Tuzk-e-Baburi/ Baburnama

Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, the great grandson of Timur Lane and Genghis Khan and a native of the city of Andijan in the Uzbek arm of the Ferghana Valley of Central Asia is immortalized in history by the Empire he founded in the Indian subcontinent in 1526. His glory however runs deeper than the territories he conquered or the military dexterity that he displayed in founding the Mughal Empire. Baburnama or Tuzk- e-Baburi—his autobiography remains important as the first autobiography by any Emperor to give such a detailed account of the land he adopted as his own. The Baburnama, besides being one of the most important texts of the Mughal period, provides insight into the literary, intellectual, and cultural world of Babur (1483–1530) and also into the natural world and society of contemporary India. Written in Chaghatai language, known to Babur as ‘Turki’-the spoken language of the Andijan-Timurids, the prose of Baburnama is considered to be highly Persianized in its syntax and vocabulary. Under Emperor Akbar’s initiative, the work was completely translated into Persian by a Mughal courtier Abdul Rahim.Unlike many of his descendants, Babur was an educated Timurid and his observations and comments in his memoir therefore are reliable commentaries of the society, economy, polity and nature of the land he was born in and eventually ruled. He for instance used certain terms in Baburnama which were unique like “garm-sil” by which he meant ‘hot country’ and felt Hindustan is similar to Kabul in that regard. It is also very interesting how Baburnama identified Hindustan with four kinds of climate and as Babur wrote, once one crossed the water of the Sind, “everything is in the Hindustan way (tariq) land, water, tree, rock, people and horde, opinion and custom.”Henry Beveridge, the celebrated translator of Baburnama, was of the opinion that it is one of those priceless records which is fit to rank with the work of Rousseau, and the memoirs of Gibbon and Newton. In Asia,Beveridge thought, it stood second to none.