1483 – 1530
Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur
Poet, ruler, founder of the Mughal dynasty
A Timurid prince from Andijan, poet and founder of the Mughal Empire in India. He captured Samarkand three times and left, in the Baburnama, one of the most vivid portraits of the city.
© Probably Aqa Riza, a Khurasani Persian migrant painter to India (The Indian heritage: court life & arts under Mughal rule, Victoria & Albert, Public domain
A city taken three times
Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur was born in Andijan on 14 February 1483, the son of Umar Shaykh Mirza, ruler of Ferghana; through his father he descended from Timur, through his mother from Genghis Khan. He inherited the throne of Ferghana in 1494, aged twelve, and Samarkand, the Timurid capital, became the obsession of his youth.
In 1497, after a seven-month siege, the fifteen-year-old Babur took Samarkand, only to abandon it a hundred days later when rebellion broke out at home. In 1500 he seized it again in a surprise attack, but in 1501 he was routed by Muhammad Shaybani Khan at Sar-i Pul and, after a long siege, gave up the city — and, as part of the peace terms, his sister Khanzada Begum in marriage to the victor. With Safavid help he entered Samarkand a third time in 1511, and lost it again in 1512. Turning south, he established himself in Kabul, won the battle of Panipat in 1526 and founded a new empire in India. He died in Agra on 26 December 1530.
Samarkand in the Baburnama
Babur's memoirs, written in Chagatai Turkic, preserve a detailed picture of late 15th-century Samarkand. 'Few towns in the whole habitable world are so pleasant as Samarkand,' he writes. He describes Timur's Kok Saray and Friday mosque, Ulugh Beg's madrasa and his observatory on the slopes of Kohak hill, the porcelain-clad Chini-khana, the Bagh-i Dilkusha and other gardens.
'The best paper in the world is made there,' he adds, noting that the water for the paper mills came from the Kan-i Gil meadow. Losing Samarkand remained a lifelong regret.
