Person · Mughal dynasty founder · India
Zahiruddin Babur
Also known as Babur, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad
Timurid prince descended from Timur on his father's side and Chinggis Khan on his mother's, who lost his Ferghana patrimony as a teenager, took Kabul in 1504, and after years of raids across the Hindu Kush beat Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat in April 1526 to found the Mughal state in India. He died at Agra in 1530 and was buried first there and then — on his instruction — at the Bagh-i-Babur in Kabul. The Baburnama, his Chagatai-Turkish memoir, is one of the most self-aware and detailed autobiographies written anywhere before the modern period.
- Date
- 1483–1530
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Timurid / Mughal
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He hated the Indian plains, writing in the Baburnama that India had no good horses, meat, grapes, melons, ice, cold water or baths; the gardens he laid out at Agra, Dholpur and the Ram Bagh were partly an attempt to make the climate bearable. He drank heavily until he swore it off in 1527 before Khanwa — the vow is one of the Baburnama's set pieces. His son Humayun's recovery illness is said to have ended with Babur praying to take it onto himself, which he did, dying soon after.
About the place
Placed at Kabul (where he is buried) and Agra (where he founded the empire).
Connections (7)
- Won battle atPanipat
Babur beat Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat on 21 April 1526 with field artillery and the Central Asian tulughma flanking manoeuvre against twice his numbers, which founded the Mughal state in India. The battle took most of a morning; Ibrahim Lodi was killed on the field and his army dissolved. Babur was in Delhi by the end of the week and Agra within the month, where he found Humayun had already secured the treasury including the Koh-i-Noor.
- Ruled fromKābul
Babur took Kabul in 1504 at the age of twenty-one after losing his Ferghana patrimony as a teenager, and ruled from Kabul for the next twenty-two years before his Indian conquests. His raids across the Hindu Kush into Hindustan — in 1519, 1520, 1524 and finally 1526 — were all launched from Kabul, and on his explicit instruction his body was taken back from Agra after death and reburied at the Bagh-i-Babur there.
- Ruled fromAgra
Babur made Agra his Indian capital after Panipat in 1526 — a decision partly geographic (closer to the richer Doab than Delhi was) and partly rhetorical (Delhi was identified with the Lodi state he had just defeated). He died at Agra in 1530 and was buried first in the Char Bagh he had laid out on the Yamuna's east bank, before Humayun had his remains sent back to Kabul for permanent burial.
- Son ofHumayun
Humayun was Babur's eldest son and succeeded him at Agra in 1530 at the age of twenty-two. Babur's deathbed instruction, famously preserved in the Baburnama tradition, was that Humayun should treat his brothers kindly — advice Humayun followed to his cost, as his brothers' independent territories and factional politics contributed to his losing the empire to Sher Shah within a decade.
- Won battle atKhanwa
Babur beat Rana Sanga's Rajput confederacy at Khanwa on 16 March 1527 — a battle he treated in the Baburnama as the one that actually made the Mughal state, more consequential than Panipat because it defeated the surviving Rajput coalition that still threatened the sultanate he had just inherited. He took the title Ghazi after Khanwa and declared the Mughal state's permanent character; the pre-battle vow against alcohol is one of the Baburnama's set-piece passages.
- BuiltKabuli Bagh Mosque, Panipat
Babur commissioned Kabuli Bagh Mosque in 1527 to commemorate his victory at the First Battle of Panipat the previous year, naming it after his wife Kabuli Begum. It is the earliest Mughal monument on the subcontinent; the three-domed plan with a central pishtaq is already Timurid in idiom. Humayun added the Chabutara Fateh Mubarak after his 1555 reoccupation of Delhi.
- DefeatedIbrahim Lodi's Tomb, Panipat
Babur defeated and killed Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat on 21 April 1526 using mobile field artillery and the tulughma flanking tactic Timur had used at Ankara. Ibrahim’s head was brought to Babur after the battle; his body was buried on the battlefield in the simple platform grave at Panipat that is the only royal Lodi tomb outside Delhi. The battle ended the Delhi Sultanate and founded Mughal rule in India.