Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/129

 MOGHULS. (197) O none of the many Imperial dynasties of Delhi have belonged members so illustrious and remarkable, in many respects, as to that of the Moghuls. On the 17th December, 1398, Tamerlane, the great Tartar chieftain, who had rapidly overrun Northern India, and defeated the armies of the existing Imperial dynasty of Toghluk, was proclaimed in the city of Delhi as Emperor of India. On the last day of that month, having sacked the city, and glutted his hordes with plunder and the massacre of its inhabitants, he left it, never to return. Like his progress into India, his departure from it was marked by cruel, almost indiscriminate slaughter and pillage, and beyond the mere proclamation as emperor, he had no further connection with the empire, which remained without a government for many years. After Tamerlane or Teimour's death, the kingdom of Trans Oxania fell to the share of his son, Meeran Hoossein; and after two successions, that kingdom was divided into three—Budukshan, Cabul, and Samarcand. In the year 1519, one hundred and twenty years after the proclamation of Teimour as emperor of India, his descendant, Baber, son of the king of Samarcand, taking advantage of the distracted condition of the existing dynasty of Lodi, invaded India with a large army, and took possession of the Punjab, which he claimed as a portion of the province of Cabul, belonging to his own kingdom. He was not at first successful in his designs ; but the prize was too great to be abandoned without further efforts, and, finally, on the 20th April, 1526, he defeated the Imperial army on the famous battle-field of Paniput, near Delhi, and was proclaimed emperor in the royal city on the 22nd of the same month. It was thought probable that, like his ancestor Teimour, Baber would content himself with the honorary title of emperor, and retire to his own proper dominions; but he never left India. By a series of masterly combinations, he recovered province after province which had revolted from the dynasty he had supplanted; and at his death, which occurred on the 24th December, 1530, he left to his son Hoomayoon the undisturbed possession of the most magnificent empire of Asia. Baber was