The memoirs of the founder of the Mughal empire: a candid account of his campaigns from Ferghana to Delhi, full of observation of countries, plants, animals and gardens, and of the gardens he laid out himself in Kabul and Agra.
Babur (1483–1530), a descendant of Timur on his father’s side and of Chinggis Khan on his mother’s, lost his small kingdom of Ferghana as a young man, took Kabul in 1504, and in 1526 defeated the Sultan of Delhi at Panipat, founding the empire his grandson Akbar consolidated. He wrote his memoirs in his own Turkic language; his grandson had them translated into Persian in 1589, and illustrated copies were made in the imperial workshops. The English translation by Annette Beveridge (1912–22) is in the public domain.
Babur loved gardens and running water. Near Kabul and Jalalabad he laid out charbaghs, among them the Bagh-i Wafa of 1508–09, on rising ground with a stream through the middle and orange and pomegranate trees in its four plots. In India he found the plains flat, the water deep in wells and the towns without regular gardens, and he describes how, soon after Panipat, he chose ground across the Jumna from Agra and laid it out in order and symmetry, with wells, a water wheel, a tank and beds of roses and narcissus, so that the people of the country, who had seen nothing so regular, called that bank of the river Kabul.
The book, part by part
I Ferghana and Samarkand (1494–1504)
Babur’s youth, his kingdom and the Timurid gardens of Samarkand.
II Kabul (1504–1525)
The country of Kabul, its fruits and flowers; the Bagh-i Wafa and the other gardens he made there.
III Hindustan (1525–1529)
The conquest; a long description of India, its people, plants and animals; the gardens at Agra.