The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s2.2

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.