58 ISLAM AT WAR
the governor of the Punjab. He won a major victory at Panipat over Ib-
rahim, the last of the Lodi dynasty, and founded the Moghul Empire,
which lasted, at least in name, until 1857.
The conquest of India began anew with the invasion led by Babur, the
young king of Kabul. A Mongol in descent, he differed from his ancestors
in that he came as a conqueror, not a raider. His army was almost insig-
nificant in number, but it was supported by the first field artillery to be
seen in India, and his leadership was brilliant. On April 21, 1526, he
fought the battle of Panipat against Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, the ruler of the
sultanate of Delhi. Babur’s 15,000 men, well supplied with artillery and
muskets, confronted the 100,000-strong defending array and in a short
morning blasted it apart. His new artillery blasted the old walls of the
Indian cities as easily as it had the walls of the old castles of Europe.
Delhi and Agra were easily occupied. Babur then turned to the subju-
gation of Hindu India with the help of his new Moghul conquests. A
Rajput confederacy had been established under Rana of Udaipur. Babur
met them in battle at Sikri, near Agra. Before the battle was joined, Babur
swore off alcohol, his principal sin, and then led his forces to victory. By
the time he died in 1530 his dominions extended from the Oxus to the
frontier of Bengal and from the Himalayas to Gwalior. Babur was suc-
ceeded, in 1530, by his son Humayun, and then more effectively by Akbar,
who would continue his work.
For the first seven years of his reign, Akbar was constantly at war. In
1567 he stormed the Rajput stronghold of Chittur and conquered Ajmere.
In 1570 he conquered Oudh and Gwalior. In 1572 he marched into Gujarat,
defeated the last of the independent sultans of Ahmedabad, and formed
the province into a Moghul viceroyalty orsubah. That same year his
generals drove out the Afghans from Bengal and reunited the lower valley
of the Ganges to Hindustan. This gave Akbar control of the largest unified
part of India that had ever stood under the rule of a single man. During
the remainder of his life he continued to extend the boundaries of his
empire, annexing Orissa to Bengal in 1578. Akbar died in 1605, and the
kingdom passed to Jahangir, his son. His was a glorious reign, and he was
not only a conqueror, but also a supporter of the arts and sciences. It is
interesting that in 1576, at Shiraz, an inventor presented him with a re-
peating matchlock—a gun that fired twelve times in succession!
Jahangir was succeeded by his son Shah Jahan, who rebelled against
his own father, just as his father had rebelled against his grandfather. It
was Shah Jahan who erected the peacock throne in Delhi and built the Taj
Mahal as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. He lies
beside her in the famous memorial.