Babur and the road to Delhi (1526)

Part oneA prince without a kingdom

In 1494 an eleven-year-old boy became ruler of Fergana, a small valley kingdom in Central Asia. His name was Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur. Through his father he descended from Timur, and through his mother from Genghis Khan. The bloodline did not help him much. At fifteen he took Samarkand, Timur's old capital, and lost it and Fergana at the same time. The Uzbek conqueror Muhammad Shaybani Khan was taking over the region. In his worst days Babur and his three hundred followers shared one tent, which they gave to his mother.

His luck turned in 1504, when he took Kabul. The city was a gateway between Central Asia and India, and the war horses of the north passed through it. From there he tried twice more to win back Samarkand. He even accepted the help of the Safavid shah Ismail on humiliating terms, but the people of Samarkand rejected him. He gave up on Central Asia and looked south.

He wrote about all of this in his memoir, the Baburnama, one of the most personal books ever written by a ruler. In it he describes battles, gardens, friends and fruit with the same eye, and admits his own mistakes.

Part twoPanipat and Khanua

In northern India the Afghan Lodi dynasty ruled from Delhi. Its sultan, Ibrahim Lodi, had angered his nobles, and some of them invited Babur in. He crossed into India in 1525. On 21 April 1526 he met Ibrahim's army at Panipat, north of Delhi. The Lodi army was much larger and had war elephants, but it had neither muskets nor cannon. Babur tied his carts together as a barrier, placed his guns behind them, and sent his horse archers around the flanks. Ibrahim was killed, and his army broke.

Babur did not sack Delhi. He promised its people safety, visited the shrines of its Sufi saints and took the treasury at Agra. The next year he faced a greater test. The Rajput chief Rana Sanga, leader of the Sisodiya clan, joined with Afghan nobles to drive him out. At Khanua, near Agra, in 1527, Babur's army was frightened and unsure. He poured away his wine, broke his drinking cups and swore to give up drink, and called his men to fight. They won. Northern India was now his.

His dynasty called itself Gurkani, after Timur's title "son-in-law" of the house of Genghis Khan. History knows it as Mughal, from the Persian word for Mongol. Babur ruled for only four years. In 1530 his son Humayun fell gravely ill, and Babur is said to have walked around his bed praying that his own life be taken in place of his son's. Humayun recovered, and Babur died that December. As he wished, he was buried in a garden in Kabul.

Part threeHumayun's long road back

Humayun inherited a new and unsettled empire, and brothers who wanted it. An Afghan commander from Bihar, Sher Khan Suri, beat him at Chausa in 1539, where Humayun had to swim the Ganges to escape, and again at Kanauj in 1540. Humayun lost everything and fled west.

Sher Shah Suri, as he now called himself, ruled northern India for five years and ruled it well. He rebuilt the great road from Bengal to the north-west, later called the Grand Trunk Road, with inns for travellers along it. He set up a postal service of riders and issued a silver coin, the rupiya, the ancestor of the rupee. He died in 1545, and his successors quarrelled.

Humayun spent fifteen years in exile. His son Akbar was born in 1542 in Sindh while he was on the run. He found shelter at the court of the Safavid shah Tahmasp in Iran, who gave him an army, and with it he took Kabul and Qandahar. In 1555 his general Bairam Khan beat the Suris, and Humayun entered Delhi again. Six months later, in January 1556, he heard the call to prayer while coming down the stairs of his library with books in his arms. He tried to kneel, caught his foot in his robe and fell. He died a few days later. His son Akbar was thirteen.

The prince who once shared a single tent with his men died the ruler of northern India.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al MuqaddimahBabur, the Founder of the Mughal Empire (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Fergana
• Samarkand
• Kabul
• the Khyber Pass
• Lahore
• Panipat
• Delhi
• Agra
• Khanua
• Chausa

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter