Imposing Mughal buildings dominate Delhi’s landscape, and most travellers, like Delhiwalas, would include the splendid Red Fort and gorgeous Humayun’s Tomb in their sight-seeing checklist. Perhaps history lovers and picnickers make repeat visits to these and myriad pre-Mughal ruins that dot the sprawling metropolis to frolic in lush gardens, dabble in amateur photography and soak in the atmosphere of bygone times.
But who were the Mughals and where did they come from? How did they get to Delhi and emerge as arguably the most glamorous and powerful dynasty in the world by the time Shah Jahan, the most opulent of Mughal Emperors, built the Lal Qila (Red Fort) and a brand new sparkling city, Shahjahanabad (now Old Delhi)?
A King Without a Kingdom!
Babur
A larger story begins with the amazing tale of Zahiruddin Muhammad “Babur”, aptly nicknamed “tiger”, who at age twelve lost his father and found himself ruler of Fergana, a tiny rustic principality, due north of Kashmir, once in ‘Turkestan’, now in present-day Uzbekistan.
Born in Andijan, Babur claimed descent from two legendary nomadic warriors – the Tartar Turk, Timur (corrupted to Tamerlane) on his father’s side, and the Mongol, Chingiz (often spelt Genghis) Khan on his mother’s. By age fifteen, Babur had realised his dream of taking Timur’s once imperial capital, Samarkand, just west of Fergana, but also lost it along with Fergana, first to rebel cousins and brothers, in the fashion of the times, and finally to Uzbegs determined to drive Timurids out of Central Asia.
Coveting Hindustan
Babur almost never made it to Delhi. Following years of wandering without home or kingdom, by a sudden act of fate, Babur seized Kabul when its ruler, an uncle (Ulugh Beg, grandson of Timur) died, opening up opportunities for Babur to turn his sights further south. He wrote in his excellent memoirs, the Babur-nama, that ever since he won Kabul in 1504 at age twenty-two, he “coveted Hindustan” – northern India, as a possible refuge and chance at gaining real fame. Twenty years later, on his fifth attempt, supported by disaffected Lodhi governors of Punjab and Sindh who sought his help in ousting the Lodhi Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim, Babur had some luck. Crossing the Khyber Pass and the Indus River, he marched south to the Yamuna (or Jumna) River, to the hot, dusty plains about fifty miles from Delhi, and there fought the decisive Battle of Panipat.
The Battle of Panipat
In just half a day’s dramatic battle on a sweltering April day in 1526, Babur’s modest army, equipped with superior strategy, cannon and musket, and sheer guts, defeated Ibrahim’s massive imperial forces on the historic battlefield slightly east of Kurukshetra of Mahabharat fame. Ibrahim was slain, and as per rather gruesome custom, his severed head presented as war trophy to Babur, who ordered the unfortunate sultan’s body to be bathed and buried with honour in a brocade shroud at that very spot – in a tomb in modern-day Panipat town. The road to Delhi and Agra now lay wide open for the conqueror.
A New Emperor of India
Babur immediately dispatched his teenage son, Humayun, to take over Agra while he headed to Delhi, where he first “made a circuit of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya’s tomb”. Even in our times, Nizamuddin is a much-visited Sufi shrine in the heart of south Delhi, in remembrance of the great ‘expat’ saint who lived in the capital and died there in 1324 at the age of ninety-two.
The next day Babur visited Khwaja Qutubuddin’s tomb (near the Qutub, honouring a saint from Ush in Fergana who came to Delhi centuries earlier and died there in 1235), and “visited the tombs and residences of Ghiyasuddin Balban and Alauddin Khilji, his Minar, and the Hauz-shamsi, Hauz-i-khas and the tombs and gardens of Buhlul and Sikandar (Lodhi). Having done this, we dismounted at the camp, went on a boat, and there araq was drunk.”
Two days later, the Friday sermon, or khutba, was read in Delhi’s main mosque in Babur’s name and money distributed to the poor and needy. Babur was proclaimed ruler, and as, in his words, “Dihli is held to be the capital of the whole of Hindustan”, he was its new Padshah Ghazi or Emperor.
