The Baburnama : An Emperor Tells His Own Story
'Ali Dust Taghayi Paying Homage to Babur
Zahir-u-din Muhammad Babur was the first Mughal ruler of India--one of history's great empire builders by any standard.
Born in 1483 in the Central Asian kingdom of Ferghana (part of modern Uzbekistan), Babur was descended from two great conquerors: Genghis Khan and Timur (known in the west as Tamurlane). After being edged out of his own kingdom, he conquered Samarqand when he was thirteen, lost it, conquered it again when he was nineteen, and lost it again a year later. He carved out a new kingdom for himself in the mountains of Afghanistan and then went on to conquer a large section of northern India.
Much of what we know about him comes from his autobiography, the Baburnama (Book of Babur). It's not clear what inspired Babur to write his memoirs. Historical accounts were popular in the Islamic world of his time, but there was no tradition of royal memoirs. His choice of language was also unusual. Babur was perfectly at home writing Persian, the literary language of Central Asia at the time. But he chose to write the Baburnama in Chagaty Turkish, the language spoken by himself and his people.
The memoir is lively, personal and direct. Babur begins the story when he inherited the throne at the age of twelve and ends in mid-sentence in September, 1529, a year before his death. He paints a picture of a warrior who partied as hard as he fought. He loved wine, melons, and gardens. He hated India, which was, in his opinion, lacking in all three. He was proud of his ability to write Persian poetry--and pleased to recite it at a party. (Poetry was a courtly skill and popular party game in the Central Asia kingdoms of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, just as it was in Elizabethan England and eighteenth century France.) He tells us what he did, thought and saw--not to mention how much he drank and how sick he was afterwards. He details who was at each event and why their presence was important. He outlines his military strategy at important battles. He complains about India, which he described as "a place of little charm", but describes its animal and plant life with careful, loving detail.
It is, in short, an intimate self-portrait of a prince, warts, binge drinking, and all. "I have simply written the truth," he tells the reader at one point. "I do not intend by what I have written to compliment myself: I have simply set down exactly what happened...May the reader excuse me; may the listener not take me to task." Speaking only for myself, this reader hung on every word.
This post previously appeared in Wonders and Marvels
Image courtesy of the Walters Art Museum
The Year Without Summer: “Eighteen hundred and froze to death”
Historian William K. Klingaman and meteorologist Nicholas P. Klingaman combine forces in The Year Without Summer: 1816 And The Volcano That Darkened The World And Changed History. Working in a vein similar to Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, the Klingamans weave together modern scientific explanations, nineteenth-century scientific (and religious) speculations, and historical events into a compelling account of what happens when weather goes wrong.
The book begins with the violent eruption of Mount Tambora in the Indonesia archipelago on April 5, 1815 and the immediate impact on the surrounding region. But the eruption is only the background. The main story is the disruption of weather that followed: more than twelve months of heavy rains in Europe, drought in North America and unseasonable cold everywhere. The Klingamans follow the extreme weather and its consequences month by month, drawing on witnesses that include Jane Austen and Thomas Jefferson, as well as newspaper accounts, sermons and government reports. They describe the cumulative impact of failed harvests, failed relief efforts and apocalyptic fears. Perhaps most important, they draw connections between the weather and historical events that are seldom considered together: the outbreak of religious revivalism in New York State known as the Second Great Awakening, American expansion west, political battles over the Corn Laws in England, growing unrest in post-Napoleonic France, and even the creation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
The Year Without Summer is a fascinating blend of science and story, particularly relevant in the context of modern debates about climate change.
This review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
What Did the Old Pretender Pretend?
Prince James Francis Edward Stuart studio of Alexis Simon Belle. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery. (NPG348)
The story of England's Glorious Revolution is generally summarized as follows:
In 1688, the Protestant nobility of England, outraged by attacks on their constitution, rose up against the man usually described as the last Stuart king, James II, and offered his throne to his daughter and son-in-law, William and Mary of Orange.* James fled to France with his wife and infant son, James. For the rest of their lives, James Francis Edward Stuart and his son Charles Edward Stuart, known as the Old Pretender and the New Pretender**, attempted to regain the British throne. I've always assumed that the title Pretender referred simply to their efforts to reclaim the throne. It turns out the story is a little more complicated, as is so often the case.
The first thing you need to remember about James II is that he converted to Catholicism before he became the king of England. Today that would be a matter of personal choice, but in seventeenth century England it was a red flag. Popery and absolute monarchy were linked in the public's imagination and neither were popular. Got it?
In 1673, James, then the Duke of York and heir presumptive to the British throne, married the (Catholic) Italian princess Mary Beatrice d'Este. She was his second wife and, at fifteen, only four years older than his oldest daughter, Mary. *** In 1676, she gave birth to a son who lived only a few days. For the next twelve years, the couple remained childless****--a fact that reconciled English Protestants to his succession to the throne in 1685. After all, Catholic James would be succeeded by the devoutly Anglican Mary and her Calvinist husband William.
In 1687, Mary Beatrice visited the spa city of Bath, not yet the popular resort it would become in the Georgian period, and took the waters. Late that year, the royal couple joyfully announced the Queen was pregnant. The popular reception was mixed. English Catholics were elated. English Protestants were not; if the Queen gave birth to a healthy son it would mean a new Catholic dynasty on the throne. Bath's PR people credited the waters with restoring her fertility. English Protestants began to comment on Bath's then reputation for licentious behavior and began to murmur about the "suppositious baby". Rumors spread that James was not the father. Others said the Queen was not even pregnant. In Holland, James' daughter Mary was convinced that it was a plot to trick her out of her inheritance.
After the Prince of Wales was born, an even wilder rumor took hold. James' opponents claimed that a male baby was smuggled into the Queen's chamber in a warming pan to replace her stillborn child. Witnesses to the birth testified before a Privy Council meeting, but the rumors continued. As far as Protestant England was concerned, the "warming pan baby" was a pretender to the throne.
In order to avoid such questions in the future, the Home Secretary attended all subsequent royal births until that of the current Prince of Wales.
* Technically, William and Mary were Stuart rulers and so was their successor, Queen Anne, but these little details are often lost in the synopsis version of history.
** Aka Bonnie Prince Charlie
***James introduced his daughters to their new step-mother saying, "I have provided you with a playfellow."
**** Not for want of trying. Between the death of her first child in 1676 and the birth of the Old Pretender, Mary suffered miscarriages, still-births and the death of four additional infants.