CONQUEST OF INDIA BY BABUR

The grand Mughal Empire was founded by Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur the Chaghati Turkish Mughal emperor, who according to all estimates is one of the most fascinating personalities in all history. He spent his greater part of his life outside India and though Lane-Poole says, his permanent place in history rests upon his Indian conquests. Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur was born on 14th February 1483 in Andijan the capital city of Ferghana now in Uzbekistan. He was the son of Umer Sheikh Mirza, the sovereign of Ferghana, by his wife Kutlug-Nigar Khanum Begum ,the daughter of Yunis Khan Mongol descended from Chaghati Khan, the second son of Changaiz Khan (Temuchign). Although Babur hailed from the Barlas tribe which was of Mongol origin, his tribe had embraced Turkic and Persian culture, converted to Islam and resided in Turkestan and Khorasan. His mother tongue was the Chaghatai language (known to Babur as Turki, “Turkic”) and he was equally at home in Persian, the lingua franca of the Timurid elite. Babur the fearless military commander entered in to the heart of India in 1526 A.D. When Ibrahim Lodhi ascended the throne in1517 A.D., the political structure in the Lodi dynasty had dissolved due to abandoned trade routes and the depleted treasury. The Deccan was a coastal trade route, but in the late fifteenth century the supply lines had collapsed. The decline and eventual failure of this specific trade route resulted in cutting off supplies from the coast to the interior, where the Lodi Empire resided. The Lodi Dynasty was not able to protect itself if warfare were to break out on the trade route roads; therefore, they didn’t use those trade routes, thus their trade declined and so did their treasury leaving them vulnerable to internal political problems. Sultan Ibrahim Lodi the Ghazali Afghan (1489?1526 A.D), the youngest son of Sikandar, was the last Sultan of Delhi and a fearless military leader and kept out the opposition for almost a decade. He was engaged in warfare with the Afghans and the Mughals for most of his reign and died trying to keep the Lodi Dynasty from annihilation but was defeated in 1526 at the Battle of Panipat. This marked the end of the Sultanate of Delhi, and the rise of the Mughal Empire in India led by Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur