HISTORY OF MUGHALS

MUGHALS Emipre :Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, is one of history's more endearing conquerors. In his youth he is one among many impoverished princes, all descended from TAIMOOR. who fight among themselves for possession of some small part of the great man's fragmented empire. Babur even captures SAMARKAND itself on three separate occasions, each for only a few months. The first time he achieves this he is only fourteen.

What distinguishes Babur from other brawling princes is that he is a keen oberver of life and keeps a diary. In it he vividly describes his triumphs and sorrows, whether riding out with friends at night to attack a walled village or mooning around for unrequited love of a beautiful boy. Babur's 'throneless times', as he later describes these early years, come to an end in 1504 when he captures Kabul. Here, at the age of twenty-one, he is able to establish a settled court and to enjoy the delights of gardening, art and architecture in the Timurid tradition of his family.

With a powerful new Persian dynasty to the west (underISMAILI) and an aggressive Uzbek presencece to the north (under SHIBANI Khan), Babur's Kabul becomes the main surviving centre of the TAIMOOR TRADITIONS. But these same pressures mean that his only chance of expanding is eastwards - into India.
Babur feels that he has an inherited claim upon northern India, deriving from Timur's capturein  DEHLI in 1398, and he makes several profitable raids through the mountain passes into the Punjab. But his first serious expedition is launched in October 1525.

Some forty years later (but not sooner than that) it is evident that Babur's descendants are a new and established dynasty in northern India. Babur thinks of himself as a Turk, but he is descended from GENGISH KHAN as well as from Timur. The Persians refer to his dynasty asmughal, meaning Mongol. And it is as the Moghul emperors of India that they become known to history

ONE should not raise one's pen to write history 
unless one is equipped with a thorough knowledge of 
the original sources and a clear conscience. In order 
to obtain correct information, it is absolutely essen- 
tial to approach history with an unprejudiced mind 
and without preconceived notions. The evidence 
thus collected from the huge mass of historical litera- 
ture that has come down to posterity from the pen of 
the contemporary chroniclers must be carefully sifted 
and pieced together in such a way as to present an 
accurate account of the past. History must not be 
used as an instrument of propaganda even in the best 
of causes ; if used in a wrong cause, it may result in 
filling streets with human blood. Volumes written 
on the Muslim Period of Indian history have volumi- 
nously added to the volumes of communal hatred 
and bigotry. Whatever the aims of their authors, 
the text -books on Indian history, particularly on the 
Muslim Period, teem with exaggerations, distortions 
and timid suppression of facts, so much so that they 
tend to set one community at the throat of the other. 
False history has done more than a mere wrong to the 
cause of national unity and inter-communal amity in 
India. A retrospective glance at the present state of 
affairs will not fail io ~eveal to the reader the fact 
that the teaching of wrong history, more than any- 
thing else, is responsible for the recurring riots among 



viii PREPACK 

the different communities of India. The sooner, 
therefore, such books are dispensed with, the better 
for the peace and prosperity of India. Born and 
brought up in communal atmosphere, we, Indians, 
see everything with communal glasses and therefore 
get a gloomy view. The obvious result is that the 
best of Muslim monarchs, statesmen and scholars have 
been painted in the darkest of colours and condemned 
as bigots and intolerants, nay, as blood-thirsty tyrants. 
As things stand at present, communal harmony with- 
out correct history is a dream which cannot be 
realized. The whole of Indian history, therefore, 
requires to be re-written in the right spirit, ' not so 
much from the point of view of occurrences at the 
capitals of various states as in order to delineate the 
spread of culture a,nd to demonstrate the value of its 
present composite form, so that our people may not 
be led away by the false notion that whatever para- 
phernalia of civilization we posset does not go back 
to more than a century and a half '. Some time ago 
the Punjab Government appointed a Special Com- 
mittee to see into the subject. The Committee 
investigated the matter and made some useful recom- 
mendations. The same point regarding the re-writing 
of the whole of Indian history, particularly the Muslim 
Period, was stressed at Poona at the All-India Histo- 
rical Conference in 1934 by Dr. (now Sir) Shafaat 
Ahmad Khan who presided over its deliberations and 
suggested the appointment of a Mss. Commission for 
the purpose. How far the objects aimed at have been 
achieved, I do not know. Some six years'ago, while 






PREFAJE IX 

I was a student, I too felt the same necessity after 
making an independent study of the Muslim Period 
and set myself to the task in right earnest. Remotely 
removed as I was from big educational centres, I was 
consequently deprived of all facilities for research. It 
was my love for my subject (history) that drove me 
from place to place in search of books drawn upon for 
material and the result is The Mughal Empire which 
I now submit to the judgment of the public. 

The Mughals are no more. Posterity may 
pause and pronounce judgment o~i their actions and 
administrations ; but to be fair and free from fallacy, 
it is necessary to bear five things in mind : viz., (1) the 
background, (2) the spirit of the age (3) the condi- 
tions of the country (4) the tendencies of the times, 
and (5) the time that has elapsed since the fall of the 
Mughal Empire. The background in the case of 
Mughal Emperors was Islam on the one hand and 
Persian traditions on the other. In the case of Shah 
Jahan and Aurangzeb, Islam had a great influence on 
their actions, whereas Persian traditions played a 
prominent part in determining the acts and adminis- 
trations of the rest of the Great Mughals. The spirit 
of the age, the conditions of the country and the 
tendencies of the times too had a great share in 
shaping their policies. While taking these four factors 
into consideration, allowance must also be made for 
the fifth the time that has scanned the interval 
between the fall of the Mughal Empire and the 
establishment of British Dominions in India time that 
has made marvellous improvements in and additions 



X PREFACE 






to the existing knowledge of man and changed his 
conception of things. 

Since the book has been intended chiefly for 
students in schools and colleges as well as for the 
general reader, I have constantly kept their needs in 
view and therefore avoided burdening it with numerous 
footnotes, though I have fully tapped the sources of my 
information, both original and secondary, catalogued 
at the end of the book, and referred to my authorities 
on controversial topics, such as the alleged apostasy of 
Akbar and the so-called bigotry of Aurangzeb, topics 
on which I have differed from modern historians and 
suggested a new line of thought. 

Last, but not the least, my unreserved thanks 
are due to all those writers, mediaeval and modern, 
whose monumental works Lhave consulted for construct- 
ing this narrative ; to the Hon'ble Sir Abdul Qadir 
for writing the Introduction ; to my brother S. M. Raza, 
B. A., for preparing the Index and^to my learned 
officer, the Judicial Commissioner, N.-W. F. P., for 
permitting me to publish this book.