Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul

by Alex Rutherford

  Humayun lowered his own head and began to pray: ‘Speed my father to Paradise. Give me the strength to continue what he began so that, looking down on me, he will be proud . . . Give me the strength . . .’

  Rising at last, Humayun took one last look at his father, then turned away. Tears filled his eyes again and he struggled to steady his voice. ‘Abdul-Malik,’ he called, ‘the emperor is dead . . . Send for the embalmers . . .’

  Two days later, Humayun watched as six officers laid Babur’s body, washed in camphor, wrapped in a soft, woollen shroud and enclosed in a silver coffin packed with spices, on a gilded cart drawn by twelve black oxen. Then, to the slow beating of drums, the funeral cortège began the long, slow journey that would take it north-west over the bleached plains of Hindustan, across the Indus and up through the winding, dun-grey hills of the Khyber Pass to Kabul. Humayun knew it was right that in death his father should return to the mountainous lands he had loved.

  As Babur had asked, when his body reached Kabul it would be laid in the earth in the hillside garden Babur himself had created beneath a simple marble slab close to Baburi’s grave and those of his mother and grandmother. As Babur had also wished, nothing would be constructed over it, no great edifice. The grave of the first Moghul emperor would lie exposed to the winds and soft rain beneath the infinite canopy of the sky.

  Humayun glanced at Kamran, Askari and Hindal close beside him. Their sombre faces told him they shared his grief and that for the moment, they were united. But how long would that last? Might they come to resent his father having given him supreme power rather than dividing his realm between them? Ambition – the relentless hunger for fresh conquest and the power it would bring that he had long felt stir within himself – would undoubtedly rise in them, especially Kamran, so close to him in age . . . Would he not feel resentment in Kamran’s place? Or Askari’s? Even little Hindal might soon consider the world with a cool, ambitious, speculative eye. All sons of an emperor, it was in the blood of each of them to desire to be the one to lead their dynasty to new heights. How long before Babur’s memory faded and brotherly feeling waned? Might they become like snapping dogs circling the same piece of meat? Before he realised what he was doing, Humayun stepped away from his half-brothers, whose eyes were still on the cortège as, with its escort, it slowly disappeared round a bend in the road through the city of Agra, leaving a pall of orange dust hanging in its wake.

  ‘Do nothing against your half-brothers . . . love them . . . reconcile them . . .’ Babur’s words, the last instructions of a loved and loving father, resounded inside Humayun’s head. He had made a promise to Babur and he would keep it. Doing so would not be easy and might demand all his self-restraint. Babur’s words had in part been a warning . . . For generations the House of Timur had ripped itself apart. Brother had turned on brother, cousin on cousin, and their feuding had irredeemably weakened them, making them easy prey to external enemies like the Uzbeks. He, the new Moghul emperor, must not let that happen in Hindustan. It was his sacred duty.

  Humayun looked down at Timur’s heavy gold ring, an unaccustomed weight on his right hand, with the spitting, flat-eared tiger carved deep into the metal. It had seen so many conflicts, so many conquests . . . where would it travel with him? What glories, what disasters might it see while on his hand? That was not yet for him to know but, whatever happened, he would never bring dishonour on his dynasty or on his father’s memory. Raising the ring to his lips he kissed it and made a silent vow: ‘I will be a worthy successor to my father, and all the world will have cause to remember me.’

  Historical Note

  Babur’s life was a whirlwind of battles, blood feuds and epic challenges so numerous that even he did not document everything in his disarmingly frank memoirs, the Baburnama – the first autobiography in Islamic literature. In fact, he left numerous gaps, some covering considerable periods of years. Despite these omissions, the main events of his life, such as his three captures of Samarkand, his conflict with the Uzbeks and, of course, his establishment of the Moghul Empire in north-western India – Hindustan, as it was then known – are clear from the Baburnama and other sources. I have described the principal events in their historical sequence, though condensing, combining or omitting some incidents and compressing some timescales.

  Babur’s grandmother Esan Dawlat – whose advice, he says in the Baburnama, he relied on in his youth – his mother Kutlugh Nigar and his sister Khanzada all existed, as did his traitorous half-brother Jahangir. Babur’s father indeed fell to his death from his dovecote at Akhsi when the battlements collapsed beneath him. Similarly, Babur’s main enemies – Shah Ismail of Persia, Sultan Ibrahim of Delhi and the Uzbek warlord Shaibani Khan, who really did carry off Khanzada, are also historical. However, I have used the liberties afforded to historical novelists to flesh out some of the other characters or to create new ones based on a combination

  of real people important in Babur’s life. Wazir Khan and Baisanghar fall into these categories, as indeed does Baburi – though in his memoirs Babur writes fondly of a market boy of that name.

  The social and military contexts are described as accurately as possible. For example, though he was a Sunni Muslim, Babur describes with relish his mammoth drinking binges and frequent consumption of bhang (cannabis) and opium. His acquisition from Ottoman Turkey of gunpowder weapons and his skilful deployment of them are also based on fact and were indeed the turning point in his fortunes.

  At one time or other, I’ve visited nearly all the places important to Babur’s story. His ancestral kingdom of Ferghana – in modern-day Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan – is still a place of apple, almond and apricot orchards, with beds of juicy melons the size of footballs. In late summer, men and women still thresh the grain by hand, using flails, sending clouds of golden chaff into the air, and herds of sheep, goats and shaggy yaks browse the high pastures, guarded by mounted herdsmen and their vigilant dogs. I’ve slept in their conical felt tents, eaten their root vegetables, mutton and buttered rice, which would have been so familiar to Babur, and drunk the fermented mare’s milk that warmed him. In late September, I’ve felt the air turn suddenly chilly and watched the first snowflakes start to fall in the high passes. In spring, I’ve seen the rivers and streams swollen with meltwater. I’ve followed Babur over the rolling hills and golden grasslands to Samarkand, to Kabul where his simple grave – recently restored with funds from Unesco – still sits on the hillside above the city, down through the Khyber Pass to the plains of northern India, to Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan.

  Everything I saw on those travels, everything I experienced, added to my admiration of and affection for Babur not only as warrior, adventurer, survivor and founder of the Moghul Empire but also as writer, gardener and lover of poetry and architecture.

  Babur, of course, would have used the Muslim lunar calendar but I have converted dates into the conventional solar, Christian calendar we use in the west.

  Specific Notes

  p.3 Timur, a chieftain of the nomadic Barlas Turks, is better known in the west as Tamburlaine, a corruption of ‘Timur the Lame’. Christopher Marlowe’s play portrays him as ‘The Scourge of God’.

  p.26 The reading of the sermon, the khutba, in the mosque was the usual formal means of proclaiming sovereignty in Islamic countries.

  p.51 Timur’s fortress in Samarkand, the Kok Saray, was in later times destroyed by the Persians. A square now covers the site.

  p.86 Registan Square: today two sides of the square are formed by madrasas built after Babur’s time on the sites of earlier pilgrims’ hostels and caravanserais. However, Ulugh Beg’s exquisite madrasa, decorated with bright blue stars, survives from the early fifteenth century.

  p.88 A Russian archaeologist in the early 1940s obtained permission to open Timur’s tomb. He entered the crypt on 22 June 1941, at night to avoid offending local sensitivities. Around three a.m. he opened the coffin. Almost immediately his assistant rushed in with the news of the invasion by Hitler
of Russia. His examination of Timur’s remains took more than eighteen months and confirmed that Timur was lame through an injury to his right leg. Within days of the skeleton being reinterred, the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad.

  p.91 The visionary Ulugh Beg’s observatory on Kohak Hill outside Samarkand is thought to have been a three-storey circular tower with a diameter of some forty-six metres. The remains of the half of his giant sextant that was set into the ground can still be seen.

  p.92 In the courtyard of the Bibi Khanym mosque, amid mulberry and quince trees, there is a giant marble stand on which the Osman Koran, said to be the second in history and captured by Timur from the Turks, once rested. It is now in Tashkent. Bibi Khanym’s tomb lies opposite the mosque.

  p.195 The story of Borte, Genghis Khan’s wife, is true.

  p.263 Humayun was born to Maham in 1508.

  p.271 As Kamran was born to Gulrukh during a period not covered in the Baburnama, the precise date is unknown but he was clearly very close to Humayun in age.

  p.285 Shah Ismail’s forces killed Shaibani Khan in 1510. The Shah had a gold-mounted cup fashioned from his skull and sent the straw-stuffed skin of his head as a present to the Ottoman Turks.

  p.300 The Safawid dynasty had made the Shia practice of Islam the state religion of Persia in 1501. The distinction between Shia and Sunni derived from the first century of Islam and originally related to who was Muhammad’s legitimate successor and whether the office should be an elected one or restricted, as the Shias claimed, to the descendants of the Prophet through his cousin and son-in-law, Ali. ‘Shia’ means ‘party’ and comes from the phrase ‘the party of Ali’. ‘Sunni’ means ‘those who follow the custom, “Sunna”, of Muhammad’. By the sixteenth century further differences had grown between the two sects, such as the nature of required daily prayer.

  p.318 Askari was born to Gulrukh in 1516. Hindal was born to Dildar three years later, in 1519.

  p.326 Maham did beg Babur – even before Hindal was born – to let her adopt Dildar’s child and he agreed.

  p.329 The sultan had several ‘Great Bombards’, one of which is today in the Fort Nelson Museum in Portsmouth, UK.

  p.351 The battle of Panipat was fought on 20 April 1526.

  p.383 In his memoirs Babur recorded meticulously, and in detail, the dreadful effects on his digestive system of the meal poisoned on Buwa’s orders.

  p.391 Babur’s garden in Agra was sited across the Jumna from the spot where his direct descendant, Shah Jahan, built the Taj Mahal as the mausoleum for his dead wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Shah Jahan modified Babur’s garden to make it into a scented moonlight garden from which he could view his lost wife’s tomb across the Jumna.

  p.397 The battle of Khanua was fought on 17 March 1527.

  p.429 Babur died on 26 December 1530, eight months after Humayun had fallen ill.

  p.430 Babur’s grave in his gardens above Kabul fell into dilapidation and was subsequently damaged during the recent troubles in Afghanistan. It and the gardens have been restored under the auspices of UNESCO and the Aga Khan’s Foundation.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Part I: Timur’s Heir

  Chapter 1: Death Among the Doves

  Chapter 2: First Blood

  Chapter 3: Timur’s Ring

  Chapter 4: Into the Fat City

  Chapter 5: The Kok Saray

  Chapter 6: One Hundred Days

  Part II: King Without a Throne

  Chapter 7: Hit and Run

  Chapter 8: The Bridegroom

  Chapter 9: Baburi

  Chapter 10: An Ancient Foe

  Chapter 11: Bitter Almonds

  Chapter 12: The Old Lady with the Golden Elephant

  Chapter 13: On the Run

  Chapter 14: A Sign of Fortune

  Part III: Governing by the Sword

  Chapter 15: Lord of the Bow

  Chapter 16: A Fortunate Birth

  Chapter 17: Daughter of Genghis

  Chapter 18: The Wine Cup

  Chapter 19: The Kizil-Bashi

  Part IV: Land of Dust and Diamonds

  Chapter 20: Turkish Fire

  Chapter 21: Blood and Thunder

  Chapter 22: Panipat

  Chapter 23: The First Moghul

  Chapter 24: Buwa

  Chapter 25: Jihad

  Chapter 26: The Bondage of Kingship

  Chapter 27: The Dying of the Light

  Historical Note