Start of Mughal Empire

Babur in Kabul: AD 1504-1525

Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, is one of history's more endearing conquerors. In his youth he was one among many impoverished princes, all descended fromTimur, who fought among themselves for possession of some small part of the great man's fragmented empire. Babur even captured Samarkand itself on three separate occasions, each for only a few months. The first time he achieved this he was only fourteen.
What distinguished Babur from other brawling princes is that he was a keen oberver of life and kept a diary. In it he vividly described his triumphs and sorrows, whether riding out at night to attack a walled village or mooning around for unrequited love of a beautiful girl.








Babur's 'throneless times', as he later describes these early years, came to an end in 1504 when he captured Kabul. Here, at the age of twenty-one, he was able to establish a settled court and to enjoy the delights of gardening, art and architecture in the Timurid tradition of his family.
With a powerful new Persian dynasty to the west (underIsmail I) and an aggressive Uzbek presence to the north (underShaibani Khan), Babur's Kabul becomes the main surviving centre of theTimurid tradition. But these same pressures mean that his only chance of expanding is eastwards - into India.







Babur felt that he had an inherited claim upon northern India, deriving from Timur's capture of Delhi in 1398, and he made several profitable raids through the mountain passes into the Punjab. But his first serious expedition was launched in October 1525.
Some forty years later (but not sooner than that) it is evident that Babur's descendants are a new and established dynasty in northern India. Babur considered himself as a Turk, but he was descended fromGenghis Khan as well as from Timur. The Persians refer to his dynasty as mughal, meaning Mongol. And it is as the Moghul emperors of India that they become known to history.







Babur in India: AD 1526-1530

By the early 16th century the Muslim sultans of Delhi (an Afghan dynasty known as Lodi) were much weakened by threats from rebel Muslim principalities and from a Hindu coalition ofRajput rulers. When Babur led an army through the mountain passes, from his stronghold atKabul, he at first meets little opposition in the plains of north India.

The decisive battle against Ibrahim, the Lodi sultan, came on the plain of Panipat in April 1526. Babur was heavily outnumbered (with perhaps 25,000 troops in the field against 100,000 men and 1000 elephants), but his tactics won the day.







Babur dug into a prepared position, copied (he says) from the Turks - from whom the use ofguns had spread to the Persians and then to Babur. As yet the Indians of Delhi had no artillery or muskets. Babur had only a few, but he used them to great advantage. He collected 700 carts to form a barricade (a device pioneered by the Hussitesof Bohemia a century earlier).
Sheltered behind the carts, Babur's gunners could go through the laborious business of firing their matchlocks- but only at an enemy charging their position. It took Babur some days to tempt the Indians into doing this. When they did so, they succumbed to slow gunfire from the front and to a hail of arrows from Babur's cavalry charging on each flank.







Victory at Panipat brought Babur the cities of Delhi and Agra, with much booty in treasure and jewels. But he faced a stronger challenge from the confederation of Rajputs who had themselves been on the verge of attacking Ibrahim Lodi.
The armies met at Khanua in March 1527 and again, using similar tactics, Babur won. For the next three years Babur roamed around with his army, extending his territory to cover most of north India - and all the while recording in his diary his fascination with this exotic world which he had conquered.