Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul (31 page)

‘Soon afterwards the army departed. A thick pall of dust hung over the parched grasslands outside Samarkand as ninety thousand men – mostly on horseback – manoeuvred into formation and moved off. Within three days they had passed Shakhrish, the Green City, Timur’s birthplace, and descended the strongly garrisoned defile known as the Iron Gates out on to the scrubby red desert plain, the Kizl Kum.

‘On and on they marched, across the Oxus, past Balkh and Andarab, all the time still within the boundaries of Timur’s empire. And then Timur took an advance party of thirty thousand – my grandfather among them – up through the Khawak Pass on to the roof of the world and into the Hindu Kush. There, they encountered early winter and conditions unknown to plainsmen. Their horses slipped on the ice. Some fell with their riders to their death. Others broke legs and were fit only for the cooking pot.

‘Timur ordered the men to rest by day and travel by night when the ice was frozen solid and less slippery than during daytime when it had a coating of meltwater. Soon they reached an escarpment that was impossible to descend without ropes. Now – my grandfather told me – Timur had to be lowered on a litter by his men a hundred feet down a rocky cliff since he could not make the climb down himself. The cold had reopened the old scar on his right leg and he dared not trust the limb with his full weight. And all the time they were fighting off ambushes by the local tribe, the infidel Kafirs. The snow was often stained bright red with blood . . .

‘But after many struggles they reached Kabul. My grandfather told me it was a fine city, overlooked by a hilltop fort, and at a point where great trade routes meet. Smaller and less grand than Samarkand, of course, but very splendid nonetheless.’

‘Indeed, I believe it still is,’ Babur murmured to Baburi. ‘One of my father’s cousins rules it.’

‘You have relatives on every throne, just as I have friends behind every market stall in Samarkand . . .’

‘Ignore us, Rehana, and continue.’

‘By September, Timur had crossed the Indus using a bridge made of boats lashed together and was just five hundred miles from Delhi. Everywhere his troops took prisoners, destined for the slave markets of Samarkand on their return but for the present forced to serve them as they marched. My grandfather had five. His particular favourite was a small, dark-eyed orphan called Ravi.

‘In December, Timur’s advance patrols sighted the great domes and minarets within Delhi’s walls. But the Sultan of Delhi had a strong army, including a hundred and fifty of his most feared weapon – the armoured elephants with their shining coats of overlapping steel plates and curved scimitars attached to their long ivory tusks.

‘Timur wanted to avoid a costly and uncertain assault on the walls and provoked the sultan’s cavalry to make a sally against him. But before long the sultan’s troops, amid heavy fighting, retreated back into the city through the same gate out of which they had charged.’

Rehana paused. ‘Here I come to a melancholy part of the story. The prisoners had let out a huge cheer of support for the sultan’s men, hoping to be freed if the sultan were victorious. Timur had heard this and feared that their ardour might lead them – they numbered nearly a hundred thousand – to rebel when the next battle took place.

‘Determined and unsentimental, he ordered that all the prisoners should be killed. What is more, each man should execute his own captives.

‘Men wept as they killed in cold blood. Even women prisoners who had become loving concubines were slain, and some say Timur made the women of his harem kill captives who had served them. My grandfather killed his adult prisoners but could not kill Ravi.
He ordered him to run and hide among some dunes. However, when he returned later, he found Ravi’s body half concealed by a scrubby bush under which he must have been trying to hide, his head cleft almost in two. I always remember my grandfather saying that it looked like a ripe melon cut in half on a market stall in Samarkand and that the carnage all around looked and smelled as if he were among the butchers’ stalls there.

‘Timur hoped that the killings would provoke the Sultan of Delhi into another attack and he prepared for battle. To guard against the much-feared elephants, he ordered his soldiers – whether cavalry or infantry, officers or men – in front of their lines to dig deep trenches and pile the earth they dug out into ramparts. Next, he had the blacksmiths stoke their fires to their whitest heat and beat out three-pronged, sharp-tipped iron stakes to strew where the elephants were most likely to charge. He had buffaloes roped together by the head and feet with leather strips, then tied up behind the stakes and in front of the trenches. He ordered camels to be loaded with wood and dried grass, lashed together and held in reserve. Finally, he told the archers to fire only at the elephants’ drivers who sat exposed on the beasts’ necks just behind their ears. With them dead, the elephants would run out of control.

‘In the middle of December – I remember my grandfather said the skies were grey and the weather cool – the sultan’s men indeed sallied out once more, just as Timur had hoped, the great brass kettle-drums on the beasts’ backs sounding and the very ground seeming to shake under their huge feet.

‘But then my grandfather saw the wisdom of Timur’s plan. The elephants never reached their lines. Stumbling on the pointed iron tripods, they came almost to a halt among the bullocks. Then Timur unleashed his masterstroke. He set fire to the wood and dry grass on the camels’ backs, then drove them towards the elephants. The great beasts panicked and fled, throwing the soldiers from their backs as they did so and trampling others in their fear, crushing their heads beneath their feet. Victory was Timur’s. Delhi was his.

‘Although Timur’s official command was that no man should enter Delhi without permission, it was one of the few of his orders
not strictly enforced. Our soldiers were everywhere, looking for booty – for women too, I dare say. My grandfather was among them, drinking spirits from a tavern abandoned by its owner, when rumours spread of a rising by the local inhabitants who had already killed several of our men . . .

‘Half drunk, the soldiers rushed out into the streets. In their dizzy heads they saw enemies everywhere and killed anyone who crossed their path. Soon they were setting fire to shops and houses just to see the flames rip through them.

‘As the drink drained from my grandfather, he grew ashamed and entered a tall, narrow house. Here he found a small boy, about the age of Ravi, hiding in a marble bath. The reminder of Ravi and his cleft head sobered him further. He gestured to the boy to conceal himself instead in a large chest in the corner of the room and told him not to come out until it was safe.’

Rehana fumbled in the inside pocket of her quilted coat and drew out a small object wrapped in a fragment of gold-embroidered purple silk. As she removed the cloth, Babur saw a very small golden elephant with rubies for eyes. She held it out to him. ‘The boy gave him this and my grandfather passed it to me as he had no other surviving grandchildren – the others had died from the smallpox that broke out just after my birth.

‘Before he left, my grandfather wrote a notice in our language of Turki to say that the house had been searched and contained nothing of value. Knowing he was one of the few of our soldiers who could read, he also drew a picture showing a man barred from entry. He pinned both to the door.

‘After two days Timur stopped the massacres and burnings. My grandfather’s note and drawing must have been good because when he returned that way he found the house intact and the boy sitting on the front step . . .

‘My grandfather – like all the other soldiers – acquired much treasure.’ Rehana’s eyes closed in near ecstasy. ‘In the sultan’s palace they found subterranean vaults filled with gems – smooth, lustrous pearls, scarlet rubies, sapphires blue as the sky, glittering diamonds from the mines in the south – and piles of silver and gold coins,
all exactly as Timur had promised. My grandfather was given his share. In addition, he took ornate armour and two white parrots he found in a cage in a deserted house.

‘Suddenly, after just three weeks in Delhi, Timur gave the order to leave. Slowly his armies made their way back north and east, sometimes travelling only four miles a day, so burdened were they with their riches. Long before they reached Samarkand, my grandfather had gambled away his booty, except this golden elephant and the white parrots.

‘But his eyes always lit up when he spoke of Hindustan – India. His tales were seldom of battles and even less of his own doings. Much more often he spoke of the well-watered green fields where many fat cattle and sheep grazed, of beautiful sandstone and marble buildings and of Hindustan’s great wealth in gems. Above all, he said that the wonders of that land were beyond description. They must be seen to be believed . . .’

Rehana had finished, and a smile illuminated her lined face.

‘You have brought one of Timur’s greatest triumphs to life for me.’ Babur had been transported by the pictures she had painted. ‘What you have told us of Timur’s methods and of Hindustan is so remarkable that I will ask one of the scribes to write it down, not only so that others can be reminded of his great deeds but so that I can consult it again. Thank you.’

Rehana rose and, with the aid of her stick, made her way out of the room. To Babur it seemed that her step was a little lighter.

‘Majesty.’ Hussain Mazid had spoken. ‘Why didn’t Timur absorb Hindustan into his empire?’

‘I don’t know. My father was fond of quoting some lines of a poem about Timur’s raid. I can’t remember the words precisely but it was something like “Nothing stirred, not even a bird, within Delhi for two months after its sack”, and that Timur’s route through Hindustan was “lined with a multitude of corpses which infected the air”. Poets exaggerate but perhaps even Timur felt it would be too difficult to rule a place where he had wrought so much destruction . . . Perhaps he was also conscious that he was growing old and still had much to do – more conquests to make, more
booty to win. After all, he stayed in Samarkand only four months after his return from Delhi, then moved west to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to capture Aleppo and Damascus and – at the battle of Ankara – to take prisoner the great emperor of the Ottoman Turks, Bayazid the Thunderbolt. He imprisoned him in a cage that accompanied the court on its travels. They say he cried like a baby behind his bars . . . And of course, Timur died on the road to China . . . Hindustan was just one of his campaigns . . .’

‘Rehana is certainly right about Hindustan’s fine jewels. Sometimes traders used to bring them to Samarkand to sell and they were of great lustre,’ said Baburi. ‘I often wondered what it would be like to see that country.’

‘Perhaps you will,’ Babur said thoughtfully. ‘Last night on the battlements I pondered whether I should consider beginning my empire somewhere other than in Samarkand. Rehana bringing me her ancestor’s story of Timur’s conquest of Hindustan seems almost like an omen.’

‘Come on,’ Babur yelled. The barely thawed ground beneath his naked soles was stony and the hill was steep but he drove his aching body on. Baburi was quick – Babur could hear his steady panting just a couple of yards behind – but he was quicker and the knowledge pleased him . . . With the coming of spring, the desire for action stirred within him once more, and with it the determination to be ready, to harden his body for the challenges ahead. Every day for the past two weeks he had gone running through these remote hills and valleys and dived naked into the chill rivers with only Baburi for company. There was little danger of meeting anything more hostile than a herd of mangy goats.

In his mind he felt more than prepared. His struggle with Shaibani Khan was not over – and never could be until he had fulfilled his promise to Khanzada to rescue her. After that, who knew? Samarkand held a special place in his heart but he was unable to get out of his thoughts the rich and exotic world beyond the jagged, snowy summits of the Hindu Kush. If Timur had gone there, why shouldn’t he?

A
fter a day’s hunting Babur was riding slowly back towards Sayram. Around him in the fields the country people, their womenfolk in bright garments of red, green and blue, were stooping to prepare the ground for the planting of the season’s corn. Suddenly Babur spotted three riders raising golden dust as they galloped towards him from the settlement with the late-afternoon sun behind them. As they approached, he recognised two members of his bodyguard. The third was a stranger. When the three pulled up, he jumped from his horse and flung himself on to the dry ground before Babur.

‘Rise. Who are you?’

‘A messenger from your half-brother Jahangir. I give thanks to God that I have found you at last. I have searched for many days. You were hard to find.’

‘Deliberately so. These are troubled times. What message do you bring from Jahangir? I did not think to hear from him – at least, not while fortune’s hand is against me.’