1381-1504 - Timurid Rule
A product of both Turkish and Mongol descent, Timur claimed Genghis Khan as an ancestor. From his capital of Samarkand, Timur created an empire that, by the late fourteenth century, extended from India to Turkey. The turn of the sixteenth century brought an end to Timurid Empire when another Mongol-Turkish ruler overwhelmed the weak Timurid ruler in Herat. Muhammad Shaybani (also a descendant of Genghis Khan) and his successors ruled the area around the Amu Darya for about a century, while to the south and west of what is now Afghanistan two powerful dynasties began to compete for influence.
Taimur possessed very much the same organising genius as Chinghiz Khan, from whom, in the female line, he was descended; he almost equalled him in ferocity, and surpassed him in perfidy, whilst his aims, if as vast, were at least as reckless. At an early age he had succeeded in gathering in his own hands the guiding-reins of the Tartar tribes in Central Asia, and finding himself master, he began at once to carry terror and devastation into neighbouring countries, Afghanistan and Persia at once fell before him. He then carried his arms into Circassia, Georgia, Mesopatamia, and the southern parts of Russia. Having laid waste these countries, he prepared to invade India by way of the Hindu Kiish, Kabul, Band, and Dinkdt, on the Indus.
At the period of Timur’s invasion of India [after 1381 AD], the Katorians making themselves conspicuous for their opposition to that monarch. After leaving Inderab he entered their difficult country by way of Khawah, and after an expedition of eighteen days reduced them to submission.
It will suffice to state that from the first invasion of Taimur, 1383, until after the accession of Babar, Afghanistan had no history of her own. Portions of her territory are occasionally mentioned for some or other specific quality by the historians. Thus, Herat is spoken of during the fifty years prior to the accession of Babar, as having been the most magnificent city in the East, celebrated not merely for the beauty and splendour of its court, the architectural beauty of its mosques, tombs, colleges, and palaces, but as being the resort of the greatest divines, philosophers, poets, and historians of the age. At this time Herat was the capital of Khorasan, and that province was governed by Husen Mirza, the most powerful of the princes of the House of Taimur. Kabul and Ghazni were then likewise ruled over by a prince of the same house, Sultan Ulugh Mirza, but of the internal administration of the country, and of the conduct and character of its people, there seem to be few traces. With the death of Ulugh Mirza, however, the dry bones of its history suddenly recover their vitality.
The vast dominions of Taimur, divided after his death, had been reunited into one kingdom by his great-grandson Abusaid, fourth from him in order of succession. On the death of Abusaid the empire was again partitioned. Whilst the three elder sons divided the countries north of the Oxus, the youngest son, Ulugh Mirza, was allotted Kabul and Ghazni:—the adjoining territory of Khorasan, with Herat as its capital, falling to a more distant relation — Husen Mirza. Mirza, Prince of Ghazm and Kabul, died in the year 1502. His death was the signal for intrigues and assassinations, one usurper following another.
The sixth in descent from Taimur, Prince Babar, was born in 1482. At the age of twelve he inherited by the death of his father the kingdom of Ferghana. He was not yet fifteen when the troubles in Samarkand induced him to attempt the conquest of that province. He conquered and occupied the capital; but the task of governing and maintaining the country was beyond the means at his disposal, and after an occupation of little more than three months he was compelled to evacuate it, and fall back on Ferghana. His absence from that province had, however, proved fatal to him. Plots against him had been fomented, and he discovered one morning that he was a king without a kingdom.
By the means common in those days, he was able to raise a sufficient force to recover Ferghana, and he was even meditating another raid against Samarkand, when the Uzbeg Tartars invaded Central Asia and forced Babar to seek refuge in the mountains. Here he lived for some years the life of a true adventurer; now an exile in the desert; now a monarch on a throne. He gained and lost Samarkand; he was buoyed up by hopes of Ferghana; but he was always happy, always joyous, always confident in the future.
At length, however, fortune seemed to shut out from him the last hope of success, and in his twentythird year Babar was forced to cross the Oxus and take refuge in Kiinduz, between Balkh and Bddakshan, the governor of which was Kushrii Shah. Here he succeeded in raising a force of Moghols. At their head, he marched on Kabul.
In 1504, Prince Babar, who but three months before had been forced to leave his kingdom of Ferghana as a homeless exile, appeared before Kabul and took it. At the time that he conquered Kabul that country comprehended the long and narrow plains running nearly from south to north between Ghazni and the capital; the whole mountainous territory reaching to the Koh-i-Baba and the Hindu Kush, and thence down to the confines of what is now British territory as far as Fort Kurm. The mountainous tribes were more predatory and more independent than they are even at the present day.
At the head of an army of freelances Babar felt that his only chance of safety lay in engaging his followers in new adventures. He first led them against Kandahar, which he conquered. Within two hundred and forty miles of Herat, he thought it then advisable to make a journey thither, in order, with his relative, its ruler, to concert measures against their joint enemies, the Uzbeg Turks. During his absence his brother Jahangir revolted and fled to Ghazni. Then his Moghol soldiers mutinied. No sooner had Babar, returning to Kabul, put an end to these disorders, than a more dangerous outbreak, instigated and abetted by the Moghols he had brought with him, took place. Babar, escaping with difficulty from Kabul, put himself at the head of a few devoted followers, and made head against his enemies. By his courage and his activity he made up for the smallness of his following, and, ever present where he was needed, ever taking advantage of the opportunities that offered, he in the end suppressed the revolt.
The Uzbegs, meanwhile, were advancing as the other Turkic tribes had advanced before them. They swarmed into Khorasan, occupied Herat, then besieged and took Kandahar. Ghazni and Kabul were now threatened, when, happily for Baber, the King of Persia, alarmed at the conquest of Khorasan, advanced against the Uzbegs, defeated them with great slaughter, and drove them across the Oxus.
To be safe, only, was never with Babar the supremest good. For him safety meant opportunity for fresh conquests. The defeat of the Uzbegs by the Persians re-awakened then the old longing for Samarkand. That city had been his first conquest—the scene also of his first rebuff. He must woo her once again.
He wooed and won her (1511). But again was Samarkand fickle. She welcomed back his old enemies the Uzbegs, and after a contest ranging over two years, he lost, not only her, but every other possession across the Oxus.
Thrown back then on Afghanistan, he recovered Kandahar. He could not, however, be content with a country of rocks and stones. Opportunely at this moment there came to him a cry for aid from Daolat Khan, the Afghan viceroy of the Panjab for Ibrahim Lodi Afghan, King of Dehli. Simultaneously the Rand of Chitdr sent a messenger to promise his aid if Babar should invade India. The invitation promised too much to allow Babar to refuse it. King of Kabul and Ghazni, he crossed the Indus (1525-26), and advanced unopposed on Labor, defeated there the army that had been hurriedly raised to oppose him, reduced that city to ashes, and advanced towards Dehli.
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