THE FAMILY AND EARLY DAYS OF BABAR
On the 9th of April, 1336, there was born to the chief of the Birbas,
a tribe of the purest Mughal origin, at Shehr-Sebz, thirty miles to
the north of Samarkand, a son, the eldest of his family. This boy,
who was called Taimur, and who was descended in the female line from
Chengiz Khan, was gifted by nature with the qualities which enable a
man to control his fellow men. Fortune gave him the chance to employ
those qualities to the best advantage. The successors of Chengiz Khan
in the male line had gradually sunk into feebleness and sloth, and,
in 1370, the family in that line had died out. Taimur, then
thirty-four, seized the vacated seat, gained, after many vicissitudes
of fortune, the complete upper hand, and established himself at
Samarkand the undisputed ruler of all the country between the Oxus
and the Jaxartes. Then he entered upon that career of conquest which
terminated only with his life. He established his authority in
Mughalistan, or the country between the Tibet mountains, the Indus
and Mekran, to the north, and Siberia to the north; in Kipchak, the
country lying north of the lower {13} course of the Jaxartes, the sea
of Aral, and the Caspian, including the rich lands on the Don and
Wolga, and part of those on the Euxine; he conquered India, and
forced the people of territories between the Dardanelles and Delhi to
acknowledge his supremacy. When he died, on the 18th February, 1405,
he left behind him one of the greatest empires the world has ever
seen.
After his death his empire rapidly broke up, and although it was
partly reconstituted by his great-grandson, Abusaid, the death of
this prince in 1469, when surprised in the defiles of the mountains
near Ardebil, and the defeat of his army, precipitated a fresh
division among his sons. To the third of these, Umershaikh Mirza, was
assigned the province of Ferghana, known also, from the name of its
capital, as Khokand.
Umershaikh was the father of Babar. He was an ambitious man, bent on
increasing his dominions. But the other members of his family were
actuated by a like ambition, and when he died from the effects of an
accident, in 1494, he was actually besieged in Akhsi, a
fortress-castle which he had made his capital.
His eldest son, Babar, then just twelve years old, was at the time at
Andijan, thirty-six miles from Akhsi. The enemy was advancing on
Andijan. Babar, the day following his father's death (June 9), seized
the citadel, and opened negotiations with the invader. His efforts
would have availed him little, {14} if there had not existed
jealousies and divisions in the hostile camp. These worked for him so
as to secure to him all that remained of Ferghana. But he had lost
the important towns of Khojend, Marghinan, and Uratiupe.
For two years after the retirement of the invader, the boy rested,
consolidating his resources, and watching his opportunity. Then,
troubles having arisen in Samarkand, he made a dash at that city,
then the most important in Central Asia. He forced its surrender
(November, 1497), but as he would not allow his troops to pillage,
these deserted him by thousands. He held on, however, until the news
that Ferghana was invaded compelled him to quit his hold. On the eve
of his departure he was prostrated by a severe illness, and when at
length he reached Ferghana it was to hear that his capital had
surrendered to his enemies. He was, in fact, a king without a
kingdom. 'To save Andijan,' he wrote, 'I had given up Samarkand: and
now I found that I had lost the one without preserving the other.'
He persevered, however, recovered Ferghana, though a Ferghana
somewhat shorn of its proportions, and once more made a dash at
Samarkand. The Uzbeks, however, forced him to raise the siege, and,
his own dominions having in the interval been overrun and conquered,
he fell back in the direction of Kesh, his birthplace. After many
adventures and strivings with fortune, he resolved with the aid of
the very few adherents who remained to him, to return and {15}
attempt the surprise of Samarkand. It was a very daring venture, for
his entire following numbered but two hundred and forty men. He made
the attempt, was foiled; renewed it, and succeeded. He was but just
in time. For the last of the garrison had but just yielded, when the
chief of the Uzbeks was seen riding hard for the place, at the head
of the vanguard of his army. He had to retire, baffled.
But Babar could not keep his conquest. The following spring the
Uzbeks returned in force. To foil them Babar took up a very strong
position outside the city, on the Bokhara road, his right flank
covered by the river Kohik. Had he been content to await his enemy in
this position, he would probably have compelled him to retire, for it
was too strong to be forced. But he was induced by the astrologers,
against his own judgment, to advance beyond it to attack the Uzbek
army. In the battle which followed, and which he almost won, he was
eventually beaten, and retreated within the walls of the city. Here
he maintained himself for five months, but had then to succumb to
famine. He was allowed to quit the city with his following, and made
his way, first to Uratiupe, ultimately to Dehkat, a village assigned
to him by the reigning Khan of the former place. For three years that
followed he lived the life of an adventurer: now an exile in the
desert; now marching and gaining a throne; always joyous; always
buoyed up by hope of ultimate success; always acting with energy and
vigour. He attempted to win {16} back, and had been forced to
abandon, Ferghana; then he resolved, with a motley band of two to
three hundred men, to march on Khorasan. It seemed madness, but the
madness had a method. How he marched, and what was the result of his
march, will be told in the next chapter.
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