5
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE
MUGHAL EMPIRE
THE GREAT MUGHALS AND THEIR ADVERSARIES
A new age begins with the unification of India under the Great
Mughals. The achievements of this dynasty, which produced a rare
sequence of competent rulers, were due to a particular constellation of
historical circumstances. These conditions are exemplified by the
striking career of Baber, who conquered India for the Mughals. Baber
had the great gift of a quick presence of mind. His fate forced him to
make incessant use of this gift. The Usbeks who swept down from
Central Asia to Samarkand deprived him of his ancestral kingdom.
With Persian support he could briefly reclaim his patrimony. The
Persian connection remained of importance to him and his successors.
Coming from a borderland wedged in between the Persian empire and
the horsemen of the north, he was equally impressed with Persian
culture and the martial spirit of his northern adversaries. He wrote
Persian poems and from the Usbeks he learned military strategy and
tactics which later were to help him conquer India. The rising power of
the Usbeks compelled him to go east. He left his country and
conquered Afghanistan; from there he made several forays into India
before he finally embarked on his great campaign which gave rise to
the Mughal empire.
His success in India was chiefly determined by his use of firearms and
artillery which the Turks had brought to Asia from the West. Baber was
a contemporary of the Ottoman sultan Selim I and of the Safavid ruler
of Persia, Shah Ismail. They laid the foundations for the three major
gunpowder empires of Asia. The speed of the proliferation of the new
strategy based on a mobile field artillery was amazing. It guaranteed
instant superiority on the battlefield as Selim demonstrated when
conquering Syria and Egypt in 1517. Baber’s victory in India followed
nine years later. Baber’s successors jealously guarded the new technology
to which they owed their success and did not even share it with their
faithful allies, the Rajputs, who mastered it only much later.