The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s1.2

v4.c12.s1.2

It would have sufficed for the purposes of an Indian history if the narrative had been resumed at the point where the disaffected Afghāns first began to intrigue with the Timurid ruler of Kābul in the year 1523. But the early life of the emperor Bābur offers so strange and engrossing a subject that it would be improper not to present the reader with a summary at least of the previous career of the man who founded the Mughul Empire of Delhi. We must, therefore, momentarily focus our attention on the country situate between Persia and Turkestān, in which Bābur was born and where he spent the first thirty years of his life. Since Tamerlane's invasion of India in 1398 (see vol. III, chap. VII) this country never seems to have attracted the attention of his descendants, for though these included men of rare gifts none of them were great soldiers or statesmen. The two we remember best are Ulugh Beg, Tīmūr's grandson, who was an eminent astrologer, and Sultān Husain Baiqara, Tīmūr's great-great-grandson, who for fifty-four years made Herāt one of the greatest centres of literature and art that the world has ever seen—a veritable cinquecento Florence in the heart of Asia. But between 1405, when Tīmūr died, and 1500 (by which time Tīmūr's central Asian kingdoms had been divided between the Uzbegs and the Safavids) among all the Timurid princes—who are known to Muslim historians as the Mīrzās—there was none capable of consolidating their common heritage. The hereditary instinct for great adventures seems to have lain dormant in the Timurid stock, until it suddenly revealed itself again in the person of the emperor Bābur. The whole result of Tamerlane's invasion of India had been the appointment of a governor of Multān, who, although he founded the short-lived dynasty of Sayyids, never even assumed the title of king. Of the other lands conquered by Tīmūr nothing remained to his immediate successors except Transoxiana, most of the modern Afghānistān, Khurāsān, and part of Persia, and his conquest of Delhi counted for no more when he died than his defeat of the Ottoman Sultān Bāyazīd.