The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s1.10

v4.c12.s1.10

At this stage we hear of the arrival in Transoxiana of Shaibānī Khān, chief of the Uzbegs, who was destined to play a great part in the early history both of Bābur and of Shāh Isma‘īl, the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Persia. Baisunqur Mīrzā had invited Shaibānī Khān to come and help him against his cousin Bābur. The Khān of the Uzbegs came but again withdrew without rendering any assistance, having seen enough to make him realise, as Erskine says: “the richness of the prey and the weakness of its defenders.” In 1501, after suffering a defeat at Sar-i-pul, Bābur withdrew to Samarqand which, after a protracted siege, he surrendered to Shaibānī Khān. Bābur himself only obtained his freedom by a promise that his sister should marry the Uzbeg Khān. He now withdrew to Tāshkent, which had been given to Sultān Mahmūd Khān, son of Yūnus Khān, by ‘Umar Shaikh; and there Bābur spent three years in hiding and misery. In June 1504 we find him accompanied by a handful of men and women, a refugee without a home and without a destination. Shaibānī Khān, the Uzbeg, in the meanwhile had become master of Transoxiana, and had put to flight Khusrav Shāh, the governor of Qunduz. This disaster and the consequent dispersal of Khusrav’s army came as a blessing to Bābur, to whose camp large numbers of deserters fled. Those chiefs who now attached themselves to Bābur were called the “Guest Begs”. Bābur now found himself at the head of a force of over four thousand men (according to Mīrzā Haidar, twenty thousand) and he was obliged to choose between marching to help in the defence of Herāt which was being attacked by Shaibānī Khān, or of moving farther south, over the Hindu Kush. Feeling his forces were not sufficiently strong to cope with Shaibānī's large army, he chose the latter alternative. Having led his men over the formidable passes of the Hindu Kush, he came at last within sight of Kābul. As we have seen, Kābul had on the death of his father Abū Sa'īd passed into the hands of Ulugh Beg, on whose death in 1501 it went to his son 'Abdur-Razzāq, who had been immediately displaced by Muqīm the Arghūn. Had Bābur found Kābul safely in the power of his cousin 'Abdur-Razzāq, he would have had no good excuse for trying to take possession of that important military post, but seeing that it was in the hands of an usurper, whom 'Abdur-Razzāq had been unable to withstand, he not only attacked but, as much by ruse as by daring, captured it, and having done so asserted his hereditary right to the kingdom of Kābul and pensioned off his cousin with an estate. We are justified in assuming that it was while Bābur was bringing order into his new kingdom and somewhat vainly attempting to collect its revenues that he was first inspired with his Indian dream. The temptations offered by the fertile plains of Hindūstān did not affect his passionate affection for the land of his birth, to which he so constantly refers in his *Memoirs*, and it is unlikely that he had contemplated settling in India until after his defeat at Ghazdawān in 1512. Moreover, to conquer Hindūstān did not necessarily mean lasting severance from Turkestān; rather would success in the south give the means whereby to recapture Farghāna and Samarqand.