CORE Babur, First Panipat 1526 and the Mughal foundation
Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (founder of Mughal empire) was born at Andijan on 14 February 1483 and inherited Fergana in 1494 at the age of 12. On his father's side he descended from Timur through Umar Shaykh Mirza, while on his mother's side he traced lineage to Chinghiz Khan through Yunus Khan. This double Timurid-Chinghizid inheritance gave Babur a Central Asian claim to high sovereignty, but it did not guarantee political security. Repeated struggles for Samarkand ended in failure, and the decisive turn in his career came in 1504 when he captured Kabul. From Kabul he gained a defensible base, access to the Punjab routes, and the military depth from which the Mughal foundation in India would eventually emerge.
Babur's Indian advance succeeded because he arrived with both opportunity and method. On 21 April 1526, at the First Battle of Panipat, he faced Ibrahim Lodi north of Delhi with roughly 12,000 soldiers against an army commonly described as about 100,000 men and 1,000 elephants. Babur's force used matchlock fire and field artillery under Ustad Ali Quli, while tulghuma sent mobile wings around the enemy's flanks. Ibrahim Lodi was killed on the field, the Lodi sultanate collapsed, and Delhi-Agra passed into Babur's hands. He was not yet master of all India, but he now possessed the political center from which revenue, symbols of kingship, and future campaigns could be organized. Panipat therefore mattered not only as a dynastic transfer in 1526 but as the first decisive demonstration that artillery-backed open-field tactics could break a much larger north Indian army.
Victory at Panipat did not end resistance. On 17 March 1527 Babur fought Rana Sanga of Mewar at Khanwa, a battle with direct Rajasthan relevance because it opened the long Mughal-Mewar axis of north-west Indian politics. Sanga's confederacy included Hasan Khan Mewati and Mahmud Lodi, and it represented the strongest Rajput challenge to the new conqueror in Hindustan. Before the campaign Babur renounced wine, framed the contest as jihad, and abolished tamgha to strengthen loyalty within his camp. Once fighting began, artillery, defensive positioning, and tulghuma again worked together. Rana Sanga was wounded and removed from the field; he died in 1528. Khanwa did not erase Rajput power, but it prevented a Mewar-led expulsion of Babur from the Delhi-Agra core.
Babur followed Khanwa with campaigns meant to close the remaining gaps in his authority. In 1528 he captured Chanderi from Medini Rai; the siege is remembered for the jauhar associated with the fall of the fort. In 1529, at Ghaghra, he confronted the Afghan-Bengal alignment linked with Mahmud Lodi and Nusrat Shah of Bengal. By the end of 1529 Babur had checked the principal Afghan challenge in the Gangetic plain and held a realm stretching from Kabul to Bihar, though not Bengal proper. He died at Agra on 26 December 1530, and Humayun succeeded him in 1530. The sequence from Panipat to Khanwa, Chanderi, and Ghaghra explains why Babur's reign cannot be reduced to a single lucky victory.
Baburnama remains the most intimate source for Babur's career. Written in Chagatai Turkic and later translated into Persian by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khana under Akbar, it combines war narrative with observations on rivers, gardens, fruits, cities, and the climate of Hindustan. That literary record is one reason Babur stands at the start of both imperial and historiographical memory. His remains were eventually laid in Bagh-e-Babur at Kabul in keeping with his wishes. For Rajasthan history, the essential point is that Babur's first great Indian imperial settlement was tested not in isolation but against Rana Sanga of Mewar, making Khanwa a foundational junction between Mughal expansion and Rajput statecraft.