Editing Babur (section)

== Background ==
[[File:Babur's Genealogical Order.jpg|thumb|Babur Family Tree]]
[[File:Emperor babur.jpg|200px|thumb|17th-century portrait of Babur]]
Babur's memoirs form the main source for details of his life. They are known as the ''[[Baburnama]]'' and were written in [[Chagatai language|Chagatai]], his [[first language]],<ref name="Babur Nama">{{cite book |title=Babur Nama: Journal of Emperor Babur |year=2006 |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] India |location=Mumbai |isbn=978-0-14-400149-1 |page=xviii |last=Hiro |first=Dilip |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VW2HJL689wgC}}</ref> though, according to Dale, "his Turkic prose is highly Persianized in its sentence structure, morphology or word formation and vocabulary."<ref name="Dale2004">{{cite book |first=Stephen Frederic |last=Dale |title=The garden of the eight paradises: Bābur and the culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483–1530) |publisher=Brill |year=2004 |pages=15, 150 |isbn=90-04-13707-6}}</ref> ''Baburnama'' was translated into Persian during the rule of Babur's grandson Akbar.<ref name="Babur Nama" />

Babur was born on 14 February 1483 in the city of [[Andijan]], [[Fergana Valley]], contemporary Uzbekistan. He was the eldest son of [[Umar Shaikh Mirza II]],<ref>{{cite web |quote=On the occasion of the birth of Babar Padishah (the son of Omar Shaikh) |url=http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/rash1.html |title=Mirza Muhammad Haidar |work=Silk Road Seattle |publisher=[[University of Washington]] |access-date=7 November 2006 |archive-date=16 April 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150416044122/http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/rash1.html |url-status=live }}</ref> ruler of the Fergana Valley, the son of [[Abu Sa'id (Timurid dynasty)|Abū Saʿīd Mirza]] (and grandson of [[Miran Shah]], who was himself son of [[Timur]]) and his wife [[Qutlugh Nigar Khanum]], daughter of [[Yunus Khan]], the ruler of [[Moghulistan]] (a descendant of [[Genghis Khan]]).<ref>{{cite book|author1=Babur|title=Babur Nama|publisher=Penguin Books|isbn=978-0-14-400149-1|page=vii|year=2006}}</ref>

Babur hailed from the [[Turkic peoples|Turkic]] [[Barlas]] tribe, which was of [[Mongol]] origin and had embraced the [[Turco-Persian tradition]]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Babur |title=Bābur (Mughal emperor) |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=29 August 2016 |archive-date=5 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230305124145/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Babur |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Iranica" /> They had also converted to Islam centuries earlier and resided in [[Turkestan]] and [[Greater Khorasan|Khorasan]].

Aside from the [[Chaghatai Turkic]], Babur was equally fluent in [[Classical Persian]], the [[lingua franca]] of the Timurid elite.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Iran/The-Timurids-and-Turkmen |title=Iran: The Timurids and Turkmen |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=29 August 2016 |archive-date=18 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230618001818/https://www.britannica.com/place/Iran/The-Timurids-and-Turkmen |url-status=live }}</ref>

Some of Babur's relatives, such as his uncles [[Mahmud Khan (Moghul Khan)]] and Ahmad Khan, continued to identify as Mongols, and allowed him to use their Mongol troops to help recover his fortunes in the turbulent years that followed.<ref>{{cite book |last=Dale |first=Stephen F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xyluDwAAQBAJ&dq=dughlat+kashgar+mongol&pg=PA33 |page=35 |title=Babur:Timurid Prince and Mughal Emperor, 1483-1530 |year=2018 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9781316996379}}</ref>

Hence, Babur, though nominally a Mongol (or ''Moghul'' in Persian language), drew much of his support from the local Turkic and Iranian people of Central Asia, and his army was diverse in its ethnic makeup. It included [[Sart]]s, [[Tājik people|Tajiks]], [[Pashtun people|ethnic Afghans]], [[History of Arabs in Afghanistan|Arabs]], as well as Barlas and Chaghatayid Turko-Mongols from Central Asia.<ref>{{cite book |title=Central Asia in Historical Perspective |last=Manz |first=Beatrice Forbes |chapter=The Symbiosis of Turk and Tajik |publisher=Boulder, Colorado & Oxford |year=1994 |page=58 |isbn=0-8133-3638-4}}</ref>