ended from Tamerlane, or Timur,
on his father's side, and, on his mother's, from Chinghiz Khan. In
the year 1494, at the age of twelve, he became king of Farghana, a
small kingdom of Central Asia, now known as Kokand. His sovereignty,
however, was of a very precarious tenure, for he was surrounded on
all sides by a horde of rapacious, intriguing relatives, scrambling
for the fragments of Timur's empire. With hardly a trustworthy
ally except a remarkably clever and courageous old grandmother, he
struggled for three years to retain his birthright. Then, acting on a
sudden inspiration, he made a dash for Samarkand, the ancient capital
of Timur, and won it. In his delightful memoirs Babar describes how,
with boyish glee, he paced the ramparts himself, wandered from palace
to palace, and revelled in the fruit-gardens of what was then one of
the finest cities of Asia. But in less than a hundred days, most of
his shifty Mongol troops, disappointed in not finding as much booty
as they expected, deserted and joined a party of his enemies, who
straightway attacked Andijan, the capital of Farghana, where Babar
had left his mother and grandmother. Before he could come to their
rescue Andijan had fallen, and at the same time Samarkand, which he
had left, was occupied by another of his numerous rivals. This double
misfortune caused still more of his followers to leave him, and he
found himself without a kingdom, except the little town of Khojend,
and with only two hundred men. For almost the only time in his life
he gave way utterly to despair. "I became a prey to melancholy and
vexation; I was reduced to a sore distressed state and wept much."

Before long, however, Babar, rejoined by his mother and grandmother,
whom the captors of Andijan had spared, taking advantage of another
turn in the wheel of fortune, recovered his kingdom of Farghana,
but lost the greater part of it again through another desertion of
his "Mongol rascals." A second time, with only a handful of men, he
surprised and captured Samarkand (A.D. 1500). In the following year
he rashly sallied out against Shaibani, the most formidable of his
adversaries, was defeated, and, after vainly trying to hold the city
against the victors, was forced to fly under cover of the night. This
time he did not weep, but consoled himself next morning by riding a
headlong race with two of his companions. Reaching a village, where
they found "nice fat flesh, bread of fine flour well bak