The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s4.80

v4.c23.s4.80

To Bābur, fresh from the flourishing cities of his fatherland embellished with the magnificent buildings of the Timurids, the state of the cities and towns of Hindūstān must have afforded a striking contrast. Conditions in northern India for a long period had been such as to give little encouragement to the building art, few edifices of any importance had been constructed, and those monuments which told of the splendour of an earlier age had been suffered to fall into decay. Compared with the living culture that he had left, he found himself traversing a wilderness of neglect. Most of the towns through which he passed seem to have consisted of nothing more than mud forts. And the capital cities were but little better. Lahore, once adorned by the palatial residences of the Ghaznī and Ghorī sultans, was almost in ruins. Āgra, to which the Lodīs had moved their court, contained only a brick citadel in a state of disrepair. At Delhi, it is true, there remained substantial records of ancient architectural grandeur, "but now worn out and disfigured to the last degree". Bābur, from his camp near the river, made a tour of this historical site, much as a visitor would do the round of its various relics at the present day. He was compelled to pitch his tents here because the most recent city built by Fīrūz Tughluq had been abandoned some time before, and, except for its mosque, lay derelict. Everywhere in northern India it was much the same, and to complete the scene of desolation the severe earthquake of a few years previous had taken its toll. "Large and substantial buildings were utterly destroyed. The living thought the day of judgment had arrived; the dead the day of resurrection."¹ One place only seems to have moved Bābur to any degree of enthusiasm, and that was at Gwālior, where he "went over all the palaces of Man Sinh and Vikramajit", and remarked that "they were singularly beautiful, though built in different patches and without regular plan". These buildings, however, illustrated the prevailing type of secular architecture as practised by the Hindus early in the sixteenth century, and it was to such structures that the Mughuls turned when they began to build palaces of their own.