The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s2: II
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s2
- Language
- English
II
v4.c12.s2.1
We may now turn to the second phase of Bābur's career, namely his invasions and conquest of Hindūstān. In this part of his history we shall encounter many names already familiar to the student of these volumes; it may, nevertheless, be useful to enumerate some of those persons with whom the narrative is mostly concerned. Hitherto Bābur had been dealing with men of his own race or of races closely connected with it, either Mongols or Turks. That is, of course, only true in regard to the chiefs and leaders; for the population of Khurāsān, Badakhshān and Kābul were more Iranian than Turkish. Not till he crossed the Sind or Indus river did Bābur encounter rulers and chiefs of Indo-Aryan stock, and whereas the first twenty years of his active life were spent in competition with Tatar chiefs, his last years (1524–30) were passed in fighting against Afghāns and Hindus. Hindūstān was as foreign to him and to his army—in spite of the bond of Islam—as Egypt was to Napoleon and his French troops.
v4.c12.s2.2
Although the Punjab had been overrun by Tamerlane in 1398–9 this event had only caused a temporary interruption in the Turko-Afghān period, which had begun with Qutb-ud-dīn Aibak in 1206. This period had witnessed the rise and fall of six dynasties, none of which lasted a full century. When Tamerlane invaded India he brought to an end the Tughluq dynasty, which had ruled over Delhi for nearly a hundred years. He left no prince to continue his conquest; all he did was to appoint Khizr Khān governor of Multān, and for nearly forty years this man and his descendants ruled in Delhi under the name of the Sayyid dynasty, the last of whom, ‘Alā-ud-Dīn (1444–50), abdicated in favour of Buhlūl Lodī. On his passage to India, however, Tamerlane had established his rule in all the country between the Oxus and the Indus, and when at the beginning of the sixteenth century his descendant Bābur crossed the Hindu Kush, he regarded not merely Kābul and Ghaznī as his lawful heritage, but even the Punjab. Recalling the precedent set by the Mongols in the thirteenth century and by Tamerlane in the fourteenth, it came as a complete surprise both to the Afghāns and to the Hindu rajas when Bābur made it clear that he had come to stay. But though he made the way ready for the Mughul Empire of Delhi, it was only a military preparation, and his own son having failed to put these gains on a lasting basis, it fell to the lot of his grandson, Akbar, to turn all these advantages to permanent account.
v4.c12.s2.3
When Buhlūl Lodī, the elected head of a confederacy of Afghān chiefs, appeared on the scene, the old empire of Delhi had really ceased to exist. His grandfather had been governor of Multān under Fīrūz Tughluq, and his father and several of his uncles had served under the Sayyids. Buhlūl annexed the Punjab to Delhi; his son Sikandar Lodī during a reign of thirty years added considerably to the kingdom he had inherited from his father. But the Delhi kingdom was actually a congeries of semi-independent governorships mostly held by Afghāns (Lodīs, Farmūlīs or Lohānīs). Bābur himself says that when he first entered Hindūstān this country was governed by five Muslim and two pagan rulers, namely the Lodīs in the Delhi empire which extended from Bhera to Bihār; Sultān Muhammad Muzaffar in Gujarāt; the Bahmanīs in the Deccan; Mahmūd Khaljī in Mālwā; Nusrat Shāh in Bengal; the Raja of Vijayanagar, and Rānā Sanga in Chitor. In order to make himself master of Hindūstān, Bābur would have to dispose of the Lodīs and of Rānā Sanga. The leading *dramatis personae* in this Indian episode are Ibrāhīm Lodī—the son of Sikandar Lodī, the son of Buhlūl Lodī—who came to the throne in 1517; and ‘Ālam Khān or ‘Alā-ud-Dīn—another son of Buhlūl Lodī. Outside the ruling house were Daulat Khān, governor of Lahore, the son of Tātār Khān, who held Sirhind and all the countries of the Punjab to the north of the Sutlej; Dilāwar Khān, Ghāzī Khān and Hājjī Khān, his sons; Hasan Khān Mewātī, Biban—an Afghān chief, king of Oudh—and Rānā Sangram Singh, or Rānā Sanga of Chitor, who was the acknowledged head of the Hindu chiefs.