page_title: Mongol invasions of India
section_title: Timur and Babur
hierarchical_section_title: Mongol invasions of India / Timur and Babur
caption_attribution_description: English: The Defeat by Timur of the Sultan of Delhi, Nasir Al-Din Mahmum Tughluq, in the winter of 1397-1398; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2014.101 فارسی: شکست خوردن سلطان دهلی از تیمور Nederlands: Timoer verslaat de Sultan van Delhi, Nasir Al-Din Mahmum Tughluq, in de winter van 1397-1398.
context_page_description: The Mongol Empire launched several invasions into the Indian subcontinent from 1221 to 1327, with many of the later raids made by the Qaraunas of Mongol origin. The Mongols occupied parts of the subcontinent for decades. As the Mongols progressed into the Indian hinterland and reached the outskirts of Delhi, the Delhi Sultanate led a campaign against them in which the Mongol army suffered serious defeats.
context_section_description: The Delhi sultans had developed cordial relations with the Yuan dynasty in Mongolia and China and the Ilkhanate in Persia and the Middle East. Around 1338, Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq of the Delhi Sultanate appointed Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta an ambassador to the Yuan court under Toghon Temür (Emperor Huizong). The gifts he was to take included 200 slaves.
  The Chagatai Khanate had split up by this time and an ambitious Mongol Turk chieftain named Timur had brought Central Asia and the regions beyond under his control. He followed the twin policies of Imperialism and Islamization, shifting various Mongol tribes to different parts of his empire and giving primacy to the Turkic people in his own army. Timur also reinforced the Islamic faith over the Chagatai Khanate and gave primacy to the laws of the Shari'ah over Genghis Khan's shamanist laws. He invaded India in 1398 to make war and plunder the wealth of the country.
  Timur's empire broke up and his descendants failed to hold on to Central Asia, which split up into numerous principalities. The descendants of the Mongol Chagtais and the descendants of Timur empire lived side by side, occasionally fighting and occasionally inter-marrying.
  One of the products of such a marriage was Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. His mother belonged to the family of the Mongol Khans of Tashkent. Babur was a true descendant of Timur and shared his beliefs: he believed that rules and regulations of Genghis Khan were deficient as he remarked, "they had no divine authority."
  Even though his own mother was a Mongol, Babur was not very fond of the Mongol race and wrote a stinging verse in his autobiography:
  "Were the Mughals an angel race, it would be bad,
  Even write in gold, the Mughal name would be bad."
  When Babur occupied Kabul and began invading the Indian subcontinent, he was called a Mughal like all the earlier invaders from the Chagatai Khanate. Even the invasion of Timur had been considered a Mongol invasion since the Mongols had ruled over Central Asia for so long and had given their name to its people.
caption: Timur defeats the Sultan of Delhi, Nasir Al-Din Mahmum Tughluq, in the winter of 1397–1398
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