Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/179

 DOORANEE. (266)

N the beginning of the sixteenth century the Dooranee empire was a formidable and widely extended power. Its nominal capital was Sarmacand, and the minor capitals, Balkh, Kabool, and Kandahar, were vice-royalties. Its dominions reached from Trans Oxania on the west, to the Sooliman mountains on the frontier of India to the east; and from the Hindoo Koosh in the north, to Sinde and Beloochistan on the south, if not actually to the Indian ocean. This immense territory was ruled over by the descendants of the Emperor Teimoor, and the celebrated Babur succeeded his father, the sixth in descent from Teimoor, at the close of the fifteenth century, when he was twelve years old. The preceding govenments had been weak, and much of the Dooranee territory had been usurped by others. Babur reconquered and reunited the whole, and prepared to invade India, to which great country the distracted state of its monarchy, under the Afghan Lody dynasty, in^dted him. After the third attempt, Babur crossed the Indus at the head of the Dooranee chivalry, which numbered only 10,000 horse; but he was joined by Doulut Khan Lody, the Indian Viceroy of the Punjab, and, advancing on Delhi, was met by the Emperor Ibrahim Lody, whom he defeated and slew in a bloody battle fought on 21st April, 1526. Babur then became Emperor of India, which, with the Dooranee territories, became probably the largest empire in the world. Babur died at Agra on the 2(3th December, 1530, and was succeeded by his son Hoomayoon, who was driven out of India by Share Shah Soor, of Bengal, in 1540; but he recovered India during the disorders which followed the death of Shere Shah, and, from 1555, the Dooranee and Indian kingdoms were re-united. This unity was maintained, notwithstanding occasional rebellions, up to the close of the reign of the Emperor Aurungzebe; and, at his death (February 7, 1707), his son, the Prince Mauzum, was Viceroy at Kabool. In the contest between the Emperor's sons for the succession, and the generally distracted state of the empire, much of the Dooranee dominion was alienated; and after the invasion of Nadir Shah, in 1738, they were wholly annexed by him to