A History of Agriculture in India v2.c67.s1: Conquest of Kabul
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c67.s1
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Conquest of Kabul
v2.c67.s1.1
This was another dark period for Babur and he sought refuge with his uncles in the area around Tashkent. Shaibani Khan not only had Samarkand, but had also captured a large slice of the territory of Farghānā. In A.D. 1504 Babur was in a desperate situation, and only a handful of loyal soldiers remained with him. When everything appeared to have been lost, Babur with his three hundred and odd followers crossed the Hindu Kush in a snow storm, stumbled into Kabul and made himself the master of a principality named after that city. Thus began the second phase of his career. For the next twenty-two years, he was the king of Kabul, which roughly corresponded to the modern Afghanistan and included Badakshan. From A.D. 1504 to 1513, with Kabul as his base, Babur again tried to conquer Samarkand. This ambition was fulfilled almost absolutely in October 1511, when he entered that city ‘in the midst of such pomp and splendour as no one has ever heard of before or ever since.’ Babur’s dominions now reached their widest extent: from Tashkent and Sairam on the borders of the deserts of Tartary, to Kabul and Ghazni near the Indian frontier. It included within its boundaries Samarkand, Bokhara, Hissar, Kunduz and Farghānā. But this glory was as short-lived as it was great. Uzbeg chiefs from whom Babur had snatched Samarkand in October 1511 returned to attack the city in June 1512 and inflicted a crushing defeat on Babur. Babur was forced to flee from one part of his dominions to another.
v2.c67.s1.2
He lost everywhere and finally returned to Kabul early in A.D. 1513.
v2.c67.s1.3
The reason for Babur’s discomfiture in the second half of 1512 lay in his understanding with Shah Ismael Safavi of Persia for the capture of Samarkand. For the Shah’s support Babur had agreed to hold the Samarkand kingdom as his vassal, become a convert to the Shia faith, adopt all its symbols, and to impose the Shia creed on the orthodox Sunni subjects of the conquered kingdoms. This unprincipled compromise made Babur extremely unpopular with his Sunni subjects and enabled the Uzbeg chiefs to stage a come back at Samarkand.