The Babur-Nama: Memoirs of Babur (Vol. 1)

Baburnama (Memoirs of Babur) contains the memoirs of Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), the founder of the Mughal Empire in India and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur. It is an autobiographical work, written in Turki, the spoken language of the Andijan-Timurids. The prose, though highly Persianized in its sentence structure, morphology and vocabulary, makes an interesting reading.It is a widely translated work and is part of textbooks in over 25 countries, mostly in Central, Western and Southern Asia. It was first translated by John Leyden and William Erskine and later by the British orientalist scholar, Annette Susannah Beveridge (1842-1929).The book (in two volumes) describes Babur's fluctuating fortunes as a minor ruler in Central Asia, in which he took and lost Samarkand twice and his move to Kabul in 1504. There is a break in the manuscript for 12 years starting from 1508. By 1519, Babur was established in Kabul and from there he launched an invasion into Northwestern India. The final section of the book covers the years 1525 to 1529 and the establishment of the Mughal empire in India, where Babur's descendants ruled for three centuries."Babur's memoirs are no rough soldier's chronicle of marches and countermarches...they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man of the world, well read in Eastern literature, a close and curious observer, quick in perception, a discerning judge of persons and a devoted lover of nature; one, moreover, who was well able to express his thoughts and observations in clear and vigorous language."--Stanley Lane-pool