Babur (1483-1530)
founder of the Mughal Dynasty.  He was a soldier but also had scholarly and asthetic interests.  Creator of Gardens in India ( “In that charmless and distorderly Hindustan plots of garden wer laid withough order and symmetry”)

In 1494 Babur, a young Central asian prince, came into power upon the death of his father, the ruler in the Ferghana valley (Uzbekestan).  He seized the kingdom of Kabul in 1504 after he had been driven from his homeland and patrimony by the invating Uzbeks.  Babur had been ruling Kabul for over 20 years and engaging in periodic raids on the northweasten fronteir of the subcontinent when he defeated Sultan Ibrahim II of the Delhi Sultanate at Panipat in 1526 and fell heir to the kingdom of Delhi and its possesions in the Punjab and the Doab (the region between the jumna and Ganges Rivers).

In 1526 following his vicrory at the battle of panipat, Babur founded the Mughal Empire, taking Delhi and Agra. “Mughal” was a derivation of the name “Mongol” as Babur’s ancestors included, on his father’s side, Amir Timur, and on his mother’s side, Genghiz Khan.  And so began a line of Mughal rule which brought with it an unparalleled development of the arts and the Islamic culture.

Emporer Babur was a skilled leader, had a great love of literature and poetry, and initiated the tradition amongst the Mughal rulers of recording memoirs.