BABUR NAMA

Name:Md Naseer
Class: UG-II (Semester IV)
Roll number: HIST050
Registration number: 21106160050
Paper name:HISTORY OF INDIA V (C.1550-1605)
Paper code: HIST04C9

Course Instructor: Dr. Deepa Khakha

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INTRODUCTION

Baburnama was written by the founder of the Mughal empire in India—Babur. His account

provides a reader of the 20th and 21st century with an understandable and accessible account

of that milieu. We can find many models comparable to Baburnama, but the scale and varied

themes it covers in a reliable narrative make it a "universally recognizable" human emotion. 1

It captures the way a prince in his teens establishes himself in the Persianate world of Central

Asia, India, and Iran. The original title for Babur’s account was "Vaqai," meaning events.

"Vaqiat-i Baburi" was known by Babur’s descendants.2 Vaqai refers to a genre of reports of

court proceedings in Mughal historiography. In Baburnama, Babur's writings revolve around

him. In the same way, the cultural background of the author, civilization, and social condition

also play a major role in deciding the outcome of a text and the life of the author. Babur’s

account entered into the treasury of world culture, leaving a legacy to reconstruct the history

of Central Asia and North India as well as his magnificent prose because of its source materials.

Baburnama is a unique and a fascinating account of the life and times of Babur,who was not

only a great conqueror but also gifted a writer and poets.The book provides a detailed

description of the political and social and social conditions of central Asia and India during the

15th and 16th centuries and offers insights into the customs , traditions and beliefs of the people

of that time.Babur had a lifelong passion of literature , arts , architecture and the Baburnama

reflection of his wide range intellectual and cultural interest.The book includes in depth details

of his military exploits , run ins with other kings, and personal experiences and reflections , as

well as descriptions of the flora and wildlife of the areas he conquered .As we can say that

Baburnama is a remarkable historical sources that throws light on the politics , culture , and

1
Stephen Frederic Dale, Garden of the Eight Paradises: Bābur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia,
Afghanistan and India (1483-1530) (Brill's Inner Asian Library, 1566-7162; v. 10) (Brill Academic
Publishers,2004).Pg.24

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societies of Central Asia and India throughout the 15th and 16th centuries in addition to being a

comprehensive and insightful account of Babur’s life and times.

Content of ‘Baburnama’

Baburnama describes Farghana, Samarkand, Kabul, Parhala, the Rustam Maidan, the

Qandahar Fortress, Hindustan, Gualiar, and many more significant locations he came to know.

We can clearly see the political landscape of North India and Central Asia in the late 15th and

early 16th century. Babur had a meticulous eye for capturing details through observation, which

made him a very cultured person. Babur used Baburnama to record daily occurrences and

activities in his life. These writings primarily adhere to the Persian style of writing, but we also

find descriptions of the lives of common people, such as the conditions of soldiers, acrobats

like Luh, musicians like Khawaja Yusuf, and the instruments they play, such as the audi

(lutenist), ghichak (guitar), and nayi (flautists), and singer like Jahangir Mirza and Mir Jan used

to entertain. He makes reference to wine (chagir) drinkers like Bai-sunghar Mirza as well as

the various styles of wine made around the subcontinent. He describes the weavers, lamp-

bearers, boatmen, robbers, gatekeepers, rebels, dervishes (holy men), Sufis, scholars, young

people, pastoralists, peasants, artisans, merchants, and traders. Babur's account allows us to

observe the political climate, civil war, and nobility's state in Northern India and Central Asia.

Although Babur belonged to the aristocracy, we can also read the biographies of other nobles,

such Yunas Chaghatai, Mahmud Miran-shahi, Mirza, Husain Bai-gara, and many more. Along

with other ladies and kids, allusions to his family members are discovered. They are revered

and treated with great respect, although they are not frequently acknowledged.

We find that Babur made five expeditions into Hindustan. During his raids, he only faced

resistance at Sialkot by Jats and Gujjars. He called them wretches who acted obstinately and

tyrannically. 3 From his account, scholars are able to understand his motive and condition

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before his invasion; for instance, Alam Khan Lodi asking for Babur’s help against Ibrahim

Lodi.3 Babur mentioned that the country was ruled by five Muslim rulers and two Hindu rulers

among small kingdoms. It also captures the battle and victory of Panipat and Kanwa, giving us

an admirable reference of gunpowder and cannon in creating obsolete mediaeval forts. He

mentioned that Ibrahim had a standing army of 100,000 and about 1,000 elephants.4 Babur

began to move in the arrangement of right, left, and centre and his army was organised and

numbered with the reference of 700 carts and mantelets.5 Babur used Ottoman tactics where he

employed long range artillery and mobile tactics that made the charge of elephant cavalry

inefficient. A similar tactic was used during the battle of Kanwa against Rana Sangha, who,

according to Babur, failed his promise to act together.6

We find that Babur was a religious person because during Ramadan he precisely observed

fasting and prayers. He constructed Kabuli Bagh mosque and gave donations to the poor. He

made an alliance with Shah Ismail Safavi by going against his own Turkish Sunni and Afghan

followers. He even visited the tombs of Sufi saints and had dialogue with Sunni scholars and

Sufi dervishes. This reflects his tolerance towards Sufi and Shi’a practices. After the battle of

Kanwa, he added the title "Ghazi" to his official seal, referred to Hindus as infidels, and

recognised himself as a holy warrior, wanderer, and martyr for Islam. 7

There are many anecdotes that portray him as a great warrior and ruler, but there are many

instances indicating normality. He watches wrestling, feeling sick, dislocation of his wrist,

headache, bodily pain, tooth break, ear ache, wounds of the leg, head, etc., which are frequently

found in his account and make him rest for weeks or months. For instance, he dislocated his

3
Babur and Annette Susannah Beveridge, The bābur-nāma in English. Pg. 428, 439-464.
4
Bābar Ẓahīraddīn Muḥammad and Wheeler M. Thackston, Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and
Emperor. Pg. 329.
5
Babur and Annette Susannah Beveridge, The bābur-nāma in English. Pg. 468-470.
6
Ibid. pg.551-574.
7
Bābar Ẓahīraddīn Muḥammad and Wheeler M. Thackston, Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and
Emperor. Pg. 387

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wrist when he was trying to give a blow in the face of Baba Jan. This made Babur unable to

write and use bows for many months.8 He also mentioned most of the treatments, and we also

find anecdotes of Mughal surgery. As he travelled, he continuously gave a description of the

exceptional sites, gardens, waterways, flora, and fauna of the region. For instance, while giving

the description of Hindustan, he mentions his contemporary rulers, mountains, rivers,

irrigation, fauna like elephant, nil-gai, peacock, water-tiger, vegetables, flowers, seasons, days

of the week, division of time, measures, revenue, etc., and he was astonished by seeing a new

world.9 He commissioned the building of several water tanks and short channels to irrigate

these gardens and placed Persian and Turkish-style gardens and orchards.

Wine parties are frequently and elaborately mentioned in his account. The parties were held in

his tent and garden, where they freely consumed wine, liquor, and maajun. 10 The Quran forbade

the consumption of intoxication, and Babur was aware of this fact. Later, he understood this

sinful act and renounced its consumption by pouring wine on the ground, destroying precious

vessels and building an alms house and commemorative well at that place. This was done

among his nobles.11 A Farman was issued throughout his empire for public renunciation of

alcohol consumption. It can be observed that his work can be divided into three parts. Firstly,

Babur’s accession to the throne, political forces in Fergana, secondly, his invasion of

Hindustan, and lastly, his consolidation and adaptation in India. We only get an account of 18

years of his life because there are three major gaps in his work. There is almost no information

given about the periods between 1508-19 AD, 1520–25 AD, and 1529 to 1530 AD.

8
Babur and Annette Susannah Beveridge, The bābur-nāma in English. Pg. 408-409.
9
Ibid. pg. 480-521.
10
Bābar Ẓahīraddīn Muḥammad and Wheeler M. Thackston, Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and
Emperor. Pg. 302.
11
Babur and Annette Susannah Beveridge, The bābur-nāma in English. Pg. 551-556.

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Critique

The Chaghatai Turkic language, which was a hybrid of Turkic and Persian and was spoken by

the Timurids, is used to write the Baburnama. At the period, this language served as the

common tongue across Central Asia, and the Mughals continued to speak it in India for many

years after Babur's demise. The Baburnama is distinguished by its frankness, attention to detail,

and vivid, descriptive language.The language, sentence structure, and morphology of Babur’s

prose are very Persianized. Small poems and many phrases are in Persian, and the work was

translated into Persian by Abdul Rahim. 12 He described the smallest details with a forthright

and pleasant style as he saw them, and it leaves a good impression in the mind of the reader.

Baburnama is regarded, as Prof. Lanepool describes, as the most trustworthy piece of work

because of Babur's honesty as a chronicler and a witness. 13 It seems that he combined his

geographical knowledge with chronology, which led to the formation of a fixed consequence

of historical events. Many historians believe that Babur came at the invitation of Dwalat Khan

Lodi and Alam Khan. This anecdote is self-contradictory because it is mentioned that Babur

was paid homage and horses by Dawlat Khan Yusuf-Khel’s son Ali Khan and other notables

at Bhera, but six years later, Baburnama portrays an entirely opposing picture. Babur accused

Dwalat Khan Lodi of tricking Babur’s army by strapping two swords around his waist, leading

them against their enemy and causing turmoil and strife among them." 14 Similarly, it has

elaborate exaggerations when we look at his description of his army of 12000 men against the

one lakh army of Ibrahim Lodi.

12
“Socio-Cultural and Economic History of Medieval India,”
https://ddceutkal.ac.in/Syllabus/MA_history/Paper_14.pdf. (accessed on May 26, 2022)
13
Vidya Dhar Mahajan, A History of India (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1980). Pg. 268.
14
Bābar Ẓahīraddīn Muḥammad and Wheeler M. Thackston, Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and
Emperor. Pg. 277-318

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Gaps in ‘Baburnama’:

In the Baburnama, the most prominent gaps are 1502-1503, 1508-1519, and 1520-1525. In the

Turkish version of Baburnama, the story continues, whereas in the Persian version, we find

Babur lost the battle and it ends there. The description of the events shows it skips that phase

and continues after a year. 15 Babur's dream of Naqshbandi Khwaja Yaqub was said to have

saved him in the first interval. Beveridge contends that these anecdotes were employed to fill

in the blanks in his report. These kinds of anecdotes are disregarded by scholars, but they reveal

their way of thinking, their conviction, and their respect for the Sufis' supernatural powers. He

was forbidden by Shaibani Khan from 1508 and 1519, and in a similar way, between 1520 and

1525, Shaibani Khan beat him and made him marry his sister. Such occurrences show that he

made an effort to steer clear of his formative years. His tale concludes abruptly fifteen months

before his passing, and because of this, academics like Beveridge have argued that there might

be some problems during that time.

Genre

Historians classify the texts produced during Mughal India into various genres based on

similarities in function and form. Genres cannot be categorized, and it’s a common

epistemological viciousness of modern scholars to fit premodern texts into modern bounded

genres. Such categorizations were not always fluid because overlapping elements were present

in them, and it made sense for a normal reader to assume such accounts represented a singular

version of their respective writer. 16 When we look at Baburnama, it seems to be an

autobiography because Babur himself wrote about his life in first person, but it also contains

15
A. Azfar Moin, “Peering through the Cracks in the Baburnama: The Textured Lives of Mughal Sovereigns,”
The Indian Economic &Amp; Social History Review 49, no. 4 (2012): pp. 493-526,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0019464612463806. Pg. 494
16
Taymiya R. Zaman, “Instructive Memory: An Analysis of Auto/Biographical Writing in Early Mughal India,”
Brill (Brill, January 1, 2011), https://brill.com/view/journals/jesh/54/5/article-p677_3.xml?language=en
(accessed on 26th May, 2022)

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detailed biographies of his kin and compatriots. Hence, autobiography in Mughal

historiography meant overlapping of the author’s social, political, familial, and literary circles

were inseparable with his text, and we find history of his own during that time. Since the 18th

and 19th centuries, "autobiography" began to be used in Europe, and they defined it as "the act

of writing one’s own life." As an historian, we should be cautious about using modern thinking

and concepts to estimate an account written in late-medieval India because such writing of

one’s own self is rarely found in the Islamic world, and because of Babur and Jahangir’s virtue

as kings, we found such an act. 17 According to Dwight Reynolds, auto/biographers of the Arab

world were aware of autobiographical acts and that their texts were full of details specific to

individual lives and that it was common there. 18 While examining beyond Baburnama, we find

the character of Babur in other accounts like Ahval-i Humayun Padishah by his daughter

Gulbadan Begum, where we find about her father’s death. This indicates the presence of

intertextuality, fluid margins of genre and interconnectedness of lives in Mughal

historiography.19 I can infer that as a historian we should be aware of, especially for Mughal

historiography, the author’s motive, their reliance on collective and individual interpretations.

Hence, it is important to go beyond one text and authenticate it with other genres to have a

proper history.

Cross-cultural concept

The migration of Iranian-speaking and Turkish-speaking people took place. That led to an

intense mixing of languages in that region because of the presence of different tribes, Mongol

and Semitic-speaking people. Baburnama conveys everyday life aspects of Central Asian

17
Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson, The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan
Period (Bombay: Kitab Mahal, 1964). Pg. 282.
18
Kristen Brustad, Dwight Fletcher Reynolds, and Dwight Reynolds, Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the
Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Pg. 28-66.
19
Taymiya R. Zaman, “Instructive Memory: An Analysis of Auto/Biographical Writing in Early Mughal India,”
Brill (Brill, January 1, 2011), https://brill.com/view/journals/jesh/54/5/article-p677_3.xml?language=en
(accessed on 26th May, 2022)

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people, their worldwide view, mental characteristics, their outlooks and language. For instance,

he mentioned ten to twelve languages were spoken in Kabul. 20 The situation Babur captures in

his account indicates multilingualism, and Babur himself knows Farsi and Turkic languages.

Cross-cultural influences did not only affect language; we also find diverse aspects in military

and household terms such as food, drink, clothing, and so on. Baburnama means that Central

Asian people have a similar mentality and a common past. They use special names in the

Turkish language. Beks is used to refer to the leaders of any individual regiment who served

under the Khan; bek/biy/bey is used to refer to nobles and the rich. Biki and bikim are the

words used to serve as the prefix to the names of women of noble families. 21 It can be

understood that Babur tried to give a picture of primordial Turkish realities as well as the things

that were different in Hindustan. He gave a vivid description of the history, culture, and

linguistic picture of the Central Asian peoples of the middle ages, and the people were

connected as a community by sharing it as their common aspect. Hence, it is obvious to say

that Baburnama was written under the complex system of Central Asia.

20
Siuita Abdykadyrova et al., “Reflection of Intercultural Concepts in the Work ‘Baburnama,’” Open Journal of
Modern Linguistics 11, no. 02 (2021): pp. 140-148, https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2021.112012. Pg. 143
21
Ibid. pg. 144-147.

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CONCLUSION

A historical literary masterwork, Baburnama provides a wealth of information on Babur's life

and times, as well as the larger historical setting in which he lived. It is a useful resource for

academics, historians, and general readers because to its complex and nuanced portrayal of

Babur as a king, author, and human being.It brings to life a fascinating time in history and

provides a window into the cultural, political, and social dynamics of the time through its vivid

descriptions of people, places, and events.Baburnama, like other mediaeval Indian texts, has

many issues. However, it brings to light cultural transactions that remain mostly imperceptible

to a scholar of the 20th or 21st century but were naturally and enormously momentous for

native sixteenth-century readers. It can be concluded from the above observation that his

journey, due to several matters, from Central-Asia to Hindustan captures the differences that

are present in Ferghana, Hindustan, and other places by giving the descriptions. He wrote the

unfamiliar things he found after visiting a place, and it fulfils the historical gaps of those places.

Classifying ‘Baburnama’ as any particular genre still remains a very challenging thing for a

modern-day scholar because it cuts across various genres of writing because they didn’t have

any concrete understanding of auto/biographical writing and the content it presents is more

important for a scholar. Baburnama presents the relationship between the spiritual realm and

the temporal realm present during that time as well as the political scenario of Central Asia and

Northern India. The language he used in his writing also reflects the diversity of people living

in Central Asia, such as his multilingual dialect coming from Turkish, Mongol, and Semantic-

speaking people. Gaps in his account are frequently found, forcing historians to rely on

contemporary sources, which are scarce and inaccurate. It is still not clear who penned down

all the events because Babur was a ruler and he had other work to do. When we look at the

writings, the first portion has a fine literary style, with delicate prose having the verses in

Persian and Turkish, and the later writings in the text were not refined, indicating that they

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were casually written because of lack of time and copied from a diary. The authenticity of

Baburnama is a more reliable source to reconstruct the history of that time and contemporary

historians appreciate such an act of writing with accuracy by a king, but as a scholar we should

be cautious of his ideologies, philosophy, and motives that he tried to present to his audience

and descendants.

BIBLOGRAPHY

• Zaman, Taymiya R. “Instructive Memory: An Analysis of Auto/Biographical Writing

in Early Mughal India.” Brill. Brill, January 1, 2011.

https://brill.com/view/journals/jesh/54/5/article-p677_3.xml?language=en.

• Babur, and Annette Susannah Beveridge. The bābur-nāma in English. London: Luzac,

1922.

• Bābar Ẓahīraddīn Muḥammad, and Wheeler M. Thackston. Baburnama: Memoirs of

Babur, Prince and Emperor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

• Dale, Stephen Frederic. Garden of the Eight Paradises: Bābur and the Culture of

Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483-1530) (Brill's Inner Asian

Library, 1566-7162; v. 10). Brill Academic Publishers, 2004.

• Elliot, Henry Miers, and John Dowson. The History of India, as Told by Its Own

Historians: The Muhammadan Period. Bombay: Kitab Mahal, 1964.

• Nizami, Khaliq Ahmad. On History and Historians of Medieval India. New Delhi:

Munishiram Manoharlal, 1983.

• “Socio-Cultural and Economic History of Medieval India.” Accessed May 26, 2022.

https://ddceutkal.ac.in/Syllabus/MA_history/Paper_14.pdf.

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Total words: 2625

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