The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s1.3

v4.c12.s1.3

At the time of Bābur's birth, in 1483, these countries were no longer a single empire, but were broken up into a number of separate states large and small ruled over by Timurid princes among whom there was constant rivalry and warfare. Among these princes was Bābur's father, 'Umar Shaikh Mīrzā, who had inherited the kingdom of Farghāna. In 1494 'Umar Shaikh died and was succeeded by Bābur, then a child of eleven. For the next twenty years he was engaged in continual struggles with his cousins, in which his main objective was always the kingdom of Transoxiana with its capital Samarqand, for, like his great ancestor Tīmūr, Bābur had a deep-seated affection for this city. His only lasting success during this period was his occupation in 1504 of Kābul, a Timurid state, which then became his headquarters. It was to Kābul that he withdrew after his defeat by the Uzbegs at the battle of Ghazdawān in 1512, when he finally abandoned all hope of realising his chief ambition; but there, instead of resigning himself to the relative obscurity of a minor principality, he began to contemplate what neither Chingīz Khān nor Tīmūr had been able to achieve, namely the conquest of Hindūstān. Nothing could have seemed less probable when Bābur at the age of eleven inherited his father's small kingdom of Farghāna than that he should one day become emperor of Hindūstān; and in the first thirty years of his active career, in spite of his untiring energy and indomitable courage, he achieved nothing beyond turning his cousins out of Badakhshān, Kābul and Ghaznī.