“Amazed at this apparition, I felt that God had just restored me to life.  I called to them at once, ’Seize Yusuf the constable, and the wretched traitors who are with him, and bring them to me bound hand and foot,’ Then, turning to my rescuers, I said, ’Whence come you?  Who told you what was happening?’ Kutluk Muhammad Barlas answered, ’After I found myself separated from you in the sudden flight from Akhsi, I reached Andijan at the very moment when the Khans themselves were making their entry.  There I saw, in a dream, Khwaja ’Obaid-Allah, who said, “Padishah Babar is at this instant in a village called Karman; fly thither and bring him back with you, for the throne is his of right.”  Rejoicing at this dream, I related it to the big Khan and little Khan....  Three days have we been marching, and thanks be to God for bringing about this meeting.’” [1]

After this exciting adventure Babar rejoined his time-serving uncles, but was forced into exile again in 1503, when, at the battle of Akshi, the Khans were completely defeated by Shaibani.  Then he resolved to depart out of Farghana and to give up the attempt to recover his kingdom.  Characteristically, when foiled in one enterprise he entered upon another yet more ambitious.  Joined by his two brothers, Jahangir and Nasir, and by a motley array of various wandering tribes, he swooped down upon Kabul and captured it.

The description of the new kingdom thus easily won, which fills many pages of the Memoirs, reveals another side of Babar’s character—­his intense love of nature.  He gives minute accounts of the climate, physical characteristics, the fruits, flowers, birds, and beasts, as well as of the human inhabitants.  In the intervals between his battles, or between his rollicking drinking parties, which for some years of his life degenerated into drunken orgies, we often find Babar lost in admiration of some beautiful landscape, or collecting flowers and planting fruit trees.  Wherever he came, Babar’s first care was to dig wells and plant fruit and flower gardens.  India owes much to the Great Moguls’ love of horticulture.

When Babar had drilled his unruly Afghan subjects into something like order, he made, in 1506, one more unsuccessful attempt to crush Shaibani.  However, in 1510, when that doughty warrior was defeated and slain by Ismail, Shah of Persia, Samarkand fell once more into Babar’s hands, as a vassal of the Shah.  Eight months afterwards he was driven out again.  From that time Babar gave up all hopes of re-establishing the empire of his ancestor Timur, and turned his face towards India.  In 1519 he gathered an army for his first expedition, which was, however, more of a reconnaissance than a conquest.  Four more attempts he made, until at last, in 1526, with only 10,000 men, he defeated the hosts of Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Afghan kings of Delhi, who, with 15,000 of his troops, were left dead on the field of Panipat.