Babur Nama

‘The facts are as stated here I have set down of good and bad whatever is known.’ The Babur Nama a journal kept by Zahir Uddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530) the founder of the Mughal Empire is the earliest example of autobiographical writing in world literature and one of the finest. Against the turbulent backdrop of medieval history it paints a precise and vivid picture of life in Central Asia and Afghanistan-where Babur ruled in Samarkand and Kabul-and in the Indian subcontinent where his dazzling military career culminated in the founding of a dynasty that lasted three centuries. Babur was far more than a skilled often ruthless warrior and master strategist. In this abridged and edited version of a 1921 English translation of his memoirs he also emerges as a sensitive aesthete naturalist poet and lover. Writer journalist and internationally acclaimed Middle eastern and Central asian expert Dilip Hiro breathes new life into a unique historical document that is at once objective and intensely personal-for in Babur’s words ‘the truth should be reached in every matter’. Review As a work of autobiography the Babur Nama stands alone in the pre-colonial world... Its vital first person narrative its evocation of emotions we all share its elements of self-dramatisation indeed its apparently `modern' sensibility... A work of world literature... With luck Dilip Hiro's edition will draw a new audience to the remarkable Babur. --- About the Author Dilip Hiro