Babur, Humayun, and Sher Shah: the Mughal foundation

The Mughal Empire began with Babur, a Timurid prince from Central Asia, who defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last Sultan of Delhi, at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. Babur's smaller army won through the use of field artillery and the tulughma tactic of flanking cavalry, techniques he had learned in Central Asian warfare. He then defeated the Rajput confederacy under Rana Sanga at Khanwa in 1527 and wrote the Baburnama, his frank memoir, which remains one of the great autobiographies of the period.

Babur died in 1530 and was succeeded by his son Humayun, whose reign was interrupted by Sher Shah Suri, an Afghan ruler from Bihar. Sher Shah defeated Humayun in 1540 and ruled until 1545, building an efficient administration in a short reign. He reformed the currency, issuing the silver rupiya that gave the later rupee its name, improved the roads, including the road later known as the Grand Trunk Road, and organised land revenue by measuring fields and fixing rates. Akbar later adopted many of Sher Shah's methods.

Humayun spent years in exile in Persia and, with Persian help, recovered Delhi in 1555, only to die in 1556 from a fall in his library. His tomb in Delhi, built by his widow, became a model for later Mughal architecture, including the Taj Mahal. Humayun's son Akbar, who was thirteen when he came to the throne in 1556, would turn this shaky inheritance into a durable empire, but the foundation itself had been laid by three very different rulers: a conqueror, an administrator, and a returning exile.

The early Mughal story matters because it shows that empires are rarely built by one man. Babur supplied the conquest, Sher Shah supplied the administrative model, and Persian culture, brought by Humayun's exile, shaped the court that Akbar inherited. It also shows how quickly fortune could change: within fifteen years the Mughals lost and regained an empire.