#gurkani

How The Thriving, Prosperous Timurid Empire of Central Asia Declined and Dissolved While Timur’s personal brand of ruthless politics and battlefield competence kept his realm united during his lifetime, it was not long after his death that cracks began to appear in the foundations of his empire. Succession among nomadic steppe cultures was rarely a simple affair and the mantle of the chief…

The Timurid Renaissance When Timur the Great passed away in early 1405, a succession dispute quickly arose among potential claimants. Timur had kept control over his empire by appointing family members as governors of various regions and cities. Now that he was gone, some of them favored splintering the empire so that they could now act with absolute authority in their domains and not have to…

Monday, May 24, 2021.

Babur spends his time ruling Kabul, never forgetting Samarkand and his home of Ferghana. He will never go back to these cities ever. Little does he know his destiny lies south, in the land beyond the Hindukush. He receives a secret message from the Afghan nobles at the court of the Delhi Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, an unworthy son of a successful father, Sikandar. Ibrahim Lodi is in his ninth year of reign when treachery strikes his legacy.

He rides to meet the Timurid army his informants have told him about. It is reported to be 12,000 strong. Ibrahim is confident. He has numbers on his side. He outnumbers the enemy by at least 9:1, with an army of reportedly 100,000. This is not including his roughly 300 war elephants. Terrorizing creatures on the battlefield, enough to send the enemy scattering in fear.

Zahiruddin meets the Lodi army at Panipat. The year is 1526. He forms a tulguhma formation. His army follows tactics borrowed from the Ottomans. It is divided into flanks and into smaller units best suited to surround the enemy from all sides effectively. However, the tactics aren’t the only thing the Timurids have brought to the Indian subcontinent from the Ottomans.

Little does Ibrahim know; he is in for the scare of his life. He is going to experience the brutality of the miracle that is gunpowder. Never before seen in this part of the world. He engages with the front of the Timurid file and charges confidently, knowing he will be able to break ranks and decimate the foe. As his army draws nearer, the front file of the Timurids starts growing wider, parting in the middle. To expose a line of mounted artillery that uses gunpowder and canons. The tide of the war changes suddenly.

The bullets fly and the artillery tear into the Lodi ranks and the sound of the cannons booming scare the Elephants so badly that they turn and start crushing their own soldiers in the chaos. Babur has half his work done for him. The Gurkani flag prevails. The long history of the Sultanate in Delhi ends.

Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur finally establishes an empire worthy of his lineage. Though he doesn’t feel very strongly about the place he has conquered. He complains of the weather frequently; hardly likes the fruits that grow in this country and accuses the gardens of India of being too drab to be even called gardens. Despite all this, he lays the foundation of what will come to be the most prosperous empire in medieval times. Shaping a continent and its culture, forever.

Monday, May 10, 2021.

I was going through the Baburnama today when I came across something really interesting. Babur mentions how the Shahs of Badakhshan trace their lineage back to Alexander, the son of Philip. He of course speaks of none other than Alexander the Great. We’re talking about tracing lineages across whole eras. Obviously, I’m now obsessed with this.

A study of the footnote related to this claim made by Babur, annotated by Mr. Thackston, says that when Alexander reached Central Asia, he expressed his desire to leave behind a lineage that shall be safe from the “princes of the world.” His Greek advisors, after much deliberation, concluded that he could do this safely in an area of the Steppes called “Badakhshan.” They apparently came up with a “Book of Regulations” that would keep Badakhshan safe from succession games and fratricide/patricide.

If this is to be believed, the book succeeded, as the Shahs of Badakhshan boasted of an unbroken lineage from the time Alexander left behind his genes in the region. In fact, up until Babur’s time, Badakshan was never overrun or annexed by anybody. It stayed in the hands of the lineage. This launched a volley of relentless questions in my mind. If this is true, could it be possible that even the Gurkani somewhere shared these genes of The Great? If this is indeed true, it gives way to the fantastical possibility of the “Greatness” being passed on through generations and is manifested every few centuries. Like it happened in the case of Jalaluddin Muhammad Padshah Ghazi, grandson of Babur. I’m trying to get my hands on as much literature as possible to explore this facet. Very exciting.

Monday, May 3, 2021.

Born in Khurasan to Yadgar Beg, the uncle of Humayun on his mother’s side, Bega Begam was a woman of great talent and immense character. Married to her cousin in the year 1527, Bega Begam became Humayun’s wife when he was still the Viceroy of Badakhshan.

While she appears in the written historical record very sparsely, the little glimpses that we get of her character, speak volumes about the Force of Nature that this lady was. She was made Padshah Begam when Humayun ascended the throne and was even with him when he was defeated by Sher Shah Suri. Taken and held captive in this time, she is still, the only Padshah Begam to have ever been held captive. (If you don’t count Mahabat Khan’s unintentional coup decades later, where he held control over Noor Jahan).

Bega Begam was a woman educated in the fine arts and Persian as well as other languages of the time. What stands out in her education though, is that she possessed also, the knowledge of medicine and illnesses. This knowledge comes to the forefront in one very well-documented episode, where Bega Begam, comes to the court of Humayun with the medicine she has concocted, to give the young prince Jalaluddin. Hamida Banu, the prince’s mother is quite naturally wary of this. Bega is her competition and may easily harbor her own intentions for the throne of Hindustan. And so, what Bega Begum does next, describes her immaculate character more than anything else. Sensing the distrust, Bega Begam drinks some of the medicine herself and then proceeds to rub it on the child’s teeth.

When Humayun dies in 1556, she makes it her mission to construct the most magnificent tomb in the empire to lay the late Emperor to rest. This she undertakes from her own wealth. In 1564, she makes the Hajj pilgrimage with Humayun’s sister Gulbadan. Hereafter, she is also called Haji Begam respectfully. She comes back to Delhi and chooses to stay there rather than go to Agra, where Jalaluddin has established his new capital. She stays close to the tomb’s construction site and continues to live there after the tomb has been built. She spends the rest of her life teaching and helping the needy, away from the glamour of the Imperial harem in Agra.

Monday, April 19, 2021.

I’d like to take a small detour (one of the many) from the Gurkani men to talk of a woman I mentioned last week. Meet Khanzada Begum, born 5 years before Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Khanzada is a Timurid princess who goes on to lead an extraordinary life, that is a perfect prototype of the Gurkani lady. She keeps Babur company throughout his conquests. This kind of co-travelling even in military expeditions, is something we see throughout Gurkani history, even in Hindustan, in later years.

But when Babur at 18, loses Samarkand a second time, to his Uzbek nemesis, Muhammad Shaybani Khan, Babur is forced to leave Khanzada to his rival as war ransom. And so, Khanzada is married off to an Uzbek warlord at twenty-three. But this is going to be only the first of the three total marriages in her life. Shaybani gets her remarried to a lowly nobleman in his court. Both these men die in battle in 1510.

Things take a fortunate turn for Khanzada as the Persian Safavid army sweeps the kingdoms of Central Asia. Shah Ismail I defeats the Uzbeks and he finds Khanzada among the defeated. On learning that she is none other than the sister of Babur, his friend and ally, Shah Ismail I returns her to Babur at Kunduz. She is reunited with her brother at the age of thirty-three. Already twice widowed and childless.

Babur has lost his mother and younger sister by this time and he cherishes Khanzada even more as she represents, for him, his golden Timurid lineage. She is married to a friend and courtier of Babur, Mahdi Khwaja. Though they never have children, Khanzada adopts Mahdi’s two-year-old sister, Sultanum and raises her as her own daughter, eventually marrying her to Babur’s son Hindal Mirza.

When Babur sends for his zenana after conquering Hindustan, he dies before the zenana ever reaches him. Before his death, he proclaims Khanzada begum as the Padshah Begum. Khanzada plays a central role in preventing fratricide to occur in the Gurkani clan, almost three generations too early. Of course, three generations later, fratricide becomes commonplace in the Gurkani dynasty (when Khurram sets the ball rolling with the poisoning of his elder brother, Khusrau). Khanzada prevent s this from happening between Humayun and his brother Kamran. To broker peace as a representative of the Emperor (Humayun), she undertakes the long journey through motherless terrain, essentially alone without any male relatives accompanying her from Kandahar to Kabul, at the incredible age of sixty-five.

Monday, April 12, 2021.

It’s the tenth of June, 1494. Central Asia is ruled by the descendants of Timur and The Great Khan. Umar Shaikh Mirza, the son of erstwhile ruler of the Timurid empire, currently ruler of Ferghana, is in his Kabooterkhana. The Mirza is the grandson of Miran Shah, son of Timur. The kabooterkhana is built shoddily in this lesser-lived palace and it juts out from the main structure, overlooking a ravine below. Which is where our Mirza ends up, dead, when it eventually gives way. I guess Humayun inherited the falling down your death part of it all too. (Too dark?)

Umar Shaikh’s eldest, Zahiruddin, is just eleven years old, at this time. His mother, Qutlugh Nigar Khanum, like the wife of Timur, is also a princess of Moghulistan, a descendant of Genghis Khan. With the father dead, Zahiruddin becomes the ruler of Ferghana. And immediately, his rule is fraught with danger. His extended family rules the lands of Central Asia. And two of his uncles have been warring with his father for a while now. They are restless. They see this eleven-year-old boy and jump at the chance. But the young ruler has a guardian angel in his maternal grandmother, Aisan Daulat Begum, queen of Moghulistan. He is able to keep his throne for a few years. In 1497, when the young mirza is all of fourteen, he lays siege to the fort of Samarkand. And surprisingly, wins it. This win, speaks much about this boy’s abilities as a military commander and strategist. For him, it is and will forever be counted among his greatest wins. In seven months of ruling Samarkand, Zahiruddin faces a rebellion in Ferghana.

He leaves Samarkand to crush the rebellion of his brother Jahangir (not the one you know popularly, an earlier one). He loses his father’s inheritance to the rebellion. And when he marches back, he finds Samarkand taken too, leaving him with no land to rule. Zahiruddin then goes to Badakhshan. Badakhshan is just north of the Himalayas, east of the Hindu Kush. Native to the Tajiks, who are a formidable ethnicity, known for their ferocity in battle. Zahiruddin builds a new army with these natives. He lays siege to Samarkand for the last time. He takes the city back. But this is short-lived. His beloved Samarkand is not his destiny, it seems. He is defeated by the scariest of his rivals, Muhammad Shaybani.

Muhammad Shaybani is the Khan of the Uzbeks. Zahiruddin despises the Uzbeks. But when he is defeated and trapped with his army in Samarkand, he is forced to give off his sister, Khanzada Begum to this monster, in marriage, to secure safe escape for himself and his army. In his memoir, Zahiruddin shamefully accepts this act. Though, this isn’t your average damsel in distress story. This certainly isn’t the last we hear of Khanzada Begum. Samarkand’s loss and Ferghana’s treachery forces our hero to march towards the only lands he has left to go to. So, it is less with a determined mind than with a lack of choice, that Zahiruddin marches southwards to Kabul. Here he finds that the ruler, Ulugh Beg II (Zahiruddin’s paternal unlce), has died and left no heir but an infant.

I've always loved history, from the time I can remember. I had a teacher in primary school, Mrs. Nivedita. She was the only history teacher I ever had, that understood how history should be taught. It amazes me how people end up hating history as a subject. Have you ever heard of anyone that hates listening to stories? I believe the blame lies not in the children that end up hating history but in the teachers who somehow colossally end up making the simplest subject to teach, a most boring one.

All the teachers who followed Mrs. Nivedita, did a terrible job at teaching history. But the fact that I still am passionate about the subject bears testimony to how profoundly a brilliant teacher changes our view of a subject.

History class for me, after Nivedita ma'am, mostly comprised of arguments with the teachers (I accept, I was a bit of a show-off too), with one of these arguments landing me, believe it or not, in the principal's office. I learnt many lessons that day. The main one however being, you do not hurt adults and their big egos. No matter how pure your intentions are.