Rulers of India: Akbar

by G. B. Malleson

I must pass lightly over the proceedings of the next seven years, eventful though they were. In those years, from 1507 to 1514, Bábar marching northwards, recovered Fergháná, defeated the Uzbeks, and took Bokhára and Samarkand. But the Uzbeks, returning, defeated Bábar at Kulmalik, and forced him to abandon those two cities. Attempting to recover them, he was defeated again at Ghajdewan and driven back to Hisár.² Finding, after a time, his chances there desperate, he returned to Kábul. This happened in the early months of 1514.

² There are two other Hisárs famous in Eastern history: the one in India about a hundred miles north of Delhi: the other in the province of Azarbijan, in Persia, thirty-two miles from the Takht-i-Sulaimán. The Hisár referred to in the text is a city on an affluent of the Oxus, a hundred and thirty miles north-east of Balkh.

Again there was an interval of eight years, also to be passed lightly over. During that period Bábar chastised the Afgháns of the mountains, took Swát, and finally acquired Kandahár by right of treaty (1522). He took possession of, and incorporated in his dominions, that city and its dependencies, including parts of the lowlands lying chiefly along the lower course of the Helmand.

Meanwhile Sháh Beg, the eldest son of the Zulnun, who had formerly ruled in Kandahár, had marched upon and had conquered Sind, and had made Bukkur the capital. He died in June, 1524. As soon as this intelligence reached the Governor of Narsápur, Sháh Hásán, that nobleman, a devoted adherent of the family of Taimur, proclaimed Bábar ruler of the country, and caused the Khatbá, or prayer for the sovereign, to be read in his name throughout Sind. There was considerable opposition, but Sháh Hásán conquered the whole province, and governed it, acknowledging Bábar as his suzerain. At length, in 1525, was invited to Múltán. He marched against the fortress, and, after a protracted siege, took it by storm (August or September, 1526). Meanwhile, great events had happened in India. On the 29th of April, of the same year, the battle of Pánípat had delivered India into the hands of Bábar. Before proceeding to narrate his invasion of that country it is necessary that I should describe, very briefly, the condition of its actual rulers at the time.

CHAPTER IV

BÁBAR'S INVASIONS OF INDIA

Into the first period of Indian history, that extending from the earliest times to the invasion of Mahmúd of Ghazní, in the beginning of the eleventh century, I do not propose to enter. The world, indeed, possesses little detailed knowledge of that period. It is known that from the Indus to Cape Comorin the country was peopled by several distinct races, speaking a variety of languages; that the prevailing religions were those of the Bráhman, the Buddhist, and the Jain; and that the wars periodically occurring between the several kings of the several provinces or divisions were mostly religious wars.

The invasion of Mahmúd of Ghazní came first, in the year 1001, to disturb the existing system. But although Mahmúd, and his successors of the Ghazní dynasty, penetrated to Delhi, to Rájpútána, and to the furthest extremities of Gujarát, they did not practically extend their permanent rule beyond the Punjab. The territories to the south-east of the Sutlej still remained subject to Hindu sovereigns. But in 1186, the dynasty of the Ghaznívís was destroyed by the dynasty of Ghor or Ghur, founded by an Afghán of Ghur, a district in Western Afghánistán, a hundred and twenty miles to the south-east of the city of Herát, on the road to Kábul. The Ghuri dynasty was, in its turn, supplanted, in 1288, by that of the Khiljí or Ghiljí. The princes of this House, after reigning with great renown for thirty-three years over Delhi and a portion of the territories now known as the North-west Provinces, and, pushing their conquests beyond the Narbadá and the Deccan, made way, in 1321, for the Tughlak dynasty, descended from Túrkí slaves. The Tughlaks did not possess the art of consolidation. During the ninety-one years of their rule the provinces ruled by their predecessors gradually separated from the central authority at Delhi. The invasion of Taimur (1388-9) dealt a fatal blow to an authority already crumbling. The chief authority lingered indeed for twelve years in the hands of the then representative, Sultán Máhmud. It then passed for a time into the hands of a family which did not claim the royal title. This family, known in history as the Saiyid dynasty, ruled nominally in Northern India for about thirty-three years, but the rule had no coherence, and a powerful Afghán of the Lodí family took the opportunity to endeavour to concentrate power in his own hands.