The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c12.s3.31

v4.c12.s3.31

Bābur was one of those men who are so active in mind and body that they are never idle and always find time for everything. Excepting during the three years when he was hiding in Tāshkent under the protection of the Sultān of Kāshghar he knew no rest, and he himself says towards the end of his life that he had never kept the Fast of Ramazān twice in any one place. He was pre-eminently human, and has drawn a picture of himself in his memoirs in which no attempt is made to hide either his virtues or his vices. He was a rigid Sunnī Muslim, and both orthodox and superstitious in his beliefs. When in order to please the Shiah Shāh Ismaʻīl he adopted the Qizilbāsh head-dress for himself and his soldiers, he showed a form of moral courage reminding one of his grandson Akbar, who while still professing Islam displayed the utmost leniency towards Hindus and Christians: and if Bābur’s motive was purely political, it required no little self-reliance to face the sarcasm and derision which this head-dress provoked among the zealous Sunnīs of Transoxiana: not to mention the hatred in which the name of Shāh Ismaʻīl was held by reason of his cruelty towards the Sunnīs of Khurāsān.