Bābur

Mughal emperor of India (r. 1526-1530)

• Born: February 14, 1483
• Birthplace: Principality of Fergana (now in Uzbekistan)
• Died: December 26, 1530
• Place of death: Āgra, India

Bābur, the first of the Mughal rulers in India, spread the Mughal Empire over most of northern India. He was a wise king whose memoirs have revealed much about his life.

Early Life

Bābur (BAH-bewr), whose name means lion, tiger, or panther, was born in Fergana (modern Afghanistan), on February 14, 1483. A descendant of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, Bābur became king of Fergana in 1494 at the age of eleven, when his father,ՙUmar Shaykh Mīrzā, died. Along with the kingdom, Bābur inherited his father’s struggles with his cousins for the kingdom of Transoxiana and its capital, Samarqand.

Life’s Work

Bābur spent the first three years of his reign fighting his cousin Faisunqur, from whom he captured Samarqand in 1497 after a siege of seven months; yet he was soon forced to relinquish the city.

Between 1498 and 1499, Bābur married, and he divided Fergana with his brother. In 1501, Bābur once again attempted to conquer Samarqand. Between April and May of 1501, Bābur suffered a defeat at Sar-i-Pul and retreated to Samarqand. After taking the city by surprise, Bābur and the inhabitants of Samarqand tried to repel the forces of Muḥammad Shaybānī Khān, chief of the Uzbeks, who had agreed to help Baisunqur Mīrzā fight his cousin, Bābur. Bābur was able to hold off Shaybānī Khān’s men for four months but was finally forced to surrender the city. Bābur was released from his captivity, but only after he had agreed to give his sister’s hand in marriage to the Uzbek khan.

Once free, Bābur spent the next three years in hiding at Tashkent, which had been given to him by his uncle, Sultan Mahmud Khan. Even though Bābur’s uncle furnished him with a command of one thousand men, Bābur was defeated in 1503 at Arciyan by Tanbal, who had appealed to Shaybānī Khān for assistance. Having lost Fergana, Bābur spent the next year as a nomad in the remote territories of Sukh and Hushyar. In June, 1504, Bābur and his brother formed another army, composed of refugees from the Uzbeks, and secured Kabul, from which he would maintain himself until 1525. While at Kabul, Bābur was influenced by Persian culture, traces of which can be found in his poetry.

From Kabul, Bābur conducted unsuccessful raids in central Asia and northwestern India. In January, 1505, Bābur made his expedition to Hindustan in search of badly needed supplies. Bābur, at the invitation of Husain Baiqara, who died soon afterward, marched on Herāt against Shaybānī Khān but returned to Kabul, because he was not prepared for the fierce winter. In June, 1507, Herāt surrendered to Shaybānī Khān. Meanwhile, Bābur’s uncle, Muḥammad Ḥussayn, had proclaimed Bābur’s cousin Khan Mīrzā lord of Kabul in Bābur’s absence.

After suppressing this rebellion by attacking the rebels without warning in the streets of Kabul, Bābur decided to gain possession of Qandahār, which was strategically important. Thus, when the Arghun princes in Qandahār asked Bābur for military assistance, he rushed to their aid. He had not traveled very far, though, before the Arghun princes changed their minds and decided to oppose Bābur. After defeating them in combat, Bābur learned that Shaybānī Khān was preparing to attack Qandahār. Instead of meeting Shaybānī Khān in combat, Bābur took a more prudent though admittedly less courageous course: He undertook his second invasion of India in 1507. During his return to Kabul, Bābur decided to change his title from mīrzā (prince) to padishah (emperor).

Three years later, Bābur conquered Samarqand for the third time by taking advantage of the political situation at the time. Shaybānī Khān’s dispute with the Ṣafavid shah Ismāՙīl erupted into warfare. In 1510, Ismāՙīl lured Shaybānī Khān from his refuge at Merv and slew him. As a result, the Uzbeks withdrew to Transoxiana. Elated by Ismāՙīl’s victory, Bābur sent Khan Mīrzā to thank him. Ismāՙīl responded by returning Bābur’s sister whom Bābur had given in marriage to Shaybānī Khān years before.

As a client of Ismāՙīl, Bābur lost much of his popular support among the Mughals. Because Ismāՙīl would not allow Bābur to break his pact, Bābur believed that the most expedient thing to do was to give lip service to the Shīՙite creed while remaining faithful to the Sunni doctrine. Years later, he was to prove the sincerity of his beliefs by writing a lengthy religious poem.

In 1511, Bābur once again invaded Samarqand and was pronounced king in 1511. Yet Bābur’s reign as ruler of Samarqand proved to be short-lived. The Uzbeks, who were determined to remain in Transoxiana, encountered and defeated Bābur’s forces at Kul-i-Malik. Bābur retreated to Hisar. He managed to solidify his hold on Badakhshān by placing his cousin, Khan Mīrzā, on the throne, but he relinquished all hope of again ascending the throne of Samarqand. Instead, he occupied himself between 1515 and 1518 by waging wars in every direction in order to force the mountain dwellers of Kabul and Ghazni to fear and respect him.

The second phase of Bābur’s career his invasion and conquest of Hindustan began only after he had finally relinquished his boyhood dream of conquering Samarqand. In a sense, Bābur decided to assimilate into his empire people who were not of Indo-Aryan stock because he considered the Hindu Kush to be his lawful heritage, passed down to him from his ancestor Tamerlane, who had established his rule in all the country between the Oxus and the Indus on his passage to India. One could also say that Bābur compensated for his failure to conquer Samarqand by turning his attention toward India. While it is true that Bābur prepared the way for the Mughal Empire in India, his forays into India were really nothing more than a military preparation for the more permanent rule that would be established years later by his grandson.

Before Bābur could become lord of India, he had to dethrone the five Muslim and two pagan rulers who governed Hindustan. Bābur initiated this campaign in 1519, when he cemented an alliance with the Yusufzais by marrying the daughter of one of their chiefs. He concluded what he considered to be his first expedition into Hindustan by conquering Bhera but winning the hearts of its occupants by sparing their lives.

Owing to the dearth of details in Bābur’s memoirs concerning the second, third, and fourth expeditions, it is with his fifth expedition that the history of Bābur’s Hindustani campaigns continues. Bābur agreed to assist Dawlat Khān Lodī in deposing Lodī’s kinsman, who ruled most of northern Hindustan. In return for Dawlat Khān Lodī’s promise to regard Bābur as his sovereign, Bābur utterly defeated the army of Ibrāhīm Lodī near Lahore, which Bābur claimed for his own. This impetuous decision on Bābur’s part brought his alliance with Dawlat Khān Lodī to an abrupt end.

Bābur quickly formed another alliance withՙĀlam Khān, the uncle of Ibrāhīm Lodī, who offered to cede Lahore to Bābur if Bābur helped him conquer Delhi. Bābur hoped that by substitutingՙĀlam Khān for Ibrāhīm Lodī, he would not only be given the legitimate right to Lahore but also have control overՙĀlam Khān, who was old and feeble. Thus, Bābur ordered his soldiers to assistՙĀlam Khān in the assault on Delhi, but he decided that his presence was more sorely needed at Balkh, which Ismāՙīl was defending against the Uzbeks. Dawlat Khān Lodī then seized the opportunity to recover Lahore by offering to helpՙĀlam Khān conquer Delhi. After failing to take Delhi, Dawlat Khān Lodī’s army scattered in disorder, so he and his son retreated to the fortress of Milwat, where they surrendered. Dawlat Khān Lodī died while being taken to the prison at Bhera.

Having secured Lahore, Bābur began his campaign to conquer Delhi. Aware of the political advantages of having the loyalty of an Afghan prince, Bābur gaveՙĀlam Khān a command at Panipat and Khanua. Bābur then marched on Delhi with his eighteen-year-old son, Humāyūn, who led the forces that defeated the armies of one of Ibrahīm Lodī’s emirs. Taking a defensive position at Panipat, Bābur’s Mughals utterly defeated the vastly superior numbers of Afghan forces by flanking them with arrows and bombarding them with gunfire from the front. At the battle’s end, Ibrāhīm Lodī was dead, and Bābur had reached his greatest goal: the conquest of northern India. As soon as he made his grand entrance into Delhi, he won the favor of the people by preventing his soldiers from looting and by protecting the wives and children of the raja of Gwalior. On April 27, 1526, a week after his arrival at Delhi, Bābur was proclaimed emperor of Hindustan in the Grand Mosque.

The founding of Bābur’s vast empire in Hindustan, which began with the capture of Lahore in 1524, was completed in six years. With his victory at Panipat in 1526, most of the Afghan chiefs united under Bābur’s rule. Bābur most likely restricted his conquests to northern India because of his reluctance to offend Ismāՙīl by attacking Persian territory.

Bābur’s death cannot be attributed to only one cause. From boyhood, he had suffered from a troublesome lesion, and throughout his adult life he was stricken with bouts of marsh fever. His body was further weakened by his intemperate ways, particularly his fondness for wine. He also became seriously ill as the result of an attempted poisoning by the mother of Ibrāhīm Lodī. His eventual death is enshrouded in mystery and legend. In 1530, when Bābur’s son Humāyūn was attacked with fever, Bābur prayed that God would accept his life in exchange for that of his son. Coincidentally, Bābur was taken ill as his son slowly recovered, and he died three months later inĀgra on December 26, 1530. Several years later, his body was moved to its present location at Kabul.

Significance

Bābur is a prime example of a class of political entrepreneurs who vied with other seminomadic rulers from Central Asia for revenues from the herdsmen and territory. Like those of his rivals and enemies, Bābur’s kingdom was linked and sometimes divided by the loyalties of clan and family, not by treaties of national states. He was also typical of the rulers of that time in the savagery he displayed during battle.

Even though Bābur was born to the ruling class, he maintained and increased his kingdom as a result of his own adaptability and courage. He was a resourceful general who learned about musketry and artillery from the Uzbeks; he then applied these methods with great success against the lords of Hindustan. Thus, he became one of the first military commanders in Asia to realize the full potential of artillery.

Bābur was a skillful diplomat, who prepared Hindustan for conquest by playing the emirs of Ibrāhīm Lodī against one other. He also performed the seemingly impossible task of molding an array of fiercely independent and competitive bands of Mughals into a nation by employing a prudent blend of force and kindness. In addition, he displayed moral courage as he risked the disapproval of other Sunni Muslims in his decision to appease Ismāՙīl by adopting the Qizilbash headdress for himself and his soldiers. In addition, Bābur’s custom of showing mercy to his defeated enemies endeared him to the people he conquered.

While Bābur inherited some of the barbaric ways of the descendants of Tamerlane, he differed from most of the Mughal rulers of the sixteenth century in his love of beauty. An accomplished poet and diarist, Bābur composed works that rank with the best literature written at that time.

Bibliography

Bābur. The Bāburnāma. Edited and translated by Wheeler M. Thackston. Introduction by Salman Rushdie. New York: Modern Library, 2002. An exciting and revealing firsthand history of Bābur’s life and times in his own words. This is the primary source for most of the biographies that have followed. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and indexes.

Brown, F. Yeats. Pageant of India. Philadelphia: Macrae Smith, 1942. A brief biographical sketch of Bābur’s life, heavily laced with quotations from Bābur’s memoirs. Provides interesting anecdotes, especially regarding the assassination attempt by the mother of Ibrāhām Lodī.

Burn, Richard, ed. The Mughal Period. Vol. 4 in The Cambridge History of India. Reprint. New Delhi: S. Chand, 1987. Chapter 1 is an excellent summation of Bābur’s life. Although the chapter emphasizes his military campaigns, it also provides historical background, sketching the personalities who had an important influence on Bābur’s life.

Foltz, Richard C. Mughal India and Central Asia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. A study of the legacy of Bābur’s conquests for his people, this book argues that the background of the Mughals and their origins in Central Asia are crucial to understanding their culture in India. Discusses the nostalgia of Indian Mughal rulers for their Central Asian homeland. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Grenard, Fernand. Baber: First of the Moguls. New York: Robert McBride, 1930. Based entirely on Bābur’s memoirs, this is a biased but highly readable account of his life. The fanciful story line is enhanced by the reproduction of sixteenth century paintings.

Lewis, B. “Bābur.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat, and J. Schacht. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1959. This concise treatment of Bābur’s life concentrates almost exclusively on his military conquests, paying little attention to his personal life.

Williams, L. F. Rushbrook. An Empire Builder of the Sixteenth Century. London: Longmans, Green, 1918. A standard biography covering Bābur’s entire life. Beautifully illustrated with paintings from the period. The book refrains from romanticizing Bābur’s life, opting for the objective approach instead. Recommended for the serious student of Bābur’s life and of this period of Mughal history.

Ziad, Zeenut, ed. The Magnificent Mughals. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Authoritative anthology of essays by top scholars, each summarizing the history of a different aspect of Mughal culture. Provides accounts of Mughal economics, religion, and the arts, as well as the contributions of women to Mughal society. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.