Babur
founder of the Mughal Empire (1526–1530)
Babur (Persian: ببر, Persian: [bɑː.βuɾ]; 14 February 1483 – 26 December 1530; born Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad) was the founder of the Mughal Empire in South Asia. He was a descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan through his father and mother, respectively. He was also given the posthumous name of Firdaws Makani ('Dwelling in Paradise').
Born in Andijan in the Fergana Valley (now in Uzbekistan), Babur was the eldest son of Umar Shaikh Mirza II (1456–1494, Timurid governor of Fergana from 1469 to 1494) and a great-great-great-grandson of Timur (1336–1405). He ascended the throne of Fergana in its capital, Akhsikath, in 1494 at the age of twelve and had to put down a rebellion. He conquered Samarkand two years later, only to lose Fergana soon after. In his attempt to reconquer Fergana, he lost control of Samarkand as well. In 1501, he briefly recaptured both areas but his attempt failed when the Uzbek prince Muhammad Shaybani defeated him and founded the Khanate of Bukhara.
In 1504, the exiled Babur conquered Kabul, which was under the putative rule of Abd ur-Razaq Mirza, the infant heir of his uncle Ulugh Beg II. Forming a partnership with the Safavid emperor Ismail I he reconquered parts of Turkestan in 1511, including Samarkand, only to again lose it and the other newly conquered lands to the Shaybanids.
After losing Samarkand for the third time, Babur turned his attention to India and employed aid from the neighbouring Safavid and Ottoman empires.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Babur” is founder of the Mughal Empire (1526–1530). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Babur, founder and Mughal, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q797848. VIAF identifies the subject as 97090468. The Library of Congress control number is n50053659. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1483, 1530, 1456 and 1494.
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This entry incorporates text from “Babur” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.