The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s3.29

v4.c12.s3.29

The question naturally presents itself: how did Bābur keep such a detailed record of his own doings from the age of eleven (A.H. 899)? Not only his own doings, but those of his relations are recorded in full detail. And whence did he derive all this information, biographical and geographical? Mīrzā Haidar Dughlāt had the same gift: he tells us he wrote the *Tārīkh-i-Rashīdī* because the memory of the Mughuls and their Khāns—i.e. the eastern branch of the Chaghātāi—stood in danger of being altogether lost through want of a chronicler. The earlier Mongols, Chingīz and his descendants, had been fortunate in their chroniclers in their own day. It was the descendants of Tamerlane, however, Bābur, Mīrzā Haidar, Gulbadan Begam, who first among princes undertook to write autobiographies, while Humāyūn, Jahāngīr (for part of his reign) and Shāh Jahān were content to have their memoirs written by personal attendants. There are very few examples in history of a great conqueror who was also an eminent poet, though many soldiers, like Julius Caesar and Xenophon, have been men of letters. Bābur was a sufficiently good poet (in Turkī) to have become famous on that account alone, had he achieved no fame as a soldier or ruler.