Zahir-ud-din: "Defender of the faith"
Monday, April 12, 2021.
It’s the tenth of June, 1494. Central Asia is ruled by the descendants of Timur and The Great Khan. Umar Shaikh Mirza, the son of erstwhile ruler of the Timurid empire, currently ruler of Ferghana, is in his Kabooterkhana. The Mirza is the grandson of Miran Shah, son of Timur. The kabooterkhana is built shoddily in this lesser-lived palace and it juts out from the main structure, overlooking a ravine below. Which is where our Mirza ends up, dead, when it eventually gives way. I guess Humayun inherited the falling down your death part of it all too. (Too dark?)
Umar Shaikh’s eldest, Zahiruddin, is just eleven years old, at this time. His mother, Qutlugh Nigar Khanum, like the wife of Timur, is also a princess of Moghulistan, a descendant of Genghis Khan. With the father dead, Zahiruddin becomes the ruler of Ferghana. And immediately, his rule is fraught with danger. His extended family rules the lands of Central Asia. And two of his uncles have been warring with his father for a while now. They are restless. They see this eleven-year-old boy and jump at the chance. But the young ruler has a guardian angel in his maternal grandmother, Aisan Daulat Begum, queen of Moghulistan. He is able to keep his throne for a few years. In 1497, when the young mirza is all of fourteen, he lays siege to the fort of Samarkand. And surprisingly, wins it. This win, speaks much about this boy’s abilities as a military commander and strategist. For him, it is and will forever be counted among his greatest wins. In seven months of ruling Samarkand, Zahiruddin faces a rebellion in Ferghana.
He leaves Samarkand to crush the rebellion of his brother Jahangir (not the one you know popularly, an earlier one). He loses his father’s inheritance to the rebellion. And when he marches back, he finds Samarkand taken too, leaving him with no land to rule. Zahiruddin then goes to Badakhshan. Badakhshan is just north of the Himalayas, east of the Hindu Kush. Native to the Tajiks, who are a formidable ethnicity, known for their ferocity in battle. Zahiruddin builds a new army with these natives. He lays siege to Samarkand for the last time. He takes the city back. But this is short-lived. His beloved Samarkand is not his destiny, it seems. He is defeated by the scariest of his rivals, Muhammad Shaybani.
Muhammad Shaybani is the Khan of the Uzbeks. Zahiruddin despises the Uzbeks. But when he is defeated and trapped with his army in Samarkand, he is forced to give off his sister, Khanzada Begum to this monster, in marriage, to secure safe escape for himself and his army. In his memoir, Zahiruddin shamefully accepts this act. Though, this isn’t your average damsel in distress story. This certainly isn’t the last we hear of Khanzada Begum. Samarkand’s loss and Ferghana’s treachery forces our hero to march towards the only lands he has left to go to. So, it is less with a determined mind than with a lack of choice, that Zahiruddin marches southwards to Kabul. Here he finds that the ruler, Ulugh Beg II (Zahiruddin’s paternal unlce), has died and left no heir but an infant.
In Kabul, Zahiruddin Muhammad becomes a ruler finally. And he rules this region till 1526, when his constant expeditions to Hindustan (that he has been foraying into since 1505) bear fruit. And so immensely, that Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur knows not of the change he will bring to the subcontinent, nor the influence his descendants will have over it, culturally and politically, for centuries to come.