'fl ; the skin of his head, stuffed with straw,
was sent to the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid at Constantinople;
and one of his hands constituted the gruesome credentials
of an envoy sent to one of his vassals, the ruler of Mazan¬
daran \ Babur's sister, Khan-zada Begum, who had fallen
into the hands of the Uzbeks ten years before, was delivered
from her long captivity by Shah Isma'fl, and was sent with
all honour to her brother, who in his Memoirs^ gives an
interesting account of their meeting. Friendly embassies
were interchanged between the two monarchs (for Babur
had already in 1508 formally assumed the title oi Pddishdh
or Emperor), and as Babur's final abandonment of Trans¬
oxiana a year or two later, followed in 1526-9. by his
successful invasion of India, which thenceforth became the
seat of his government, removed all likelihood of friction
between him and the Persians, the friendship thus formed
was fairly stable, and was renewed in the next generation
by Shah Tahmasp's hospitality to Humayun when he was
temporarily expelled from his kingdom and driven into
exile. Indeed the complaisance shown by Babur towards
the strong religious views of Shah Isma'fl at one time con¬
siderably impaired his popularity amongst his subjects
Literary inter- bcyond tho Oxus, who then, as now, were
course between remarkable for their extreme devotion to the
durfng^he " '^ Suuni doctrluc, which Shah Isma'fl relentlessly
Safawi period persccutcdl Nor were the relations between
Persia and India confined to their rulers, for during the

1   See W. Erskine's History of India, etc., vol. i, pp. 303-4.

2  Ed. Ilminsky, p. 11.

3  Erskine, Hist, of India, vol. i, p. 321.

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