Author: Alex Rutherford
Publisher: Headline Review
Pages: 497
Price: Rs 299
Eisha Sarkar
Posted on Mumbai Mirror on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 04:45:35 PM
Few pages in Indian history textbooks have been devoted to Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India. Cast aside as a barbaric Mongol intruder who overthrew Sultan Ibrahim at the Battle of Panipat in 1526 to seat himself in the throne at Delhi, our history focuses more on the monumental feats of his descendants - Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan and even Aurangzeb.
In author Alex Rutherford's (the pen-name for the husband-wife writing team of Michael and Diana Preston) Empire of the Moghul: Raiders from the North, the author recreates the life of Babur, as described in his memoirs, the Baburnama. Rutherford describes the ambitions of the 12-year-old Babur, who faces a seemingly impossible challenge as he becomes the new ruler of Ferghana in Central Asia in 1494. Determined to equal his great ancestor, Timur aka Tamburlaine, whose conquests stretched from Delhi to the Mediterranean, the child-king has to overcome treasonous plots, tribal rivalries, rampaging armies and ruthlessly ambitious enemies that threaten his destiny, kingdom and even his survival. As he tests his wits and will, Babur realises that a man never feels as alive as he is in the presence of death.
But the book is not just about Babur. It's about the women and men who stood by him even in defeat - his mother, Kutlugh Nigar, his strong-willed maternal grandmother, Esan Dawlat and his loving older sister Khanzada who was forcefully taken as wife by Uzbek warlord Shaibani Khan after he defeated Babur at Samarkand, his guide and chief mentor, Wazir Khan, his loyal commander and father-in-law, Baisanghar and Baburi, a former market-boy and Babur's closest friend.
It's the relationship and comparison between Babur and Baburi that gives the book a different flavour. Baburi lifts Babur’s spirits when he is depressed, brings him back to earth when his ambitions take flight. He shows signs of jealousy when Babur talks about his wife. They argue and they brawl. Babur relies on Baburi's street-survival skills as much as he does on the wisdom of Wazir Khan and Baisanghar. Baburi disappears after a spat with Babur and returns years later after a stint in the Ottoman army. He introduces Babur to gunpowder that is crucial to Babur’s subsequent success.
Though the author has used the liberties afforded to historical novelists to flesh out some of the characters or create new ones, Rutherford's idea of using the candid Baburnama to create a work of historical fiction is simply brilliant. In Empire of the Moghul: Raiders from the North, the characters come alive as do the places. Google the images of Ferghana and Samarkand and you'll find the monuments with bulbous blue domes, apple and apricot orchards and melons that Babur talks of in the book.
Rutherford writes, "I've followed Babur over the rolling hills and golden grasslands to Samarkand, to Kabul where his simple grave - recently restored with funds from Unesco - still sits on the hillside above the city, down though the Khyber Pass to the plains of northern India to Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan.
Everything I saw on those travels, everything I experienced, added to my admiration of and affection for Babur not only as warrior, adventurer, survivor and founder of the Moghul Empire but also as writer, gardener and lover of poetry and architecture."
Empire of the Moghul: Raiders from the North is indeed a fitting tribute to the flawed and brave man who founded a great dynasty and a grand empire!
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