Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/25

Rh little use to guide us through such a length of obscurity as that in which we view at present the history of Tamerlane's successors in India, until the time of Sultan Babr: and this obscurity must remain, until the original histories brought into England by Mr. Frazer, or others equivalent to them, shall be published. THE SULTAN BABR was the 6th in descent, not from Sharoch, but from the Mirza Miran Schah, another of the sons of Tamerlane; this Babr, yielding to the conquests of the Usbeg Tartars, retired from the country of Mawhranhar towards India: after making several expeditions into Indostan, he at last in the year 1526 defeated Sultan Ibrahim Loudi, and became emperor of Delhi. Who Sultan Ibrahim Loudi was, will in all probability be known, when the commentaries of Sultan Babr, written by himself, and which are at Oxford, shall be translated. After making still farther conquests in Indostan, Sultan Babr died near Agra in December of the year 1530.

THE pride of the Great Moguls descended from Sultan Babr, in vaunting in their titles and on all other occasions, their descent from Tamerlane, has given rise to the common belief, that the throne of Delhi, and the whole extent of the conquests made by Tamerlane in India, were maintained by his posterity in a regular filiation, and without interruption. But such a succession would have given no room for Sultan Babr's conquests over a stranger, as Sultan Loudi appears to be, and would have excluded him from the honour of being the founder of the present dynasty of Great Moguls. HOMAION succeeded to his father Babr, and in 1540 fled into Persia before the Pitans, whom we imagine to have been the Mahomedan subjects of Sultan Ibrahim Loudi conquered by Babr. By the assistance of the king of Persia Homaion recovered his empire in 1555, and died in 1556. Before his flight he had conquered and added to the Mogul dominions the kingdoms of Guzerat and Malva; he had likewise taken possession of the kingdom of Bengal.