What Happened
Bābur begins his record as an orphaned twelve-year-old suddenly responsible for Farghāna, a kingdom he promptly loses. What follows is a decades-long pursuit of Samarkand, the city of his ancestor Tīmūr, which he captures three times only to be evicted by the Aūzbegs. Forced into permanent exile, he pivots to Kābul and eventually the wealthy plains of Hindūstān. Unlike typical royal chronicles, he writes with startling candor about his love of wine, his military failures, and his grief. He pauses mid-campaign to describe the exact flavor of a melon or the irrigation systems of the Ganges, creating a vivid survey of the medieval East.
Key figures
- Bābur
Founder of the Mughal Empire and author of the memoirs.
- Annette Susannah Beveridge
Translator who reconstructed the Turki text from scattered manuscripts.
- Samarkand
The ancestral capital Bābur obsessively tried to recapture.
- Humāyūn
Bābur's eldest son and successor to the throne.
What it's really about
- Displacement
- A lifetime spent as a royal refugee seeking a permanent home.
- Naturalism
- Scientific curiosity regarding the plants and animals of new lands.
Why it's memorable
- Bābur describing his first alcoholic drink and the subsequent parties in the gardens of Kabul.
- The Emperor catching birds with a cord tied to a short arrow in the Afghan passes.
Where it lands
The record ends abruptly in 1530, shortly before Bābur's death and the arrival of an embassy from southern India.
For your book club
- Does Bābur's extreme honesty about his failures make him a more or less effective leader?
- How does his obsession with Samarkand influence his final decision to settle in Hindūstān?