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The Coming of
Babur
BY ABHA DAYAL K AUL

Who were the Mughals and where did they come

from? How did they get to Delhi and emerge as
arguably the most glamorous and powerful dynasty
in the world?

A King Without a Kingdom

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The story begins with the amazing tale of Zahiruddin Muhammad “Babur”, aptly nicknamed “tiger”, who
at age twelve lost his father and found himself ruler of Fergana, a tiny rustic principality, due north of
Kashmir, once in ‘Turkestan’, now in present-day Uzbekistan.

Born in Andijan, Babur claimed descent from two legendary nomadic warriors – the Tartar Turk, Timur
(corrupted to Tamerlane) on his father’s side, and the Mongol, Chingiz (often spelt Genghis) Khan on his
mother’s. By age fifteen, Babur had realised his dream of taking Timur’s once imperial capital,
Samarkand, just west of Fergana, but soon lost it along with Fergana, first to rebel cousins and brothers,
in the fashion of the times, and finally to Uzbegs determined to drive Timurids out of Central Asia.

Coveting Hindustan
Babur almost never made it to Delhi. Following years of wandering without home or kingdom, by a
sudden act of fate, Babur seized Kabul when its ruler, an uncle (Ulugh Beg, grandson of Timur) died,
opening up opportunities for Babur to turn his sights further south. He wrote in his excellent memoirs,
the Babur-nama, that ever since he won Kabul in 1504 at age twenty-two, he “coveted Hindustan” –
northern India, as a possible refuge and chance at gaining real fame.

Twenty years later, on his fifth attempt, supported by disaffected Lodhi governors of Punjab and Sindh
who sought his help in ousting the Lodhi Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim, Babur had some luck. Crossing the
Khyber Pass and the Indus River, he marched south to the Yamuna (or Jumna) River, to the hot, dusty
plains about fifty miles from Delhi, and there fought the decisive Battle of Panipat.

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The Battle of Panipat

In just half a day’s dramatic battle on a sweltering April day in 1526, Babur’s modest army, equipped
with superior strategy, cannon and musket, and sheer guts, defeated Ibrahim’s massive imperial forces
on the historic battlefield slightly east of Kurukshetra of Mahabharat fame. Ibrahim was slain, and as per
rather gruesome custom, his severed head presented as war trophy to Babur, who ordered the
unfortunate sultan’s body to be bathed and buried with honour in a brocade shroud at that very spot –
in a tomb in modern-day Panipat town. The road to Delhi and Agra now lay wide open for the
conqueror.

A New Emperor of India

Babur immediately dispatched his teenage son, Humayun, to take over Agra while he headed to Delhi,
where he first “made a circuit of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya’s tomb”. Even in our times, Nizamuddin is a
much-visited Sufi shrine in the heart of south Delhi, in remembrance of the great ‘expat’ saint who lived
in the capital and died there in 1324 at the age of ninety-two.

The next day Babur visited Khwaja Qutubuddin’s tomb (near the Qutub, honouring a saint from Ush in

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Fergana who came to Delhi centuries earlier and died there in 1235), and “visited the tombs and
residences of Ghiyasuddin Balban and Alauddin Khilji, his Minar, and the Hauz-shamsi, Hauz-i-khas and
the tombs and gardens of Buhlul and Sikandar (Lodhi). Having done this, we dismounted at the camp,
went on a boat, and there araq was drunk.”

Two days later, the Friday sermon, or khutba, was read in Delhi’s main mosque in Babur’s name and
money distributed to the poor and needy. Babur was proclaimed ruler, and as, in his words, “Dihli is held
to be the capital of the whole of Hindustan”, he was its new Padshah Ghazi or Emperor.

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